Test - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: Test: This role -playing hide tip even wipes the floor with Final Fantasy

It is quite possible that you have never heard of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but if so, you might be similar to me. When I announced two years ago, I was immediately curious: how persona looked like, a role-playing game with a sophisticated round fight system-but in great graphics, as it is completely unusual for such JRPGs. And with a fascinating setting that draws its surreal-looking fantasy landscapes in the style of the French Belle èpoque. Now I have played it through and can tell you: This first impression is just scratching the surface. Clair obscur: Expedition 33 is just sensational! In each way.

Usually such tests begin with generally introductory words that carefully introduce the matter. But for Clair obscur: Expedition 33 I turn the tables and exceptionally start with the conclusion. Because this game is simply a sensation! Graphically, it plays in the absolute reference class, in which even the largest AAA productions only make great efforts. It is dressed in a staging bombast that sometimes remains the spit. His enchanted game world is fascinating and mysterious in a way that you cannot get out of amazement and definitely want to learn more about it. His combat system is probably the best that I have ever experienced in a video game.

If you like JRPGs, you must have played Clair obscur: Expedition 33. And if not, then you may be like me: Because in principle I am already inclined to this role-playing genre with a round combat system, but I am often put off by ugly graphics, interchangeable anime style and brittle. Then Clair Obscur is the perfect game for you! Precisely because it is a JRPG in the heart, but does not look like a typical JRPG for a second.

This is exactly what seems to me to be the vision of the developers: to take the best of their favorite role-playing games and to raise their components to a new level that was previously unmatched. The combat system from persona, the epic staging of Final Fantasy, but also a mystical lore of a curse that is difficult to understand with the mind, as in.

Hard to believe that Clair Obscur is the debut game of the small French studio Sandfall Interactive, whose only 30-50 employees previously worked for Ubisoft and Wolcen. Like Larian with Baldur's Gate III at most, you have put something on your feet here that only large AAA publisher could do-but which would never dare to do something unusual and unique.

Story: A world beyond all imagination

Enough raved for now. Let's start with the story that takes away from the first moment, precisely because it describes a fantastic world that may be similar to ours but follows completely different laws. The first pictures already captivate it at the moment: We see a city that is obviously reminiscent of Paris, but seems as if it had been torn in the interior of a collapse in the space-time structure. Fragments of the world float on rocks in the air, the Eiffel Tower leans as a leaf in the storm as if a mischievous god had turned the natural laws on the left, the Arc de Triomphe is split in the middle as if a flash has torn the reality itself.

We seem to be in a time that the Belle èpoque modeled, comparable to the role -playing game Greedfall: women wear fusing clothes and bodies, men long coats with ruffles on their sleeves, the buildings radiate the splendor of past times and the streets reflect the moonlight on the uneven cobblestone.

This world has been dying since the “painter” was published many years ago and for the first time a number painted on a huge monolith on the horizon. A 99. Since then she has appeared every year and pulls one of them. All people who reach the age that the number on the Monolith shows at the moment as if Thanos had snapped with his finger. What is the intention? And what does it count down - what will happen when the year 0 has been reached?

Every year an expedition breaks open to reach the painter and stop her in her fatal craft. But none has ever been successful. No one ever returned. Today is the day on which the painter will write the number 33. Today is the day when expedition 33 breaks out on your journey ...

But the arrival on the painter's legendary continent begins in the disaster. Apparently, unholy powers that escape from every imagination. The expedition is almost completely destroyed by a mysterious attacker. Like a miracle, however, leaders Gustave and his most faithful companions survive and set out to explore the cursed realm and to reveal their secret.

A fabulous enchanted world

Clair obscur: Expedition 33 divides his adventure into individual sections, which controls her over a upper world and which would probably be called "dungeons" in an ordinary JRPG. Each of them designs their own, completely unique world, which can hardly be surpassed in beauty and ingenuity.

A deceptive, friendly forest with fairytale idyllic flower meadows, a broken rocky landscape with floating islands in the middle of a storm cloud, a snow -covered railway station, a mystical sand palace, and then you regularly experience highly surreal moments such as this chapter, which seems to play under water between cling plants and rising air blistering, although you move as normal Apparently no problems breathe. Enigmatic doors in the middle of the landscape keep leading to a mysterious mansion that may not fit into this apocalyptic country between dream and reality.

These chapters develop largely linearly in the structure, but everywhere the way to detours and dead ends, in which at least valuable loot, but often also optional areas and particularly crisp bosses can be found.

