Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025)

No point talking about the objective qualities of Clair Obscur, this could be the most reviewed game of all time. My preferences:

The Good:

• environment design and special effects, up to the point of "holy shit I didn't know computers could do this", and I work in a computer graphics-adjacent job
• sound and music
• story hits some emotional notes
• Esquie

The Bad:

• it's long
• it's repetitive
• numbers go up (don't get me wrong, I like numbers going up as much as anyone else, but gameplay and story are just at odds here)
• the combat relies on gimmicks I didn't care much for
• so yes, it's a JRPG

I feel like I would have enjoyed this a lot more as a 2 hour movie that properly paces its story about grief.

But it's still a very impressive game.

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 - (PS5)

Not my type of game at all, I hate turnbased combat BUT all the hype and good things about it got me interested. On Black Friday it was on a big sale so I thought why not try it out!

The game is made by a rather small French studio. I think many of the developers came from Ubisoft, with this as their new studios first game. After I played it they had a real home run winning 9 award on The Game Awards 2025, including Game Of The Year.

Short plot of the game is that a mysterious Paintress lives far away. Every year she paints a number at the Monolith in the distance, every human equal or older than that number are erased from existence. She started with 100 and counts down every year. 67 expeditions have traveled and tried to beat the Paintress but failed. Now the number is down to 33 and every human older than 33 doesn’t exist.

This game was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. I got hooked instantly, the atmosphere, music and acting together. It had me interested for almost all of act 1. Then I had a bit of a fallback, for a couple of hours I did not enjoyed it as much. Something in the story then got me pulled in again and it was awesome until the last couple of hours. I just wanted to finish the story and complete the game. Thought it was a bit too long.

For a turnbased game it was great. The parry/block part of it was a great touch, even if I mostly sucked at it!

Story was enthralling, acting was great from all the main characters. Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr and Andy Serkis to mention a few!

I was surprised by it, went in quite blind. Only heard great things but not seen any gameplay or anything.

I now understand the hype and even if it’s not my personal GOTY, it’s up there in the top.

Rating: 🌲🌲🌲🌲➕

Beautiful game, despite some big flaws like no minimap, and terrible fast travel system, if I can even call it a system. It is very hard to remember where you left certain super-bosses, etc. Music is mostly the same throughout the game, which is very lovely. The turn-based combat is amazing. Voice acting and characters are amazing.

Not perfect, but what game is? 5/5, loved it.

What a gem from an indie company I've never heard of ( I did read it's their first and only game so far).

I'm feeling some pretty hard FOMO right now cause I'm so happy for everyone this clicked with and I desperately want to jump on that hype train but man this is doing nothing for me. Turn-based combat wrapped in melodramatic period piece inspired fantasy setting. I cant think of any other combination of ideas that i'd find less appealing.

I was really looking forward to this but I guess I'm gonna have to pass. Shout out to the flawless score though, I just wish I hadn't already listened to it on repeat for literally weeks on end before jumping into the actually game. Maybe that would have pulled me through.

Here is the short version. I’m giving this game a 5/5 stars, however, realistically, I would make it a 9/10 stars. It get’s the round advantage because this is one of the best RPGs I have played… Ever. However, there are some material deficiencies, that I cannot completely overlook. As with most of my reviews, I'll lean heavy into the negatives, but the positives are covered by literally everyone. This review will have SPOILERS. If you haven’t played this game and you plan on playing it or are a fan of that 90s era JRPG (aka Final Fantasy and company) styled games. Just go play it first. What are you waiting for? ~ 60 hours, did most of everything, but not complitionist style. Played on PC.

Summary

Overall, one of the best games to come out in this genre with a unique story, felt great to play, and didn't over stay its welcome (mostly). PLAY IT. Unless you don't like this kind of game in this genre, that seems to be the main problem with people who give this game a bad review.

I'm not sure what to even say about this. It's one of, if not the most beautiful games I have ever played, and stories I have ever experienced in any medium.

First of all, the introduction to the game in itself is perfect. Many games take a while to get into or give you boring tutorials but this one shows you what the game is about from the start. I don't reccomend googling anything about the game. After playing the intro, you will know what you are in for.

First, as I mentioned, the story is amazing, and touched a lot of personal notes for me that I will not get into in a steam review. The characters are amazingly voice acted and realized, they feel like real people, and this is one of few games where I feel they let the characters act as people would in those situations. They let the characters feel negative emotions like anger, grief, hopelessness, etc. At the same time, there are parts of the game where the humor is genuinely hilarious to balance out the darker themes.

The gameplay is also great. It's turned based combat, however there's an active parry system. I was very bad at this at first but it turns out to be extremely satisfying. You have ways to gain active and passive buffs to your character (and upgrade those), and upgrade your resources, and weapons. Nothing in the game is grindy or annoying. Exploring the overworld is organic and interesting, I wanted to explore it to see anything I could about the lore or fight any optional encounters. Few games have you wanting to explore every inch because you actually WANT to see what the lore might say or what you will see, versus completionist compulsion.

