Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of those rare RPGs that doesn’t ask you to be patient.
Most games in this genre have a slow start. You grind through tutorials, sit through long cutscenes, and wait for the systems to click. Expedition 33 skips all of that. Within the first hour, you’re already deep in combat that feels genuinely satisfying, moving through a world that looks and sounds unlike anything else in the genre.
What makes the combat work so well is that it never lets you go passive. You’re not just selecting menu options and watching animations play out. Every turn asks you to parry, dodge, or react in real time. It’s the tactical depth of a classic turn-based RPG, but with the pulse of an action game. You stay alert. You stay in it.
The world itself earns its own section. The art direction is haunting in the best way, and the orchestral score hits every emotional beat. Simply walking through the environments feels intentional, like the whole game was designed to reward curiosity.
The story holds up too. The Expedition premise creates constant momentum. There’s a reason to keep moving forward, and the narrative never meanders long enough to lose you.
If there’s a criticism to make, it’s hard to find. Expedition 33 is lean. No filler, no bloat, no padding to inflate the runtime. It respects your time in a way most AAA RPGs don’t.
Final verdict: 9/10. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the gold standard for what a modern RPG should be. It’s polished, it’s beautiful, and it’s fun from the first minute to the last.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 scores 9/10 on immediate fun. A visual and auditory eargasm that makes turn-based combat feel like high-speed cinema.
Turn-based (if you hate that).
One question: did it deliver immediate fun? Graphics, story depth, difficulty and critical acclaim are ignored. Pick-up-and-play accessibility is rewarded; anything that makes you wait for the fun to start is penalized.
How we score: We don't care about graphics, story depth, or critical acclaim. One question — did it deliver immediate fun? We reward pick-up-and-play accessibility and penalize anything that makes you wait for the fun to start.