If you want to criticize something on Clair Obscur, then that these individual sections look fantastic, but also feel a bit artificial and "done", less after a lively world like in the Witcher or, but just like a video game level that a developer has put together from paths, rocks and trees-which makes sense within the logic of lore and history. After all, we do not travel a flowering, densely populated empire, but an hostile, cursed country that knows nothing but death and ruin and, precisely by the absence of permanent acting NPCs, enrolls a mystery that seems worthwhile to ventilate. More Dark Souls than The Elder Scrolls.

The story of Clair Obscur, however, relaxes less in adventurous experiences than on the characters, their relationships with each other and their puzzling connection to this world, which repeatedly reveals unexpected secrets. As in the best times of bioware, the game draws its narrative sophistication, especially from the quiet moments, the evenings together around the campfire and the conversations there, which create intimacy and contemplation, as they are exemplary role-playing Epen.

But this discipline of pure show values ​​and emotional overwhelming also masters Clair obscur masterfully and trumps in excellence and impressiveness that you regularly hear and see. Especially in his second half, the game with every boss fight is swinging up to a staging force, for which no other word seems to be "epic" and leaves the impression every time that the developers could impossible further from now on - until shortly afterwards they show the opposite with an exclamation point.

Perhaps the best fighting system in video game history

But with all the enthusiasm of the game world and its staging, Clair Obscur shines especially in the actual royal discipline of good game designs: the combat system. Basically, you can imagine it similarly as in Persona 5, but in a perfection that it wipes the ground with the large model.

Each of the six characters has completely individual game mechanics, which are so different that everyone feels almost like a completely own combat system: one increases a level with each attack, which enables increasingly powerful spells in the course of the fight and should be planned accordingly from the start. The other should always use the skills of different categories (sun and moon) alternately to reinforce their effects. In addition to the special skills, another plays additional playing cards, which triggers powerful additional effects when planning skillfully. Another other collects his moves from defeated opponents, which incorporates him an increasingly stately selection of skills. And another character creates different colored points with every spell, which in turn unleash brutal elementary forces when used in appropriate use.

In addition, the synergies between the characters play a central role that enable an infinite number of combinations: If one character succeeds in flames the opponent, another in the next round can be filled with the fire and fill up with this. Under certain circumstances, it may make sense to have supposedly uselessly useless, weak attacks in order to charge the action points and thus to be able to unleash the particularly destructive forces in the course of the fight.

Nobody who is familiar with the genre of the JRPGs will be completely new. But the perfection in which Clair obscur coordinates the individual mechanics and interlinks their effects with each other is simply masterful. Depending on what your party composition looks like and which opponent your opponent, whether several or a particularly particularly strong, whether that protects itself through protective shields, or one who rushes to your own losses, that have flies or certain resistance, each of them requires specially coordinated procedures.

As a result, hardly a fight feels right away, you are constantly encouraged to rethink your tactics and adapt the circumstances, especially through the numerous perks with which your companion gives your companions small advantages that take significant effects in the amount. For example, to heal yourself again with every successful counterattack, to be able to numb the opponent with every attack or to give buffs onto the team members, often means the Zünglein on the scales, especially in the later course of the game. Finding the ideal compilation here is increasingly developing into a science, but is all the more joy when a previously hopelessly seemingly hopeless boss fight suddenly seems feasible.

And in contrast to almost every other JRPG, Clair obscur stages these fights in a visual spectacular, where I can still hardly get enough after more than 60 hours. Then the sorceress conjures up her flashes out of her fingers and lets her down on the enemies, the leader charges his magical sword before taking a daust of somersault and sinking the glowing blade into the opponents and the alchemist ignores a thunderous earthquake by tearing the floor with dramatic gestures.

What the developers do with the unreal engine here is simply fabulous. Every single scene acts like a show show that is supposed to demonstrate what is possible with it: the characters of hundreds of rose petals are blown up, the sparks on burning weapons and twitch the flash of magical objects. How many special effects a game actually tolerates?

Even the facial animations, on which even large publisher fail regularly, just see "Wow!" out of. Up to the little things in Clair Obscur everything two sizes bigger than life - just one example: instead of climbing up bold ladders, the characters effectively rush to higher levels on a kind of moon jet. Even the unsightly reeling of the textures typical of the unreal engine have the programmers completely under control when Sandfall Interactive.

