Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a Turn-Based RPG game was released in 2025 for PS5, XSX/S, and PC.
It was developed by Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive.
Before I begin reviewing the game, I wanted to talk about how much I love spending my time of playing the video games.
I got into with the platforming, fighting, racing, beat-em-ups, shoot-em-ups, hack n slash, FPS, and list of the genres goes on, but there's one of the genre which really changes the video game entirely that are felt different but giving us a new kinds of gaming experience to play, so that is an RPGs.
It's stands for Role-Playing Game where the titles are much heavily focused on story-based adventures with fully-designed open-world exploration, choice of character's classes for weapons and armors, in-game dialogue texts, inventories for maps and items, and of course going on the big adventure filled with many goal quests to complete and battling with the foes using turn-based or real-time combat to progress through the whole campaign is something that kept me interested to play the RPGs games.
It had the list of sub-genres starting from Turn-Based to Tactical-RPGs to Action-RPGs which each of these had different playstyle of RPGs system that kept the genre quite unique for video games.
I had a blast of playing the amazing titles starting from my gaming nostalgia to more recently played like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy 7, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Fire Emblem, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, Xenoblade Chronicles, Valkyria Chronicles, Nier Automata, Persona 5, and Elden Ring.
These are the things that got me into playing an RPGs stuffs in which I love spending time of doing exploration for discoveries, leveling up the class's skills after battle, farming more currencies to shop for items and weapons, collecting materials for upgrades, and of course completing all list of quests to progress the long-lengthy story campaign is how much I love playing these kinds of genre that are story-based adventures.
Going back to this review, there's one of the game that had many people talked quite a lot since the game was first revealed back in 2024, which I believe they are a passionate fan of the RPGs in general are so much looking forward to playing the modern indie title that are inspired by JRPGs series like Final Fantasy and Persona in terms of open-world design and turn-based battle system, so that is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
It's a 2025's Turn-Based RPGs game had became quite popular among with RPGs fans which manages sold over 8 million units after the launch, as well as recieved numerous of gaming awards including game of the year 2025 and topped various publications lists of best games of 2025 by many gaming medias.
It was being hailed for its narrative and themes, art direction, game direction, original soundtrack, gameplay, and performances had recieved universally acclaimed reception at the release.
So after I discovered the game's trailer, read the game's review, and watched the game awards show 2025 last year, I was fascinated to see how much indie game studio had to put-up their effort of creating a high-quality single-player based game are the biggest selling point for the modern gaming, which most of the AAA studios of western gaming publishers nowadays had failed to deliver the promise they originally intended, which is why the indie game studio are really good at making the original gaming projects that puts western gaming publishers and their AAA studios to its wall of shame.
I decided to pick this copy up for my PS5 to see how this game really goes in terms of story narration, visual presentation, turn-based battle, and exploration, so could this game be a 9th-gen's turn-based RPGs masterpiece? lets find out and discover all the things on the review today.
So without go further do, let's start the review.
Presentation
The game set in a Belle Epoque-inspired world called Lumiere, a place where many people lived in the city which unfortunately their lifecycle won't last very long when the gommage hits the countdown to its new yearly number causing their existance instantly vanishes.
After the dark day of the gommage's new cycle, the group of Expedition 33 are set out their quest is to travel across a dangerous continent and preventing the mysterious entity known as the paintress from creating a new decending number of yearly execution cycle.
I say the opening story started out as heartbreaking tradgedy where all the people in the Lumiere spending their final moments before the new yearly cycle hits the countdown is where the entire popularion started to fade away from their existince, so I kinda liked the powerful opening scene is off with the great start to know exactly what was going on in the game's story, and then you have a team of party had agreed to go together for the journey on the mission is to not only just about destroying the paintress, but it's the yearly cycle that causes many existing people getting dissapeared in every 365 days which is why they go out on their adventure to fight for their life before the countdown hits the deadline.
Aside with the openings, the rest of the story throughout the campaign is incredible because it is a well-written narrative that keeps you going in every chapters of story campaign, so I liked the balance of story-pacing that doesn't drag down the playthrough and it is not ridiculously long cutscenes to watch just got the pacing of the story campaign right which I enjoyed many parts of game's plot that are felt incredibly amazing.
I also liked the deeper bond between the members of the team had delivered really interesting conversation dialogue together during the night of the camp just adds up the character's development with early backstories and building-up friendship.
I say it had many great cast of characters in the game that are likable and recognisable throughout the story campaign, such as you have Gustave the engineer with a mechanical arm, his foster sister Maelle the youngest member of the group, Lune the scholar and mage, Sciel the farmer and teacher, and of course the other threes in later part of the chapter such as Verso the stranger, his hairy-white gestral friend Monoco, and Esquie the mythical creature who serves as their transportation across the mainland.
