Our first look at Expedition 33 was in an Xbox Games Showcase in June 2024. Seeing it then, I was immediately enraptured by the game’s wistful vibes, gorgeous colors, and an almost painterly stylized realism that reminded me of games like Dragon Age: Veilguard and Bioshock Infinite.

However, what really hooked me was the combat section of the trailer – it reminded me of Persona 5 Royal’s combat UI but was (and pleasantly so!) caught off-guard by the parrying and blocking being real-time.

It’s always exciting to see a game try new things to reinvent the wheel in a genre as long-standing and as broad as the RPG scene. So let’s see what Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 brings.

SPOILER ALERT: This review contains heavy details on story elements and characters mentioned in the first few scenes.

A product of passion

have a high amount of respect for developers who put a lot of thought into the style of their game – companies like Atlus, publishers of consistently stylish games like Persona 5 Royal, Persona 3 Reload, and their more recent new IP Metaphor: ReFantazio.

I was surprised to find how strongly Expedition 33’s Art Director, Nicholas Maxson-Francombe, felt about nailing down their art direction.

In an interview with Xbox, he said, “I just wanted to get out of the stuff that we’ve just seen a million times, – science fiction, to space, or zombies, all that kind of stuff. I just wanted to get my head out of there and see what I can try to come up with that was original for me personally.”

This direction resonates everywhere in Expedition 33 so far – from the artistically framed shots in the rendered cutscenes, to the sights and scale of walking around Lumière, the voice acting, sound effects, all the way down to the game’s solid UI design – in and out of combat.

In the current climate of the gaming industry, it’s important to highlight just how passionately the developers at Sandfall Interactive talk about their game; one aspect of their game that they continually bring attention to and obviously hold in high regard is their attention to detail in terms of their UI.

I was reminded of how Atlus’s lead interface designer, Koji Ise, has previously spoken about how their team utilizes the game’s UI in unique manners; “… we’re able to match our UI and animations to act as emotional accelerators,” he said in an interview with The Verge.

This is exactly how Expedition 33’s UI, the combat UI in particular, makes me feel – like there’s a sense of urgency in combat, and every battle could be the Expedition team’s last.

I really applaud how the design team utilizes their UI in conjunction with sound effects and specific visual cues to really make you feel how snappy the real-time action blocking/parrying is and how well they make combat flow from character to character.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself here talking about different characters and their synergy in combat – for now, let’s delve into a bit of the story with one of our main characters.

Let’s talk about the story

Gustave is an engineer who, among many others in the Expedition, has dedicated his life to finding a way to end the Paintress’ reign over Lumieré.

We start the game with a cutscene – Gustave and Maelle are having a conversation on a rooftop that’s overlooking Lumière’s harbor. We’re given our first look at the city they call home – the harbor down below and the clusters of people gathered there, the rooftops littered with debris and abandoned furniture, and an ominous looming structure in the distance with a glowing, engraved number 34.

I love how small this cutscene made me feel as the player character – this view extends upwards as well, with large shards of rock in the sky and the blue rocks weaving in and out of decrepit Parisian buildings.

We later end up at a rendezvous point, but Maelle says we look stressed and proposes a little relaxer in the form of a battle – cue our combat tutorial.

It’s a simple tutorial: we learn how to attack, block, parry, and how to use your Attribute points for Gustave to access his special skills. This tutorial is also our first taste of the block and parry system, which feels just about right – the sounds and visual cues are there to help you if you’re not used to the timing.

These two skills will be what makes or breaks most combat encounters, so make sure to pay attention!

After the tutorial, we spend some time with Gustave and Sophie around the harbor talking about the Gommage. We keep hearing this term but we’re not told anything about it.

Everyone in Lumière seems to know exactly what it is, though. There is a somberness about how people talk about it, like it’s horrible but inevitable – something that they don’t have the power to change, so the citizens of Lumière have no choice but to face it head on.

When Sophie and Gustave are ready, they head towards the harbor and the Gommage begins.

This is one of the most heartbreaking cutscenes I’ve ever experienced in recent memory.

The Gommage is basically a Thanos-snap. People fade away into flower petals, presumed sacrifices to the Paintress and her reign – it’s a flowery, beautiful bloodbath.

Speaking of the Paintress, we get our first glimpse of her here, as she changes the number on the tower from 34 to 33.

She settles into a fetal position on the island, with the looming, glowing number 33 behind her.

I was reminded one of the last things Sophie said to Gustave a little before she passed – that maybe the Paintress is just as trapped in this cycle as the rest of Lumière.

With Gustave’s goodbyes said to Sophie and the Gommage’s grisly conclusion, we’re escorted to an Expedition Party by two of our teammates, who seem to know Gustave very well and exactly what he’s going through with Sophie’s passing.

It seems that everyone here is grieving someone or something – like Lucien says to Gustave, “grieving alone’s the worst.”

Many of Gustave’s compatriots are ready to take the plunge with Expedition 33, with many of them having only one year left to live (barre Maelle, who has 9 years left until her own Gommage).

It seems they would rather dedicate this final act to try and bring back hopes of a brighter future for the citizens of Lumieré, that one of their Expeditions might be successful and the Paintress’ reign put to an end.

Our final goodbye to Lumière is headed by Gustave’s sister Emma, her voiceover playing over a montage of the group’s journey to the mainland where the Paintress awaits.

