I feel like the endgame portion of an RPG is a really tough thing to nail down. It can be too short or overlong. It can be too easy or too difficult. It can also be too irrelevant to the main story or do nothing for the characters, serving mainly as just extra padding for gameplay. There are so many ways it can go wrong that those times when it’s done right shine all the brighter. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of those games that gets it right, and takes it even farther!

As I was thinking about the endgame segments in games I’ve enjoyed over the years, I was a little surprised to find that very few were all that memorable or even especially fun. A small handful come to mind, like those of the PS2 Ratchet & Clank games, Destiny, and Elden Ring (especially Elden Ring) little if anything comes to mind otherwise. This isn’t to say that other games are worse for not having a geat endgame experience, but rather that it really is that rare for it to be done to a really high level.

*minor spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 follow*

So what does Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 do so right? Well, there are a number of things, but if I were to sum it up in just a couple of words, it changes. Usually, the endgame is just the time when players can run around the map knocking out sidequests and powering up for the final boss, perhaps even take on a super boss or two if there are any. But, you’re still basically just doing the same exact thing you’d been doing the whole time up until that point.

You could say that the same is true in Expedition 33 too in that you’re exploring the world and gearing up to prepare for the end. Where the difference lies is in its scale. See, you don’t just gain access to more areas, you gain more access to, well, everything. You go from a hard limit on damage output to pretty much no limit at all. If you want to, you can easily build your characters in a way that enables them to one-shot everything. Seriously, everything.

Builds themselves become more available because you both already have a large pool of pictos/luminas to draw from and a ton more to find out in the world. You also get easy access to literal hundreds of upgrade points, allowing you to do basically whatever you want so long as you take the time to explore.

Exploration is worth it too, because pretty much every new location as a story behind it, and some of them even tie further into the character’s stories and main plot despite being optional. There’s several locations meant to offer greater combat challenges for those who just wanna fight.

The world is revealed in a big way in Expedition 33’s final hours, offering a heck of a lot more than first impressions would have led you to believe. All the while, everything stays fresh, from the combat to the music , to the characters and atmosphere. It’s just, well, to borrow a phrase from the culture the game’s based on, “c’est magnifique”! I hope, I really, really hope to see more from Sandfall in the future, because this game, from start to finish is an absolute home run!

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What are some games that you’ve played that had a great endgame? If you’ve played Expedition 33, what are your thoughts on it?

Image from the Steam page