Clair Obscur - review

We meet our main cast as the expedition sets out. On the beach, an elderly man appears and slaughters most of the group. Gustave barely survives and contemplates suicide before being saved by Lune.

The gameplay is introduced slowly through the other characters as we only had access to Gustave in the prologue. The main thing to notice is that each of the characters has an overarching mechanic making up most of it's kit. As the party regathers, we meet Maelle (Gustave's adopted sister) and Sciel.

For example Maelle has stances which determine how her abilities function which benefits she will get from casting an ability while she is in virtuoso stance. All of the mechanics feel very fleshed out and abilities in the skill tree seem to follow the general idea of RPGs where damage is dilluted through (weak – medium – strong – extreme) levels of damage with differing animations and or casting conditions. The general feel in the start of the game is quite simple, you will spend most of your time working around the mechanic you have available be that maelles stances, Gustaves overcharge, Lunes runes or Sciells twilight bonus.

Gameplay is fluid and expressive. Characters have well-designed skill kits, with focused playstyles. The unfortunate thing is that this gets overshadowed later if you do decide to "optimize" your damage.

Voice acting is a standout feature. The performances feel lived-in and emotionally authentic. One of these examples can be seen below

Later, we meet Esquie ("mon ami!") who helps us navigate the world. Nearing the end of the first act we encounter a difficult boss which introduces multi-phase fights and forces players to understand parry/dodge mechanics deeply together with the importance of free aim attacks and enemy weaknesses.

Something you might have noticed while playing is that Gustave seems to have far fewer abilities than the other characters and his weapons really don't give him any bonus like the other characters weapons do. This in turn is great foreshadowing. At the end of the act the elderly man from the start appaears again and Gustave sacrifices himself to save Maelle while a new character appears and Verso joins the group. Verso's shady demeanor hints that he isn't telling the whole truth.

Bit of a digression regarding the gameplay.

Clair Obscur combines turn-based combat with real-time elements: free aim, QTEs, parrying, and dodging. These features give players agency and intensity often missing from the genre of turn based RPGs, this feels like a generally industry-wide accepted mechanic nowadays with most newer releases containing the parry and dodge mechanic.

We can easily see all the inspirations from the favourite games of the core team responsible for Expedition 33, you can see them and their favorite games on their site: www.sandfall.co

We can see the inspirations from different games in the genre come into other aspects of the game, for example: Persona, final fantasy, nier automata these are all games that are very heavy on story with interesting symbolism about death, the meaning of truly being alive integrated in the core gameplay features. Persona 3 Reload has the characters shoot themselves in the head with a pistol which they call an Evoker in order to awaken the powers of their persona in the game heavily explores the themes of death and the inevitable passage of time.

Social bonding with party members echoes Persona's social links, but more forgiving. Side content expands the world and rewards exploration.

The main issue I have with the core gameplay idea is maybe coming from my own missunderstanding of combat where towards the end of the game where if I didn't dodge or parry most things would just one shot me and recovering would be quite hard (I played the through the game and platinumed it on the normal expeditioner difficulty). This comes from the fact that most endgame bosses have an insane combo made up with multiple hits where even one mistake in a dodge or parry can cost you having to revive a character and spend one of your remaining characters turns on that.

What I would like to praise the game for is the lack of “skill trees”. What you have as a means of upgrading your character is the weapons you are using (which have 3 bonuses and some flat stats on them) and adding stat points to your character into one of the 6 stats that exist as well as a selection of skills you can learn. What most newer RPGs for the past decade have been doing is adding skill trees with either senseful changes to the core mechanics or just nonsense like percentually increased stats.

The game consists of plenty of side areas and a lot of side content of which most is quite interesting and different enough that it doesn't bore you like the usual RPG/JRPG grind you get when you try to do everything. And usually all of the side areas offer a little bit more context to the overall world. So my advice is to really visit all of the side areas, read/listen through all of the expeditioner diaries and grab all the info as soon as possible. It should be a good show of how good the gameplay is that by the time I finished most things I was already level 94, and just had to grind a little bit to reach level 99 with my characters.

Character builds offer deep freedom, like in Elden Ring. Want to cheese fights with a Verso infinite-shot build? Go ahead. Want to solo with Maelle? Sure. Want to have a more methodic and defensive approach and experience the fights to their fullest extent, why not. The game encourages expression.

