Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – A Beautiful Mess That Misses the Mark

[TheViltsuZ]

Oh, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. You promised a dazzling French twist on the JRPG formula, a surreal masterpiece dripping with Belle Époque charm and innovative combat. What we got instead is a game that’s so busy admiring its own paintbrush it forgets to tell a coherent story or deliver gameplay that doesn’t feel like a chore. Sandfall Interactive’s debut is a visually stunning misfire that drowns in its own ambition, leaving players frustrated and exhausted.

Let’s start with the combat, which sounds thrilling on paper: a hybrid of turn-based strategy and real-time action, with dodges, parries, and quick-time events (QTEs) to keep you on your toes. In practice, it’s a clunky, overstuffed mess. The game leans so heavily on twitchy reaction mechanics that it feels less like a thoughtful RPG and more like a rhythm game with pretensions. Every fight demands split-second timing for parries and QTEs, but the windows are so tight that even seasoned players will fumble. Worse, the system punishes you harshly for missing a beat—enemies can wipe your party in seconds if you don’t nail every dodge. Strategy? Forget it. The game’s obsession with real-time flourishes leaves little room for meaningful build-crafting or tactical depth. After a few hours, battles feel repetitive and draining, like you’re stuck in a loop of mashing buttons to keep up with the game’s overzealous demands.

The story doesn’t fare much better. The premise—a mysterious Paintress who dooms entire age groups each year by painting numbers on a monolith—starts off intriguing but quickly collapses under the weight of its own melodrama. The narrative swings wildly between heavy-handed tragedy and cryptic nonsense, piling on plot twists that feel more like cheap shocks than earned revelations. Characters like Gustave and Maelle are meant to carry the emotional core, but their dialogue is so steeped in clichés (“We must fight for hope!”) that it’s hard to care about their plight. The game’s attempt at profound themes—grief, mortality, family—feels shallow, as if Sandfall decided that tossing in a few tearjerker cutscenes would automatically make the story deep. By the third act, the plot becomes so convoluted that even the most dedicated players will be scratching their heads, wondering what the point of it all was.

Visually, Clair Obscur is undeniably gorgeous. The Belle Époque-inspired world, with its warped Eiffel Tower and watercolor-like environments, is a feast for the eyes. But even this comes with caveats. The game’s reliance on Unreal Engine 5’s bloom effects is so aggressive that it’s headache-inducing, and the lack of a toggle to tone it down feels like a bizarre oversight. Exploration, meanwhile, is a letdown. The world is linear to a fault, with branching paths that lead to predictable loot or forgettable side content. For a game that markets itself as a grand adventure, it feels oddly claustrophobic, as if Sandfall couldn’t decide whether to commit to an open world or a guided tour.

The soundtrack, while occasionally stirring, is another mixed bag. Lorien Testard’s score tries to channel the haunting elegance of NieR or Xenoblade, but it often feels like it’s trying too hard to be epic. The constant swells of strings and operatic vocals during battles can be overbearing, drowning out the action and making every fight feel like the climax of a Wagnerian opera. Subtlety is nowhere to be found.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is how close it comes to greatness. There are flashes of brilliance—moments where the combat clicks, or a character’s backstory lands with genuine emotion—but they’re buried under a pile of poor design choices and narrative missteps. The game’s 25-30 hour runtime feels padded, with mandatory side quests and drawn-out battles that sap your patience. Even the menus are a hassle, cluttered and unintuitive, making gear and skill management more tedious than it should be.

For all its polish and passion, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a classic case of style over substance. It’s a game that wants so badly to be a modern JRPG classic but stumbles at every turn, leaving players with a beautiful but hollow experience. Sandfall Interactive clearly has talent, but this debut feels like a rough draft of something that could have been extraordinary. Save your $50 and revisit Persona or Final Fantasy instead.

Score: 4/10 – A dazzling disappointment that’s more frustrating than fun.

[SS]

TL;DR

10/10 no chicks with penises.

[Necho]

Point farming bait, skip guys.

[TheViltsuZ]

Originally posted by Necho:

Point farming bait, skip guys.

No arguments?

[Eekiki]

Spoken like a true games "journalist".

[Aurumworks]

Smells of ChatGPT.

[Platapoop]

Originally posted by TheViltsuZ:

Originally posted by Necho:

Point farming bait, skip guys.

No arguments?

Well one easy one. If it's too hard then lower the difficulty. Even on expert if you build correctly you don't need to dodge/parry at all.

[Sunsetter]

Yawn.
More ChatGPT nonsense.

[Summoner]

Ai text. This person can't type more than one line.

[Sharkinbear]

There is a section to post reviews on the store page.

[SaltyRoastie]

erm why didnt you post this on your reviews? trying to farm points or something??

[a passerby]

Originally posted by TheViltsuZ:

No arguments?

Arguments? Have some sense of shame. This post is a clear LLM write-up

[Revan]

So that's where all the Polygon journalists who got fired, because they were too disconnected from actual gamers, went. Now they write odd reviews on Steam, apparently..

[Everlightly]

Did Ubisoft pay you to leave this review?

[RCJenn]

Good review.

I'm in the same boat. The game is gorgeous, the characters very likeable, and the world design is pure art. But under the hood, it's a real mess.

No mini-map, even though the zones are wildly convoluted, as a canvas should be.
Advertised as a JRPG-like, but it's not.
Advertised as a turn-based game, but completely reliant on twitch mechanics.
A story that gets wildly entangled and loses all focus the further you go.

Luckily I was able to try it out on Game Pass, otherwise, as beautiful as this game is, I would be completely miffed at spending full price for this.

I'm 61. My twitch days are long behind me. I was led to believe that this was would be the RPG to end all RPG's. But if even the rabid fanboi's would be honest with it, it's twitch reflex game with very muddled mechanics set in a gorgeous eye candy world.

[Agahnim01]

"leaving players frustrated and exhausted"

What "Players"?

Don't generalize... the large majority of Players love it...

I, for one, wasn't raised with a GPS in my hand, so i had no problems orienting myself by looking around and listening to characters...

I also love the combat and haven't felt that engaged in a game since Elden Ring. And if i look at the general online discourse, most Players seems in line with that take.

Of course, you're allowed to dislike some aspects of it and ask for options to make the game more streamlined for you... but please, don't lump in all "Players" in the same basket.