Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of those special games that is not only fun to play but leaves a lasting impression afterwards. The small team at Sandfall Interactive has crafted an awe-inspiring fantasy world, beautifully contrasted with a grim tale of loss and grief. The game not only serves as a love letter to JRPGs but also pushes forward a somewhat dwindling genre in meaningful ways.
Clair-obscur is a painting style that focuses on the use of strong contrast — light (clair) and dark (obscur) — to create depth and dimension within an artwork. This concept is woven throughout the game in the visual style, mechanics, themes, and character motivations.
Story
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 tells a gripping fantasy tale that is full of wonder, excitement, tragedy, genuine character interactions, and shocking story moments. Despite its grim and melancholic world, there’s still levity, hope, and fun to be found, balancing the scale well.
Sixty seven years ago, The Fracture broke the world apart, catapulting a chunk of the city of Lumière into the middle of the ocean, becoming the last known bastion of humans in the world. It was at that same time that the paintress appeared, painting a new number on her monolith each year, descending from a hundred. At the time of the painting, whoever has already passed that age ‘Gommage’, meaning they are erased from the world.
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Each year, after the Gommage, a new expedition sets out on a mission to defeat the paintress and free the world from its march into oblivion. Failing that, they’re tasked with leaving behind any knowledge they’ve gathered and lay the groundwork for future expeditions. But after decades of failure and little to no word from teams after they leave Lumière, few believe that the expeditions will ever make any difference.
We follow Gutsave, his adoptive sister Maelle, and the other members of Expedition 33, as they set out on their impossible quest. With a legacy of almost seven decades of defeat, I wasn’t expecting an easy adventure for the troupe… But my God, there was no preparation for what awaited them so early on their journey! The expedition is left shattered and scattered, with Gustave waking up alone in a foreign land. As he searches for survivors, he passes piles of dead expeditioners from journeys past, which for some reason haven’t decayed at all, laying bare the stark reality that many expeditions end soon after they begin.
After reuniting with Lune, Maelle, and Sciel, the much diminished Expedition 33 sets off for the monolith once more. The odds are stacked against them, with an army of monstrous Nevrons standing in their way, but help from newly made friends make their task a little easier.
It’s hard to speak to the rest of the story without spoiling key moments of the game, but the tale that Expedition 33 weaves is deep and mature, with characters that hook you in and don’t let go. There were multiple moments in the game that were delightfully unpredictable, leaving me speechless, in tears, or staring at the pause screen while my brain tried to process a shocking revelation, upending my understanding of the story so far.
When all the grand setpieces, epic battles, and ‘holy shit’ moments were over, and the emotional rollercoaster had come to a stop, I was satisfied with how the game concluded. I loved the story of Expedition 33 but — like the rest of the game — the ending is more complex and nuanced than simply happy or sad, making for a more relatable ending, but one that left me with conflicting emotions.
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World
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 presents a dour yet magnificent world, inspired by Belle Époque France, full of both hope and hopelessness, conflicting worldviews and philosophies, touching on some deeply personal themes. Some have lost hope for the future and think it cruel to bring children into a doomed world, while others believe it selfish to not try and repopulate and hold out for a miracle. Many think that the expeditions are a waste of resources and time, a year tossed away that could’ve been spent with family and loved ones, while others see the expeditioners as brave, in their staunch belief that the paintress can be defeated.
While we begin the game sixty seven years after the fracture, I couldn’t help but think about the first few years of the curse; the panic and confusion that would’ve arisen after the paintress formed the first number on her monolith, erasing the oldest amongst them. A sad and shocking scenario to be sure, but I can only imagine the building fear and trepidation as that number ticked down year after year, taking younger and younger people. Decades later, hope has eroded away, leaving apathy and grim resignation in many.
But the world isn’t a complete depress-fest, a marvelous landscape full of awe-inducing sights awaits. Despite the heavy events of the game, the wonderment the expedition members experience at being in this new, alien landscape is impossible to hide on their faces. A feeling I shared while exploring this all-new IP for the first time.
Characters
In a game of highlights, it’s the characters, writing and performances that shine the brightest.
The writing is superb, managing the difficult task of making fantasy feel believable. The writing can be adult and mature, not shying away from complex situations and emotions, but also whimsical and funny. Brought to life by a fantastic voice cast, you’ll be laughing your ass off one minute, then have tears streaming down your face the next.