The game does have a villain such as Renoir the white-haired old man trying to prevent the teams of Expedition from being able to reach at the monolith where the paintress took place in.
The game's presentation is looking gorgeous for its themes and settings in the dark fantasy style of fictional France which I really liked the sceneries, the design, the landmarks, and the environmental features that are simular to the golden age era of French cultral history.
You have the locations such as Lumiere which is a fictional city concists of residential and commerical buildings, public squares and monumental structures featuring decorated facades, balconies and ornamental ironwork, bakeries, taverns, hotels, and market stalls.
The spring meadows is a calming area filled with rocky hills, sunlit greenery, and hidden shadows.
The flying waters is a mystical underwater region where you can walk around freely like if they were on land and the whole atmosphere is akin to water including fish swimming around, air bubbles and jets, and number of aquatic plants.
The ancient sanctuary is a large maze-like place characterised by striking red tress, glowing blue lanterns, and a melancholic aesthetic.
The gestral village is a place filled with the bazaar, fighting arena, the performing stage, the unfinished casino area, and of course the chief's house.
The stone wave cliffs is a coastral region featuring towering weathered coastal cliffs, jagged rock formations, cliffside trails, tide caverns, and flooded buildings.
The forgotten battlefield is a spawling fort-like area littered with trench lines, old military weaponary, massive stone fortifications, and shipwrecks near a quarry.
The Monoco's station is a snowy vintage-inspired mountain train station featuring old rail tracks, vintage station infrastructure, and a train departing through snow and ice.
Overall, it has incredible story, likable characters, and gorgeous presentation themes.
Gameplay
In single-player campaign, you take control of the members of the Expedition 33 in 3rd-person perspective in both open-world exploration and turn-based battle, as your main goal is to being able to reach at the monolith to face the paintress, so in order to do that your party members requires to level it up their skills and abilities before you're fully prepared to face against the high-class enemies and bosses to able progress through the journey.
For general and exploration controls, push the left-stick control is to move character, where as the right-stick control is to rotate the camera, but you can also re-centre the camera position by pressing the right-thumbstick button.
You can able to toggle walk by pressing the left shoulder button to make the character move slowly, but pressing it again switches back to jogging, but holding the right-trigger button makes the character run faster.
You can switch your character by pressing the left thumbstick button to toggle any party members you want to play as during the exploration.
Press the cross button is to jump which are used for jumping on some platforms, and you can press the square button to interact things like obtain items or objects, opening door, activating stuff, and of course talking to NPCs for dialogue conversation.
Press the right shoulder button is to strike on enemies in close range which I will explain it for details later on the review.
You can access to expedition status menu by pressing the triangle button which displays character's health, small compass, and objectives on screen.
You can also access to character's menu by pressing the option button to open up expedition menu, so this will allow you to check character status and level, manage inventory and equipment (such as weapons, armor and usable items), swap or remove members from your active party, check journal and lore for notes and collected logs, and view your current reserves of chroma elixirs.
You can view your map inventory by pressing the d-pad up button to display the map screen which tells you where you at and where you're heading to, so it also had red marker which displays main objective location.
You can take the break by pressing the d-pad down button to open up the camp which are used as resting place which I will explain it for details later on the review.
For turn-based combat, you will have 4 party members on the screen to fight against the foes, so what the turn-based system actually works is that you and the opponents will have to take turns meaning that once your whole members of the party had finished their turns by using the action then it will switches to the opponents taking over their turns until they all finished which switches back to your whole party members.
Each of the party members has health points displayed on the character's icons which indicating how much remaining health you had left and then it also has active points which requires to use actions such as skill attack and firing shot.
The active points can be replensishes by gaining one each per-turns or performing multiple parrying on each enemy's melee or projectiles.
In battle controls, you can select targets on enemies by pressing the left and right of left-stick control might help you to choose which types of enemies you wanted to fight on.
The UI displays on the screen which gives you an option to select any of these commands such as cross button is to use melee attack which acts as an regular damage attack on the enemies as well as using it as the QTE action in which you will see the QTE command display on the screen meaning that you must complete the QTE sequence by pressing the button in the right time to gain a perfect damage attack on enemies.
The square button is to use skills attack which requires the AP points meaning that your skills attack will consume your AP points, but it also allows your character to perform various of skill moves and magics.
The triangle button is to access your items such as the red tint is to heal your health points, the green tint is to revive your fallen party members, and of course the blue tint is to grant 3 AP points to a target character, but use it wisely is because these have limited supply during the combat, so the only way to replensish these is to head over at the checkpoint flag to restore it.
