Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Review – An Early GOTY 2025 Contender

It’s easy to feel a bit jaded about the video game industry these days. From mass layoffs to AAA games with bloated budgets and decade-long development cycles, is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is a game humbly revealed only a year ago, coming from a small French studio, Sandfall Interactive. 

It promised to be an RPG inspired by cult classics, games that we all remember playing decades ago, with mechanics that modern games simply stay away from. Turn-based combat with party customisation, an overworld to explore, all set in a brand-new world with an original story. 

In many ways, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 sounded too good to be true on paper. And on April 24, 2025, it arrived on Xbox Series X|S, the PlayStation 5, and PC, in addition to launching on Game Pass on day one. So, how does this game truly stack up against the promises laid out by Sandfall Interactive, and does it live up to the hype leading up to its launch?

TL;DR

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is a triumph on every front. It has everything from a gorgeous visual presentation to captivating music and a mysterious story to keep you hooked. And best of all, it’s a tight, focused J-inspired RPG that’ll take 40-50 hours to complete.

Story – Fighting Against Your Fate

The story of Clair Obscur Expedition 33 begins at dusk, as players take control of a man named Gustave. He’s melancholic, looking to the horizon as he stands on top of one of the buildings of Lumiere, his hometown. 

Gustave looks toward a large glowing number across the sea, nervously waiting for something to happen, as his childhood friend Maelle joins him. Together with all the citizens of Lumiere, they start their way down to the harbour for an annual event they’re all secretly dreading. 

A Mystery Waiting to be Uncovered

Revealing too much of Clair Obscur Expedition 33 and its story is doing it a disservice. This is a game with a very original, mature, and mysterious story that’ll hook you from the moment you start playing. Suffice it to say, the themes of the story revolve around fate and how different people handle the inevitable. 

Do you play the cards you’re dealt or fight for a better tomorrow? Do you try and impose your beliefs on others, or do you simply retreat into yourself and let go of your fears? Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is a very personal story with living, breathing characters that have clearly defined motivations, backstories, goals, and shortcomings. 

Contrary to most J-inspired RPGs and JRPGs like Persona 5, this is not a lighthearted tale whatsoever. While it does have moments where tensions ease up and our characters can relax for a moment, it’s also a very heavy, dark tale with complex implications and consequences. 

If there’s one thing you’ll take away from this review, it’s that Clair Obscur Expedition 33 should be experienced as blindly as possible.

Gameplay – New Elements Mixed into the Familiar

This is a turn-based J-inspired RPG at its core. It’s worth noting that while it’s heavily inspired by games like Shin Megami Tensei, it’s a Western game through and through. Quality of life changes made to the traditional JRPG formula ensure that the game never feels grindy, and you’ll never feel like you’re wasting your time. 

For example, there are no potions to manage in your inventory. Instead, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 relies on a Souls-like approach with flasks that recharge every time you rest at a checkpoint. This also revives all enemies around you, making for a strategic choice of whether you want to rest or keep going a little further. 

Similarly, the game features a traditional overworld you’ll explore as miniature figures of your party. Very few games take this approach to world exploration today, and it’s truly a blast from the past, travelling from one zone to another. Speaking of zones, they’re all very linear. 

The game takes inspiration from Final Fantasy X in this regard, ensuring you’re always on a straight path from the entrance to the boss fight and back to the overworld. While there are side paths to explore and loot to collect, these side objectives are never too time-consuming and always rewarding. It’s a far cry from many RPGs that don’t respect your time and reward you with minimal resources or experience for your efforts. 

Every time you boot up Clair Obscur Expedition 33, you’ll achieve something cool, see a new story cutscene, or discover a new area to explore. It’s an engaging experience that doesn’t feel like a waste of time, and with a 40-50 hour runtime, it’s perfectly paced for an RPG.

Heavy on the Quick-Time Events

Although the game draws heavy inspiration from JRPG classics, it also modernises the formula in several ways. Most notably, the combat is turn-based but heavily revolves around quick-time events, or QTEs. 

Whether you’re casting skills, parrying attacks, or avoiding projectiles, you’ll need to be an active participant. This means Clair Obscur Expedition 33 plays more like an action game than your typical turn-based RPG. And you’ll have to get used to QTE if you want to stand a chance against anything but the weakest opponents. 

This might be a make-or-break for many people, as QTE isn’t the most popular gameplay mechanic. It was heavily prevalent in the early 2000s when games like the original God of War popularised it. Since then, it has faded from the limelight a bit, only for Clair Obscur Expedition 33 to implement it front and centre. 

