RPGs and JRPGs are, arguably, the most popular they have ever been, with franchises like the Soulsborne series and Xenoblade Chronicles becoming household names, while old-school RPG mainstays like Final Fantasy continue to reign as king. However, as time has passed, it’s clear that turn-based endeavours have fallen to the wayside in favour of more high-octane, real-time combat systems. Enter Sandfall Interactive, a new studio from France that originally began as a tiny team of only one person, hoping to bring the magic of that original style of RPG back with a new, innovative twist.
The result? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the first major turn-based RPG in quite some time. And not only has it successfully rekindled the flame of turn-based RPGs, but it is also one of the best games of 2025 and an all-time great for the RPG genre. Between the haunting, raw story about death and artistry that feels so wholly unique and creative, the jaw-dropping battle system that remixes the best of old and new school RPGs to craft one of the best combat frameworks in the entire genre, the gorgeous world and art direction, and the stellar music and voice cast, Clair Obscur is a genuine masterpiece that, somehow, only takes a fraction of the time to complete compared to an average RPG.
Sandfall Interactive have absolutely knocked it out of the park with their first big swing. Whether you’re a ride-or-die for traditional, old-school turn-based RPGs or an adrenaline-fueled action RPG nut, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has something for you in this incredible innovation on a time-tested formula.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 releases on April 24th for $49.99 (£44.99) on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. It is also a day one release on Game Pass.
Story | Paint Me A Picture
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes place in a magical dystopia where the last bastion of humanity rests on an island called Lumiere. Across from Lumiere, on a distant, untamed land known only as the Continent, sits the Paintress, a massive Eldritch being who dwells beneath a colossal monolith. Once every year, the Paintress rises to paint a new number on her monolith, causing all those who have passed that age to Gommage, with them becoming little more than smoke and rose petals.
Each year, the number on the monolith sinks lower, and each year, a new Expedition, ever younger the last, is sent out to the Continent to kill her so that she may never paint death again. In over 70 years, not a single Expedition has ever succeeded or come back alive. You play as the members of Expedition 33, the latest group of martyrs who have chosen to dedicate the last year of their lives to destroying the Paintress – or, at least, to becoming the foundation that the next Expedition may walk upon – so that, eventually, the shadow of death may fade from the skies of Lumiere once and for all.
Expeditioners Unite
For most of its run time, Clair Obscur is a dark, grim, mature game that does not hesitate to tackle the macabre themes that its premise dredges up. It isn’t gratuitous or flighty with the subject of death, but instead raw and confronting, forcing both the Expeditioners of Expedition 33 and the player to confront the reality of death, as well as the reality of life. It’s a gutsy story, one with a clear vision willing to take big risks and even upset its audience to tell a compelling, captivating narrative that manages to wonderfully balance themes of generational trauma, nihilism and the dangers of escapism with a boundless love of art and humanity.
What I wasn’t quite expecting was that, amongst the bleakness, Clair Obscur’s story and world are also incredibly charming. There’s a surprising amount of humour in the game, and I laughed out loud fairly often. The Gestrals – amusing mannequin-like creatures who speak only in mumbled French and have paint brushes for heads – are a standout addition and bring some much-needed levity and joy whenever they’re around, and the game as a whole is better for it. The emotional depths that the story goes to feel ever deeper because of those cheerful, fleeting moments, whereas you learn to savour the bright spots in anticipation of the inevitable descent back to tragedy.
Broken Lumiere
That isn’t to say that the story is perfect. Even with its relatively small cast, Clair Obscur still falls to the age-old RPG curse where some of the main party members end up feeling a bit sidelined: there is a clear “main character” or two amongst the cast, and there comes a point where the others sort of fade into the background. The history and reasoning behind the Expeditions themselves help alleviate this somewhat – they all set out on this mission to kill the Paintress, after all – but it does become very noticeable towards the latter half of the game’s runtime.
At the heart of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a love and appreciation of the sheer act of creation, of pouring yourself and all you are into something, of bearing your heart and soul in a way that is messy, raw, and real. If you are a creative person – an artist, a musician, a writer, anything – the story and its characters and themes will likely strike a deep chord with you. It’s a genuinely beautiful tale and one I’m sure will linger and dwell in my mind for many months to come.
Hollow Happiness
Gameplay | For Those Who Come After
Combat | A Foot in Both Worlds
Clair Obscur has the best turn-based combat I have ever played. It has all the usual bells and whistles for a turn-based system alongside some interesting real-time elements that ratchet up the intensity of each battle. You can dodge and parry enemy attacks, ala Sekiro, and you can also increase the damage of your attacks by timing specific button presses, ala Xenoblade Chronicles. It’s a really interesting mix of systems and one that augments the more passive, preparatory flow of turn-based combat with a frantic, active component.