The circle button is to dodge many enemy's incoming attacks, so be sure to do it in the right timing as your enemy's projectiles or melee will get close to you.
Speaking of evading enemy's attacks, it is the first turn-based games to include the parrying system which allowing you to deflect various of enemy's incoming attacks. It can be used by pressing the right shoulder button to use parry when the enemy's melee or projectiles get closer to your range, so be sure to do it on right timing as soon as you hit the right shoulder button.
Having the multiple parrying is the quickest way to increase your AP points meaning that you don't have to stand there and wait for the turns to finish to gain 1 AP per-turns, so using the parrying will give you 2 or 3 more AP points to gain enough.
I also wanted to mention that after successfully parrying the enemy's melee or projectiles combos will allow you or your party members to perform the counterattack on enemies resulting a servere damage attack on these guys.
You can also perform gradiant counters when the enemies perform their own gradiant melee or projectiles, so the gradiant counters can be done by pressing the right trigger to use gradiant parrying when the gold icon displayed on screen during the slow-motion effect, so do it on the right timing as soon as you hit the right trigger will successfully performing a massive damage counter attack on enemies.
You will also have a extra bar on the bottom of the screen which indicates an gradiant ability meaning that this will act as an ultimate attack, so you can charge them up during the combat through your party's actions, and they do not consume a normal turn when cast.
When the gradiant bar is fully filled up to 1 to 3 gradiant points, you can use these by pressing the right trigger then select any of gradiant attacks to use it will allow them to perform a strong special moves on enemies delivering a massive damage hit.
I also forgot to mention another control layout which is the aiming and shooting at the enemy's weak spots or shields, so you hold the left-trigger to ready aim while pushing the right-stick control is to freely aim around, then you just shoot it by pressing the right-trigger.
What it does is that when the enemy's shields are increases up to 8 or 10 shield icons, you can able to fire at them till the enemy's shields are all empty but remember firing your shot are consumed with AP points to keep you in mind otherwise you won't able to save all your AP points for your skill moves, so use it when its necessary to use it during the combat.
It can also work on enemy's weak spots which you will see an obivious shapes on them, so firing their weak spots delivers a big-firing damage hit.
I say the controls system and turn-based combat are pretty outstanding is because it plays very simular to the classic-style JRPGs in terms of game design and battle system.
The UI layouts on combat battle are easier to navigate things which you just simply press any of the single buttons to access the skill moves or basic attack moves just makes the commands quite straight-forward.
I also wanted to praise the use of parrying and dodging system is because instead of your party members randomly doing automatically like from any of the earlier turn-based RPGs games, you just manually press the button to use parry and dodge which makes it a lot easier to not only just to deflect enemy's melee or projectiles but it also engages your counter attacks after successfully performing parrying as well as avoid taking damage when successfully dodging the enemy's incoming attacks.
It also gains more AP points per-parrying which also works really well in order to keep your party members more active with the skill moves frequently, so this is what I liked about having the manual button for parrying and dodging in turn-based RPGs title just really helps me to keep up with the battle.
I say they did a great job with the damage system depending on how effective your basic attack and skill moves are actually capable of delivering amount of damage hit points, so your basic attack does a decent amount of damage hit points where as your skill moves or gradiant attack does deliver a significent numbers of damage hit points if you successfully completing the QTE sequence perfectly without missing out all single button combination displayed on screen.
The enemy's A.I does a remarkable job with their attacking patterns which starts from their basic attack to their skill moves which I got to say is that these guys are not stupidly overspamming meaning that some of these enemy will use any kinds of attacks and skills differently which makes the battle feel more engaging to play.
What I liked about the gameplay design is the leveling up attributes, upgradable weapons, unlocking skill moves, and increasing enhancements.
Just like every of the turn-based RPGs games, it requires you to collect many of materials for weapons and enhancements as well as building up your character's level stats for attributes and skill moves.
The material items can be found on any locations in which you can obtain it from the trader who sells the various of items or something that been left on the ground somewhere, so once you have obtained it then you can head over to the camp to meet a faceless soul that grants you a two options such as upgrading your weapons and increase your enhancement points.
Having to upgrade your weapons increases your attack power meaning that once its been upgraded then your attack power will make your attacking system much stronger and severe, where as increasing your enhancements points will allow you or party members to equip more pictos meaning you will have more passive abilites to perform such as first-hit damage increase as an example.
Your character's stats can be leveled up by defeating many enemies and bosses, so once your stats is leveled up you can able head over to the checkpoint flag giving you a two options such as leveling up attributes and unlocking skill moves.
