Sandfall Interactive Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was undoubtedly one of the stars of the summer season of gaming reveals – a new release that made quite a splash when it debuted at the Xbox Summer Showcase in June. Now we’ve had a closer look at the game playing out in real time before our eyes – and this first look shows that the initial hype is probably justified.
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In a hands-off demo, I was able to see a brief snippet of a single scenario from the French-developed adventure. Where the game is made is important in some ways, and that’s because of its nature: it’s a “JRPG” at heart. It certainly contains many of the mechanical and systems design tropes that most people associate with the genre.
The catch, of course, is that it is not made in Japan. Like Sea of Stars or like the criminally underrated The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what that means for how this game fits into genre definitions. But the point is: if you like those kinds of games on a mechanical level, you’ll probably like this one too.
The obvious comparison you’ll hear a lot is with Persona 5. And that’s not a wrong place to start either – one look at Expedition 33’s menus and the stylish camera movements and exaggerated animations in combat tells you all you need to know about that game’s main inspiration, at least as far as combat goes. However, it also tries to go beyond that association by employing what the developers call “Reactive Turn-Based Combat.” They even include the word – Reactive – in the game’s genre, as listed in press releases and on storefronts.
The idea is familiar from other games: alongside menu navigation to select moves, there are a number of real-time actions and reactions the player can perform to maximize damage and power. So this is a strictly turn-based game, with characters’ turn order shown on the left side of the screen. But this tradition is complemented by things like real-time dodging, frame-accurate parries, counters, combos, and reactive quick-time events that, when executed correctly, maximize the ability at hand.
The game wants to encourage players to engage in this system, although it seems perfectly possible to power through combat without it. For example, at the end of each counter, the end of battle screen will show how many successful counters and parries you’ve had – which really encourages the player to engage with this stuff.
While it mimics Persona and other Japanese games in system design, Expedition 33 takes a more original path in terms of look and feel. It’s visually stunning, with combat punctuated by impressive particle effects. The environments are beautiful too: this demo is set underwater, though the characters can mysteriously breathe and talk. The graphics are impressive – aquatic plants sway in the current, the characters cut around and over shipwrecks and the remains of a submerged civilization.
Much of the plot remains a mystery to me, although the basic concept is wonderfully simple: its characters, all 33 years old, are doomed to die in one year. The group embarks on a journey – an expedition, if you will – to kill a god-like being and save their lives.
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There’s a lot to like here – characters that instantly appeal to you, an intriguing narrative approach, and enemy designs that are interesting from both a visual and combat design perspective. Looking at the characters in their expedition uniforms, I wish each one had a more individual look – but for all I know, that could come with time, as I didn’t get to see any gear or equipment systems.
In short, it looked good. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s reveal trailer showed us style – all the peacock-like swagger of Persona 5, but filtered through a Western perspective. A first look at the game in progress shows us there’s substance too, in carefully thought-out combat systems that want to do more than copy what’s come before – there’s ambition here for evolution.
Of course, we will only provide the real proof when we try it ourselves. Hopefully that will happen soon.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be released sometime in 2025 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X & S.
