When Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 debuted at the Xbox Games Showcase last year, it instantly turned heads. Aesthetically, it looked like an art book had come to life—a mix of gorgeous landscapes and stunning visuals. What really stood out, though, wasn’t just the game’s looks—it was the turn-based RPG combat enhanced with quick-time elements that felt both nostalgic (as it reminded me of Shadow Hearts) and fresh. Now that the full game is out, I can safely say this: Clair Obscur doesn’t just meet the expectations it set—it thoroughly blows them out of the water with an RPG experience that is definitely up there along with the greats. Here’s our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review!
Painting a Picture
The game is set after a huge event called “The Fracture”. Much isn’t known about it yet but what you do see is that reality appears to have been bent and warped with various debris floating in mid-air. At the distance, people of the city of Lumiere can see a huge monolith bearing a number and huge female-like being is crouched in front of it, known as The Paintress. Every year, she wakes up and rises to paint a new number in the monolith and every year – a number is one less than the previous. Sort of like a countdown. Tragedy sets when people discover that number coincides with the maximum age that people can now live. Once the new number is painted, everyone beyond that age disappears and fades away. This horrific annual event is now known as the “Gommage”.
As the direness of the situation sets in, the people of the city of Lumiere send out expeditions each year to travel, reach, and hopefully stop the Paintress. The Expeditions – named after the current number on the monolith – are mostly comprised of people who are about to gommage and have chosen to dedicate their final year of life to end this cycle… though none have succeeded. Now, 67 years after the very first expedition, Expedition 33 starts their journey.
A Masterstroke in Combat
Let’s get this out of the way: the combat in Clair Obscur is superb.
I mentioned my comparison to Shadow Hearts earlier and the reason for that comparison is because I absolutely adored the more involved combat system of that game as compared to the usual RPG. Don’t get me wrong. I still love normal turn based but the added nuance really does feel nice. This hybrid combat system features normal attacks, free-aim attacks, and rhythm-based QTEs for skills. Fail a QTE and your skill might flop. Nail it, and you’ll unleash satisfying bursts of damage.
Defensive mechanics are also dynamic. A well-timed parry (using R1/RB) can negate an enemy’s attack entirely—and even trigger counterattacks if you parry all attacks done. Dodging exists, but it’s parrying that steals the show. It’s more rewarding, more stylish, and ties directly into AP regeneration (which you need to use skills), setting you up for a massive combo or a huge move the next round if you pull it off.
What’s more, each character has a unique combat gimmick that dramatically affects your playstyle. Gustav, for instance, builds up an Overcharge meter for devastating damage. Luna, the party’s mage, uses Elemental Stains—basically energy tags that empower her spells if certain conditions are met. Maelle, the fencer, switches between stances: defensive (less damage taken), offensive (more damage done and taken), and virtuous (double damage)—and each stance unlocks different effects or skill enhancements.
There’s real rewarding depth here and it’s layered on top of a robust customization system. Between your Pictos (accessory-like items with passive bonuses), Lumina (which lets you equip passives from Pictos you’ve mastered), and weapons (each with scaling passives at levels 5, 10, and 20), you can build a party that feels uniquely yours and with awesome damage engines.
For example, my Gustave farmed AP through basic attacks to fuel huge moves afterwards. My Lune used free-aim shots to generate random elemental stains and inflict statuses ailments on my foes. Maelle, who I’ve equipped with various crit-raising pictos and passives would then capitalize with massive moves through her Virtuous stance.
It’s almost dangerous how much time you’ll spend in the build screen. And you’ll love every second of it.
A Story worth a Thousand Words
First off, lemme just say, this game blew me away with just how good story its story telling was. Initially, I was worried. When it comes to RPGs, I usually prefer stories that are in very lived-in worlds. Especially if I’m saving the world, I like to know more about the world I’m saving. I wanna feel attached. It’s part of my immersion. I usually don’t like simply just going through weird landscapes and terrain because I feel like I’m just trudging through and going through the motions. I had this problem with games like Final Fantasy 13 and 16. e. This oddly wasn’t the case with Clair Obscur which surprised me.
The story’s greatest strength lies in its characters. Every member of your team has a strong, clear motivation. Nobody exists “just because.” You can feel the weight of their pasts, the urgency of their present motivations, and what they have at stake. It’s refreshing to play an RPG where you rarely ask, “Why would they do that?”—because their actions make sense. They feel human. i. I’d like to add that your characters are also all reasonably smart. I rarely find myself in situations where I would be flabbergasted at how someone hasn’t figured out something that I already figured out. And without spoiling anything, I absolutely treasured moments where your party would just choose willful ignorance. Like they would doubt someone’s actions repeatedly and rather that them being stupid FOR PLOT REASONS, you can see how they chose to not give it anymore thought because they NEED to trust this person. They NEED to see how things play out because if they don’t, they just get stuck.
