Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

The Wild Part Is, The Hype Is Mostly Real

Look, when a game comes in with a Metacritic 91, an OpenCritic 92.1, a 97.5% recommendation rate across 206 reviews, and a 95% Steam rating from 175,870 players, your first instinct should be skepticism. That kind of pile-on praise can turn into noise fast. But with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the annoying thing is… yeah, the crowd’s basically right.

This is Sandfall Interactive’s first game, published by Kepler Interactive, and it somehow landed like a full 3A prestige RPG while clearly coming from a smaller, AA-scale team. That matters. Not because “small team good” is some automatic excuse, but because this thing has an identity most giant-budget RPGs would kill for. It takes turn-based combat, welds real-time parries and Gradient Counters onto it, then wraps the whole thing in this Belle Époque France-inspired oil-painting nightmare. You’re leading Expedition 33 against the Paintress, trying to stop her from painting death again, and the game actually earns that melodramatic setup.

And the industry treated it like a moment, not just a good release. It won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025, pulled 13 nominations and 9 wins, and became the first debut game to take the top award there. It also became only the second game after Baldur’s Gate 3 to sweep the five major Game of the Year awards. That’s ridiculous. But I get it. Compared to Persona 5 Royal, which is still the cleaner, slicker pure command-based RPG, Expedition 33 has more danger in every input. You’re not just choosing attacks. You’re reading, parrying, punishing, and trying not to panic. That gives the tragedy more bite.

Buy It If You’ll Learn The Parry, Skip It If You Just Want Menus

Here’s the catch: this is not the RPG I’d hand to someone who wants to chill, select Fire, heal every few turns, and vibe through the story. The real-time timing is not decoration. If you hate action-game reflex checks, or you’ve got no patience for tight parry windows, this game can absolutely rub you the wrong way. It’s turn-based, yes, but it’s turn-based with a raised eyebrow and a knife behind its back.

If you are willing to meet it halfway, though, this is one of the easiest recommendations of 2025. The combat loop is the hook, but the atmosphere is what sticks. Lorien Testard and Alice Duport-Percier’s music is massive, with French vocals and a 154-track score that people are already talking about like an all-timer. The UE5 staging and painterly art direction give it that “moving canvas” look without feeling like empty art-school posing. And the Pictos gear plus Lumina passives give build nerds a lot to chew on, especially if you like finding nasty cross-character combinations.

Version-wise, don’t overthink it. This is a single-player RPG, roughly a 30-hour campaign, not a forever game trying to live on your hard drive for three years. If you’re on PC, Steam is the easiest recommendation because the player sample is huge and brutally positive. Just know the late game can snap in weird ways: strong builds can flatten bosses, the post-game can spike hard, and some critics felt the final stretch loses pacing control. Also, the AI asset controversy should stay in the record: its Indie Game Awards win was rescinded over that issue. That doesn’t erase the game’s craft, but it does complicate the victory lap. For me, the overall lands at 8.7 out of 10: brilliant, bruising, occasionally messy, and absolutely not for everyone.