A touch of Souls-Like

On the other hand, it is extremely unusual for this type of round fights that Clair obscur not only requires the tactically clever use of his attacks and spells, but also the reaction -fast parrying of opposing attacks. And here the game finally gets a appearance of Dark Souls (or rather), because only those who rehearse the movement patterns of the opponents and then press the button to the parade exactly at the right moment, throw their attacks back on them and break their defense. And that is absolutely necessary, especially for the heavier bosses, in order to have a chance against them at all.

I know what some of you certainly think: Oh no, I don't feel like something like that. I feel the same way in this regard. In no single game with Parry system I have ever dealt with it, neither in Dark Souls, God of War or Monster Hunter, because firstly I don't feel like it and secondly neither about the speed of reaction or patience that is necessary for this.

But in the case of Clair Obscur, I literally bitten myself because it feels incredibly captivating, but finally also incomparably satisfactory when you have looked through an opponent's approach and at some point he plays his own attack with huge force. The fights feel like a mixture of cool strategy on the one hand, and on the other hand, on the other hand, after an elegantly wrapped choreography, in which you dance a rhythmic round of death with your opponent.

In particular, the numerous particularly heavy optional bosses spark a pattern that has so far been known primarily from Souls-Like games. Because at the first confrontation with them you still think: "Completely impossible!" But after two or three or four attempts slowly an understanding of the other person, the thought is "feasible", who quickly became a determined "I can do it!" until it lies very quickly later.

However, Clair obscur also becomes a game that constantly requires the highest concentration and does not tolerate negligence. In any case, after 20 hours of a weekend I really felt physically exhausted. If you find no favor at all, you can downshift at any time into the easier level of difficulty in which the game is significantly more forgiving.

Perhaps you are better considering this only with the many optional endgame bosses and areas, because here too Clair obscur knows no measure. You are busy with the story for about 30-40 hours, but by the way and above all afterwards, if the credits have already run, additional content awaits you of the same scope again that nobody would miss, the developers would have saved the work, but apparently they not only worked out the duty of their concept plan, but also realized the whole Nice-to-Have list: Particularly spectacular (and quite strong), Areas and funny side quests, in which you do not pull into the battle for a change, but complete a tricky obstacle course on the beach or climb a tower that protrudes into the clouds and will guarantee your hands to sweat in constant fear.

It is also astonishing at a total playing time of over 80 hours that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, in contrast to most similarly Gardened role -playing games, has hardly any idling. There is always something new to discover, and if the thought stimulates for a moment that the level can gradually be over, he is usually shortly afterwards or comes up with a spectacular event that you couldn't see.

Is there nothing to complain about?

In this context, the soundtrack of the game, which does not contribute to the special experience with Clair obscur: melancholic piano ballads, epic choral in the boss fights, even French chansons and shimmering post-rock melodies, is also emphasized in this context. Co -up unreal atmosphere that make the strangeness of this world noticeably noticeable.

Even with the synchronous speakers, Sandfall Interactive could not be ripped off and committed an all-star ensemble with Andy Serkis (Gollum in the Lord of the Rings) for the role of the villain, Charlie Cox (Daredevil in the Marvel series of the same name), Jennifer English (Schadur's Gate III) and Ben rigid (Finale Fantasy XVI, The First Berserker: Khazan). You also like to accept that there is no German setting.

Is there nothing to complain about? Always. But actually not. I would rather classify possible criticisms under the heading "taste question". Some will prefer role -playing games with lively game worlds like The Witcher and Kingdom Come to the largely bleak areas of Clair obscur. Expedition 33 focuses on the round battles and the crossing of the game world, not their attentive exploring, experiencing and experiencing. There are no puzzles, hardly any NPCs that distribute side quests, and only a few other activities. The game follows relatively rigidly his JRPG sequence Level-Fight-Level-Bosskampf intermediate sequence, without vary this in a nuanced pattern in the way of modern video game adventures-but that is exactly what your charm lies, you just have to like it.

Also, not every player will probably not get involved in the parry system to the same extent, and therefore at some point the desire to loses the desire to plague with the numerous optional bosses, which admittedly occur a little too often in the long run and therefore regularly take the river out of the driving game. And as beautiful and welcoming the mass of an additional content after the credits is of course, the game there flows up a little over a fee, which can hardly be criticized, because optional.

If you just want to try it out: Clair obscur: Expedition 33 is contained in the Game Pass for Xbox and PC, but also appears on PS5. According to the developer, a day 1 patch should be installed before the release, but I do not know what it should judge, because in this regard the game is also exemplary: on my tested PS5 version there was not a single recognizable bug throughout the season.