Even exploration has meaning. Discoveries and details both big and small seem like a huge deal as you are quite in the same boat as your party. You are discovering all this together and you (just like them) are piecing this together to try and make sense of what’s happening. And this, even in itself, was such an experience as the visuals of this game are just breathtaking. There were so many times that I just stopped to take it the view.
The plot drama here is so brilliantly communicated through the characters’ gestures and facial reactions too (although it sometimes doesn’t work). The voice work is so well done too and I can’t praise the cast enough – although it admittedly took me a bit to reconcile Shadowheart’s (from Baldur’s Gate 3) voice with Maelle since there does seem to be an age disparity there. And yes, I can’t hype up enough how much MUSIC was such a huge factor with how the story was told. The Clair Obscur soundtrack is nothing short of PHENOMENAL. The songs are so emotionally charged that they add so much depth to scenes, landscapes, and battles that it amplifies the experience so much. It’s right up there with the likes of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Metaphor: ReFantazio in terms of quality and emotional impact.
Almost Perfect
As much as I give this game high praise, the game isn’t perfect and I would be remiss to not mention them in this review.
Visually, as beautiful as this game is, there are times when the brightness of the lights or even the dimness of the game’s dark areas would just be too overwhelming. Clipping does occur in maps. When it comes to changing the fashion of your characters, there would even be times when hairstyles would unusually clip into the character’s body. I also found it weird that you were unable to spin the character around when you’re applying hairstyles that just affects the back of their head. Aside from that, there would be times that I wish I could adjust the camera distance so that I could be a bit further from my character to see more of the map.
In terms of sound, I did notice a persisting bug (at least I think it’s a bug) of this weird noise that sounds like a large rock or wooden structure creaking. I’m not sure if that’s something in the environment but I did find that when I would reload my game, it would disappear for a good while.
Speaking of saves, RPG fans may have to get used to how Clair Obscur doesn’t use save slots. Rather the game autosaves. It does however give you the option to access recent autosaves to do a bit of backtracking. This does mean however, you won’t be able to preserve specific save files for you to go back to specific moments in the game.
It is also worth mentioning that I do think you’ll need a rumbling controller for Clair Obscur. The controller rumbles when you are within range of something you can swing to and sometimes, these swing points aren’t exactly visible. There were a few times that I would only find out when I was cued by a rumble that Id stop and look around.
Lastly, I think there are a few things that can be better in terms of the game’s various UIs. For example, there is a noticeable lack of minimap and quest markers are a bit on the minimal side. It can be argued that this is intentional which would let you focus more on exploration and discovery but sometimes, there is just so much to do that it does get quite overwhelming and you become prone to forget things that you’d like to revisit. I, at least, wish that you could leave personal markers on things you’d like to come back to. Or maybe even a list of potential sidequests you can do later. There are also still things that I wish would be described better. Monster weaknesses for me are really hard to keep track of and certain mechanics (which I won’t get into because spoilers) for battle were admittedly difficult for me to grasp. One thing I do kept wishing for is a way to see how much Lumina points a Pictos passive would be. A way to maximize your build would be to equip the PICTOS with the most expensive passives in terms of Lumina points. A way to quickly see this would really help and, in fairness, this is something that could be fixed with an update.
All things considered, the game has flaws but I gotta say that these are all forgivable in my eyes especially weighed with what the game does right. Plus, if you consider that this is Sandfall Interactive’s FIRST GAME (which is absolutely mind-blowing), it’s hard to fault them for these mistakes.
Final Verdict: 9/10
My experience with my Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review was admittedly a bit of a rollercoaster.
When I did my first impressions of the game, I will admit that I didn’t feel as strongly positive as I do now. The demo featured just the toplines of the game and I felt like so much of its systems weren’t explained well enough that it ended up being confusing along with some really weird graphical glitches. My initial thought was that this was going to be a game with a good concept but wouldn’t really be able to stick the landing. This was my feeling going into reviewing the full game.
Now that I have finished the game, I’m so surprised and delighted that this game managed to show me that it was waaaay more than what the demo showed. There’s so much that the combat system offers and learning parry windows as well as getting to do specific builds for your party just feels so satisfying. Enemy variety felt nice because of how you needed to learn various attack patterns so combat was usually switched up well and rarely got stale. The game would even throw you puzzle-type enemies that would be less power checks and more trying to solve a problem on how to beat them. More than that, the story is just so next level that I can’t believe that this is a developer’s first game. Everything felt so human that very few things ever felt black and white. Interacting with your party felt so rewarding as you’d get to understand more of what they were about. Matched up with amazing visuals and an absolutely beautiful soundtrack, I can confidently say that Sandfall has made a game that will be seen as a Milestone RPG and will definitely be one of my personal favorites.
I cant wait to see what Sandfall Interactive will create next.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 releases on April 24, 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
(This review was made on a PS5 with a code provided by the game’s publisher)