Developer: Sandfall Interactive
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £41.99 (Humble, Steam and Epic)
Released: 24th April 2025
Available on: Humble, Steam and Epic
Played Using: Xbox One Control Pad
Approximate game length: 35 + Hours
Every year, on a distant mountain, the Paintress paints a number, always one less than the last. Once complete, anyone over that age fades away, this is known as the Gommage. Every year, shortly after the Gommage, an expedition of the brave goes out to stop her, so far none have succeeded. Each of these expeditions are named after the number that appears on the mountain and, generally, are populated with people whose age is now on the mountain. This time it’s expedition 33’s turn.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an RPG with a turn based combat system that utilises real-time mechanics (we’ll go into those later). Now, when I say RPG, this is more akin to something like Final Fantasy or Persona than the Elder Scrolls or Baldur’s Gate. In fact, much of the in combat UI resembles that of Persona 5 which makes quite a lot of sense as I’ve read a few interviews where they state that that game was an influence.
Something to keep in mind is that Sandfall Interactive are based in France and this game is distinctly French. For example, all the expeditions that go to try and stop the Paintress leave from a place called Lumiere, which has a lot of Parisian architecture and features the Eiffel Tower (well, sort of). The reason I bring this up is because the characters occasionally swear in French even if you have the language set to English. It can be a bit strange to hear the characters shout ‘Merde’ when a moment before they had said many other expletives in English.
Now from the screenshots you may notice that this game has something of a unique look to it. This is because the artstyle of the game is inspired by the Belle Époque artistic movement, I have to admit that until I read that on the Steam store page I had not heard of this movement before this game, it seems my college art classes might have skipped it. Still, it makes for an absolutely stunning looking game both with its vistas and enemy designs.
Once you’re out of the initial explorable area (aside from the prologue) you’re thrust onto the world map. From here you can start to explore this strange world and find the many other explorable areas.
While within these explorable areas you will see enemies wandering around. If they notice you they’ll immediately begin to approach and if they touch you combat will begin. If you choose to attack them first it will initiate combat but in this case your party will get to fight first (usually).
Within most areas you’ll find a merchant that accepts a resource called Chroma that you attain after each battle as well as sometimes finding within the areas.
As was mentioned earlier the combat in this game is turn based but is also reactive. On your turn you can attack, aim, use a skill or an item. Using a skill consumes AP, the amount of which depends on the skills cost. Using a skill is also one area in which the ‘reactive’ part of the combat comes into effect, as the game will ask you to press a button (A on the Xbox Control Pad) in order to perform the skill to its best ability.
AP is regained when you use a base attack (which do not consume AP) or when you parry a blow. However, as you progress through the game you will develop other ways to regain AP. Once a skill or an item is used or when a base attack is performed that character’s turn ends. Aiming, however, does not end the character’s turn and instead allows them to shoot at an enemy. Each shot uses up a point of AP. Doing this is usually ineffective, however if you can identify an enemies weak point you can use it to cause a high amount of damage or disable an ability they have.
When an enemy attacks you can choose to parry or dodge, this is the other part of the reactive combat. If you time it correctly you can avoid all the incoming damage and then perform a counterattack. However, doing this can be a tricky affair as many of the enemies will perform feints, do a combo or add in a different type of attack.
Outside of combat there are two ways to heal your party members. One is by using a chroma elixir the other is to rest at an Expedition Flag that you will find in most explorable areas. As was mentioned previously you can rest while at an Expedition Flag which will recover your party members health, refill chroma elixirs and replenish any items used during combat. However, it will also respawn any defeated enemies in the area, with the exception of bosses. That isn’t the only thing these flags do though. They also allow you to allocate attribute points that you earned from leveling up as well as learn new skills.
In typical RPG fashion you level up by gaining experience through defeating enemies. Each time you level up you earn three attribute points and one skill point. You can only spend these attribute and skill points when interacting with an Expedition Flag. Another thing that increases with each level is that character’s lumina score (more on this shortly), which can be used immediately without the use of an Expedition Flag.
In this game there are five attributes: Vitality, Might, Agility, Defense and Luck. Now, it is tempting to think that might will specifically relate to how much damage you will cause. In part you would be right but there is more to it. You see, certain weapons will scale their damage based off of the score in a specific attribute that is determined by the weapon in question. So it may be that with one weapon the might attribute is used to scale the damage and another uses luck or agility.
The effectiveness of the attribute points is affected by what weapon that character has equipped. Some weapons will give greater improvements to one attribute than another, which is indicated by the attribute having a sword beside the number with a corresponding letter. The letter shows how effective spending an attribute point there will be.
Interestingly, when you increase an attribute the stats relating to that attribute are highlighted and will show how much they increase by and sometimes increasing one attribute will cause another to improve as well.
Weapons can be increased in level by expending a resource called a chroma catalyst, which you can find in the world, purchase from merchants and sometimes win as loot at the end of a combat.
As the weapons level increases so does its power (which assists with attack damage) and eventually special bonuses will be unlocked for that weapon. The cost of increasing a weapons level goes up each time you do it, and after a while normal chroma catalysts will no longer be useful for that weapon and you’ll need to use a more potent variant which again can be won through combat, found in explorable areas or purchased from merchants.
As you play through you will pick up items called a Picto. Pictos are skills that can be equipped to provide passive bonuses such as increasing the amount of damage caused when counterattacking or providing a large offensive bonus when that character’s health is below a specific threshold. Each character can equip up to three pictos at once.
After winning four combats with a picto equipped, that picto becomes unlocked as a lumina. What this means is that the benefit that the picto granted while equipped is now available to be added to any character without having to use up a picto slot. Each lumina costs a certain amount of lumina points to equip, some being very cheap and others being extremely expensive. You can change out these lumina as much as you wish to allow yourself to create builds for specific encounters.
Each character has their own bespoke mechanic in combat. That can vary wildly, with one character you have to take into consideration what stance they are in while another requires a certain amount of ‘stains’ to perform a skill. I won’t go into exhaustive detail about the various characters because that really is part of the joy of playing this game. What I can say is that I had a lot of fun working out the synergies between the characters and the luminas they had equipped.
This game continues to add in new mechanics right up until about midway through the second act (approximately), such as a relationship mechanic. This relationship mechanic is a wonderful addition as it really allows you to explore and understand these characters more. It also has the additional benefit of adding new special abilities if you take the time to advance it far enough.
It’s because of the relationship mechanic that the real depth of this game’s writing came into focus for me. These characters are perhaps the most… human I’ve seen in a game. They are messy and complex with conflicting emotions with both each other and themselves.
I really want to highlight something that I’m sure has been mentioned a lot about this game. This is an indie title that looks stunning and is superbly written, it’s also a title that no triple A publisher would ever dare to take a risk on. And the game was created by a core team of thirty or fourty people. I’m so glad that Sandfall Interactive have had such success with this game and I really hope to see more from them.
Oh, and just in case it wasn’t clear. Yes, I do recommend this game, especially if you enjoy RPG’s.
