"C" Game Completed!
#ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
So first of all: Wow.
That this game, a turn-based, menu-driven, high-effort J'RPG (get it, cuz French) can even exist in 2025, when all the big publishers swear up and down that nobody wants games like this anymore, despite it landing and being a pretty big hit, selling out of physical copies in multiple regions? That's astonishing, and the work of the devs here to bring a labour of passion to life and actually deliver something on-par with the all-time greats of the genre? Magnifique.
I am rating this game 4 stars. Why? Because I have major complaints about the story. I'll get into WHY that is exactly, but I want to preface by saying that did not ruin the experience for me. The gameplay systems? Amazing. Visuals? Amazing. The dev stories - how former Ubisoft people formed their own studio to make the games Ubisoft wouldn't? Amazing. But in all the discourse about this game, I HAVE to talk about my thoughts on the story. And it will be in spoiler text below. Scroll past it if you want a more fulsome review of the nuts and bolts of the game.
The story starts off amazing, but ultimately did not deliver for me. I was right there along with the story, completely absorbed in Expedition 33 and their mission, loving this story about how they're exploring these completely unknown lands, fighting impossible odds, and slowly making headway. Then Gustave died, and I think that's when the game started to fall apart. Gustave wasn't necessarily my favourite character, but his drive and his uncertainty gave the story a lot of depth. When he was unceremoniously killed off, only to be replaced with Verso, a character I REALLY did not like, out of goddamn nowhere... It's almost like that marked a point where two different scripts were staples together. I didn't find the family drama stuff to be interesting, at all. I thought that finding out this whole world was just a magic painting, not some twisted future of our world, was kind of a cop-out. I was really, really not happy with how this story shifted gears from an "us against the world" narrative to one about grief and family drama. Does that make it BAD? No. I thought the story, for what it was, was very well told. I just didn't like where it went. Not to mention all the loose ends it never really wrapped up... What did Gustave's Lumina Converter really accomplish beyond a game mechanic? What was that flower monster all about, and why did it seem familiar to the party? Why bring Maelle to the mansion and not back to Lumiere where the party would not go to find her? Who the fuck are The Writers and why are they warring with The Painters? What was all this lore about Lumiere's Council potentially working against the goals of the Expedition? Is this stuff all answered in the disparate side content? Maybe! And I'll get to that down below.
The other major complaint I have about the game is the three-act structure. I feel like for the first two acts, it's really well-paced with lots of hidden areas and reasons to explore. But in the 3rd Act, it does something similar to FF6's World of Ruin, where a ton of previously inaccessible areas are unlocked all at once, and many of them are far beyond your current level. A lot of these areas are really well-made, but they don't really come together very well. I feel like a majority of these areas should have been written into the story in a more organized way, instead of shoving super bosses in them and calling it a day. It really feels like a lot of these areas were perhaps meant to be part of the main game, but the story just didn't have enough legs to carry them. It's really weird. Capping the damage at 9,999 until the late game was an odd choice too; I felt like scaling could have been handled a lot better on general. My sense is that a decision was made during development to cut the scope of the main story to get it out to market in a reasonable time frame. And for a studio's first game? Probably the right call.
The sound design, in general, is excellent. I do think the soundtrack relies WAY too heavily on the one singer singing in essentially the same range without much variety, but on the whole, really great music - appropriately gloomy, and strikes a mood that matches the art direction. (Could have done without the lyrics that, FYI for non-French speakers, LITERALLY SING ABOUT THE EVENTS OF THE GAME, which I thought was a little goofy and on-the-nose). The voice acting is some of the best I've ever seen, with everyone here really knocking their performance out of the park. Would not be shocked one bit to see one or more performer get an award. Like honestly, you could give François's actor an award and I wouldn't even bat an eye.
The cast, with the exception of Verso? Excellent. Love them. Even some of the side characters from the start that you never see again. I can't emphasize though how much I did NOT like Verso though. I think my favorites overall were Sciel and Monoco. Sciel in particular was really great, because you think she's gonna be like your bog standard sexy femme fatale character, but she has a lot of depth. I was quite surprised. Monoco's lines were few, but they all seemed to hit really well.
I'm kinda rambling at this point, but I am also trying to avoid repeating a lot of the same talking points others have already made... So I'll end it here.
Expedition 33 is a really, really great game; full of passion and creativity and really smart decisions all around. The story didn't quite come together for me, but there's so much to love here that I think the whole is better than the sum of its parts. Definitely an all-timer, and I'm super excited to see what this studio is cooking up next... And I got my fingers crossed that other studios see this game's success and start making high-effort, ambitious, menu-driven, turn-based RPGs again. 🤞🤞🤞 Games that aren't just a cheap imitation chasing nostalgia (Sea of Stars, Octopath, etc.), but the real McCoy.
Also I love Esquie.
