Impressions of the game 'Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'

I cleared Expedition 33, a title from France that has been receiving an extraordinary reputation overseas, in just under 35 hours. Using a system that mashes together the command-based RPGs that "used to be" Japan's specialty with the Souls series, everything except the world-building and story is composed of homages to past JRPGs, particularly the Final Fantasy series. In terms of FF numbering, it uses 7, 8, 10, and 13 as a foundation, while the playfeel is a jumble of all of them. It can be pointed out that the essence of this game is that after Japanese manufacturers, who are weak to foreign pressure, somehow stopped making command-based RPGs because they were constantly being trashed by JRPG-hating critiques laced with esprit—partially born of jealousy—they hurriedly artificially bred an endangered species in a foreign land. While playing this, I felt a creeping realization that the leather bag called 'games,' which the French have sometimes treated as an object of contempt and considered inferior to music, theater, and film, has become old enough to fill them with the richness of wine, the quintessence of culture. However, the art, music, and literature used in the game seem to have been hedged against failure—like an educational endowment insurance—by sharing them with a film version currently in production, which made me feel like saying, 'That is exactly the kind of thing you would do, you discrimination-filled surrender monkeys!' While Honkai: Star Rail, which also aimed for the revival of JRPGs, lies on the ground and reveres us, Expedition 33 looks down on us with its blue eyes and long noses held arrogantly high. You can see the usual 'Western behavior' there, where the inexplicable fear of the Asian region—Dragon Road!—and inferiority complex are inverted. Changing the rules in fields where they cannot win is their specialty, and with an attitude of 'I admit I stabbed the knife into the center of the chest, but I had no intent to kill,' they go around advertising as if 'we have rediscovered the mysterious Basse-taille swimming technique that was buried in history.' It really makes me want to say, 'Shame on you!'

With the premise that there is such a cultural background and historical context behind the rave reviews overseas, let me state my impressions of Expedition 33. As an RPG, there are many unfriendly parts where it 'doesn't scratch the itch,' and even just looking at the major elements, one cannot rule out the possibility that it is imitating the user-unfriendliness of the PlayStation 2 or 3 era, such as 'the lack of a mini-map and compass in dungeons,' 'the lack of guides or markers to destinations,' 'insufficient explanation of the specifications of Lumina, which corresponds to abilities in FF,' and 'the lack of visual effects or similar aids for the almost essential parry (you have to identify it visually by motion).' Regardless, there are too many things that you just have to 'learn by touching' for a modern game. In the early stages, before you grasp the full scope of the system, it is hard to convey what is fun about the game, but from the point where the 'thirty-something single man equivalent to Aerith' exits (spoiler), it becomes increasingly interesting. Once you get to the world map, the degree of freedom increases significantly, and thanks to the Souls-series-derived gameplay where 'you parry everything... just by doing that, you can beat any boss,' playstyles like 'challenging high-difficulty dungeons from the early stages to obtain high-performance weapons that don't match your progress' are permitted. It is frustrating, but I have to admit that for RPG fans since the Famicom era who love 'deliberately loose balance-breaking,' this is a very compelling adjustment. To digress a bit, in the ancient days, there was a game that sold itself on a chuunibyou-esque worldview called Baroque, which was something that could only be described as a '3D Shiren the Wanderer with failed balance,' but for some reason, I remembered how it had persistently, persistently, persistently deep-rooted fans who kept polishing it endlessly (though it hasn't been observed recently...).

I feel like this Expedition 33 is also rolling on a dangerous line where it hits home for those whose skin matches the worldview, and is incomprehensible to those who don't. However, for someone like me who doesn't have a deep knowledge of the Belle Époque and whose only memories of French films are 'The City of Lost Children,' 'Léon,' 'Amélie,' and 'Innocence (at least),' I cannot deny that the completely unpredictable story development stimulated my interest in playing. To briefly explain the story of this work, the '33' in the title refers to the age of death of a certain person (spoiler), and it is set in a world where only people under this age are allowed to survive, and the countdown progresses year by year. The story begins with a single man in his mid-thirties seeing off the disappearance of his older lover, and it can be said to be a very 'French' introduction where the brain bugs out and applies the appraisal of antiques—where 'the older it is, the more valuable it is'—to human beings. I have no doubt that the MCRN President is the most famous victim of grooming in the world, but in his country, where they never stop shouting that these bizarre values are the cutting edge, you can't even voice such obvious sympathy, so being 'progressive' is always stifling. On the other hand, it is the habit of 'frog-eaters' to place pedophilia—Judith Vittet! Natalie Portman!—on the other side of the scale to balance it out with the 'oba' (the opposite of 'oji'), and the heroines of this work are, in order, 'a single woman in her thirties,' 'a widowed mother in her thirties,' and 'a girl in her mid-teens,' which has become the backing for an analysis that might seem like a rant (as a result, the fact that mentions of women in their twenties disappear completely is an interesting part of France, but perhaps it is because the median men who adore that never reach art).

And the design of Mael, who corresponds to Cloud in FF7, is truly wonderful. The outstanding point of this work is the subtle nuances of acting through facial expressions, and the look of despair he shows in the scene where the older man he secretly admires is brutally murdered (spoiler) sent an electric current through my groin. Unfortunately, this grotesque and magnificent noir eventually converges into a 'problem of a certain family,' and it is very interesting that as game culture has matured enough to be enjoyed by adults, we can now see 'each country's view of family' in it. Reluctantly, I will mention that Japanese creative trends are full of content like 'a person who believes their life was destroyed by the era and toxic parents cleans up the grave and then scatters their own ashes in the sea,' but on the other hand, that from the continent is a plot that 'respects the work and life of grandparents and demands actions that do not shame the family name,' and it is too self-evident which will decline and which will prosper as a total human group. I believe that the mentality of feeling no contradiction in placing 'patriotism and discrimination' side by side is due to the budding of the pathology sown by the Zenkyoto generation, but since this is a topic I have repeated before, I will say no more here. However, because our culture has been Westernized for a long time, the family friction depicted in this work has a sense of déjà vu—Toyoko Yamazaki or Seishi Yokomizo?—and I did not feel the sense of 'having my eyes opened' that I do when I encounter RPGs from the continent. To express my dissatisfaction with the mystery element that forms the core of Expedition 33, the device of trying to reinforce the outer fiction with a nested structure of 'fiction within fiction' is overwhelmingly often a case where the creator's strong self-consciousness becomes a stench, and in this work, too, an indelible odor drifts from under the strong perfume. 'To publish such a masterpiece from the first attempt, my talent is terrifying! It is c'est bon to praise the skill of the French who revived a traditional art that has lost its succession in Japon!'—watching them get all excited with a silent, lukewarm smile is probably the right distance for us.

As usual, it ended up looking like I was trashing it completely, but hey, I was just countering their so-called esprit. Anyway, if you take into account the world exploration of ACT 3 and Mael's damage inflation, Expedition 33 is a gem that I can recommend from the bottom of my heart to all the former FF lovers who used to burn with hostility toward the Final Fantasy faction.

Expedition 33, after all that esprit, I finally achieved the Platinum trophy (the last one was the bronze 'Strange Encounter'). They are deliberately reproducing the immature usability of the PlayStation 1 era, aren't they? The fact that the group photo of the developers viewable in the game is all white French people is also a 'wrongness' that stings like mustard, saying 'if it becomes like a national soccer team, it will never reach the essence of culture,' and it was the best!