Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

If you're new here (welcome, btw), I'm a turn-based JRPG guy. Give me a party, a menu and a turn to think, and I'm home. So when the first trailer dropped, long before the awards and the think pieces, I already knew I was buying this. Turn-based, gorgeous, and a tease of a hook I couldn't stop thinking about. I didn't know it was going to be anything special. I just wanted it.

Then it won nine Game Awards, including Game of the Year 2025, and a strange thing happened: people started refusing to play it. Too much hype, the awards are rigged, turn-based is dead, pick your reason. I get it. I've skipped things for less. But trust me on this one. It's just that good.

It's perfect for me. I suck at souls-likes and I'm too chicken to even start Sekiro. But I'm 1000% a turn-based and tactics fan. I loved The Legend of Dragoon and the first Magna Carta (never played the second one, because it decided to be a turncoat from PS to Xbox). This game sits right in that lineage. The QTEs make every fight exciting and make you pay attention, but the turns in between let you think and plan.

What makes it great, though, is the builds. Each party member has a specialty, and on top of that there's near-limitless variation to design your own favorite synergy. You want hard mode? Don't overtune, or unequip your passives altogether. You want to cheese? Min-max like me. My party is Maelle as a 1 HP glass cannon, Lune as the build-up nuker and healer, Sciel as the tank and support. I finished the game before the patch, so yes, I unashamedly cheesed the entire last act and the optional bosses with Maelle. This game lets everyone pick it up and play it to their own optimal style.

Why a 9 and not a 10: it tries to attract turn-based fans and action fans, and it's purely neither. For the hybrid player, it's better than both. For anyone used to only one, there's friction, and I'll acknowledge it.

Here's the story in beats, and I'll keep it vague on purpose. The prologue hooks you immediately. The scene after the landing sets the stage and the mood for everything after. The end of Act I tells you this game doesn't pull punches. The entry into the final act tells you this is a proper fantasy world that'll blow your mind. And the ending... makes you pick a side.

Without saying who or how: someone you've grown attached to will not be around for the rest of the trip, and the game makes sure you feel it. The world you've been fighting for might not be what you think it is. And when the credits are in sight, you'll have to decide what to do about that. So will half the fandom. The mark of a great story is how long you keep thinking about it, and arguing about it, after the credits roll. This one will probably stay with me for good.

The music is outta this world. Start the game, sit on the main menu, don't touch anything. You'll get the feels before you've pressed a button. Lorien Testard wrote a soundtrack that sat on top of Billboard's classical charts for six weeks, and the game hasn't even started yet.

The intro chapter is the most hooked I have ever been in a video game. It opens with drama, not action, and that drama is the best motivation for playing the entire story I've ever been handed. It sets the stage, sets the mood, sets everything. And then there's the look: dark, fantastical, unique, crafted with love by people who clearly cared about every brushstroke. Fantasy at its peak.

What this story is about: grief, and what a family does with it. Letting go, or refusing to. Who gets to decide when a story ends. Heavy stuff for a game where you ride a giant friendly creature across the ocean, and it carries every bit of it. The twists are gut wrenching because they land on those questions, not on plot mechanics. It's very grounded. I'll tell you that.

So why a 9? Fantasy stories always give and take. When you find out in the final act what this story is really about, it minimizes, a little, the value of the characters and the journey you took with them. It's still a generational story. I don't know how I'd fix it, or if it even needs fixing. But part of the depth I had to brush off with a "yeah, right, okay, it's a fantasy story after all," and that's the one point.

All of them are great, and I have nothing else to say but glaze over every one of them. Ben Starr as Verso, Jennifer English as Maelle, Charlie Cox as Gustave, Kirsty Rider as Lune, Shala Nyx as Sciel, Andy Serkis as Renoir, Rich Keeble as Monoco. Top tier, the lot. Jennifer English took Best Performance at The Game Awards for Maelle. I'd have voted Verso, but Ben Starr would be insufferable about it (JK), so Jen can have it.

US$49.99 at the time of writing. Call it a 40 to 60 hour game; I lost track of time, and the side content is worth it for the lore and the costumes. Buy it for the story and the music alone and it's a steal. Great gameplay to boot. This is a brainless buy.

My 10 for games means one of three things: I'm biased, I'm nostalgia-baited, or it's just that good. No nostalgia here. Biased, maybe, toward turn-based and toward a party of three women who carried me through the final act. But mostly, it's just that good.

I haven't touched the free update with the new bosses, and I'm being honest about why: I'd need actual skills now, and I'd rather lavish in my cheesy memories a little longer. Buy me a coffee and I'll go get humbled. Maybe.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: a painting you'll want to live in, and a story that asks whether you should.