This is in my opinion the largest benefit in the core gameplay of the game, where a lot of JRPGs do it wrong. It's never quite possible to achieve this type of flexibility in other games and definetely not as easily as you can in Clair Obscur.

Cosmetic collectibles also influence the game: outfit changes affect certain cutscenes and even antagonist appearances. Music records are also collectible and playable at camp.

Verso leads the grieving party to Old Lumiere. There, we discover he was part of a previous expedition alongside his father, Renoire – the man who killed Gustave. By now Maelle is extremely focused on killing Renoire.

Renoire escapes, and the team is left without a lead until Verso proposes another path: defeating the Axons (Insanely powerful Nevrons) and getting their core so that the party can open the way towards the paintress. As we fight these Axons we see that they seem to be quite more important figures in this world compared to the usual Nevrons we have fought thus far. One being a hypnotic dancer lady and one being a Emotion-mask based man-like figure. What's interesting is that Verso tells of a third Axon which you cannot access until later in the game.

After challenging and defeating them, the group reaches the Paintress – but she cannot be harmed. A portal appears, and they are pulled into a new dimension.

At the monolith's summit, Renoire awaits. With the Curator's help (Why is this guy helping along?), they defeat him and Maelle gets her revenge. They face the Paintress and manage to take her down, she is broken but instead of making a last stand for herself blesses the team with buffs while we beat into her with our final kicks. She then dies in Verso's arms. They plant their flag: "Tomorrow Comes."

We now see what you would this would be an epilogue where all characters meet back up in Lumiere and celebrate the defeat of the paintress. Verso being alone reads up on a letter he got from the mysterious girl character who was with Renoir. This letter is by far the biggest “twist“ the game has left which was heavily foreshadowed through the game if you paid attention and were questioning about the events you have seen thus far. I think it's best to take a look at the letter here, there is also the voiced version attached below:

“Brother, I tire of the conflicts and the deceptions that plague our family and theirs.. So I entrust you with this letter, wheather you give it to her is up to you. I am at peace with what's to come. When the time comes I hope you will be too. Maelle, it's a strange feelign watching you with my brother laughing and smiling without the scars or the memories that afflict me. Alicia as she was meant to be, not this painted version that I am. My family a fascimile of yours. And this world, a mirror. Painted by yourmother the paintress to save of her grief. Seeingyour expedition through would plunge us all into the abyss. For in ridding the world of the Paintress you'd lose the sole force standing against the one who would erase us. The one who invokes the flowers of the Gommage. An act of love. For he does love her. Your Father. On your monolith she paints a warning for us all. Of the few she can save as her power vains. We all wish for our families to thrive. Your family however believes only one can survive. But perhaps you'll find another way. You who have lived amongst us. Perhaps you differ from your father and your sister, as I differ from mine. Your mother paints life. Whilst your father, death… What will you paint?”

While we listen to this plot twist unfold in one of the best voice acting deliveries in this game (While the game is full of beautiful voice acting this one really hits hard) where you can really feel the sorrow of this character while she was writing the letter to Maelle/Verso.

As we the player now are faced with the truth of who the paintress was and not understanding all that Alicia meant we see the entire town besides verso Gommaging and dissapearing from this world without understanding why this is happening to them as they've gotten rid of the paintress. Lumiere disappears. Maelle awakens, disfigured and mute, in the mansion with the upright Eiffel Tower. Act 3 begins. This is how the final act of the game begins.

Before I starting talking about the final act of the game I would like to give my largest recommendations to the in-game OST. I would like to provide you with my favorite songs from the game via a spotify playlist:

What I would also advise is that you take a look towards the making of the music for Clair Obscur. It's 15 minutes on youtube and if you are a big fan of videogame music this will be very interesting for you. I really hope they make some sort of mini orchestra tour as I could bet anything that it would be pretty much sold out instantly. I've attached the making of below.

All of the tracks and different mixing of the same tracks for different encounters really makes it so that when you finish the game you will listen to the songs on repeat. This cannot be said for a lot of titles that are coming out in the past couple of years that most of its soundtrack is very memorable and I am looking forward to an orchestral tour if it ever happens.

I'd like to say a couple of things about the games visual identity. The game is quite beautiful at most points, especially in the areas of the game that follow the main story segments. Main areas are stunning but unfortunately, side areas suffer from visual repetition, a common flaw in open-world games. Like Elden Ring, smaller dungeons blur together.