The graphics are great but mainly the world itself is gorgeous, all the environments feel distinct with their own enemy designs and vibe and music. Oh, the music in this game is just absolutely incredible.

The whole picture of the game (gameplay, music, story, voice acting, envrionments, exploration, lore, etc) really just perfectly aligns to capture what they were going for here. It's one of the most poignant stories about grief in any medium; you can play through the whole game with a baguette strapped to your back.

94/100

Incredible game! Highly recommend going for 100% completion.

PROS

• I enjoyed how each character had a "gimmick" in how their play style works.
• Adored Maelle, Verso, and the story behind them.
• Took a second to understand the story after Act II, but when it settled, I enjoyed it.
• Music was AMAZING. One of the best soundtracks of all time.
• Memorizing the moves of all the enemies for parrying takes time, but it's rewarding and well done.
• Levels are beautiful.
• The feeling as you travel across the Continent and get closer to the Monolith and see it getting bigger and bigger is awesome.

CONS

• Sometimes the story did that annoying thing where characters are like "My god...I can't believe it!" but they don't tell the player what it is. I know it's a method to build up suspense and mystery, but I got tired of characters going "I did it to protect you!" "You know what you did!" "It was my choice!" and they haven't explained to me what they're talking about.
• I liked the characters of Sciel and Lune, but it feels like they were put there as purely romantic interest for Verso. Their stories without the romance was good enough - dare I say, they had more chemistry together than Verso had with either one.
• There's no fast travel on The Continent, so it takes a while to travel, even once you have flying abilities.
• I wish there was some sort of checklist for each level so I could 100% the level without looking online to make sure I got all the collectables.

I get it. I get why this is a "game of the year."

The story is so emotional and takes turns I did not see coming (all for the best imo). I love the characters, I love the world, I love the visuals. I LOVE the music. Everyone who worked on this game did a phenomenal job.

I didn't love the combat, though. That's mostly on me since I don't enjoy turn-base combat all that much. The boss fights were good, and I like the parry mechanic. But there's just too much combat... So many fights one after the other against the same enemies and it gets so tedious... I started avoiding combat whenever I could and focused on the boss fights, and had a lot more fun that way.

But even so, I get it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a "game of the year" kinda game.

Seriously, the characters are all so so great - voice and acted to perfection, even when the writing felt a little hammy. The soundtrack is amazing and probably one of the best I've heard in recent years. And everything is so pretty!

Berets off to everyone who worked on this game.

One of the best RPGs I've ever played. Really, really great.

• Exceptional combat mechanics and systems with so much depth
• Fantastic characters who are written well, have wonderful English voice acting and motion capture
• A very original but complex story that holds together to the end
• Great graphics and art design
• Amazing music
• A giant stuffed animal man who likes to yell TIME FOR A SWIM-SWIM when you jump in the water
• So many haircuts to collect!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't say enough good things. Loved it, will probably go play more and I cannot wait for a sequel.

Small gripes:

• Levels can be a little confusing at times and there is a lot of inconsistencies about what you can jump on, walk through or fall off of
• No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the lipsync on cutscenes to ever line up properly - not sure if this was an issue with my setup or the game itself
• Some minor visual bugs
• Some more serious bugs with corrupted saves (I lost 30 minutes at one point because I had to revert to an earlier save).
• I don't need clunky platforming challenges in my J'RPG

Finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Every ounce of this game is caked in passion, love, and art. From the scenery, to the dialogue, to the storytelling, right down to the smallest touches like UI design. Expedition 33 doesn’t just entertain—it wrecks you in the best way possible. Sandfall Interactive’s 30-person team has delivered a Belle-Époque fever dream whose visuals, combat, music, and themes hit with the force of a freight train, then stay lodged in your chest long after the credits fade. (I'm still on my post-game depression arc)

I genuinely can't express enough how enraptured I am with this game and just how easily the characters come together and form relationships. Every bit of dialogue feels natural and real and it helps immerse you in the story that explodes with powerful emotions. Not to mention, the soundtrack and scenery and art style of the game is GORGEOUS. Absolutely breathtaking. There were so many moments where I would simply be still and indulge in either the scenery around me or the song playing at the current time. I've even added most of the songs to my Spotify playlist, haha!!

Will never, ever have an experience like this again I'm pretty sure, so I'm glad I could be here for this one.

THIS IS MY Game of the Year, a masterpiece. I'll take it even further, this is MY GAME OF THE DECADE, and nothing comes even close.

IN-DEPTH GAME REVIEW WILL COME OUT SOON VIA OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL! Stay tuned!

RATING

AESTHETICS : 10 NARRATIVE : 10 GAMEPLAY : 9.5 VALUE : 10

OVERALL RATING: 9.87

You can watch the entire playthrough here: