Clair Obscur: Expedition 33Review - In this Review I’m going to be talking about my hands on time with the game. I finished the game about a week and a half ago, and just afterwards I actually flew to London to celebrate the launch of this title with Sandfall Interactive and some of the cast of the game, including Jennifer English, Ben Starr, and Andy Serkis, which was amazing. I’ll have some pictures up for you guys, so you can see from that event it was very, very cool.
But I want to talk about this game. This game took me about 50 hours to play through or so give or take a little bit depending on how good you are and what difficulty you’re playing on, but this might absolutely be my favorite game of the year so far. And that’s saying a lot considering I’ve played games like came come Deliverance 2, Monster Hunter Wilds, the recently First Berserker Kazan and of course have Avowed as well. A lot of good games have already come out this year. I think this one might be my favorite so far.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review
Genre: Turn-Based/Action RPG Hybrid
Developed by: Sandfall Interactive
Published by: Kepler Interactive
Release date: April 24th, 2025
Platforms: PC (review platform, code provided by Sandfall), PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Price at the time of review:$44.99
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review - Story & Setting
So let’s talk about the Story in Setting first in this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review. The story and setting of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is probably one of the most interesting things, if not the most interesting thing about the game. Clair Obscur, by the way, is a French art term that refers to the contrast between light and dark in pieces of art, and it’s definitely a theme throughout this game.
But essentially, without going into spoilers of course, just the setup of this story, which you will find out very early on once you start playing; It’s about people who live in a world where every year people are dying at a younger and younger age. A mysterious figure paints a number on a faraway tower every year that goes lower and instantly Gommages anyone who is older than the Painted Age, causing them to devolve into flower petals and disappear into the winds, never to be seen again.
You play as a band of characters that have been training to spend the last year of their life to go on an expedition to the continent, which is a mysterious place across the sea where this tower and paintress are located. In an effort to finish what previous expeditions could not and stop the paintress once and for all, and end the cycle of endless Gommages. There are many mysteries and Clair Obscur Expedition 33, and figuring them out is a part of the process and as you become more and more entangled in the games plot, you not only begin to understand the seemingly confusing motivations of many of the games characters, but you also get a deeper look into what it means to be human.
I found the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 resonated with me a lot personally. It’s a tale of tragedy, hope, perseverance, trust, and ultimately the bonds that tie us all together as human beings. In a time where people are more divided than ever, it was a good reflection for me to take a look at what’s really important about life. And that’s usually the closest people to your friends and family and how much they mean to you.
I lost my mother to cancer last June, and I didn’t understand at the time what an impact it would have on me and it’s still impacting my life today in ways that I still don’t completely understand that flare up in the most strange times possible, and I think that’s one of the reasons that this game really spoke to me. It touched upon subjects like this, and I think it will really resonate with people out there that have had similar experiences.
Characters
And the cast ofcharactersin Expedition 33 are absolutely fantastic as well. I felt like I connected and bonded with just about every single one of them, if not all of them in some way, and they’re written in a way that they’re complex, they have layers to them, and it felt like you could really empathize with a lot of their situations. I found myself wanting to bring them all with me all the time, but you could only have three characters in your party at once. However, during cut scenes and things, they all appear for those, so you don’t really miss out on that. But I I really wanted them all to be with me the whole time, which is a huge departure from other games out there that I have played recently, even in Avowed I really liked a couple characters and didn’t like other characters. Coming from Dragon Age, where I basically didn’t like any of the companions that they had to being able to like just about everyone in this. It takes me back to the days of Knights of the Old Republic where like there were so many good characters you didn’t know which ones you wanted to bring, and they’re all just really, really well done in this game. And that was so refreshing.
And there’s also quite a bit of humor in this game. It does kind of have a dark tone underlying everything, but there is also a very good humorous element in this game. And I did feel like the developers have both a good sense of understanding of life and humor. So it’s not like it’s all dark and dreary either. There are a lot of fun, funny moments in this title.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review - Gameplay
So moving along from the story and setting to the gameplay in this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review; the gameplay is kind of broken up into three segments. I would say you have exploration of the game’s overworld map, which is kind of its own thing. You have the level design of each level that you move through or location rather the locations that you’re in, the flow of those and then the combat in between, the flow of the levels and on the world map.
Exploration
The exploration on theworld mapI found absolutely fascinating. I really like the way that it’s setup. It’s designed in a way where like you unlock more and more abilities that will allow you to have access to more and more areas. So as you progress the game, be able to go back and see things that you weren’t able to see before in certain locations and have access to new locations you couldn’t access. I really enjoyed exploring the world map and finding all the things on it. It was always, always fun when I completed a main story area and then had access to a new part of the map. It’s not truly open world in the sense that like you can’t go anywhere at any point in the game. You have to unlock areas, kind of reminded me of like, the old Final Fantasy games where more and more of the world map becomes available to you as you progress the main storyline.