However, the Expedition is immediately attacked upon reaching their destination – surprisingly, by an old gentleman, whose existence is not possible due to the nature of the Gommage taking the lives of the citizens of Lumière before anyone even has the chance to grow old.

The entire party is thrown into disarray, and Gustave wakes up in a forest area separated from the others. He decides to continue forward to try to find the Indigo Tree and survivors from the Expedition, which is the designated meetup point and standard protocol for the party.

Moving through the forest area, Gustave stumbles across a gory sight – a cave filled to the brim with dead Expeditioners. Feeling hopeless and lost, Gustave sits by his fallen comrades and contemplates joining them in the afterlife when Lune suddenly appears – with a hand on his shoulder, she reminds him of their creed as Expeditioners: “when one falls, we continue”.

We’re suddenly cast into another battle with a Nevron – but with Lune introduced here as our first party member.4

After they defeat the Nevron, Gustave and Lune reach an impasse; they decide to continue into the forest area, trying to find a path to the Indigo Tree to continue their search for survivors of Expedition 33.

I’d like to leave the story part of the review at that to keep the rest spoiler-free, but this is a beautiful story and one that’s best experienced first-hand.

The best parts aren’t always obvious

Expedition 33 is a solid game that’s very easy to recommend to almost anyone, but I do have some notes – especially on some quality-of-life features.

I’ll start with the things that I liked about Expedition 33: the solid art direction, the game’s themes and its characters, and the combat.

I said this earlier in the review, but I’ve really learned to appreciate games that take their art direction seriously; some of my favorite games continue to stick out in my memory to this day because of how unique and strong their visual identities are.

This is one of Expedition 33’s strongest suits – I especially love the way that they use color in their scenes; the development team knows how to use strong colors with contrast, and when to use desaturated colors to suit the mood of the scene.

The rendered cutscenes also took me off guard with how beautifully composed they were – the artistically framed shots, the score, the voice acting and even the animations really come together to showcase the beauty of Expedition 33.

Another strong suit of the game is its subject matter of grief, loss, love, and moving on – ones that I’m sure many players can relate to in some capacity.

Before the Gommage, I really enjoyed walking around and talking to the NPCs in the starting area; their dialogue was simple enough to convey what kind of people they were and what they had lost, or what exactly they were about to lose, and how they were dealing with that.

I found the dialogue to be very believable and close to what someone in real life would say, and how complicated feelings of grief and loss are to deal with, especially when you realize that loss is an inevitable part of life and that everyone is bound to lose something or someone they love at one point or another.

The meatiest part of the game, aside from the story, is the combat and its surrounding mechanics.

I liked that we started off simple with a character like Gustave, whose build is an every man all-rounder – you can lean into heavy physical damage or dip into elemental buffs later in the skill tree.

Being the protagonist of the game, you spend an ample amount of time with Gustave before you’re introduced to the second party member, Lune. Again, I like that they introduced a character like Lune who’s almost the opposite of Gustave’s playstyle thus far in terms of skills.

You spend an ample time with Lune as well before you get to your next party member to get used to her skills and playstyle – and honestly, I liked fiddling around with her moves more than Gustave’s (but I do love playing magic-based builds rather than physical-based builds).

It’s also very easy to switch up whole builds and the whole skill tree in the rest menu, which I really enjoyed as it makes the game even more accessible to new players who might not be used to knowing how to build a character – it promotes learning and experimenting with different skills and stats and combat is fast enough that you can test it out almost immediately.

A few small things could’ve made it better

There are some features that I wish were in the game or that I wish could be changed.

The first of these is the addition of a photo mode. I was taking screenshots like mad playing this game for the first time (I have around 400 screenshots already and I only have 3 party members so far).

I think a photo mode with your team being pose-able would be worth it. The environments in this game are gorgeous and would serve as good promotional material as well, since people have really learned how to get creative with photo mode in the past few years.

Another thing that I wish I could change somehow is the way that the characters move. Walking around feels a bit fast and float-y sometimes. And I’m not a big fan of the jump – especially with some jumping puzzles involved in the world.

Of course, they’re not that difficult, but I didn’t really enjoy this part of the later levels in the game. I also think that, with how the environments are constructed, that we could have benefit ted from an optional “main goal” marker – one that would have differentiated the optional paths from the main one.

Since the game is built around playing around with different skills and stats, I would have also liked to see a “rush” mode or an auto-battle mode so that we can quickly see how a build performs on normal enemies.

Final thoughts

I’ll say it again, Clairs Obscur: Expedition 33 is a very easy game to recommend to almost anyone – it’s a fresh-feeling RPG with an interesting twist on the classic turn-based combat mode that we’ve all come to know and love and a story and themes that speaks right to the heart.

So far, Expedition 33 has exceeded all my expectations  – especially for a debut development team (and a small one, at that). Sandfall Interactive has captured lightning in a bottle by taking risks and doing something that was close their hearts, instead of taking the road most traveled.

It’s a very accessible game in that, first-time RPG players will feel guided almost the whole way through while seasoned players can just dive in. This is all familiar territory for players who have many RPGs under their belts.

If you’ve read anything here or watched anything about Expedition 33 that catches your interest, I urge you to play it yourself. You definitely won’t regret your time with it.