The attributes on each party member's stats will consist of strength, speed, health, defense, and luck, but it requires numerous of attribute points in order to increase their stats, so the more you add-up their stats then the stronger they become meaning that they are capable enough to go fight against the high-class enemies or bosses that are tough as f**k.
The skill tree has various of skill moves which requires a skill points to unlock these, so having to unlock those skill moves will allow you or party members to perform a new skill attacks or magics such as very high damage attack, mid-healing, cure status effects, using magical fire or ice elements, and etc.
I say I really loved the variarition of the skills and enhancements system which really helps the gameplay battle system keeps it going further and more when battling with the fully skilled enemies and bosses.
While the turn-based combat and leveling-up system are surely outstanding, I say I really liked the exploration in the single-player playthrough is because it had a overworld map is where you'll be exploring around to do a new discoveries where not only you can do a main story quest, but it also has various of side-quests given by NPCs and Gestrals across the world, so you will have requests missions and mini-game activities to participate which having to complete these task will reward you with the bonus items such as weapons, cosmetics, outfits, and others.
Then in the camp, you began to make relationship with your party members in dialogue conversation between them which are also rewards you with unlockable bonus such as leveled-up gradiant attacks, unique items, music records, and world exploration tools such as Equie's underwater diving ability.
I also love spending time of encountering on enemies which motivates me to keep fighting with them till I gained enough levels, so that I can able to keep building up my character's stats to get stronger is something that I can enjoy playing the turn-based RPGs games.
The best part of the game is has to be a boss battles which I got to say it's f***ing amazing...no pun intended is because it had a various of epic bosses to fight against such as you have Eveque, Goblu, Sakapatate, Francois, Lampmaster, Dualiste, Stalact, Visages, Mask Keeper, Glissando, Sirene, Renoir, and of course the Printress.
These bosses are insanely does lot of madness stuff by throwing many projectiles at your face, swings lot of melees across at you, and of course spreading the deadly status effects that made you feel valunerable to fight is the reason why I had to rely on the parrying and dodging in the right timing is the only way to keep my party members staying alive as possible just adds-up the significent overall challenge.
While it's has a positive side which is splendid, but I wanted to share a one minor things that really missing in the game is mostly the map inventory for the location's standard level, so unlike the overworld-map exploration where it had a map inventory screen which tells you where you were and where you heading at which unfortunately you don't get to see it on the standard level of location meaning you had to start wondering around the areas to find a new place, so this adds up a bit confusion is because you didn't want to keep backtracking at the same area you been before which is why it's better to include the map inventory, so you don't keep end-up backtracking at the same place again.
So far, the whole single-player campaign goes really well which I am satisfied with the results doing such a fabulous job.
Overall, it has outstanding turn-based combat, fantastic story-quests, and epic boss battles.
Graphics
The game's visual is stunningly pleasing for the 9th-gen machine thanks to unreal engine 5 had delivered a spectcular graphical features that made the whole game look visually beautiful.
The environmental settings has well-builted structures with many landmarks and buildings around are perfectly detailed that made these locations look stunningly appealing.
It had clean textures on surfaces with no rough edging around, the draw-distance is vastly detailed on the landscape side, it has nice color filtering around the scenery that adds-up a rich-vibes feel to it, there are some of the rendering objects has really nice reflection and glossiness, and of course the lighting and shadowing effects on many areas are perfectly intact.
I also wanted to praise the design of the overworld map that are totally zoomed-out on screen with top-down perspective simular to the classic turn-based RPGs games giving a dynamic view of exploration which I fully approved the design choice that made the open-world area look pretty amazing to see around.
The character's animation are surely well captured throughout the cinematic scenes with great facial figures during the dialogue conversation and the movement feels less clunky and more responsive which they did a wonderful job of keeping these characters feel realistic throughout the story quest.
The base PS5 and XSX/S (X model) has two graphical options such as the performance mode and quality mode.
The performance mode runs on 1080p caps with 60fps may not have a sharp looking image, but resulted a much smoother pacing during the combat and exploration, where as the quality mode runs on 1440p and locks on 30fps which makes the image appeared to look less foggy and more sharper on the details, but it has few of the frame-stuttering during the heavy combat animation and some cinematic cutscenes.
The PS5 Pro on the other side has more advantages over the base PS5 with the better image clarity on the performance mode, as well as the better overall quality mode which runs on 4K upscaled at 30fps with improved ray-tracing enhancements such as shadow maps and sharper image clarity.
