Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game that many people speak but not everyone fully understands what is so special about it. It looks like a work of art, sounds like poetry, and is played… well, that’s even more interesting. Is it a real breakthrough or just a well-disguised one? Overhype? As always, it’s all in the details — and it’s time to delve into them.
Content
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a manifesto of an old-school approach to interactive art. It was not distinguished by aggressive marketing or big names (except for voice actors), but as soon as you see the first frame — you can’t put it down.
It doesn’t grab you by the collar right away. Instead, it seems to envelop you: visually, musically, conceptually. Clair Obscur is an expression of decadence, the aesthetics of a fading civilization, where Belle Époque is mixed with the ruins of a world that has already passed the point of no return.
It’s not just the end of the world, it’s its aestheticization. The light is fading and the colors are burning. The heroes are not gods, but the last chance of humanity.
A cognitive dissonance immediately arises: you seem to be playing something beautiful, but it tells you something else entirely. This is the paradox that is the magic of Clair Obscur. It is mesmerizing, but at the same time disturbing. This is the beauty «Black Square» Malevich. It is the beauty of a crack that is about to break the stone.
Clair Obscur — is a game that asks questions before you even have time to ask your own. What is real: life or memory after it? Who are we if no one remembers us? Should we escape into the illusory or live in the bitter reality?
All of this is not thrown in the player’s face, but is revealed gradually, like a multi-layered painting. The story is not read, but understood through empathy.
A special role in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 plays a special role in its style. Visually, the game is a mixture of French symbolism, Art Nouveau, and post-apocalyptic decadence.
The architecture resembles old Paris of the early 20th century, but distorted by time. Everything around you seems familiar, but at the same time — alien. It’s like having a dream that you’ve never seen but remember.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn’t ask you to play yourself. It asks you to surrender. To abandon your usual gaming reflexes, not to look for DPS tables and guides somewhere on Reddit. Instead, — listen. To think. And feel. It’s not just played — it’s lived. Like a good poem that touches your gut.
At the center of the story is absurdity wrapped in beauty. Every year, the mysterious figure of The Paintress wakes up, draws a number — and all the people whose age coincides with it — disappear without a trace, scattering into rose petals that are carried away by the wind. They evaporate from history as if they had never existed. The very act called gommage becomes an instrument of destruction. Not a sword, not a bomb, but an ordinary number on a monolith.
It is more than a metaphor. It is the personification of the power of art and the fear of forgetting. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 plays with the concept of «destruction through oblivion» in a literal sense.
The artist doesn’t just kill, she rewrites reality (hello, Thanos!). If the world were a canvas, and she was the artist who decides which stain of paint will remain and which will be erased forever.
Gamers are introduced to a sad-looking knight named Gustav from Expeditionary Unit 33. Their mission is to find the Artist and put an end to the degeneration of the city of Lumiere. But this is not a story about a heroic march against the enemy. It is rather a journey into their memory, into the melting past.
The story is skillfully structured around questions that the game does not allow us to answer immediately: where did the Artist come from? Why did she choose this particular form of genocide? Why did the count start at 100? Why does it happen every year?
There are answers, but they are scattered in fragments around the world — in dialogues, notes from past expeditions, emotional scenes around the campfire in moments of relative calm. The player feels like an archaeologist of a reality that is gradually disappearing.
The plot structure is non-linear, but not chaotic. Moments of action alternate with reflections, internal monologues, lyrical fragments that would be dismissed as «procrastination» in other games. But here they are the heart. It is in them that you feel tragedy, an atmosphere of hopelessness, but also desperate hope.
Clair Obscur avoids the cliché «good triumphs over evil». The artist is not just an antagonist. Her figure is multifaceted and tragic. She is a mixture of God, victim, and artist.
And although her actions seem cruel, they have a pattern, which in the end may even make us doubt whether we were really playing for the side of light.
The ending of the game (without spoilers) — wistful melancholy. Not a scream, but a whisper. It leaves behind a silence in which the player has to formulate what has just happened. My God, it’s a French anime!
In the end, the plot of Clair Obscur is a form of literature disguised as a game. It is a hybrid of theater, poetry, and philosophical novel. This is its value: it doesn’t just exist to be passed through. It exists to be comprehended. And there are very few games like this.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — jRPG in a French tailcoat. Mechanical surrealism, where the combat system is simultaneously a ballet, a poem, and a tactical chess game. It is based on a turn-based combat system with active elements that does not let you relax for a second.
The battles here are a hybrid of classic jRPGs like Final Fantasy X and the lesser-known Sea of Stars. Attacks need to be implemented manually, not just selected: you have to deflect blows, dodge at the right time, and poke in the rhythm of QTEs to inflict maximum damage on the enemy. This adds pace to the game — even the step-by-step approach doesn’t save you from adrenaline.
This is a game that keeps you on your toes as much as any action movie. And this is the contrast with the poetry of the plot, which creates a unique atmosphere. Am I the only one who caught the Devil May Cry vibes here?
The leveling system is multi-layered, but not overloaded. It is divided into classic levels, skill trees, and a table of key characteristics such as health, strength, luck, etc.
Enemies — are not just targets. They look like creations of a sick but rich imagination: sculpted from paint, bones, stones, and fragments of reality. Each has its own tactics and weaknesses.
And bosses are a separate topic. Battles with them unfold in several stages, each of which changes not only the mechanics but also the mood of the battle. The tension rises, the music picks up the pace, and the screen becomes a stage for a drama where our very existence is at stake.
