You can interact with the environment using climbing hooks, ledges left by previous Expeditions, or the Grapple in your kit to ascend great heights. Exploration is heavily rewarded throughout the game, and you’ll come across environmental puzzles called Paint Cages that can aid your journey, along with items called Pictos that teach you new abilities. Pictos work similarly to accessories or gear in traditional RPGs, and bestow stat bonuses to the character who has them equipped. They also have unique passive skills associated with them, called Lumina. Having a Picto equipped allows the character to learn the associated Lumina permanently, and you can equip a wide range of them to diversify your builds, and customize your party to suit a preferred playstyle.
Combat
Our battle system is what we call Reactive Turn Based, where you’ll need to input commands when you attack, but also remain reactive whilst enemies attack to effectively defend your party from damage. Players take turns attacking or defending, with the turn order displayed on the left side of the screen. While basic attacks deal low damage, skills often involve a timed reactive command to maximize their effectiveness and add additional bonuses. Skills cost Action Points (AP) to use, and the cost varies between skills. Though you gain one AP per turn, you can customize your build to get AP from other sources - such as successful parries. Some multi-hit skills may allow you to chain an attack combo, unless you fail your inputs. Some may even backfire and cause damage to you if you fail your input, so careful timing and practice will be key to maximizing your effectiveness in battle.
Similarly, when an enemy attacks, you'll need to time your inputs to minimize damage. The timing windows for these inputs vary—dodging has a larger window, allowing you to evade the attack entirely, while parrying has a tighter window that negates damage and can trigger a powerful counter attack if you successfully parry the entire enemy combo.
Bosses
Bosses may also have unique mechanics or additional challenges to overcome. For example, Goblu is surrounded by flowers in the encounter, which can bestow it with powerful buffs and advantages that can quickly overwhelm the party. In this case, you can make use of the free-aim system to fire at these flowers and close their buds, limiting their effectiveness and ensuring the Expedition has the upper-hand against these powerful adversaries. Finding and exploiting these unique mechanics can be integral to boss battles.
We hope you've enjoyed this early look at the game, and we're looking forward to sharing more with you soon. We're a young, ambitious team, eager to pay homage to our favorite games in the genre while crafting something unique and entirely our own.
See you soon, Expeditioners!
~ The Expedition 33 Team
[url=https://www.expedition33.com/]Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 [/url]launches in 2025.
[url=https://x.com/expedition33]Follow us on X [/url]for more updates.