The voice acting is top tier across the board, with standout performances from Charlie Cox (Gustave), Jennifer English (Maelle), Ben Starr (Verso), and Andy Serkis (Renoir). Characters interact in very realistic ways, not just taking turns to deliver lines, but talking over each other in conversation, overlapping words, and finishing sentences. Characters falter, stumble on their words, and repeat themselves; certain words are emphasised, while others are barely a whisper, much like in real life.
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You can really feel the passion, emotion and nuance poured into each performance, which only adds to the believability of the characters, keeping them grounded and relatable, even as they discuss outlandish concepts of monsters and magic. That authenticity quickly turns into connection, as it’s easier to view a character as a real person when they sound just like one.
It was Charlie Cox’s characterisation of Gustave that resonated with me the most, his portrayal of the engineer turned expeditioner was layered and deep. From the fierce protectiveness of his adoptive sister Maelle, to the gallows humour they both share, developed from living a life surrounded by death. Gustave is caring and kind, feeling a sense of duty to his city and his people, choosing to spend his last year of life on the expedition… But at the same time, he would forsake all of that for Maelle’s happiness.
Gustave is the first point of reference the player has to the tragedies this world so generously dishes out. In the prologue, he visits his ex-girlfriend on the day of her Gommage. It’s clear they both still have strong feelings for each other, but their differing outlooks on the world had pushed them apart. What do you say to someone who is barely older than yourself, perfectly healthy, and about to turn to ash in front of you? How exactly do you deal with that mess of emotion? It was this early moment of grief, experienced through Gustave, that really endeared me to his character.
The overzealous Gestral, Monoco — voiced by Rich Keeble — with his love of battle and penchant for showing off, brings some much needed comic relief to the party. His storied history with [SPOILER], led to some genuinely funny moments as they banter and bicker like an old married couple.
Without spoiling too much, the antagonists in the game are also fantastic. Not simply clichéd villains hellbent on destruction, but well-rounded characters with justified motivations and reasonings of their own. I love when an enemy can get you sympathising with their plight and questioning which side is right or wrong… Or if such morals can even apply to the situation.
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Grief is almost a character in and of itself, rearing its ugly head throughout the game, exploring the wounds left by fresh loss, as well as the scars carried as a result of past suffering. We meet characters like Lune who is shaped and motivated by her past tragedies, driven to take up the mantle left by her parents when they departed on their own expedition. For some, grief drives them to revenge out of a sense of justice for the one they’ve lost, while others become stuck within the cycle of grief, living with the pain for fear of losing their last connection to their departed loved ones. Learning to heal and move on from grief is a key theme of the game.
Music
Expedition 33 had my heart from the very first seconds, with its stunning main theme song, ‘Alicia’ keeping me glued to the title screen. A beautifully melancholic piece with emotionally stirring strings and piano, accompanied by haunting French vocals, performed to perfection by Alice Duport-Percier and the Orchestre Curieux. The song transcends words; I didn’t need to understand what is being said to be moved by its beauty. Take a listen:
The rest of the soundtrack is also excellent. Be it the whimsical and bubbly motif of the Gestral village, one of the pump-up battle themes that always put me in the fighting spirit, or the smorgasbord of collectible records you can find hidden around the world, that can be played at camp.
Music is such an important part of a good RPG, helping to frame your adventure and connect you with its story — a solid title track can set the tone for the rest of the game. Expedition 33‘s music is up there with recent greats like Metaphor: Refantazio, Final Fantasy XVI and Octopath Traveller 2! Not a small feat.
As much as I adore the music in the game, sometimes the balance just wasn’t quite right, overpowering the dialogue and making me glad I had subtitles turned on. At other times music would cut out altogether.
Visuals
Expedition 33 has a strong visual style, with excellent character design, often stunning lighting, and a beautifully realised world framed by spectacular backdrops that give an immense sense of scale to the world. Those visuals can also be a double-edged sword however, with its immense beauty only making its flaws more noticeable.
One of the most visually striking things about the game is its bold use of colour; from forests full of blood red leaves and grasses, to dark caves lit with eerie coloured lanterns and glowing purple mushrooms, or ruined cities peppered and pierced with immense swords of brilliant yellow light. The diverse colour palette is especially noteworthy as it contrasts beautifully with the dark tone of the game.
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I was frequently awed while exploring new locations in the game. The ‘Flying Waters’ area was like a mysterious underwater wonderland… But without the water. Schools of fish, whales and other creatures swam through the sky as if they were in an undersea environment, bubbles of air floated all around, shipwrecks and anchors adorned the sea floor, and huge columns of seaweed reached for the surface, held up by a buoyancy that wasn’t there! It was a magical location that really stopped me in my tracks and made me appreciate the design.
