Gems of Gaming - Clair Obsur: Expedition 33

I'm not entirely sure where to start with this one. This is my first entry into a category that I am calling Gems of Gaming. I had originally planned this as a Youtube video series but I just do not have the spare time to put towards making videos with my full time job without stressing myself out because of how my brain works. Gems of Gaming will be games that are particularly special to me. Games I consider worthy of reverence. And this is gonna be a rare example where the game isn't an old one that I played years ago. I just finished it, so if this game hadn't been such a masterpiece, this would have just been an entry in Backlogged Gaming.

This game truly is a glory to behold. Seeing some of the different things they must have taken inspiration from all woven together. They were inspired by Final Fantasy but visually it's easy to see a lot of other things. Some of those enemy designs definitely give off the same kind of vibe enemies in From Software's games do. The combat UI feels like a darker spin on the Persona combat UI. There are bits of Lost Odyssey and a bunch of other things in there too.

Speaking of Lost Odyssey let's talk a little bit about the story. I'm gonna avoid major spoilers as much as possible but I can see some interesting parallels between this game and Lost Odyssey. While Lost Odyssey is about a group of immortals, this game largely has a focus on the concept of a world where the limited mortal time people have is shrinking year after year.

You start the game controlling Gustave who is about to embark on his Expedition named 33. Every year an ominous being known as The Paintress off in the distance reduces a large number on display down by 1. This year it drops from 34 to 33. Anyone that age or older at the time essentially gets Thanos snapped. They just fade out of existence. Since Gustave is 32, this means he now only has a year to live. There are some other emotional moments that happen during this to get you motivated that I'm not going to go into detail about because no words can do it justice.

The Expeditions which embark yearly and are named after what the number is currently at rather than what numerical order the expedition occurs at, are their attempts to travel out into the world and stop The Paintress. Many have attempted before you and you can find their journals strewn throughout the world. Some of them give interesting lore about monsters in the world, personal stories about weird things that happened, or explanations about how certain objects that literally create game mechanics were installed by previous expeditions. This is the only game I can think of that has little grapple marks on the map that actually have an in story explanation for why they are there.

Maelle is best girl and I will accept no slander to the contrary.

Obviously there are others aside from Gustave in the expedition, several of whom end up becoming playable party members. Most notably early on being Maelle who is like a little sister to him and Lune who's a pretty scholarly lady who's character design seems to have been designed for people with a foot fetish... she floats around barefoot.

They along with others who join later in the game face many trials and tribulations. Serious moments as well as wacky hijinks. One moment you're laughing at Gustave accidentally embarrassing himself, the next you're filled with existential dread as the game focuses in heavily on the concept of mortality.

That is about all I will say about the story to avoid spoiling it. I heavily avoided spoilers myself and it was for the best as many of these moments just won't hit the same if you know they're coming. The only other thing I will say without detail is I actually was kind of disappointed by the ending but for the journey I was able to enjoy along the way, I'm able to let that slide.

The combat is actually something that put me off at first. I often play turn based games to relax and enjoy a story rather than be on the edge of my seat constantly. There are quick time events when you attack to do more damage that are like a highly evolved version of how they worked in Lost Odyssey. You can also dodge, parry, and other stuff that would take too long to describe when you're being attacked. In the early parts of the game you need to dodge or parry a lot or your health will run out quickly.

This was off putting to me for awhile until I realized something. In the options menu under accessibility there is an option to disable the quick time events during your own attacks against the enemies. Making them automatically succeed. This means you only have to worry about defensive timing on stuff which actually enabled me to much more get into my own groove and enjoy the game.

Dodging has easier timing then parrying. However if you successfully parry the enemies entire attack chain you will retaliate with a counter attack that tends to do some nasty damage. Meaning once you get the hang of things you will be killing the enemies faster and avoiding getting hit entirely. And those counter attacks never stop being satisfying to land.

Platforming in my turn based JRPG? Why?!

One of the probably lowest parts of the game in my opinion would be some of the weird mini games they put in here. I know some people rejoiced cause these used to be in Final Fantasy all the time but I always found those annoying.

Luckily they aren't as annoying as the ones in Final Fantasy. No awful grind like Chocobo Racing or Blitzball. But some of the platforming moments do feel kind of awkward. Especially since the camera wasn't really meant for it. With the over the shoulder camera rather than your character being centered it leads to you kind of moving at an angle that made me miss jumps that should have been relatively easy.

The last thing I truly need to give praise to is the music. Oh my god the music. This has to be one of the best OSTs in years. Most of it has this amazing orchestral vibe and the sheer volume of the soundtrack is insane. I don't know any other game that has an OST containing 174 tracks.

There is such a vast sea of music because nearly every individual area has multiple music tracks associated with it. Music just from moving about the area but each area also has it's own combat music and basically every boss has their own unique boss battle theme. I can't think of any other game that did something like this. The closest would be the SNES Breath of Fire games changing the battle theme halfway through the game, but not for each individual dungeon.

The only downside to this is that some boss music you don't get to hear particularly too much. Sure there are some bosses you fight stronger versions of later and you hear the music again. But some are more prominent then others and obviously if you want to hear the area specific theme again, you gotta go back and beat up underleveled enemies.

But that minor downside does not in any way downplay the insane accomplishment of this game. The music is amazing. The voice acting fantastic. The visuals stunning and likely timeless. The gameplay got it's claws into me even with parts of it not really being my cup of tea. I give it a 33 out of 10.