Expedition 33 is a masterpiece
Posted onTags: Video Games
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a fantastic game where Sandfall Interactive said “Heres a bunch of games we like. We glued parts from all of them into this game. Do you like this?” And damn it. I do. I took so long to write this post because I wasn’t sure how to organize my love for this game into words.
A shot of Lumiere, the first location in the game. Very French. oui oui.
It has a strong, focused vision of what the game should be, deeply uncompromising in that vision, almost to a fault. The art direction is striking, beautiful, and consistent. The writing is emotional, the characters feel real. The music is so good, that it almost becomes a flaw that after you get used to the combat, you might move through mob fights faster than you'd like because you want to jam.I’m not really sure how best to put this into words. The game is an obvious frankenstein of different ideas from various popular games. Sandfall loved Fromsoft games, it’s obvious as hell in the dodge/parry system and the lack of quest tracking. I grew to like the dodge system but man, would have loved some quest tracking. They also loved Final Fantasy, as I’m sure you already know. The Gamer News covered how the mini games and Monocco’s battle skills (hi beastmaster) were inspired by Final Fantasy. They also loved Persona! If you’ve ever seen the battle UI, it’s french P5. Theres a tiny social link system in there! I hope you like oldschool short, irrelevant Bioware romances. It’s got that too. But despite it being a game made up of glued together parts of a bunch of games, it doesn’t feel awkward for doing this. It maintains it’s own striking identity with everything else about the game.
When I said that the game is uncompromising about it’s vision, I really felt that through the combat and UI. The UI was, while very good looking and mostly readable, slightly lacking in information. I would have loved to be able to see my party’s equipment (Especially Lumina) during battle. buffs/debuffs text view in battle would have been nice too. The world map UI was also a little barebones. It felt like a love letter to Elden Ring. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was already improved. Sandfall said they were making several UX improvements recently.
Surprise! It's Persona 5 with a dash of Sekiro! You never saw it coming~
The combat’s dodge/parry system is very polarizing. I grew to love it. I think what a lot of people miss is YOU DON’T HAVE TO PARRY. YOU DON’T. JUST DODGE. ITS WAY EASIER. When I started the game I dodged everything, never parried until I was getting perfect dodges over half the time and then I started parrying maybe 30% of the time. I also got hit a LOT. And it’s ok! If getting hit hurts too much outside boss fights, go kill a few more mobs. You’re probably underleveled. I think my biggest complaint about the system is that some enemy attacks are just bullshit to read when to dodge. I’m looking at you, Act 2 boss.
And I could go on all day about the art direction. To put it simply, it’s a beautiful game. It would be even more beautiful if the game wasn’t dealing with Unreal 5’s performance trends. btw I recommend this game on PS5 if you don’t have a PC with an Nvidia GPU. PC basically needs upscaling on midrange specs and DLSS is the best option there. Digital Foundry says the PS5 version runs great. ANYWAYS, the art direction and setting is among some of the most beautiful in my memory. Every single zone is breathtaking in it’s own way. I cannot believe they launched this game without a photo mode because every new area I wanted to stop and take pictures. I think they said hey’re working on it.
Sandfall, please, photo mode, I beg.
And the music, well, the soundtrack is one of my most played playlists the past month. I’m in love with this game’s sound and music. Lorien Testard and his team are geniuses perfectly in tune with the vibe of the game at every step. The music is so memorable, emotional and catchy. You’ll be able to recognize tracks from it out of context for years, conjuring an image of where it plays. Below is an example I send to everybody I pitch on this game’s music. It’s an early combat track so you won’t get spoiled.
Flying Waters - Goblu
The game’s writing across the board was stellar. The plot beats were well paced and the twists hit hard. Even when I guessed one of the twists a handful of hours before it happened, it’s execution was so good that it surprised and delighted anyways. The character dialogue and writing is so well done and relationships grew so naturally that I was shouting in pain at the end of Act 1 because they fucking GOT ME. Also, you will love Esquie. Esquie is the best.
Oh also, play this game with the French audio. It’s so much fun. I don’t know any French so I don’t know if the acting is good, but the actors are dramatic and emotional, and it fits so well with the rest of the game’s French theming, it’s a lot of fun.
And to wrap this up, this game launched at 50 USD in 2025. In a silly way, I’m glad this game didn’t launch at 70 USD because I have a mostly true belief that 70 dollar games aren’t worth playing. I’d happily pay more for extremely high quality games, but very few games are worth it imo. Theres enough extremely high quality stuff here that it could easily command the 70 USD price tag publishers are so horny for. I would still unconditionally recommend it. It’s kind of refreshing to see when big budget games actually execute well and stick the landing, it feels rarer and rarer these days.
You cannot sleep on Expedition 33. Play it now. No longer asking etc etc. Yell at me about it too. I want to make sickos_yes.jpg faces.