Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review
A Beautiful World Beyond A Canvas of Tragedy
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We Reviewed our copy of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on PC via Steam.It is currently also available now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC via Epic Games.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not a brand-new game, but it is the most important game released in 2025 and perfectly recaps gaming in 2025. I began playing this game in December 2025 ahead of The Game Awards, as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (abbreviated to E33) was the favorite to win. After exploring this game extensively and completing the game twice, it was abundantly clear why E33 was named the best game of the year in 2025. In fact, I would go a step further – E33 is the single best, most incredible video game I have ever played, and I have played many great games in my day. From graphics and soundtrack to gameplay and story/character design, every aspect of E33 is nearly perfect. E33 is so incredible that this review cannot do it justice, though I will try.
Before I get into the specifics about why E33 is so incredible, I want to tell you about the genius behind this game’s creation. The studio that created E33, Sandfall Interactive, was founded by a veteran game developer who quit his job at a large video game publishing company because he could not be as creative as he wanted with his work. He then went on to hire a team of 30-ish people, many of whom had never worked in the video game industry. For a little perspective, his lead narrative designer and voice actors were hired from Reddit, and the composer for all the game’s music was found on SoundCloud. Together with a budget of less than 10 million dollars, they created E33.
Released on April 24, 2025, no one expected anything from this game but Sandfall Interactive knew what they created would turn the gaming industry upside down. Exactly 33 weeks later on December 11, 2025, an event known as “The Game Awards” took place with over 150 million viewers worldwide. E33 was nominated for 12 awards, the most in Game Awards history, and won Game of the Year plus eight other awards, again the most in Game Awards history. From an outside perspective, one might think that no other good games came out in 2025 so E33 won by default, but that person would be very wrong. The year 2025 was the best for game releases in recent memory, dozens of great games from well-known studios/publishers were released but E33 was far and away the best. Many of these other games had much larger budgets and many more people working on them but still could not hope to compete with E33. That is a taste of the impact E33 had on the gaming industry, and the game I will be reviewing here.
Storytelling Masterclass
At its core, E33 is a story-driven role-playing game (aka a JRPG), and it has one of the best-told stories in all of gaming, if not all entertainment mediums. With a heavy influence from French art, culture, and folklore, E33 creatively balanced character design, plot, and world-building to create a game that completely hooks players into the game within the first 15 minutes of playtime. What I think this game does perfectly is create a history - a story that happened before the plot of the game - and it draws upon this history within the playable story often to create levels of depth that are exceedingly rare in modern storytelling. For this reason and more, it won Best Narrative, Best Game Direction, Best Role-Playing Game, and Best Performance.
Normally I would summarize the setting and the plot of the game’s story at this point, but I cannot do that for E33. There are a couple of reasons for this; one is that I know I could never summarize E33’s story well enough to do it the justice I think it deserves; and two, you can only play through this game for the first time once - I refuse to spoil more than I think I must just to convince you to play E33. This game is too special for any sort of spoiler. Every player’s experience through this game is unique and unforgettable, and I don’t want to ruin that for anyone. Instead, I will give you a quick overview of the history and world-building that I already mentioned E33 does perfectly.
Set in Lumière, a Meca for music, art, and culture, humans have lived peacefully for many years within the city and surrounding continent. Their creative pursuits are aided by a magical essence known as Chroma, which is basically raw creative power. Channeling chroma allows people to create Pictos, or manifestations of creativity like instruments, paint and paint brushes, etc.
A sudden cataclysmic event known as “The Fracture” plunged the land into chaos – it broke Lumière and scattered the pieces across the continent. Along with the Fracture came a massive figure known as the Paintress and her Monolith, as well as grotesque monstrosities created from Chroma called “Nevrons” that hunt all living things. Upon her Monolith, the Paintress painted the number “100,” which signifies maximum age any human can live to. Every year, the Paintress decreases this number by one. All the humans survived the Fracture and Nevrons regrouped on the piece of Lumière furthest from the Paintress and her monolith, only to be “Gommaged” (erased from existence) as their age becomes the same as the monolith year. In hopes of stopping the Paintress and her Gommage, humans began putting together expeditions. This happened 67 years before the events of Expedition 33. At the beginning of E33, the population of Lumière is dwindling, and monolith year is about to drop to 33.
