Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review — Grief, Paint, and Perfect Parries

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a Belle Époque funeral march that also wants you to dodge like you are in a character-action game. That sentence should not work. Sandfall Interactive makes it the entire thesis.

I played on PS5 and then again on PC to check whether the parries were in my hands or in the frame time. They were in my hands. The frame time still helped.

A world that remembers you are sad

The setup is cruel and clean: each year the Paintress wakes, paints a number, and everyone of that age is erased. Expedition 33 walks toward her anyway. The party is written as people who have already lost the argument and showed up for the walk.

I will not spoil the turns. I will say the story earns its melodramatic costumes. It is French in the useful way — sincere, a bit extra, allergic to American quip armour.

Exploration is painted ruins and impossible architecture, not an open-world checklist. When the game opens a wider region, it still feels authored. That restraint is why I never opened a wiki to find "the fun."

Turns, then wrists

Combat is turn-based until it is not. You queue an attack. Then you parry, dodge, shoot a weak point, and suddenly the RPG is a rhythm game that happens to have a ATB soul. Picto builds let you break the math in the way good JRPG veterans crave, without requiring a spreadsheet on day one.

Bosses are theatre. Some are slightly too in love with their own phase changes. Most of them taught me a verb I then used everywhere else. That is the highest compliment I have for a systems RPG.

If you bounced off turn-based games because they feel like menus, start here. If you bounced off action games because they feel like homework, also start here. The overlap is the point.

Performance and the last 10%

PS5 is gorgeous and mostly steady. PC lets you make it prettier than is polite. A handful of late encounters pile effects until the camera needs a lie down. None of that moved the score the way the first act's tone did.

The last stretch is where some debuts panic. Expedition 33 does not panic. It commits. Whether you love the ending will depend on your tolerance for operatic swings. I loved it, then sat on the couch like I had been personally painted.

Related reading: our Best PS5 games 2026 pillar, and the Expedition 33 hub. If you want another dense RPG after this, we already scored Baldur's Gate 3.

Consensus, credited

According to WellPlayed's Mark Isaacson, Expedition 33 is a 9.5/10 — an Australian desk that, like us, does not hand those numbers out for scenery. I land a tenth lower only because a couple of late fights overstay. We are describing the same object.

Australia: should you?

Full price on PSN AU or Steam is justified. If it is in your Game Pass or Plus Extra rotation the week you read this, play it there first and buy it later if you want the save file to be yours. It is a complete campaign, not a live-service hook.

Play it in a dark room. Tell the group chat nothing.

Score: 9.4 / 10.