The XSX/S (S model) on other hand are slight downgrade limited to 1080p upscaled at 30fps with no 60fps performance mode available resulting a softer image quality overall and slower pacing combat.
The base PS5, PS5 Pro, and XSX/S (X model) is the recommended platform to play this title which unfortunately for those who owns the XSX/S (S model) may not going to enjoy the campaign with washed out resolution and lack of 60fps performance option.
Out of these two graphical options, the quality mode has beautiful image quality and detailed environments which is looking great on the 4K screen, where as the performance mode is actually plays better for the smoother combat gameplay.
Overall, it has beautiful visual design, amazing open-world area, and well-captured animation.
Music and Sounds
What I love about the turn-based RPGs as an genre are widely being the best known for having an excellent original soundtrack ranging from the likes of Final Fantasy 7, Chrono Trigger, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, and Persona 5 are the prime examples of how to create a memorable soundtrack that fits the cinematic feel of the game's story, battles, and settings.
This game's soundtrack could be another level of masterclass which I adored the French-cultured orchestrated music just fits the style of the game's presentation really well filled with many excellent numbers of vocal songs and battle themes.
I concider these epic soundtrack of turn-based battle as my favourite part of the game such as "In Lumiere's Name", "Sepenphare", "Gestral Merchant", "Dualliste", "Numbers the Hours", "Reverence", and "Rouge d'Iris", where as it shares with many great vocal songs such as "Alicia (Main Theme)", "Lumiere", "The Departure", and "Dechire la Toile" had capturing an emotional in-depth of game's cinematic moments that fits the scene perfectly well.
It was composed by Lorien Testard and sung by Alice Duport-Percier did such an fabulous job on the game's original score which I concidered it as the work of masterpiece.
The game does a spectcular job for its sound design filed with many atmospheric effects and background noises just surrounded everywhere in the areas, and I also liked the sharper noise of collision sounds especially using the parrying system just worked really effectively during the battles.
I say the game has brilliant cast of voice actors such as you have Charlie Cox as Gustave, Jennifer English as Maelle, Ben Starr as Verso, and Andy Serkis as Renoir did their role a job well done.
Overall, it has excellent soundtrack, spectcular sound design, and brilliant voice cast.
Special Features
The game has various of collectables such as journals, music records, haircuts, and costumes, and it also includes the new game plus for replayability.
Overall, a very good content.
Advantages
Incredible story and likable characters
Gorgeous presentation themes
Outstanding turn-based combat
Fantastic story-quests
Epic boss battles
Beautiful visuals
Excellent soundtrack
Brilliant voice cast
Disadvantages
Lack of standard level's map causes some backtracking
Has frame-stuttering during heavy combat and some cutscenes
Final Verdict
Presentation 10/10 - incredible story, likable characters, and gorgeous presentation themes.
Gameplay 9.5/10 - outstanding turn-based combat, fantastic story-quests, and epic boss battles.
Graphics 9/10 - beautiful visual design, amazing open-world area, and well-captured animation.
Music and Sounds 10/10 - excellent soundtrack, spectcular sound design, and brilliant voice cast.
Special Features 8/10 - various of collectables and includes new game plus.
Overall 9.5/10 - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an outstanding indie title that deserves the same recognisation as the past turn-based RPGs games that we all know and love.
This could be another masterpiece in all thanks to the story and characters are all well-written and perfectly developed, it surely has a well-designed visuals, top-notch soundtrack, brilliantly performed voice acting, and of course the single-player quests and turn-based combat battle are quite entertaining to play is the reason to own this title that are done incredibly beautiful by the French game's developer.
I am really glad that the game had already won the awards from last year which is quite an achieving results for very passionate game development team that did their job pretty amazing, so this really proves that the indie gaming in general can able to make a better AAA single-player games than most of the western-published AAA studios cannot able to do their job right.
This is a kind of the game that I do not regret playing it is because I described this game as the turn-based RPGs adventure has done the job right that are properly developed and fully well-executed delivers a full quality experience that I can easily recommend it to you all.
The physical copy for PS5 are ranges £30 and more, where as the XSX/S are about £45 and more. The digital release for PS Store, Xbox Store, and Steam are cost around nearly £45.
Is the game highly recommended to play? the answer is absoultely 100% correct, this is the kind of turn-based RPGs game that the fans of the genre should must play this masterpiece and I can guarantee that you going to love this game.
I was hoping that the development team should concider bringing this game to the Switch 2 in the near future, so that will be a lovely idea to have it playable on the portable system if they have a plenty time to work on the future console port.
So thats being said, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a stunningly beautiful RPGs game out there and it is definite worth to pick this up and play it on your gaming platform.
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