The thing with huge, mechanically dense games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is that the little stuff can get lost along the way. It's a problem I've run into before in the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where I spent so much time exploring and getting sidetracked that I totally forgot to level up my armor. Ouch.
But there's so much going on in Sandfall Interactive's debut RPG that I overlooked something truly basic. Between mastering each character's playstyle, gritting my teeth through perilous minigames that make parry windows look a breeze, and playing around with my Pictos and lumina, I apparently neglected to pay attention to the fine print right in front of me. Nearly 40 hours later, I glimpsed two little words in the lower left-hand corner of the screen while exploring the Continent that blew my tiny mind: Open map.
Blinded by the fight
Yes, dear reader, I really am that oblivious. After puzzling across Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's complex overworld for tens of hours, blindly stumbling into any biome that wasn't ringed in a glowing red warning, it turned out I had a map at my disposal the entire time.
At first, I was dumbfounded. Then, elated. Finally, I settled on a curious mix of the two – though I can't lie, it only highlighted the lack of consistency when it comes to the biomes themselves.
That's because by the time I discovered the overworld map, I'd already accepted my place in Clair Obscur's world of unknowns. In context, it made perfect sense that Gustave, Maelle, Lune and company wouldn't have access to a full map of the region. Their hometown of Lumiere had been cut off from the mainland for 67 years, after all. But if there's a map for the overworld sections, charting the topographical features of the continent as well as placing main mission markers, why on earth is there no minimap in the biomes?
The modest expanse of Clair Obscur's overworld might be dwarfed by the likes of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but I'd have taken as much as a meaningful compass bar to help make biome orientation a little smoother.
Unbalancing act
Where's the drama and uncertainty in a fully-mapped dungeon crawler if the whole point is that you never know what's coming?
It doesn't help that the game implements the perfect opportunity for characters to chart their journey on the trot each time Gustave or Maelle writes in Expedition 33's journal at camp. What's to stop them from making a rough sketch or two in the margins between all the heroic stories of battles won and lost?
After my fourth frustrating loop around Flying Waters' stunning deep sea environs, beautiful flashes of refracted sunlight leading me on a merry goose chase all the while, I very nearly give up and resign myself to a life in the depths. "Maybe if someone had thought to note down a basic map at camp the previous night," I moaned bitterly to myself, "perhaps I wouldn't be in this predicament."
In the grand scheme of things, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's map problem is by far my biggest gripe about the game in general. It does seem odd that overworld map mobility is simplified progressively, once unlocking Esquie's terrain, water, and flight traversal maneuvers, while biome exploration never gets more complex than grappling hooks and the odd bit of platforming.
Given that each biome serves as its own dungeon – especially once reaching Sirene and The Visages – I guess it must be intentional. Where's the drama and uncertainty in a fully-mapped dungeon crawler if the whole point is that you never know what's coming? It's certainly how things work in Atlus' Persona games, one of Sandfall's biggest JRPG inspirations, but even Tartarus gives us a minimap to help plan ahead.
For now, I'll be licking my directionally-challenged wounds at camp each night as I keep grinding levels to face the Paintress. Maybe she can paint me a little map to show me the way out next time she crushes me at the Monolith?
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