Graphical and Musical Masterpiece
Just from the pictures attached to this review, it should be very clear to everyone that this game looks absolutely amazing. That’s why this game won Best Art Direction – it’s literally one of the best-looking video games ever and years ahead of its time. While great graphics do not automatically make a game great, the graphics in E33 certainly enhance every other element of the game to the point of near perfection. So, how did the developers make this game look so good? Two main reasons: First, Sandfall Interactive used Unreal Engine 5 by Epic Games, which is known for having the best graphics quality in game development. The downside Unreal 5 is that it generally is really demanding on the player’s PC or console, but E33 somehow got around most of that issue. Second, the character movements were made with motion-capture technology, meaning real actors/actresses acted out every single movement of the characters down to the lip movements when speaking. This technique is usually skipped in video games because it is too expensive, but Sandfall cut no corners even with a limited budget.
Something that you cannot see in the pictures is the sound effects and original soundtrack (OST), but this aspect of the game also won a Game Award – Best Score and Music. I will keep this brief because you have to listen to it to believe it, but these songs have no business being as spectacular as they are. The OST has a heavy emphasis on French Orchestral and Opera-style singing, with elements of modern Rock and Jazz mixed into some songs. I don’t understand most of the lyrics because they are sung in French, but that has not stopped me loving the creativity and effort that was obviously poured into every sound and song in E33. Live performances of the E33 OST have already sold-out concert halls across Europe, enough said.
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The Solo Leveling anime experience in video game formTurn-Based Combat Mastery
Combat is the main gameplay of E33, and it is also where the most criticism can be levied. However, E33 did not win Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game for nothing. At a baseline, the combat is turn-based which can be a no-go for many gamers, but it is far from standard turn-based combat that has been done to death in the past decade of gaming. Inspired by new and old games, E33 adopts mechanics introduced from early 2000’s turn-based Mario and Final Fantasy fights; meshes it with modern turn-based combat; sprinkles in elements of precise souls-like gameplay; and finally adds new twists to create a combat system that could very well define the turn-based genre for the next decade.
The combat system
Now, an in-depth breakdown - combat is initiated after encountering an enemy, taking the player into a combat sequence. Either the enemy or player’s characters go first based on the speed stat, whoever has the highest speed stat at the start of combat; the speed stat and other stats can be increased and augmented outside of combat, but more on that later. During the player’s characters turns, attacks, abilities, items, and more can be used under the umbrella of the AP system - AP dictates how powerful of an ability a character can use. Once an ability and target are chosen the character’s ability animation begins, during which the player must perform up to three precise key inputs that will cause the ability to do more damage based on how close to perfect the input was performed. On the enemy’s turn, the player must follow enemy attack animations to perform real-time key inputs to avoid taking damage and even counterattack.
Combat sequences can last a few seconds to over an hour, and how long it takes basically all depends on the player’s skill and preparation outside of combat. Through combat and world exploration, players level up to gain more stats, find weapons, discover pictos, and unlock lumina (a picto that is mastered through combat). Putting together good combinations of pictos and lumina, plus equipping an ideal weapon and correctly allocating stats before combat, can make even the most difficult fights easy. Regarding difficulty, E33’s combat can get extremely difficult especially after the free DLC that was dropped on the night of The Game Awards.
Character customization
Here are my final thoughts. Even if you consider yourself the most casual of gamers or story enjoys, I do not recommend this game – I mandate that you must play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This includes people that may not enjoy turn-based and/or difficult gameplay, both of these things can become non-factors via game settings. Yes, E33 is THAT incredible! That said, there is no timeline on which you should play it – this game is evergreen, meaning it will be just as good as today a year from now, or decades down the line. A few things I would recommend for playing E33: 1) Play it on the best system available to you because higher graphics quality makes a difference; 2) Play it on the biggest screen and sounds system available to you; and 3) Make sure you have the time to “binge” it. Finally, a warning - E33 is so incredible that it may ruin all other games for you for a while.
Matt
New video game, movie, or TV show? Matt probably has it on his radar, and he might even be in the middle of reviewing it. This digital entertainment enjoying dude is a Content Writer during work hours, then plays games, watches movies, binges shows, and writes about all of it in his free time.