Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s pre-load is now available on both Xbox consoles and the Microsoft PC Store.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s pre-load is now available on Xbox and the Microsoft PC store. It weighs in at 42.72 GB on Xbox per Twitter user Olio – Yvan Durêve. On PC the install is a flat 41 GB per our own screenshot. The game is a turn-based love letter to JRPG’s from Sandfall Interactive.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is stunning to look at. While not in combat you’ll move around the environment in 3rd person, marveling at the UE5 world full of impossible sites and incredible art design. There’s a scale and scope here that a team of this size “shouldn’t” be able to pull off. Enormous worm creatures fly through the sky as you’re seemingly underwater but breathing like normal. It’s a surrealist dream and nightmare at once, with a large boss creature being a beautiful and terrifying flower creature who Marlle seems to have a connection with.
Combat is active, despite being turn-based. You can dodge every attack though you’re better off mastering the game’s parrying mechanic. As our incredibly talented demoist showed by only failing once across multiple fights to counter every move. If you parry every part of an enemy’s attack you’ll get a massively damaging counter-attack that helps cut short any encounter. When you’re on the offensive you’ll have a timing QTE to do extra damage. You’re always able to do something, instead of just watching turns be taken, and I far prefer it over systems like BG3 where you can spend up to a minute or two just watching the enemy kick your ass during some fights. Some attacks will flash yellow just before the enemy strikes, indicating that you’ll need to jump instead of dodging or parrying.
We finished up the demo with a short Q&A segment. There will be seven different types of elements in the game, with enemies being weak or resilient against certain types. The gear, leveling, and skill systems looked just deep enough to offer up the customization I was hoping for without feeling overwhelming or confusing.
