Expedition 33 Review: A Bizarre, Awesome, and Sometimes Ricketty Experience - Gameplay, World, Audio & Performance

Expedition 33 Review: A Bizarre, Awesome, and Sometimes Ricketty Experience

Expedition 33 is a lot of things, but normal it is not. It immerses you in a bizarre, shattered world where, 67 years ago, a disaster known as the Fracture shattered a massive human city and planted it in the middle of the ocean.

Since that initial destruction, a supernatural creature known as the Paintress appears every year on a colossal stone column known as the Monolith, thereby initiating a countdown. The citizens have only a year to live their lives to the fullest or pursue a perilous mission to kill the Paintress before time expires. Yea, it's that weird. You have about a year to prepare, grab your gear, and figure out how to confront this giant, homicidal, female version of Bob Ross.

Adventuring through this land, filled with enemies known as the Nevrons, and piecing together the fractured story forms the core of Expedition 33. The game is released on the 24th for everything except the Switch and its available from day one on Game Pass.

Gameplay Mechanics: Mixing of Familiar and Unconventional

Once you've gotten the opening scenario out of the way, you are let loose into the world. Expedition 33 shares an attribute system similar to most other RPGs. Levelling allows you to distribute points into Vitality, Might, Ability, Defence, and Luck, influencing health, attack strength, speed, defence, and critical hit probability respectively. It's really basic.

The Picto System

Things get more bizarre with Pictos. These seem to be associated with equipment or skills. For example, "Marking Shot" might allow a chance to deal fire when free-aiming, or "Ability Dodger" gives a free action point for perfect dodging. The neat thing is that using an active Picto repeatedly can cause it to become one of the passive abilities, freeing up the active slot for another use. However, active Pictos occupy three reserved spaces, while passive abilities are tracked by another point system, which can be perhaps a little confusing for a few players at the beginning but otherwise functions well.

Character Skills & Complexity

The skill system is character-specific and costs varying levels of points (1, 2, 3, 6, 10) depending on the character. Some of the skills are not as strong on their own, but combining them – several do elemental attacks or replicate the class of the character – is effective. It does take time to fully understand the system, though.

The Fencer character, for instance, uses stances. An innovative fire damage attack would switch you into a stance boosting physical damage on the next hit but sacrificing all your defense – not something to do lightly given the enemy will attack before you can hit again.

Another character has a spell that will randomly give back zero to two action points, so you must plan your turn around many potential outcomes (0, 1, or 2 extra points).

This is followed by as you acquire later characters, who introduce even more strange and sometimes counter-intuitive mechanics.

Magic and "Stains"

The spell-casting character is quite fascinating. Casting a spell can apply "stains" to themselves, such as elemental buildup. The catch is that casting a fire spell has a high chance of applying an ice stain to them, or another seemingly opposite element. This initially feels weird, but once the game's logic behind it makes sense, it feels neat and uniquely different.

The Ever-Present QTE System

One of the major and ongoing features is the Quick Time Event (QTE) system, which is frequently disrupted during combat, both when you're casting skills and when you're under attack by monsters. Casting the aforementioned fire skill might mean double-tapping the space bar within a timely manner to deal more damage or get a buff. Under enemy attacks:

• The space bar lets you jump over ground attacks.
• Q and E for dodging and parrying.
• Dodge has an easier window of opportunity, so initially it is simpler.
• Parrying perfectly (a single hit) will immediately induce huge damage in return.
• In response to combos, you normally need to parry sequential hits perfectly consecutively in order to counter. These counters have huge damage.

While QTEs have some degree of interactivity, they highlight a game contradiction. It rapidly swings between strategic turn-based planning and quick, instantaneous reaction. Occasionally the dodge window is broad and spacious; others, even dodge is very cramped, regardless of difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard). You can even disable QTEs in menus, but curiously, this only disables your QTEs, not the requirement to perform correctly parrying or dodging enemy attacks. This restriction comes to bite you later when enemy animations are difficult to read amidst on-screen chaos.

Combat Outcomes and Progression

Most battles are winnable and victory is rewarded with loot. You can also check combat statistics like who took out the most damage or how many perfect parries you got. In camp, you can spend accumulated XP to level up, buy skills, and talk to party members.

