By Nelson Schneider - 07/06/25 at 01:36 PM CT
It’s no secret that “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” made a bit of a splash with its release earlier this year. It was also one of the games that made my list of titles to get excited about in 2025, primarily by virtue of being a story-rich, turn-based RPG with decent production values – the type of thing Squaresoft and Enix were renowned for in the Golden Age of ‘90s-era gaming, but which has largely fallen out of favor, with studios pushing more in the direction of Cinematic Sandboxes with copy-pasted Action-based combat instead.
Square-Enix has gone on the record stating that they are “aware” of the success of “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,” and seem to be pondering a return to the style of game that made the original two component publishers into household names once upon a time.
And this is worrisome.
Square-Enix has been out-of-touch and on the back foot for well over a decade now. It seems that since shortly after the merger, the two-headed Ettin of a company hasn’t been able to stick to making games in its wheelhouse, instead chasing trends and fads, yet always arriving too late – or with too crappy a product – to really wring much of a profit out of this kind of reactionary behavior. Even previous efforts to recapture the old-school magic that once made Squaresoft and Enix game releases into much-anticipated events have completely failed, with the publisher’s dedicated old-school-in-house studio, Tokyo RPG Factory, releasing nothing but a series of bombs, and other efforts at recapturing the magic of the Golden Age resulting in divisive flops like ‘Bravely Default’ and ‘Octopath Traveler,’ both brand new, modern IPs that completely miss the mark.
To be sure, “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” has a few issues of its own that have kept me from jumping in with both feet. The primary issue that players have been reporting with Sandfall Interactive’s Summer darling is that the ‘Super Mario RPG’-style timed button presses to deal extra damage or – more importantly – evade enemy attacks completely seem to feel less like ‘bonuses’ tacked onto a fundamentally turn-based system, and more like mandatory points of, not just engagement, but complete mastery. Everything I’ve read about “Clair Obscure: Expedition 33” post-launch has made it sound less like the entirely-original “high-fidelity turn-based RPG” I’ve been dreaming of, and more like a way to Trojan Horse Soulslike parry-and-dodge fixation into a turn-based game – WHICH SPECIFICALLY SHOULD NOT REQUIRE ANY TYPE OF TWITCH REFLEX OR MUSCLE MEMORY!
And thus we come to the crux of the issue. Yes, “Clair Obscure: Expedition 33” is, from all accounts, a gorgeous game with a fantastic soundtrack, and a truly original story that isn’t afraid to dive into deep philosophical issues, driven by an eclectic cast of characters who each bring their own specialties into combat encounters. But I have the horrible suspicion that Square-Enix isn’t actually “aware” of that, but is instead only “aware” that Gamers are going ape-shit-bananas over a turn-based game whose combat revolves around timed button presses, and whose balance is tuned to party-wipe players who biff the timing even once. The two-headed Ettin has already dipped a toe – and even a single toe is too much – into the dark underworld of Soulslike mechanics with “Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin,” which was an attempt to remake the original “Final Fantasy” into a frustration-based Action game. With their demonstrated obsession with chasing fads, I feel like Square-Enix learning the WRONG lessons from the success of others in their former wheelhouse of story-rich turn-based RPGs isn’t just likely, it’s inevitable.