Turn-based games are, fundamentally, built on preparation and anticipation. A lot of work goes into preparing your party for encounters, making sure they have all the tools to deal with the battles that come their way, and, while there are some reactionary aspects, such as healing, a lot of your success depends on what you do before you enter the arena. While this is still true in the case of Expedition 33, it also injects this reactionary aspect, giving you agency at almost every moment of the battle. Now, clawing your way through an intense boss encounter is as much about learning when to parry or dodge as it is about making sure you know to hit the boss’ weakness.
The best way to describe this combat framework is that it’s liberating. It just gives you so much choice and so much agency. One particularly memorable moment in my playthrough came when I stumbled headfirst into one of the endgame dungeons while severely underlevelled. Instead of doing the sensible thing and coming back later, I dove in with both feet and learned how to best those behemoths through sheer will and determination. And I beat it. The combat sandbox is just that good and flexible that, even on Expert difficulty, I was able to overcome the limits of the genre through sheer skill.
My Turn
Another massive boon in the combat’s favour is the sheer amount of enemy variety. There is a very long list of opponents that you’ll encounter on the Continent, with each having a handful of moves that you’ll need to learn and adapt to. The game isn’t afraid to mix up enemy team compositions, either, and it all gels together to make combat against even lesser enemies feel engaging. One of my favourite parts of Clair Obscur’s enemies is that the game respects the knowledge that you build up as you face them and will continually test you on said knowledge. Each enemy in the game has a mini-boss variant that you can encounter with a slightly enhanced moveset that rewards you for learning the base kit. The enemy design, combined with the superb combat framework on the player’s end, just makes battles so absurdly fun.
One issue that some players may have with this approach to turn-based combat is how demanding it is. Because even the weakest opponents require focus to parry or dodge (with the latter being much easier than the former), you can’t really relax or take battles easily like you can in other RPGs. While I enjoyed the all-in nature of encounters, turn-based purists may find the approach to be a bit exhausting, especially if you face many high-tier enemies back-to-back. Fortunately, Expedition 33 is still, at its core, a turn-based experience and you can have options when it comes to how you approach each battle: sure, you could bash your head against a boss until you perfect it… or you could just over level and crush it to pieces, if you so please. That’s what I mean when I said this combat system is liberating; it gives you options and keeps you continually engaged for the entire 30 to 50 hour runtime.
In a lot of ways, Expedition 33’s combat is the other side of Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat: while the latter is an action-focused experience with turn-based elements, the former is a turn-based experience that introduces aspects of action to make the formula more active. Both systems respect the deep, rich history of the genre while innovating on those same roots to make something brand new. Whether you’re a die-hard turn-based player or a Soulslike fanatic, I think you’re bound to find something to love in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
A World of Monsters
The Party | Dead Men Walking
A good RPG is nothing without good characters to play as, of course, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does not disappoint. Compared to some more modern RPGs, the cast is pretty small, but each party member is incredibly unique, with each having their special gameplay gimmick as well as expansive skill trees. You can also augment each character with passive abilities found on Pictos, special accessories that grant everything from minor boons to massive game-changing powers like being able to take a second turn each round. These options open up a world of build and gameplay variety for your party that feels very reminiscent of older JRPG systems like Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid.
Let’s use my favourite character as an example. Maelle’s special technique will cause her to enter one of three stances whenever she uses a skill: there’s Offensive Stance, which increases damage dealt and taken, Defensive Stance, which increases her damage resistances, and Virtuous Stance, which greatly increases her damage output. Your main goal when playing Maelle is to weave between these stances so that she will constantly benefit from one buff or another, as she cannot keep the same stance for more than a single turn.
Some players may want to lean more into her defensive fantasy, using skills that draw aggro or easily reset her Defensive Stance so that her weaker allies can go about undeterred. Meanwhile, others may want to use Maelle as their offensive debuffer, pairing her skills that inflict stacks of Burn with Pictos that either double those stacks or increase her damage against Burning targets. My version of Maelle was easily the strongest character in my party. She was very frail defensively, but with monstrous levels of offence that she would specifically unleash through her counterattacks, resulting in a risky, satisfying playstyle that made every battle engaging: towards the end of the game, I was dishing out damage numbers in the millions with Maelle’s counters, and it never got old.
