Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 feels like it came out of nowhere to me. An entirely new IP from the new studio, Sandfall Interactive, based in France, we had no idea what to expect. However, as soon as I started it, I knew we had something truly special. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 manages to recapture the magic of old-school JRPGS whilst giving it a fresh Western spin, wearing all of its inspirations on its sleeve. This is easily one of the finest games since Baldur’s Gate 3.

Story

Every year, the Paintress awakens and paints a new number on a monolith. Descending from 100, a new number is painted, and at the Gommage, anyone who is that age or older is purged from existence. At the same time, an expedition departs with the goal of finally killing the Paintress and putting an end to the cycle of death.

Immediately, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lays the stage with a great opening that introduces wild concepts and a strong emotional hook. It’s a masterfully crafted opening hour that has you exploring the city moments before and after the Gommage. It introduces us to Gustave and his adoptive sister Maelle, as well as the rest of the expedition crew who have spent most of their lives preparing themselves for this journey.

Upon arriving at the expedition’s landfall, you are attacked by a mysterious character. Your allies are scattered, and the expedition is in shambles. Gustave and Maelle set out on a journey to regather their allies before hunting down the Paintress. Along the way, you will meet new allies and threats, as well as a village of friendly creations known as Gestrals to help on your journey.

If this all sounds very Final Fantasy, that’s because it pretty much is. The set-up for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is absolutely ridiculous and utterly bizarre in the best of ways, compelling from the very first moments to the end credits. It perfectly balances some heart-wrenching moments with levity and joy. It’s a beautifully told story with complex characters who have motivations beyond simply killing the Paintress, which makes them all likable. Yet despite this grim tale, a surprising amount of humour is injected throughout, mostly through the Gestral companions scattered across the map. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had me equally laughing and crying.

Gameplay

Much like the story, the gameplay is influenced by JRPGS’ turn-based battle system. Treading a lot of familiar grounds if you’ve played games like Final Fantasy VII through to X, or more modern games like Persona and Yakuza Infinite Wealth, you will know what to expect. It’s a party-based JRPG with turn-based combat. However, there are a few fresh spins on it as well to make it stand out.

Combat is a turn-based combat system similar to that of Persona or Final Fantasy, with characters taking turns to attack, depending on where they are on the order list. Basic attacks build up energy, which can be used to perform skills. You can bring up to three characters into each fight. Each character has their own playstyle and special abilities. My personal favourite, Sciel, is able to boost her attacks by applying fortells to enemies, consuming them to do insane amounts of damage. Lune provides some great supportive options, able to remove debuffs from allies, heal when necessary, and apply burning debuffs, which characters like Maelle can use to their advantage to swap between stances with ease. There’s some great synergy between these characters’ playstyles.

On top of this, we also have a rather deep RPG system that enables some great buildcrafting and encourages exploration. A standard attribute system allows you to assign points for a linear sense of progression, giving more health and attack bonuses with each level. Each character can also equip a wide variety of skills that can change their gameplay style. Weapons also get more powerful as they level up, which also unlocks some incredibly powerful perks as you level them up. There’s already a lot here, but it doesn’t stop there. 

Pictos are the most interesting addition here and can be assigned to characters that have a wide variety of buffs, some straight damage increases, whilst others provide more strategic benefits such as generating AP, providing elemental immunity, or improving perfect parries at the cost of taking increased damage, to name a few. Finishing four fights with Pictos equipped unlocks them as Luminas, and you can then assign them to all characters using Lumina points. Pictos and Luminas can be swapped out at any moment, allowing you to tailor your build to particularly challenging fights or ones where you can take advantage of the different mechanics. It encourages you to experiment and change on the fly.

To set itself apart from other turn-based RPGS, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has another trick up its sleeve. Just about every action has a QTE-style moment attached to it in what the developers are calling a “reactive turn-based combat” system. Whenever you perform a skill attack, button prompts allow you to enhance these attacks. These are often rhythmic and go with the flow of the attack. Likewise, reactive prompts work on the defensive as well. You are able to dodge, parry, or jump out of the way of attacks. Think, the excellent Sea of Stars dialled up to 11.

It’s a great system that layers onto the combat wonderfully and makes it a more distinctive approach to turn-based combat, adding a more reactive rhythm to it. Timings are also incredibly harsh, so unless you are really good at parrying, you can’t rely purely on that and will have to dodge a few attacks. If you manage to pull off a perfect parry on the final hit, a counterattack is automatically performed. Dodging is a lot safer with a longer window, but enemies will have a lot of tricks with long wind-ups that can throw off your timing. Paying attention to the animations and sounds is absolutely critical. If you are pretty good at parrying, you can even take on higher enemies and avoid one-hit attacks altogether. 

It rewards skill without being too punishing, with frequent auto-saving and a Dark Souls-esque checkpoint system that has flags around the place, allowing you to replenish supplies and respawn enemies. You are never losing much progress after a defeat, and you can freely farm enemies to level up before tackling a particularly difficult boss fight or area. And trust me, you will die quite a lot. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a surprisingly tough game, even on the default difficulty, with some harsh difficulty spikes, but it feels all the more rewarding, rarely feeling unfair, even if a few attacks didn’t have good tells. Also worth noting that if your main party members fall in combat, you can send the reserves in for a last stand.