World, Graphics, and Exploration

Visually, Expedition 33 appears unlike most games, particularly at the beginning. Characters possess a very specific, nearly bobblehead-like feel with slender bodies and slightly larger heads. This is counteracted by the environments, specifically from mid to endgame, that are deeply colored and varied settings.

The actual graphical gem occurs in combat, when the character models interact with these settings. Witnessing enormous, shielded rock beasts jump like stone giants or characters twirling and executing counters in tandem with ground attacks creates scenes that are reminiscent of high-fantasy turn-based anime or older Final Fantasy games – scenes that I actually enjoyed.

Traveling across the game world on the open map is a breeze; you run from place to place, observing enemies and traces of earlier expeditions, implying the history and dangers of the land. Discovering what happened to those who came before you gives you a constant sense of discovery and wonder as you travel through, searching for secrets in the main and overworld maps.

Audio Landscape: Music Shines Bright

The sound is a little mixed bag, but one thing stands head and shoulders above the rest: Expedition 33's music is some of the best I've heard all year, and many years. Every single character has theme music, as do a great many of the places and baddies. The music's composer and singer have built an omnipresent, blanket sound with lead vocals that permeates the open world, hitting emotional notes at timely moments and really complementing the visuals. The music has an air of discovery and exploration about it, even when the moment is darkest, resulting in recurrent earworms which you can find yourself humming hours or days later.

Voice acting consists of great actors like Andy Serkis (Gollum!), Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Kirsty Ryder, Jennifer English, etc., giving great performances for the amazing characters they play. However, voice delivery technique also consists of pressing a button (e.g., F) to continue with dialogue sentence by sentence, and that seems to be essentially flawed.

On the negative side, some of the common sounds, like running, are disappointing. It is as if your feet are "wrapped in cottage cheese and socks." More work needed on these frequently used sounds.

Performance

Performance overall was good, particularly at higher-end hardware. On a graphics card of 2080 and above, the game performed well at 2K and 4K, although the 2080 needed to have some adjustments to settings. On a 3080 and a 4090, I had consistently more than 100 FPS at 4K, which was impressive. The game was extremely silky smooth with or without DLSS on the 3080 and higher. Frame drops or intermittent load stuttering were uncommon and only mostly happened in the most crowded areas.

Is It Fun? Overall Impressions

Is Expedition 33 an enjoyable game? All I can say is that it's a greatly different game, and most of the time very fun. The exploring and running around are perhaps quite standard, even with the overworld map, but the battle system is where it truly shines. Finding builds, optimizing action points, and executing strong combos is enjoyable. But the general complication at times is confusing, quasi-counter-intuitive for some of the characters, although it does function within the game's fiction.

There are offbeat limitations on the camp menu that may annoy RPG-bred players (e.g., having to travel somewhere to switch something). The mystery in the story was a good hook for me, not necessarily the case with RPGs.

The QTE system still doesn't feel right because you can't really turn it off. The part you can turn off is probably the less obnoxious part. The randomness of enemy animations and the timing of required reactions, especially against multiple enemy types or a boss for the first time, can lead to sudden, rage-causing difficulty spikes and even team wipes if you botch an important QTE you haven't memorized yet. These cutscenes were awkwardly difficult, as fighting with much more formidable opposition, and it was aggravating, although it did not stop me from continuing.

Pros and Cons

Overall Rating:

Expedition 33 has a lot that is unique and worthwhile, most notably the revolutionary combat, the enigma of the planet, and the incredible music. The disappointments due to the QTE integration, the lopsided challenges, and the early confusion with some systems hold it back from being completely seamless. It's a mystery game interpreted through the medium of another mystery, and though engaging, waiting for a price reduction makes it an acceptable buy for the majority.

Final Thoughts

Expedition 33 is a risk-taking game that offers something truly original. While its mix of mechanics doesn't quite resonate every time, the compelling world, tactical depth of the underlying turn-based system, and especially the fantastic soundtrack make it one to be reckoned with. If you're intrigued by its premise and are willing to fight through some of its quirks, it might very well surprise you, especially at a reduced price point.