A title inspired from Tom Junod's article about Fred Rogers. I know. But for a reason.

Someone who doesn't necessarily define himself as a turn-based fan but most of his favourites happen to be turn-based. Yeah, that's me.

Sometime last year. A game trailer drops. Solely western. Turn-based but plays like a JRPG. And splendid visuals. I get quite excited about it. And hit the Wishlist button.

February, Xbox Showcase. Another trailer drops and I get excited even more. Then, the price gets revealed: 50$ (10% discount till the first week of release). I decide to wait. "I'm sold. But it's the first ever game of the studio. Anything can happen", I say to myself.

March. The Steam Spring Sales period. I collect some indie games. All are inspired from old Nintendo classics. I wonder if I should take the risk. Never did that before. I surrender. And preorder it.

April. I am the only one really hyped in my friend group. 2 of them keeping an eye, as well. The rest? Not too much. The game comes out. I start to play right away. Get blown away by the prologue. The next day, we all were playing Clair Obscur.

The next week. We all find ourselves discussing the game. The builds, the soundtrack, the story... Anything you can think of. I don't want the game to end. I want to take my time. Everyone else gets ahead.

Several days later. GTA6 gets delayed. We rejoice. With the great chance of Clair winning the GOTY...

Today. I complete the story. With different but also great feelings. A feeling I hadn't felt since Neverending Story. Find myself applauding the game in the credits. Never did that before.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a marvellous journey with a major inspiration from the east which creates a splendid confluence with that western touch. A 2025 game came out of the golden age of JRPGs on PlayStation 2. It’s an adventure where you will find many aspects from your favourite games. An Overworld inspired by old-school Final Fantasy games. A combat UI inspired by Persona. A level design which literally feels like a souslike, including the bonfire system. A camp system inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3. Some platforming inspired by major platformers. And even, a Social Link system and different character outfits inspired by Persona again. Might sound like only a mixture. But it Is not just that. Alongside everything else also being splendid, CO:E33 even manages to achieve some things that some games tried in the past but royally screwed up. Even without all the things I said, with its tons of pros and literally zero cons, it's a game that will make you say: “This is the GOTY” even at the prologue. Literally.

The turn-based combat is a brilliant mixture of Persona (with the UI) and turn-based Yakuza games (in terms of QTEs) with their own clever touch on top of it. It’s a combat system where you can actively defend your party members via parries and dodges which happen to be much more essential than any other game who followed similar systems in the past. And not just in defence, unlike the traditional mana system, the combat takes an inspiration from CRPGs and relies your skills on action points instead. And the way to get more AP lies on successful parries. While each successful parry gives 1 AP, if you manage to successfully parry all the enemy attacks in that turn, you can pull a counterattack and give a significant damage. Though, relying on parry only is only valid for the early game. Later on, you will be able to get many Pictos and Luminas that grant you more AP in other ways. Still, the offering is a JRPG. But you have to defend like s aouslike and strategize your attacks like a CRPG. Unbelieveably true and fascinating.

Speaking of Pictos and Luminas, Pictos are basically equipments that grant your characters various buffs. While each character can equip up to 3 Pictos, if you win 4 combats with a Pictos on, the party learns that buff as a passive which can be equipped without having to equip that Pictos anymore. These passives cost Lumina points that are obtained through colours of Lumina which are sold at merchants and spread around the world. They are quite cheap, don’t worry.

When it comes to the overall experience, the game leaves the exploration mostly to the players’ curiosity both in the world map and in each area. While the only quest markers you will ever see are on the Overworld UI map, the Overworld exploration is just like the old-school Final Fantasy games in which some areas are “naturally” blocked on foot, but you can swim or fly to these areas later on. Moreover, the areas you can access but for which you are under levelled are marked as Danger at each gate. Although each area is designed like a soulslike, enemies spawning much less than any souslike makes the exploration far from overwhelming. Even, it makes it a rewarding activity most of the time. Other than that, unlike the current AAA open-world sickness, the game does not have many side quests but many optional areas. Given that the story content is only half of it, there will still be tons of things and to explore after you see the credits rolling.

Although the story part is hard to discuss without spoilers, I can at least say that as you progress, Clair Obscur’s story evolves into something beyond a great fantasy story with multiple layers. Unlike every other JRPG which are slow burn at the beginning, even only in the prologue, the game tells you how the story will be impactful later on. Personally, I don’t remember any other game where I felt so many different emotions in a single experience. Sometimes I got happy. Sometimes sad. Sometimes angry. Sometimes shocked. Sometimes confused. Sometimes, wholesome even. And all this happened while shouting: “Pour ce qu’ils viendront après !” (For those who come after!) on every occasion. Embarked on a journey to save the city of Lumière through an intriguing plot, but in the end, found myself feeling the same feelings I felt when I watched Neverending Story. While the credits were rolling, I found myself literally applauding the game which is something I had never done for any visual content before.

The visuals and the art style are breathtaking in every corner. For this reason, it is impossible not to fall in love with how the game looks. As the game’s theme is based on painting, you will truly find yourselves looking at different beautiful paintings in every corner. Like it sings in Lumière: “In beautiful paintings, we will find without help”. To be fair, the backgrounds are foggy in many areas in order to get around the limitations and performance issues of Unreal Engine 5. Even when you turn off the motion blur and film grain. However, what I appreciate about this is that the developers managed to pull this trick as an artistic choice as a means of a perfect cover for the engine limitations.

The OST is overall great. So great that even at some point, me and my friends found ourselves discussing our favourite tracks from the game which we have almost never done before. I will not tell Lorien Testard’s story again but, it is fair to say that gaming might have found its new Nobuo Uematsu.

Does it have any cons? Not really. But I must admit, the game could be better off with some small quality of life changes. Firstly, I wish there was an auto-advance option in dialogues like Atlus games. The sprint animations could have been improved as they seem so raw an inauthentic this way. And lastly, all the flying enemies being able to dodge every physical attack is kind of annoying. It could have been based on RNG instead. The only actual downside I can mention is that platforming is bad. However, this is rather an issue related to UE as it is a terrible engine when it comes to platforming and this is absolutely not the game’s fault.

Thank you for all the good memories you created Clair Obscur: Expedition 33…

Demain viendra !

11/10