When you are not fighting the wide variety of enemies, you will be exploring the world in two different forms. Each zone has a variety of hidden paths, secrets, and optional bosses to encounter to gain some sweet loot. Some of these are incredibly tough with fresh mechanics to mix things up and will most likely require you to come back once you’ve levelled up. There’s always something interesting to find, and stuff to come back to, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does a great job of teasing these moments and encouraging you to leave the beaten path. Most zones are fairly linear with only a few pathways, but I enjoyed just about every one of them. 

Much like some classic JRPGS, there’s a downsized overworld to explore, giving a real sense to the massive world that has been crafted. Within the overworld, you will find optional locations and even some mini-games like jumping puzzles that provide a nice distraction from the main story and provide some neat rewards such as additional costumes, hairstyles, or even weapons, resources, and Pictos. There’s always something interesting to do or find, and I would often revisit old areas to see what I missed.

There are a few minor gripes I have with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and that is mostly a lack of quality-of-life features. I’m not expecting a mini-map or list of all the items found in the world, that might ruin the sense of discovery. But a simple check on the map to tell me I’ve got everything will be enough, or the ability to place my own markers would go a long way. Menus could do with a bit more of a tweak, and there’s not even a bestiary to keep track of all the various creatures, allies, and locations.

As a whole, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does just about everything right, and there’s so much to dig into. A vast and beautiful world with some of the best turn-based combat in years. Deep RPG mechanics and a compelling story from beginning to end. There’s so much I didn’t touch on, but each new mechanic is introduced at a pace where nothing becomes overwhelming, and it keeps the game exciting throughout the story, which is 40+ hours long. With a lot more side content and a New Game + mode, which also increases the difficulty. You’re getting a lot of high-quality game here for something that costs almost half as much as some others.

Visuals and Sound 

The world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is visually striking. A prime example of how excellent art direction and design trump raw visual prowess. It won’t compete with the likes of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth with some muddy textures, weaker in-game character models, and lacklustre lip syncing. However, its visual presentation and sense of style are impeccable, combining French architecture and culture with more fantastical elements for something truly unique.

This could very well be the most stylish game in the past few years. The world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 looks fantastic, from the French city streets to the surrounding areas that have a grounded yet magical flair to them. There’s a ton of variety in the locations you visit, with each having distinct colour tones and enemies to fight, all with wonderful animations that pull you into the experience.

Much like Persona 5, even the UI has a lot of flair and stylings that add to the experience even more. It’s a game that oozes style from beginning to end, with some stunningly designed boss fights on top of that. I was left speechless by a lot of what I was seeing and soaked in the environment and enemies at any moment that I got.

The PC version here is well-optimised with great performance, easily above 60fps. As for ultrawide users, we have some interesting choices. Some cutscenes are rendered down to 16:9 and then further letterboxed. It’s a baffling choice to make this approach, but it could very well be an oversight that kind of ruined a few moments. However, these are few and far between, and the presentation is typically excellent.

On top of this, we have excellent voice acting thanks to some great casting decisions. With Final Fantasy XVI‘s Ben Starr and Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Jennifer English fast becoming some of the best names in the industry, appearing just about everywhere, and I’m all for it. On top of this, Charlie Cox (Yes, Daredevil) and Andy Serkis play the roles of lead protagonist and antagonist, respectively. The whole cast does a superb job with these grounded characters, with some great character interactions, hilarious moments, and solid drama that will leave you in tears. I can’t name a single character out of the main cast that I didn’t end up liking.

Then we have the soundtrack, and from the very moment the game boots up, it hooks you in with a huge orchestral score, elevating just about every moment of the game to the next level, from the more dramatic and heartfelt moments to quieter exploration and the epic boss fights. The track where you first meet your Gestral companion Monoco is just perfection. There’s always a unique track that is fitting, best of all, the 8-hour soundtrack is just sitting there on Spotify.

I also want to briefly touch on Steam Deck performance. Currently, Steam has Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sitting with a playable tag, and after trying it myself, you do have to make some sacrifices to the visuals to get a solid framerate, but I can recommend it. It easily manages to lock down a 30fps whilst looking great on the OLED screen, pulling in roughly two to two and a half hours of battery life as well.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is truly something special, combining some fantastic turn-based combat and RPG progression with a heartfelt and well-told story about dealing with loss and paving the way for the future. It’s one of the finest RPGS in years and will likely be remembered for years to come.

 

Graphics: 9.5 Lacking in some animations, but makes up for a beautiful and unique art style dripping in style and atmosphere.	Gameplay: 9.5 A few minor gripes but a fun, unique and engaging combat system keeps the game constantly exciting.
Sound: 10 The stellar soundtrack elevates the game to the next level, whilst the voice actors add so much depth to each character.	Fun Factor: 10 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a masterclass in JRPG design.
Final Verdict: 10

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PC, With an RTX 4070, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and 32GB RAM.

A copy of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was provided by the publisher.