One of the most fun and most frustrating side areas were definetely the Gestral beaches. Everyone who has tried on the volleyball game and was hunting for the platinum trophy or this achivement in particular has probably either ripped their hair out trying to beat the max difficulty instead of just doing it once on normal difficulty for the trophy.

Back to the finale of the story!

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Act 3 gives us the final context we need for the entire story to be wrapped up. It's also the shortest act as most of the mystery is really quickly explained. We meet Maelle (Alicias) real family, her father Renoir her mother Aline and her sister Clea. Through Cleas dialogue with Maelle (I will refer to her like this throughout the entirety of the review and the painted version of her will be reffered as Alicia)

we find out that the Dessendre family was struck by “The writers” and are in some sort of war with them. They tried to kill Maelle and Verso saved her at the cost of his own life. We find out that the painters can make canvases come back to life. Her mother Aline not managing to cope with the grief of losing her own son gets lost in the canvas made by Verso before he died. When the painters are in the canvas they are essentially “paused” in the real world and the longer they are in the canvas the worse their physical state in the real world becomes. Time flows much faster in the canvas and at a certain point after Aline has been in the canvas for too long with no wish to get out Maelles father Renoir goes into the canvas himself and tries to delete the painted world in order to get his wife out of it back into the real world. Hence the Gommages happening every year.

Clea is too busy fighting the writers and sends maelle into the canvas to help her father get her mom out of it. But she gets repainted into a baby and lives out quite a substantial amount of time in the canvas.

With this realization now we are back in the canvas and meet up with Verso shortly thereafter. A couple of moments later we reunite with the Curator who is actually the real Renoire. The previous version of Renoir was a version painted by Aline. He explains that now that Maelle is here and got her mother out they can finally leave and destroy the canvas. The reasoning for destroying the canvas is that Aline will not let it go as it's the only trace of her late son and no matter what they do until the canvas is destroyed the Dessendre family cannot be whole again.

Maelle after spending basically a good portion of a life in the canvas and finally getting back her memories of her real life being an absolute mess is of course not a big fan of this idea. So what Maelle does she escapes with Verso and manages to repaint the rest of the party back to life as she is a paintress herself.

With the rest of the party being not quite on-board with dying they go ahead with the final stretch. Defeating the real Renoire and pushing him out of the canvas taking his chroma and repainting everyone back to life. What we can see is that Verso does not seem too fond of this idea.

As the party marches towards Lumiere and fighting Renoire with the undead expeditioners Maelle ressurected with her paintress powers we are pretty much marching through Lumiere directly to Renoire.

As we reach him the discussion between Renoir and Maelle gets extremely heated up as Maelle really wants to stay in the canvas and bring back everyone (Even though she is not communicating that, more of like a come-and-go into and out of the canvas situation) but Renoir ofcourse sees through this. This is also a very powerfull scene with some stunning voice acting. You can see my favorite part of it timestamped below.

After beating Renoire he understands the wishes of Maelle and lets her do her thing. What happens now is that Verso finds the remainder of his real-life counterpart, drawing the canvas in which they are all in, Seeing the tired boy just reinforces his already established decision. He wants to destroy the canvas.

The final (and only) decision we make in the game is a reinforcement of the previous quote we were told by Renoire a few minutes earlier: “Life keeps forcing cruel choices.”

Maelle wants to save the canvas and Verso wants to destroy it. One implies everyone is ressurected and Maelle spends her entire life in the canvas forgetting about her real family and torturing Verso by repainting him against his will. (A very grim ending) and the other implies the Dessendre family moving on from Versos death, but Maelle unhappy and an entire conscious world killed off because the family couldnt cope with the grief.

The best thing about the ending is that it provides no easy resolution, only perspectives.

For those who come after.

I'm very happy that such a small core team could develop such a great game and deliver it in such a high quality state. Something that is definetely such an impressive feat that I am extremely looking forward to Sandfall Interactives next endeavour. If you're interested you should definetely read the interview with the CEO and CTO of Sandfall interactive about their development and publishment process and the comparison of how long it would have taken had they shipped their idea to someone like Ubisoft from the inside of the company. It only comes to show that passion like this will always prevail against all odds. You can find the interview here:

Clair Obscur Expedition33 Impossible to greenlight at a big company

If you liked the review i highly recommend getting it for yourself in physical edition Clair Obscur Expedition 33