And as far as the level designs go aesthetically, I really like the way they look visually and art style wise, they’re absolutely fascinating and for the most part, I think they were really well done. The exploration was a key consideration for me based on the demo I had already played, which was kind of minimal, and there are some areas of the game that have absolutely fantastic exploration, but I would say it’s kind of hit or miss. Some areas are really, really good in terms of exploration and some areas are very, very simple and you’re able to predict just about where you need to go and where every item is. So I wish there had been a little bit more effort put in here. In certain places, but overall I think they did a really, really good job on exploration.
And when it comes to combat, combat is probably one of the more unique things of the game, considering that it is a turn based game where each character has their own mechanics and abilities. But then you also have real time mechanics, like dodging, pairing, jumping, and then a different type of counterattack called a gradient counter. So you basically have 4 defensive actions that you can do, and then all the skills and regular attacks you can do in combat, so there’s a variety of things that you can do.
There is a very good enemy variety in the game, there are so many different enemies that it mixes it up a lot. And I had just a ton of fun with the combat of this game. I think whether you’re a turn based player or a realtime player, you’re really, really going to enjoy this, and you’re able to tweak the difficulty to kind of skew yourself more way than the other. If you’re more of a turn based player and don’t have good reflexes, you can go on easier difficulties. And if you’re more like a souls player or someone who plays a lot of ARPGs like The First Berserker Khazan, you can put it on harder difficulty and really ramp up the challenge.
I would say there are only two real issues I have with combat though, which you don’t really notice until the very end of the game, by the way, so it’s not like this is a a problem throughout most of the game, but the last 10 to 15 hours where you are kind of doing the end game, if you will. Here you start to notice that the enemies of the game, even though there’s a large variety of them, only have like 2 attacks each or maybe 3 attacks in some cases, except for like super uniqueBossesand things like that.
Many enemies become sort of mini bosses with huge health pools. And this is where you start to really see that they only have a couple of attacks because they’ll do attack A and then attack B and then attack A and then attack B and then attack and attack B for like 20 turns in a row and it starts to get a little bit repetitive at that point because there just isn’t a variety of attacks. Whereas when there was one of each enemy on the screen, you had all these different attacks going off, so it didn’t feel like that.
And additionally, I do feel like the game relies a little bit too much on Parrying compared to the other defensive mechanics than it does on like dodging for instance, or jumping or even the gradient counter attacks like they do. Dodging is just not as rewarding as Parrying, because Parrying allows you to do a counterattack which punishes the enemy. You get damage on them, you may heal yourself with them, you can trigger effects on counterattack, you build up the enemy’s break bar when you counterattack, but dodging doesn’t do any of that. So you’re sort of pushed or encouraged to Parry a lot in this game and you will Parry a lot and I felt like maybe they should have mixed in some of the other mechanics a little bit more.
Mini Games
Besides these things, there is also mini games, and the mini games are kind of a nice break from the exploration and combat and they kind of show you the fun side of the developers a little bit. And I will say I like the idea of these being in the game, but the mini games themselves, I didn’t really enjoy that much. They were kind of frustrating to some degree. There’s some parkour there, there’s a tennis match of sorts, if you will. And there are a couple of other things like that and I like the idea of them, but in practice I found them very very frustrating, often because like they’re a little bit clunky and hard to pull off. But generally I found them more fun than not.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review - Audio, Visual & Design
Graphics & Performance
Moving along to the audio, visual and design of the game in this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review, we’ll talk about graphics first. The graphics of the game are absolutely fantastic. I don’t know if they’re the best in the industry, but they are good. The cinematics of the game are absolutely fantastic. The way the world looks, the the vibe of the world, the art style, the art direction and animations are over the top. I mean this game when you first look at it looks like a AAA game, it could be a AAA game. Honestly, it should be. It’s that good in terms of production value.
Graphically the only real blips for me were there are a few stutters in some zones, and they definitely kind of use motion blur or some sort of blurring on the world map a lot to prevent frame drops. And sometimes things would be blurry for you when they were right in front of you, and it kind of made me wonder if I was losing my vision a little bit. But generally speaking, graphically, the game runs really, really well. I was getting 60FPS or higher at 4K on a 3080 TI and a 12900 K processor pretty much the entire game with a couple of exceptions.
Voice Acting
And when it comes to audio in the game, the audio of the game is almost a 10 out of 10, and I’ll get into why it’s almost a 10 out of 10. The voice acting has some of the best voice actors in the industry, especially some up and coming ones like Jennifer English and Ben Starr, who I mentioned earlier. Andy Serkis is absolutely phenomenal, and there are other voice actors as well. I don’t want to go through the whole list. But the voice acting in this game is some of the best, if not at the best caliber that you will find in a video game. It definitely sets the standard or as at the standard.