Clair Obscur completely abandons the open world in the classical sense. This is not a «sandbox», but a curated, guided journey. Literally, an expedition. But this is its strength. The player can move forward without being distracted by grind and battles for the sake of battles (you can return to them later if you wish). There is no room for wasting time. Each moment is a part of the mosaic that gathers into the final catastrophe or revelation.
Ultimately, the game is not trying to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. It is — fair. You can die. But thanks to a clear battle system, well-thought-out structure, and the absence of «bullshit mechanics», every defeat is perceived as a challenge. And this is the magic of Clair Obscur. She turns combat into a dance, mechanics into a metaphor, and the game into the poetry of action.
In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the combat system is not just a mechanic, but a part of the story. It’s a combination of strategic decisions and instant emotions that constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat.
The basic combat mechanics are built on a skillful combination of attacks and skills. You can’t just «grind» enemies mindlessly, as in conventional action games. Here, every blow, every step requires calculation.
It’s important to know when to strike hard and when to save your energy for the next step. In fact, the whole battle is a dance in which one wrong move can lead to defeat.
The Clair Obscur combat system: Expedition 33 requires tactical flexibility. Throughout the game, you will have to master many fighting styles. Simple attacks are the basic mechanics, but the real potential is unlocked in complex combinations when you combine fire, ice, electricity, and physical attacks into a single natural storm.
Deepening the combat mechanics — successful integration of rhythm. Instead of just pressing buttons in a haphazard manner, each strike and movement is accompanied by rhythmic confirmations. If the player correctly captures this rhythm, their attacks become more powerful and effective. But remember the timing!
Enemies have their weaknesses, and, importantly, they are also capable of adaptation. They use magic, they’re cunning, and their attacks are different. The game makes you constantly analyze the situation.
Although the battle mechanics seem familiar, it is this flexibility and versatility that makes the system unique. There is no room for easy victories (except on the easiest Story difficulty level).
Every battle is a serious test. But the victories here are real dopamine rush.
In the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, sound is not a background. It is the voice of the game. It doesn’t accompany the player, but leads the way, whispers, sometimes shouts. Sometimes it’s silent — but so loud that you start to get anxious. The sound design here is not just professional — it’s filigree.
The soundtrack is a mixture of Einaudi, Oulavur Arnalds and Shimomura Yoko. The main theme is not an anthem, but a requiem that is memorable from the very first scene.
What is important — the music here is dynamic. It reacts to your actions, but not intrusively. At each location, the soundtrack adapts to the atmosphere. In the battles, the music doesn’t just build up, but unfolds into a drama. Each battle sounds like the last, even if it’s the first enemy on the list.
Voice acting is a strong point of the game. The English dubbing is respectful of the material, but the real gem is the French voice acting. It sounds authentic, with the same emotional depth that the translation does not always convey.
By the way, there is currently no Ukrainian localization. Only a machine translation option is available online.
Clair Obscur sounds as unique as it looks. It’s a rare example where the sound doesn’t just complement the game — it shapes it. And if you play without a headset, you lose half the experience. Seriously. Sound is not secondary in this game. It’s one of the main characters.
The game uses all the technical capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, but not to blind you with ray tracing. No, here the rays paint sensations, and the textures convey meanings. This is the case when technology is subordinated to an artistic goal — and the result is impressive.
Imagine a world where Art Nouveau architecture merges with broken statues, and the streets look like dream galleries. The visual language of the game is a combination of Dali, Magritte and Bosch, multiplied by the ominous aesthetics of a dying civilization.
Each location is an experiment with color, shape, and texture. The game skillfully uses lighting, depth of field, and atmospheric effects to create not just immersion, but emotional pressure. HDR — not a decorative feature, but a channel for conveying melancholy.
The levels are built with amazing attention to detail. The art direction brings to mind Dishonored or Bloodborne, but Clair Obscur goes even further. The player here is a visitor to the ruins of a beauty that has just fallen from a pedestal.
Character models look like real people, not porcelain dolls. The animations are smooth. Special attention is paid to faces. The facial animation here is not just high-quality, it is dramatic. You can read what is not said in dialogues in the eyes. It’s an emotional language without words — and it works better than any monologue.
A swing is a stroke. A punch is a flash of color. Each battle looks like a living mural in motion. Unreal Engine 5 allows you to implement complex particle effects, fluid simulation, and dynamic lighting without sacrificing performance — at least on modern hardware.
The author of these lines went on an expedition on a top-of-the-line laptop MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Norse Myth and on the almost folk — desktop GeForce 5070.
4K+ and 4K resolution (3840×2400 and 3840×2160), epic settings and DLSS Quality — mode, and the output is quite comfortable 60+ fps.
There are no frills here. Even in the most lush scenes, the camera is able to keep focus, the UI doesn’t get in the way, and the composition of each shot is well maintained.
This is a beautifully directed game. And you can feel it in everything: from the choice of fonts to the way the camera stops before cutscenes.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a rare example where graphics are not a decoration but an organic part of the experience. And although not everything is technically perfect here (some friezes are still noticeable during scene switching), the overall impression is a visual poem that you want to read again. And again. And again.
The artistic and combat project by Sandfall Interactive appeared on virtual shelves on April 24, 2025. The standard edition costs UAH 1,499 but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Deluxe Edition will cost UAH 1,799.
The Deluxe version includes:
The developers didn’t bother with DLC «8 UAH» for each petal — all the bonus content was bundled into a single Deluxe set.
And if a player likes not only to block enemy attacks accurately but also to do it in style, the Flower Avenger — add-on is designed for them.