Is This The Game Of The Year

This is actually the second time that I’m writing this post, I originally wrote it a week ago on an iPad and you can obviously guess how that ended up if I am writing this article again but more on that in a different post, I just needed to vent a little at the beginning so forgive me.

Last week, I finally got some free time to play and I went with Diablo IV to see how the new season was turning out and also Path of Exile 2, to see if the new patch had fixed loot drops. Don’t worry, I am not going to declare one of these the GOTY contender. More so they led me down the path to the game that may be. Anyway, long story short, Diablo didn’t pull me in with the new season and POE2, even though the loot drops seem to be better, has another bug, at least on console, that if you go into your inventory enough times on a l level, the graphics get glitches, that worsen until all you see is a grey screen. The fix is to return to town and come back but still.

GOTY Contender

Then I actually got to the game I want to talk to you about, it’s called Claire Obscur, Expedition 33 and initially when I first saw it, I didn’t know what to make of it from the title and I have never really played a JRPG, so I didn’t think it was for me.

However, there was a lot of buzz about it online and it was on Game Pass, so I figured it was worth a try and as you can probably guess from the title, it was a strong case OMG! :)

What is a JRPG?

For those of you like me who don’t know and I could admittedly get this wrong, but it typically refers to a turn-based role-playing game developed in Japan. Over time most turned based RPGs loosely fell into this category but this isn’t the point of this article, so all you need to know is that combat in the game is turn based.

So what’s it like?

The game is really good, I am still playing through the early stages and although the beginning was a little slow for me, there was a world and a story to introduce. The story, so far has been amazing, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, so I won’t go into too much detail but there is a mysterious island with a giant on it, called the Paintress, every year she paints a number on a mountain on the island, counting down from 100. All of the inhabitants of the town can only live up until that number, so as it ticks down, their lives get shorter, which is why the title of the game is Expedition 33 as this is their last year of life and so they are going to confront the Paintress.

Once you actually set out on the expedition, you really are thrown into the thick of it, a lot happens in a very short time, again no spoilers here but you will end up on the island surrounded by mysterious things and creatures, needing to explore and fight to stay alive.

Graphics

Graphically the game is gorgeous, I’m playing on an Xbox Series X in quality mode and it looks very nice, the attention they have put into the environments and characters really is impressive and movement is very fluid. All of the game looks great and you’ll often finding yourself stopping in the middle of exploration to just look around and take in the view.

Sound

The sound in this game is truly impressive too, the music is amazing, it fits the mood so perfectly, it is a mixture of piano and singing/harmonics but it is so well done. The sounds of the environment are also really well done and will give you clues as to what’s around a corner and when an attack will come if you listen carefully. The voice acting is good, the characters all sound like I would imagine they should sound.

You can listen to the games official soundtrack here and see/hear for yourself

What do you need to do?

Ok, again no spoilers but because of events that take place when you land on the island, you need to traverse the island and it’s terrain before you get to the Paintress, during this time you are going to be free to explore and there are a lot of hidden nooks and crannies to find, a lot of areas where you will encounter enemies and even some places that won’t become accessible until you unlock them. A couple of thing’s that you are searching for appear as glowing balls of white or pink light, when you collect them, these will provide you with new abilities that you can learn and unlock for your characters or materials to upgrade your weapons and gear and some times currency for the merchants you encounter. You will also get rewards if you win a battle, at least the first time but each encounter also awards you with experience points that you can then use to level up your characters stats and abilities.

This obviously can have a tremendous impact on how you play that character, especially when you take into account some of the abilities you can find (called Picto’s in the game) and it adds an extra layer of strategy to the combat. Which leads me nicely on to the games combat.

Fight Fight!

When you’re exploring you will see mobs wandering around as well, the most important thing here is that you hit them before they hit you, usually this means running up to them and hitting RB on the Xbox, this initiates combat and gives you first attack. If you miss or they hit you first, then they start. Even if you see one mob wandering on the map, once you attack you will see that they are usually a group of three, though not always, you can’t tell until you start the fight. There are of course different types of mob, some fly, some have shielding, some have obvious weak points.

The way the combat works is that you use your first character in your group (or just you if youre alone) to decide what kind of attack or ability you want to use. You have skills, such as healing yourself or a team mate, or you can cast a buff, or a stronger attack, or you can attack with a base attack.

The thing to be aware of here, is that if you cast a heal, revive, or a buff, usually that characters turn is over afterwards and you move onto the next character in your group. If you cast one of the stronger attacks, these will use energy (I just think of it as like mana), allowing you to do more damage and also apply some kind of elemental damage. The base attacks usually involve you running forward and hitting them with your weapon(s), this regenerates mana. Finally you also have a ranged attack, that you can freely aim and shoot with, this allows you to target weak points and attack flying enemies.

Where all of this starts to get interesting though is when you start combining these skills with your pictos and then your team-mates attacks. Perhaps at the start of the turn you buff them so they do more damage, or you apply burn onto the enemies with one of your attacks because you know one of the other members of your team has an attack that does extra damage if the enemies are burning and so on.

What’s worth mentioning is that the characters are all different types as well, if I had to classify them, I’d say they fall into the basic archetypes of warrior, mage, etc, so you will have an interesting time learning what skills to use, what new skills to learn (you get skill points when you level, that can be assigned to new attacks, spells etc) and how to handle certain enemies and situations.

Defense, Defense!

Of course at some point though, it will be the enemies turn to attack, when they do, you have a couple of options to protect or defend yourself. You can, while it’s your turn, cast defensive spells in preparation, while being attacked, you can dodge, jump and parry. This all means though that you have to time these moves to the enemies attacks.

Dodging is exactly what it sounds like, you move out of the way so you don’t get hit. Early on in the game you will find a picto, that restores mana if you do a perfect dodge. The difference between a dodge and a perfect dodge is your timing :)

Jumping - some enemies will perform ground based attacks, you can avoid these by jumping at the right time, again, just like with dodging, if you time the jump correctly, you can counter attack while in the air (press RT on Xbox) and score some extra damage.

Parry, finally parry, parrying is the hardest but most rewarding defensive ability, if you parry an attack then you don’t take any damage from it but if you time the parry perfectly, you can perform a counter attack that can be quite devastating. It’s a really good thing to learn, so good to practice by picking fights or respawning mobs (just rest at one of the camp flags you find).

There is a lot more to it than I am telling you here but I think it’s better if you try and find out for yourself.

What Games Should Be

This really is true for the whole game, you should honestly, in my opinion avoid any of the guides and things you see on the internet and play and experience this game for yourself. It really is so much fun discovering things while exploring, unfolding the story, getting into fights with enemies that you have no idea how to beat and having to come up with something in the middle of the fight. I fought a giant monster that immediately on their turn ate one of my team. :(

The level of challenge in the game is set just right I think but there are difficulty modes, so you can make it easier or harder for yourself if you want and there is a story mode difficulty if thats all you want to play for.

It really reminds me and now I am going to age myself, of the way games were a few years ago, it’s just fun gameplay with a captivating story and some interesting things to do and mechanics to work out. I honestly thought I would hate the turn-based combat but I don’t. It’s something different than say Space Marine 2, where you just need to react and constantly be aware of what’s going on around you. Here you have time to size your enemies up, plan a strategy and then put it into action, it’s really rewarding when you work out how to beat that annoying mob or boss.

I think that the game has the tutorials pitched just right, they get you going but theres not too much hand-holding and at the same time they are not totally abandoning you in the deep-end of the pool :)

I’m really enjoying it so far and I think that as many people should experience this as possible, so I am going to finish here, so that I can go play some more. I suggest you do the same too :)