And when it comes to music, the music of the game is absolutely amazing as well. There are just so many good songs in this game, it absolutely made the journey for me. It elicits emotion in you, it’s action-packed, it fits every single second wherever you are in the game, it absolutely fits with what you’re doing and it’s absolutely phenomenal.
Sound Effects & Bugs
The sound effects of the game are also incredibly well done, and they’re really good in just about every area of the game. The one gripe I have about audio is that I had some sort of audio bug I think the last 10 to 15 hours of the game where I kept hearing like the same sound that sounded like a boulder rolling behind me over and over, every zone that I was in and I don’t know if it was the ambient sound of that zone, but it was the exact same sound in all the zones that made me think it was a bug and it started to get irritating after a while because nothing was happening around me, but it sounded like I was going to be crushed by a boulder. That’s funny, but it’s true.
And I already touched on performance, but I had zero crashes the whole time I played this game. I didn’t have a single one, and I had almost no bugs (besides the sounds bug). I think the couple of bugs I had were like I jumped somewhere and got stuck and I had to reload an earlier save to get unstuck. That was it, I had nothing else really happened bug-wise. This is an extremely polished game and I don’t expect these things to be a problem for anyone.
Replayability & Game Length
Moving on to replayability and game length for this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review. As I mentioned at the beginning of the Review, it took me about 50 hours to do everything. I think I’m probably missing a little bit, so I think you know you might get 52 hours, 53 hours. You might get 47 hours if you’re a better player than I am or you’re playing on an easier difficulty, but you’re looking at somewhere around the 50 hour range to do everything in this game.
I don’t think it’s very likely you’ll play this game a second time just from the way the game is designed. It’s more of like a one and done type of experience where you get rewarded from all the exploration and stuff as you play through the game, but there is a New Game Plus that does have new loot and rewards, so you may play for that. There is kind of an “end game” as well, that you’ll hit after like the 30 to 35 hour mark where all these activities sort of open up to you and you can try on new challenges and get new gear and things like that. So you’re going to get a solid game length, but it’s not like you’re going to get 100 hours or something like that.
Pricepoint
And then talking about the pricepoint in this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review, kind of piggybacking off this, this game right now is $45 on Steam on sale through May 2nd. Otherwise it’s $49.99. That is a very good price for this game. And also the game is day 1 on Game Pass, so if you’d rather just pay for Game Pass, what is like $17.00 or something like that and play or if you have Game Pass already, it’s going to cost you nothing, so this is such a great value on Game Pass and even on Steam it’s not bad.
Final Thoughts
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is it’s a rare game. It took me back to the Golden Age of gaming where people had artistic vision, technical know-how, excellent writing, kind of wrapped inside solid combat that delivers a total package experience. The the closest thing in my head when I think back to a game like this is something like Final Fantasy 7. I haven’t played all the Final Fantasy games after Final Fantasy 7, so someone might compare it to other Final Fantasy games, but it reminds me a lot of my experience playing Final Fantasy 7 the way I felt playing that game, this time though as a grown up who is a bit more mature though. But that’s kind of the level that this game’s quality is on. If I could compare it to one game, that would be the game that I would compare it to.
There are very few games today that I can recommend to everyone because they’re either story focused or too story focused like for instance Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is much more story focused than a lot of people would prefer. I mean, it does have other things to it, but it’s it’s a very story driven game and not everyone enjoys story driven games. Or some games are very combat focused. For instance The First Berserker Khazan is almost exclusively combat focused, and some people like to have a good story with their combat. Monster Hunter Wilds is the same thing. The story is there, yes, but no one’s playing Monster Hunter Wilds for the story, except that one guy. They’re playing it for the combat, so I can’t recommend Monster Hunter Wilds to absolutely everyone but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has what I believe is something for everyone, no matter what sort of player you are you will enjoy this game and I simply can’t say that about other games that I have played so far this year.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may very well win game of the year and may do so with the staff of under 50 people, proving that passion, dedication, talent and a clear vision are far more important than a large marketing budget, scores and scores of writers and tech personnel, and a big brand to rely on. I can’t wait to see what’s next from Sandfall Interactive and hope it looks a lot like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Be sure to check out our otherReviews, likeThe First Berserker KhazanandA.I. Limit!
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is a once in a generation title that transcends gaming, and approaches a work of art. From it’s unique and compelling story, its cast of characters that are some of the best in the industry, a world design that feels more like a painting rather than a video game, and the other the top combat animations that are larger than life, Expedition 33 has it all! My personal favorite game this year, and now one of my all time favorite games as well. Don’t miss out one of the most memorable experiences you can have in entertainment, and get this Day 1!
