Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s battles are best when you break them

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has flashy, thrilling battles, but the best thing about them is how you can twist the game's many systems to your advantage. The turn-based RPG combat might feel familiar, but it offers a lot of ways to customize your approach to battles so that you can do absolutely devastating amounts of […]

Apr 27, 2025 - 14:24

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s battles are best when you break them

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has flashy, thrilling battles, but the best thing about them is how you can twist the game's many systems to your advantage. The turn-based RPG combat might feel familiar, but it offers a lot of ways to customize your approach to battles so that you can do absolutely devastating amounts of damage.

In Expedition 33, you play as a group of Expeditioners who aim to destroy The Paintress, a mysterious being that erases everyone of a certain age every year. In battles, you can have up to three of your party participating in a fight, and should they all die, you can call in your teammates who are in reserve to try and finish off the enemies.

To show you how deep the rabbit hole can go in customizing your team, here's my approach to building out just one character, the fencer Maelle. Every character can equip three "Pictos," which offer passive buffs like giving you the defense-boosting Shell status at the start of a fight. But after you win a few fights with a Pictos equipped, other characters can also equip the Pictos as a "Lumina" by using "Lumina Points," which you accumulate through leveling up and by using a resource you can find in the game.

When yo …

Read the full story at The Verge.