Graceful Maelle
And that’s just one character. Each of the main party has a completely different gimmick, which then synergises with one another to broaden the spectrum even further. There are even Pictos that make solo party compositions completely viable.
The only quibble I had with the character design of Clair Obscur had to do with the skills. Unlike in most RPGs, skills in Expedition 33 aren’t a linear upgrade: instead of going from Fire to Fira to Firaga, the skills in each character’s skill tree are all unique. This is a double-edged sword as it means that all skills have relevance at the cost of that satisfying feeling of progression. I was using skills at level 80 that I had unlocked at level 4, and while that felt great, it meant that I quickly grew to stop caring about the skill trees once I had a decent setup for each character. I don’t think I changed my party’s skills once from level 40 onwards, which makes the game lack a bit of intrinsic motivation that most RPGs have.
Beauty in Chaos
Exploration | Tomorrow Comes
Outside of combat, much of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s gameplay involves roaming around impressive-looking levels that are connected by a vast and, honestly, incredible world map. It all feels quite retro, in a good way, like stepping back into the PS1 or PS2 era of videogames. In a climate where so many games are trying to be bigger and better, Clair Obscur’s restraint feels cosy and nostalgic in a way that only heightens its impact.
As someone who just missed out on the era where world maps were a staple in every RPG, Clair Obscur has opened my eyes to their brilliance. Not only does being able to cross massive swathes of the world so quickly give the Continent a paradoxically large sense of scale, it also lets Sandfall Interactive flex its artistic muscles. While the levels are self-contained bubbles of bleak artistry and beautiful chaos, the world map is a wide sheet of eye-catching locales that beg for your attention, with the Paintress’ monolith looming large in the distance being a constant reminder of your task. Without a robust fast travel system, going back and forth between areas does feel a bit clunky in the early game without the movement upgrades you unlock, but, honestly, I think it gives the game a sense of weight and antiquated charm.
Individual levels are a little less grandiose, though. Visually, each one is absolutely stunning, acting as a pocket of quiet or intense madness nestled in its little section of the Continent. On the gameplay front, they’re all essentially very pretty corridors filled with enemies: sometimes there will be a split path where one leads to a new weapon or Picto or boss fight, but that’s about as interesting as the main levels get. Exploring these locales is always worth it for the vistas and the rewards, but they aren’t ever the most memorable gameplay-wise, especially when compared to the combat.
The Continent
Art and Design | Picturesque
The world of Clair Obscur is a perfect reflection of the story the game is trying to tell: dreary yet whimsical, grotesque yet beautiful, hopeful yet tragic. Everything from the enemies to the locations is rendered in such abstract clarity that it can feel disorienting. It truly does feel like you are moving through a living gallery, each part of the world a new painting with its own story and identity that’s been stitched together.
The Continent strikes the same haunting chord that FROMSOFT’s dead worlds often do, only with a distinctive painterly flair. For example, the stony corpses of past Expeditions litter every surface in the Continent, acting as both grisly decorations as well as sad guide points, their long-dead bodies beckoning you forward in grand displays that often leave you breathless. Death is a part of this world as much as life is, and the design of it really reflects that.
There’s just so much raw creativity poured into the art direction of Clair Obscur. While it wears its inspirations on its sleeve, it manages to reinvent and provide a new perspective on it all. I never grew bored of visiting a new location as I knew that it meant I’d get to see a new batch of creepy-looking Nevrons or a gorgeous landscape with some sort of sinister edge. Honestly, it’s almost worth playing to experience the artistry alone.
Tomorrow Comes
Music and Sound | Melody of Art
As if having stellar art direction wasn’t enough, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also had to have some of the best music I’ve heard in a game recently. Whether it’s the sombre ballad that plays as you traverse the world map that echoes the inevitable despair of Lumiere, the haunting orchestral melodies that play during boss encounters, or even the absurd, joyful anthems of the Gestrals, there are so many excellent tunes to lose yourself in. Sound effects are equally memorable, with battle sounds, in particular, being incredibly satisfying (the crunch whenever you trigger Break never got tiring of listening to).
Alongside the excellent musical arrangements, Clair Obscur also has some incredible voice work that just elevates the story and characters beyond their already amazing thresholds. From Jennifer English and Ben Starr to Charlie Cox and Andy Serkis, the voice work behind this game is genuinely fantastic, with every actor giving it their all. Oh, and the garbled French from the Gestrals was also always a treat to listen to.
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- Nevron Nuisance
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- Parry Any Blow
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- Pick Your Poison
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- Power of Lumina
