When JRPGs are made by Western studios, they're often nostalgia trips trying to capture the glory days of the early Final Fantasy games, which is slightly baffling in a beloved genre crying out for innovation. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the game to finally answer that cry, and this demo of the first few hours shows how French studio Sandfall Interactive is bringing Western triple-A design ideas to the genre in a fresh way without losing any of the fun from the classic JRPG formula.
Those innovations make the game's combat an absolute joy to experience. The game uses a standard turn-based combat system as a base, but it takes lots of little pieces from other games to make a system that feels alive.
Action order is determined by your character's speed, meaning fast characters can act more than once before other characters get a turn. On their turn, a character can execute a basic attack to build up action points (AP), which are then spent on their more powerful skills and include basic quick-time-events to keep things active by increasing the number of hits and the damage they deal.
There are several more ways to build up AP though, as you have to stay ready on the controller when enemies take their turn. It's your job to read the enemy's attacks like an action game and determine the perfect time to dodge or parry. Dodging is easier, but parrying will earn you AP -- and successfully parrying every strike in an enemy's combo will unleash a powerful counterattack.
This system makes things much more intense and active than a standard turn-based battle system, as there are skill checks at every point in the process that can help you dispatch foes quickly. What puts the game over the top is the incredible cinematography in battles. The camera shifts and tilts with every action you take, with perfectly-timed slow-motion effects and visual ripples that make nailing a parry feel absolutely incredible.
On top of all this, every character in the party has a unique battle mechanic. Gustave has the Overcharge ability, where using skills slowly builds up an ultimate attack. Lune uses the Stain system, where using elemental attacks charges up elemental spirits that power up attacks of other elements. Maelle has a Stance system that alters her offensive and defensive stats, with her skills placing her in specific Stances, setting her up for other skills that benefit from using those Stances.
Every character has their own mini-puzzle to solve as you're considering what to do with them each turn, but it gets even more complex when characters' abilities combine. For example, one of Maelle's skills will only put her into her double-damage stance if she attacks a burning foe -- a status condition Lune can easily inflict. For maximum efficiency, you have to carefully plan every move, considering how it will affect other characters' skills and whether it's the most effective use of your limited AP.
It makes for perhaps the tightest combat system there's ever been in a JRPG, with the couple of boss fights in this demo (including a powerful optional boss) bringing the most out of every aspect of encounters.
Outside of battle, there are plenty of opportunities to build your characters. Characters only have five main stats that you have full control over when leveling up, but that's because all of the complexity instead comes from the Pictos and Luminas.
Pictos are equipable items that confer passive effects onto characters -- with each character able to equip three. However, use them in battle often enough and they become Luminas, which you can equip on as many characters as you want simultaneously, provided they have enough Lumina energy.
It means you're heavily encouraged to constantly switch in different Pictos so they can become Luminas and benefit the entire party, and even in this demo -- which encompasses the first two main areas in a massive world -- the incredible depth of the system became clear.
It's not just the combat that shines though, as the world and story also draw you in. In this world, every year a powerful figure known as the Paintress paints a number on a tree, at which point every person of that age dies, with the number decreasing each year. Every year, an expedition of people in their final year are sent out to try and defeat the Paintress, but so far, all have failed.
This setup makes for a grippingly dark and oppressive world where the humans feel like powerless specks on the landscape, making rooting for our protagonists all the more satisfying. Despite that tone, no sacrifice is made in the fantastical beauty of the world, with the landscapes looking gorgeous with a great sense of culture.
All of this aids the top-tier acting on display by the star-studded cast, including Charlie Cox, best known for playing Daredevil in the MCU and Jennifer English, who has already melted our hearts once as Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3 and is ready to do it again here. They bring the excellent dialogue to life in grand fashion worthy of the epic tale the team is trying to tell.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was already on many people's radars as a potential game of the year, but after this preview, there should be more confidence around it than ever. It innovates in a beloved genre, bringing an all-time great combat system to the table while telling a fantastic story that we are desperate to see more of when the game launches in April.