Beyond QTE, combat revolves around choosing a series of skills and items for each character before going into battle. Armour customisation is purely cosmetic, but you’ll do plenty of customisation when it comes to your skills and accessories. 

Every character also plays distinctly, meaning that your party members feel like unique individuals both within the story and in combat. You’ll quickly discover your favourites and learn to rely on them, mixing and matching various skills to determine the best formula for your playstyle. 

Paired with elemental weaknesses, there’s a lot to like about the game’s combat, and you’ll never get bored of landing critical attacks or parrying thanks to the game’s addictive QTE mechanics.

Visuals – A Breathtakingly Haunting Experience

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 looks better than it has any right to, being built by a core team of little over 30 developers. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, the game is stunning to look at, both in terms of its art style and world design, but also because of how smoothly it runs. The only aspect of the game’s visual presentation that’s somewhat lacking is lip-syncing, but it’s not a dealbreaker by any means and can be attributed to the game’s smaller development budget.

In terms of its art style, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 opts for realistic human anatomy paired with very creative, distorted, and dreamlike world design. It’s a very potent blend, as your party members look and sound like grown adults with expected body proportions, movement, and speech patterns. 

But then, you’ll come across strange vistas, distorted creatures, and events you couldn’t possibly describe without seeing them first hand. It lends to the game’s atmosphere and really pulls you into its world. But most importantly, it makes it all so much more believable, knowing that your characters are just people trying to make sense of the events that keep happening in front of them.

Smooth Technical Sailing, with a Small Caveat

We tested the game on the PlayStation 5, where it features quality and performance modes, running at stable 30 and 60 FPS, respectively. Clair Obscur Expedition 33 also allows you to customise motion blur, film grain, and a few other visual elements to fine-tune your experience. The game doesn’t support HDR natively, meaning you’ll have to tweak your display settings if you run into areas that are too bright or dark for your liking. 

On our default setup, we had no issues either with performance or visual clarity, so your mileage may vary. Likewise, the game is technically polished and stable from day one, meaning that you can safely enjoy it without fear of crashes or glitches. It’s a testament to the fact that games can easily avoid the typical AAA shortcomings with a proper approach to their development.

Audio – In a Category of Its Own

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 pairs its gorgeous art style and familiar yet twisted world with an equally outstanding soundtrack. The game opts for an orchestral score, consisting of vocals, violins, pianos, and any instrument you can think of and associate with French music. 

This means you’ll often hear sombre music that complements equally heavy moments happening in the story. But you’ll also hear upbeat tracks played on a harmonica, aiming to excite and engage the player. Clair Obscur Expedition 33 knows when to play things quietly and when to elevate the moment with a breathtaking vocal. Boss fights are especially notable, as they each have their own track that complements what’s happening on the screen.

A Hollywood Cast of Voice Actors

This is not a game with a sprawling cast of characters. It’s a tightly-knit experience instead, meaning that every character feels like a real person as a result. To ensure they also sound like it, the team chose to work with a group of professional voice actors, many of whom you’ll recognise the moment you hear them. 

Standouts include Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Jennifer English (Shadowheart from Baldur’s Gate 3), Andy Serkis (Gollum from The Lord of the Rings), and Ben Starr (Clive from Final Fantasy XVI). Each actor does an outstanding job of breathing life into their characters, ensuring they’re believable and easy to empathise with.

 However, the game struggles with sound mixing quite a bit, with the soundtrack dominating over vocal performances. The best thing you can do, however, is to tweak your sound settings and make sure that the music, while outstanding, isn’t too loud compared to the amazing voice work done by the cast.

Conclusion – Should you play Clair Obscur Expedition 33?

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is a testament to how video games could be in today’s day and age. Its popularity is also proof that people don’t want 100+ hour open-world games riddled with question marks, battle passes, and microtransactions. Players want straightforward experiences that try something new, pair it with some of the expected, and run for 40-50 hours. 

Two years ago, we had the pleasure of covering Baldur’s Gate 3 and the impact that game has had on the industry. Today, the same is true for Clair Obscur Expedition 33, as it should be celebrated as an AA game that did so much more than anyone expected. If you’re in any way curious about the game without being prepared to buy it, you can check it out on the Game Pass. 

Otherwise, if you’re not a fan of turn-based games and don’t like quick-time events, don’t spend money on something that’s not really your thing. For everyone else, this is an unskippable experience that you owe yourself to play if you’ve ever played and enjoyed games like Final Fantasy or Persona.

Huge thanks to Bandai Namco EU for sponsoring our review!