The lighting is also varied and immersive, crafting each area with emotive sunsets, moonlit nights, diffused afternoon sunlight and more. In one area, the game masterfully built up a sense of nervous anxiety within me, by simply having me walk down a pitch black corridor that was slowly being lit as I came into proximity with scattered lamps on the floor, yet still keeping what lay ahead of me shrouded in darkness.
That lighting however, can be a thorn in the games side. There are sporadic lighting issues throughout, often overly bloomy in bright areas, or too pitchy in dark ones. I’d find myself having to crank up the brightness within the settings, just to be able to navigate through dark caves, and sometimes I would walk into shadow, only for my screen to turn completely black and leave me clumsily trying to back out into the light again.
Framerate could get a bit choppy at times, mostly during cutscenes, which made me quickly switch modes from ‘quality’ to ‘performance’, mitigating the issue for the most part. The poor lip sync could be a bit of a distraction from the stellar performances, though I did get used to it after a while. It’s a notoriously hard thing to get right, with big budget AAA games often suffering from the same problem.
While the game has a few visual issues, I had no freezes or crashes whatsoever during my 58 hour playthrough. The only gameplay bug I took note of was one that would reverse my movement controls for a few seconds after manually loading an autosave; strange and a bit annoying, but not something that affected my experience much.
Gameplay
The world design of Expedition 33 harkens back to the golden age of JRPGs, with mostly linear areas connected by an over-world map. That map is presented beautifully with an almost ‘tilt-shift’ style that, when combined with the high angle camera, can give the feeling of toys moving around a model world.
Accessible from the main map, the main playable levels are largely linear in their design, with some branching paths hiding secrets and shortcuts that loop back on earlier parts of the level. With no mini-map to guide you, you’re flying a little blind, which enhances the feeling of exploration, but can cause you to get turned around and confused at times. It’s in these areas that you’ll do the bulk of your fighting, with few enemies found out on the world map itself.
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There are other points of interest scattered around the map that add variety to the gameplay, such as small dungeons that are home to brutal bosses waiting to test your mettle (and parrying prowess), and the fun ‘Gestral beach’ areas that present you with unexpected challenges — like parkour obstacle courses — and reward you with swimsuit outfits for your expeditioners!
While running around in the game you can instantly switch which expeditioner you’re controlling with the press of a button, which is mainly an aesthetic change, but can lead to some differing dialogue from NPCs — one strange creature would only speak to the women in the party and proceeded to challenge each one to a slam poetry battle!
Not long into your journey you’ll meet the lovable character Esquie, who looks a bit like a humongous over-inflated clown. While he excels in giving comforting hugs with his balloon body, his real talents lie in helping you traverse the map. On his back you’ll travel much faster than on foot and can smash obstacles impeding your progress. Later he will unlock the ability to swim and fly, opening up a wealth of extra content to explore and secrets to uncover.
Gestral merchants can be found around the world, who let you trade chroma for various resources and character outfits. The best bit though, is that if you want to view their most valuable inventory then you first have to best them in a 1v1 duel! Those Gestrals sure love to fight.
Sandfall Interactive have gone the interesting route of not putting manual saves in their game, which I was a bit at odds with at first. But with generous auto-saves and a list of the last twenty or so to load up if need be, I found that I didn’t really miss the manual saves at all. If anything they saved me a bunch of time by not having to pull up menus and save in multiple slots each time… Am I the only one who does that?
Flags planted by past expeditions serve as places to rest, fast travel between and force and auto-save. I always took an interest in what number was on the flag, which expedition had planted it there, often surprised by how close to the paintress some of the other groups actually got. There are also journals from past expeditions hidden around the world that offer insight into their journeys, and by what means they had attempted their assault on the monolith.
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Combat
I cut my gaming teeth on turn-based JRPGs like Pokémon Blue and Final Fantasy VII, so I’ll always have a special place for them in my heart. But I can also see how the combat style might be a barrier to entry for many gamers, being viewed as outdated and slow in comparison to modern action RPGs.
Expedition 33 successfully takes that out-of-vogue combat style, and gives it a fresh coat of paint, introducing modern mechanics that keep the player more engaged. It seamlessly blends the strategy of turn-based tactics — where you can take your time to assess your enemies and plan your attacks — with real-time actions like dodging, parrying, jumping and QTE attacks, that give you a more active role in combat. It’s a nice middle ground that should keep fans of the genre happy, while also drawing in new gamers.
