Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s reactive turn-based combat might make it the ideal Mario & Luigi replacement

Out of all the announcements from the latest Xbox Games Showcase, the one that most piqued my curiosity was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut title from Sandfall Interactive. It being a new turn-based RPG was enough to catch my interest, and additional details about its reactive combat have confirmed you not only time button presses to execute your attacks, but also to dodge and parry enemy attacks. This singular detail has only made me more excited for the game since it’s very reminiscent of one of my favourite RPG series, Mario & Luigi.

In a June 10 Xbox Wire blog post, Sandfall explained how its team are fans of not only turn-based RPGs, but action games and Souls-likes. As such, they “wanted to create something unique that combines the depth of a turn-based game with the thrill of executing a dodge or a perfect parry.” So, by memorising an enemy’s patterns, you can dodge, parry, or jump over their attacks in order to land a counter and deal further damage.

While Sandfall may have drawn inspiration from games like Dark Souls, this take on turn-based combat is practically identical to the way fights play out in the Mario & Luigi games. Other Mario RPGs, like Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG, had timed button presses (or action commands) for performing attacks and guarding as well, but Mario & Luigi allowed the brothers to use their jumping and hammer skills for both dodging and counterattacking, meaning skilled players could make it through fights unscathed.

It’s a little thing, but it’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed the combat in the Mario & Luigi games, and why it’s sad that the series has gone dormant. After 2015’s Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, developer Alpha Dream worked on two remakes of previous entries that unfortunately didn’t sell particularly well, with sales for the Bowser’s Inside Story remake reportedly being so poor that, according to former Game Informer editor Imran Khan, Nintendo canned other 3DS projects as a result. Less than a year after that game’s release, Alpha Dream filed for bankruptcy and shut down in October 2019, and there’s no sign of the Mario & Luigi series continuing.

The recent Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG remakes give me hope that Mario & Luigi will make a return. If not, Expedition 33 looks like it could be the perfect substitute, though it’s obviously offering a different style and tone to the Italian plumber’s more comedic adventures. The blog post also mentions a free-aim system that lets you target specific weak points, “offering you a substantial advantage against the hardest foes or flying enemies.” Combined with how each party member has a unique playstyle and mechanic, along with customisable skill trees, it sounds like there’ll be a lot of complexities to Expedition 33‘s combat compared to the more simple battles of Mario & Luigi.

Set in a world where a being called the Paintress is killing people of a certain age every year by painting a number on her Monolith, Expedition 33 sees the titular team embark on a mission to destroy the Paintress before they succumb to her curse. It launches in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.