(Image credit: Kepler Interactive)
With expansive, detail-rich games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, it’s easy for minor details to slip through the cracks. This is an issue I’ve previously encountered with titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where endless exploration distracted me from essential tasks, such as upgrading my armor. Painful oversight, indeed.
In the bustling world of Sandfall Interactive‘s initial RPG offering, I missed something fundamental. Between mastering character skills, bracing through challenging minigames that make timing defense maneuvers seem simple, and experimenting with Pictos and lumina, I overlooked a crucial detail right before my eyes. Nearly 40 hours in, a pair of unassuming words in the bottom left corner of the screen caught my eye while wandering the Continent: Open map.
Inspired by Bloodborne, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 directly addresses my biggest JRPG grievance, with its gloominess worn as a badge of honor. The realization of having a map all along came as a revelation. However, it only illuminated the inconsistency within the game’s biomes. Despite my eventual acceptance of unknowns in Clair Obscur—considering Lumiere’s disconnection from the mainland for 67 years—it baffled me that a comprehensive overworld map existed, yet each biome lacked even a simple minimap.
Clair Obscur‘s overworld may not rival the vastness of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but I would appreciate at least a significant compass to aid biome navigation. In a game where discovery is a core component, isn’t there merit in characters like Gustave or Maelle jotting down their journey in Expedition 33’s journal?
After circling the stunning depths of Flying Waters multiple times, spellbound by the dance of sunlight, frustration set in. I pondered, “Would a simple map sketched at camp save me from this predicament?” In Clair Obscur’s grand scheme, my biggest grievance stems from the lack of simple mapping in the game’s dungeons.
While Esquie’s traversal abilities progressively simplify overworld exploration, offering various terrain, water, and flight maneuvers, dungeon navigation remains basic, reliant on tools like grappling hooks. With biomes as standalone dungeons, particularly Sirene and The Visages, perhaps this is intentional. Can tension and mystery thrive in fully-mapped spaces when uncertainty is the essence of a dungeon crawler? This concept is familiar to veterans of Atlus’ Persona series, a key inspiration for Sandfall, though even they offer a minimap as a planning aid.
For now, I gather experience and regroup each night at camp, preparing for my next confrontation with the Paintress. Could she sketch a map to guide my escape after our next matchup at the Monolith?
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