In battle, characters can attack normally, aim a long-ranged strike, or use skills and items. Skills are what you will be relying on most, with a wide variety of offensive and defensive options, but they also cost action points (AP) to use. AP will slowly regenerate each turn, but can also be gained by using normal attacks, recovery items, or by successfully dodging, parrying, and jumping attacks.
The action parts of the combat felt fast, flashy, and fluid, with dope character animations and bombastic effects. Skills were particularly flamboyant, utilising slow-motion and particle effects to enhance the spectacle. Hitting a string of perfect parries and launching a counter-attack never got old.
I quickly realised that parrying wasn’t just a handy way to avoid damage, but perhaps the most important battle mechanic in the game. With some skills costing up to 9 AP at a time, you need to be recovering a good amount of AP to keep the strong attacks flowing. The best way to do that is parrying, as each successful parry will regain one AP for that character, so a 5-hit-combo could potentially net you 5 AP.
Each character has their own unique weapon, combat style and skill-tree, with six skills able to be equipped at one time. Gustave generates ‘charge’ with normal attacks and certain skills, which can be unleashed in one powerful ‘overcharge’ strike, dealing massive damage and often staggering opponents. Monoco meanwhile is in a class of his own, gaining new skills only by defeating new enemies and eating their feet! A little kinky if you ask me. He not only borrows the skills from his fallen foes, but physically transforms into them to do it, which is just so cool.
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You can also equip up to three ‘Pictos’ to each character, which increase attributes and grant passive ‘Lumina’ abilities. From increased AP restoration, to more damage dealt while fighting solo, an auto-shield when your health falls below 30%, or ‘first strike’ to always play first at the start of battle. There’s a plethora of pictos that can be found hidden around the world, for an almost endless amount of combinations. My favourite was an ability that let my character play twice in a row whenever it was their turn, allowing me to easily keep on top of healing, reviving companions, and restoring AP while also unleashing attacks to keep whittling down enemy health.
Something that’s always been a bit comical in RPGs is their approach to items. Carting around stacks of 99 potions and ethers, hoarding elixirs like they were dragons gold, and the endless supply of status curing herbs that you barely had need of. Expedition 33 takes a much more minimalistic approach when it comes to items, just four to be exact. You have a ration of healing, AP regeneration, and revival items that can be used during battle, as well as a ‘chroma elixir’ that will fully heal the entire party outside of battle. That might sound a bit limiting, but it’s actually quite liberating, having a bit less to think about on the battlefield. Much like a souls-like healing flask, your items regenerate when you rest at an expedition flag, so there’s no need to hoard anything anymore!
Enemies and Bosses
Enemy variety and design is superb, with cool mechanics to keep battle interesting. Some enemies switch elements after being struck, another might fall into a counter-attack stance ready to return serve. There are foes that continuously attack until you successfully parry one of their combos, monsters that will cannibalise one of their own allies to restore their health, and even Kaiju-sized bosses that can swallow a team-member whole, removing them from combat until you force them to be spit back up.
I loved the marionettes dressed as street mimes who throw up an invisible brick wall at the start of combat, then attack with an oversized invisible hammer — you could see a shimmering outline. As I attacked back, cracks of light began to appear in the invisible defence, eventually shattering. Another enemy resembled one of those old deep-sea diving suits with the metal helmets, and dragged a live sea-mine around with them. They’d swing the giant bomb at you in crushing blows… unless you choose to shoot and explode it first, raining fire on the enemy side of the battlefield.
Many of the tougher enemies in the game looked as if they’d strode right out of a Lovecraftian horror story, and even though the combat is turn based, a lapse in attention when parrying or dodging could quickly devastate the party. Many enemies dish out combos that change speed and rhythm unexpectedly, meaning you have to really study their attack patterns in order to parry and dodge reliably. Their ghastly appearances, combined with their ruthless battle prowess, gave me no shortage of souls-vibes.
Should you buy Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
Oh my God yes. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is such an easy game to recommend, whether you’re already an RPG tragic or just love good story and characters, there’s plenty in here for you. The blend of turn-based combat and real-time mechanics makes battle more accessible and engaging, while the soundtrack is pure symphonic excellence. The game does stumble slightly with some visual blemishes and audio issues, but they were things that I could easily forgive in exchange for the magic that the rest of the game presented.
Expedition 33 is a game that spoke to my soul. I quickly fell in love with this awe-inspiring yet melancholic world and the survivors left in it, and even though it tore my heart to shreds multiple times, I’d happily do it all over again.
Quest Daily scores Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
9.5/10
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam on April 24th. It will also be included within Xbox Game Pass upon release.
Quest Daily was supplied with an early review copy of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 thanks to the publisher.
