Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

"We continue."

Reviews touting this as one of the best games ever made are common, and this is one of them. But I'll go one further. It transcends the format and is arguably one of the best experiences I've ever had in a media presentation. Did that get your attention?

Announced last year with an intriguing and mysterious teaser trailer, we were introduced to Lumière, a Paris-like fantasy world set at some point in the past after an apocalypse called the Fracture. It is ruled over by this godlike being called the Paintress who gained her name by painting a descending number every year on a monolith so large that it dominates the horizon. When she rouses from her slumber and wipes away a number, the people of Lumière suffer an unspeakable tragedy, as everyone of the age the Paintess paints vanishes into ash and rose petals.

For 67 years this has been happening, since the Fracture which twisted the landscape and wiped away the world. The people of Lumière do what they can to survive with this looming death sentence that is systematically reducing the age of their eldest citizens every single year.

We first meet Gustave, a well dressed man who seems to exude a mix of intelligence, kindness and world-weariness with a touch of knowing optimism caged in a wry humor. He is nervous about reuniting with an old love on the day of the Gommage, which is what they call it when the Paintress does her thing.

He’s a strong leading man. Voiced by Charlie Cox (Daredevil) he is immediately likable and a slightly unusual choice for a fantasy adventure. He isn’t macho or especially stoic, he just feels alive. We are then introduced to Maelle, whose relationship with Gustave seems to be a mix of adopted sister and daughter. Their banter is playful and clearly loving, but she is quite different from him. She dreams of leaving Lumière and has every intention of doing just that.

See, the people of Lumière are not content to just sit and continue to die. Every year they organize an expedition to try and travel to the Paintress, or at least make a path to get to her and discover whatever they can so that the next Expedition will have greater success than they do. These Expeditions have slowly fallen out of favor because the years keep ticking down and now there are precious few left before any meaningful fight would be impossible.

Gustave and Maelle are just two members of Expedition 33, which is also the current number on the Monolith. Those who are 32, and others like Maelle who is only 16, set out with some new technologies and a hope to stop the Paintress once and for all.

That might seem like a lot of spoilers, but that's all just the set up which occurs within the first hour of the game. A game that wears its uniqueness on its sleeve, and proudly steps up shouting you don't need a team of hundreds and tens of millions of dollars to create something wonderful.

To put this into context, this hybrid turn-based RPG (Role-Playing Game) with J-RPG roots (Japanese-RPG) is very uncommon in 2025. Turn based games have all been abandoned by game publishers who have almost all adapted long running franchises that used to use those mechanics in favor of action. There are no micro-transactions or hidden DLC’s you have to purchase to unlock all the content. It is also $30 less than what AAA publishers are charging for their latest and greatest.

Made by a team of just over 30 people, many of whom were junior game designers when they started, they spent six years developing this masterpiece. They found a musician on an online forum trying to sell sound files, who then produced eight hours of unspeakably beautiful music. The art direction and graphics are impeccable, and there are very few times the game isn’t absolutely breathtaking and cinematic. The story immediately pulls you in like a page-turner novel as you fall in love with the characters.

Of course if that was all the game offered it would be good but not great. But it also has one of the most unique and deep combat systems I’ve encountered in an RPG. There are literally thousands of different combinations of builds, with each playable character unique and viable as a team member. The side-content is even engaging and well thought out, with moments of absurdity and levity in a game that primarily deals with grief and death.

The real change to game play comes in the form of an active mechanic when defending, with a properly timed button press all incoming damage can be dodged or parried. If parried, your character will counter-attack hard for a lot of damage. Except the timing for those dodges and parries are quite exacting and sometimes crucial for some of the trickier fights. I don’t have the greatest timing with that kind of stuff, so it took me a while to get it down. It was never frustrating for me though, even when I failed. I actually enjoyed combat so much that I always sought it out, which is one of the reasons most turn based combat games feel like a slog; the combat is generally quite boring.

There is also an incredibly wide variety of enemies to face, and utterly unique places to explore that are not just bog standard settings like woods or fields, but things like a forest under the ocean but on land filled with floating fish and bubbles, waving kelp and coral. Creatures both tiny and massive are expressive, funny and occasionally terrifying. And the characters you meet all have interesting motivations and full backstories. I don’t think there was a single character I disliked. Even the villains had perfectly reasonable explanations for their actions, which ends up being all the more tragic as the story progresses.

I was moved to tears at least four times during my playthrough, and I played through both endings which were emotionally devastating. What was a neat looking game has quickly sold millions of copies and is being lauded as a return to form and a dagger in the heart of a gaming industry that has been so laser-focused on delivering a profit that they are no longer delivering quality experiences. Like a favorite novel, I know I will play this game again. I just wish it was as accessible as a novel or a movie, so that everyone could share in its wonders.

Bits:

Turns out that wish is coming true, the game has already been optioned to become a movie.

Jennifer English, who voices Maelle, also starred in a recent industry-shattering title called Baldur's Gate 3, and her voice work was credited as one of the best aspects of that game as well.

This game features a world map that your characters can move through. It is an old RPG tradition that hasn't been seen in games for at least 20 years, but it is so wonderfully realized here that I bet it will make a comeback in future titles.

My only real critique of the game would be the fact its English voice actors had to swear in French and it never quite sounded completely natural.

This is a once in a generation masterpiece of storytelling, acting, art direction, music, gameplay and writing that just doesn't happen very often.

4 out of 4 Dodges and parries that I failed again… and again… and again.

Samantha M. Quinn spends most of her time in front of a computer typing away at one thing or another; when she has free time, she enjoys pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy-related.