I Hate Turn-Based Games, I Love ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'

Forbes

29-04-2025

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Sandfall
At this point, there was essentially no question that I had to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game I had heard nothing but praise for, and one that is now officially the highest user-scored game in Metacritic history.
I wasn't expecting the best game of all time, but after a day of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I understand the hype, at the very least. And the most surprising thing the game has done has turned me, a notorious turn-based combat-hater, into someone who positively loves the system they've come up with here.
The story is great, the characters are great, the environments are great, the upgrade systems are great, but focusing on the combat, it just works. And if other people like me are asking if they should play this as a turn-based game when they normally avoid the genre, my answer is an emphatic yes.
The bones are relatively simple. You do attacks, you build up an AP meter that lets you do better attacks. But each character has their own little minigame to increase their power and make their strategies more complex. That's fun in and of itself, but it's not the main reason it works for me.
Expedition 33
Sandfall
That would be the stellar addition of real-time combat with the turn-based aspects. I understand this is not the first game to do this, from Yakuza from Paper Mario, but it's more central to combat and better executed than I've seen before. There are three main levels to this:
Perfect Attack Or Defense – Almost all special attacks have a quick-time event that when landed correctly 1-3+ times can dramatically increase damage or add extra healing or defense with those types of moves. All have a different cadence you will learn the more you use the move.
Dodge – This is the basic aspect of combat, where you learn the timing of each enemy move and are able to real-time dodge them as they come in, with things like Perfect Dodge sometimes offering you things like bonus AP. It's a way to take on tough enemies or win seemingly impossible battles if you're simply good enough at this system. There are also 'jump' dodges later that allow you to counterattack at the same time.
Parry – The evolution of this system, for the truly timing-skilled is Parry, where if you manage to deflect a move perfectly or every hit of a combo you will retaliate with a massive attack that turns an offensive enemy turn into them receiving a huge chunk of damage. I am not very good at this yet, but perhaps in time.
Expedition 33
Sandfall
It's a balance. You learn how to synergize your skills, weapons and upgrades for the manual turn selection portion, but defense is almost entirely turn-based and if you lose fights, it's not purely because of bad skill selection strategy, and gives a different kind of player a leg-up. I know it's technically 'quick-time events' which a lot of people hate, but it genuinely feels good. I cannot recommend this game enough.
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