Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review – Crème de la Crème

It’s rare to see art that changes your life, and it’s even rarer to come across a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that simply consumes your soul with its elements and music. You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about the game because it’s all set to be one of the most promising contenders for Game of the Year, with the highest rating on Metacritic, even surpassing Blue Prince.

Developed by Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 was released on April 24, 2025, for PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S. Here’s our official dive into the doomed Expedition 33 at Gameffine.

Painted in Shadows and Blood

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is simply disturbing to think of at first sight. A world, where there’s no sudden trauma or war that changed the world as we know it, but a constant yearly torture that grows ever closer to extinction, one number at a time. An entity almost as powerful as a god awakes once a year and decreases the life span of humanity year after year, and the latest number she wrote, is as you guessed – 33.

Every year, humans who survived the fracture (another nasty catastrophe that we won’t spoil for you) go on expeditions to stop the paintress once and for all, knowing it’s something impossible. But the idea of sending people year after year is simply to cherish to moto – For those who come tomorrow.

You start as Gustave, absorbing a serene view and cruising through the rooftops of heavily inspired French architecture in an artistic world. But only to bid adieu to her ex-wife. While the love is still attached to both of these individuals, their opinions of bringing a child to this doomed world set them apart. But when the final hour came calling, and the paintress painted the number of her age, she turned into ashes and dust right in the hands of Gustave.

Gustave, now 32 years old, has chosen to give service to Expedition 33, alongside his adopted family member, Maelle, who is still a minor and therefore makes Gustave her legal guardian. Setting on a trajectory where every single expedition before them has failed, Gustave and his team have no other option but to honor Expedition 33.

Turn-Based? Just based.

Clair Obscur Expedition 33’s combat is performed in an infamous turn-based mechanic. But hey, before those self-proclaimed people who want real-time combat turn away, there is indeed a real-time aspect to this game. No matter which boss you come across, or how big the damage of the next attack may be, you can dodge every single attack if timed right, or better yet, parry and counter it back.

Expedition 33 offers real-time dodge and parry abilities, which make the game much more interesting and aggressive. Now my party does not need a tank or a dedicated healer. With the 3-member party format, all of them are assigned to the role to simply eat the enemy away, and send every attack back with a counter.

The movelist, character upgrades, variety of characters, and their builds are all very well-detailed features that are very easy to switch and play around, unlike other JRPGS where things can go wrong easily if you don’t have a picture-perfect build for all three of your characters.

But again, the game-changer items in question are called pictos, which are charms giving extra abilities, but they are just too broken. Each picture can be equipped and learned, which then can be shared by all party members. These pictures are upgradable, with a few of them giving you AP on start, health on parry, a chance for 200x damage, and even a blast upon round start. You can get the same picto again, which sharply increases its level and usage capacity.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a semi-open world game that allows you to go back and forth on the main map as you please, but has a single route structure inside every area and POI. Which to be honest, makes it much more sensible as you can absorb the story much better, while also strolling away for the objective of the glorious loot.

Your party will end up consisting of 5 members and 3 active members. You can deploy the remaining two in case your primary part members are all defeated. Each character has its own personality story-wise, but has its own playstyle that makes each of the characters extremely powerful and fun to use.

Maelle for example, uses stance. These stances include – Stanceless, Aggressive, Defensive and Virtuos. While the first is pretty much self-explanatory, the Vrituos stance will simply shell out 200% damage.

You’ll also eventually unlock a character named Monoco, who can change into a Nevron that you will encounter in the world. The catch is you have to defeat them once, to equip their attacks on Monoco permanently. Monoco additionally has a mask as a trait that randomly generates a certain mask type. Using an ability that matches the mask gives an enormous boost inside the battle.

Similarly, all other characters in the game are absolutely fun to experiment with.

The Paintress

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 might just be the best-looking game of 2025, apart from the fact that it already is the best game I’ve played this year. Yes, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows comes close, but not at all in terms of creativity, attention to detail, character design, and dialogue delivery.

The world of Expedition 33 has something unique to offer at every stage of the game. Each place has a new colour, either filled with brim death and disaster or painted in colours that will have you blown away for the entirety of the map.

The attention to the dirt and blood on the faces of characters during intense cutscenes is simply mindblowing to look at, especially when taking note of the size of their organization.

While we’ve made our point clear as to why this game has the best graphics, this is made even better because of the music.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has the best OST in all of gaming in 2025. There’s nothing that comes close to it. The delivery is serene, the timing brings goosebumps, and the recall value has already pushed me to add it to my Spotify playlist.

And to finally say and honour the heart and soul of the game, the voice actors of the game have enabled and played the most significant part in helping deliver the success and appreciation the game has received ever since its launch.

Real Talk

To put it together, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 changed my life. It is the best game to come out in 2025, and I doubt if any other can come even close. The mechanics, design, sound, VA, battles, and story are top-tier and do not leave out any opportunity for creativity. Sandfall games have truly knocked this one out of the park.