Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 offers up turn-based tradition, but with plenty of exciting twists - Preview

Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was undoubtedly one of the stars of the summer games reveal season - a new reveal that shocked when it made its debut at Xbox’s summer showcase back in June. Now, we’ve had a closer look at the game running in real-time in front of us - and this early first glimpse showcases that the early hype stands a good chance of being justified.

In a hands-off demo, I got to see a short stretch of a single scenario in the French-developed adventure. Where the game is made matters, in a sense, because of its very nature: this is, for all intents and purposes, a ‘JRPG’. Certainly, it features many of the mechanical and system design tropes that people most associate with the genre. 

The catch is, of course, that it isn’t made in Japan. Like Sea of Stars  or like the criminally underrated The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, I’ll leave you to figure out what that means about where this game stands in genre definitions. But the point is this: if you enjoy those sort of games on a mechanical level, you’re likely to enjoy this.

The obvious comparison to make that you’re going to hear a lot is to Persona 5. It’s not an incorrect starting point, either - one glance at Expedition 33’s menus and its stylish camera movements and over-the-top animations in combat tells you all you need to know about this game’s prime inspiration, at least for battle. With that said, it’s clearly also trying much to push beyond that association, deploying what the developers are calling “Reactive Turn-Based Combat”. They're even including that word - Reactive - in the game's genre as listed in press releases and on storefronts. 

The idea is one we’ve seen in other games - that as well as menu navigation to select moves, there’s a range of real-time actions and reactions the player can perform to maximize damage and performance. So this is a strictly turn-based game, with a character turn-order displayed down the left-hand side of the screen. But that tradition is augmented with things like real-time dodging, frame-perfect parrying, counters, combos, and reactive quick-time events that when performed correctly will make the associated skill perform to its maximum potential. 

The game is keen to encourage players to engage in this system, though it appears it’ll be totally possible to muddle through combat without using them. At the end of every counter, the battle-end screen flags up how many successful counters and parries you’ve had, for instance - really pushing to the player that they should be engaging with this stuff. 

While it apes Persona and other Japanese games in system design, Expedition 33 beats a path more of its own creation in terms of look and feel. It’s visually gorgeous, with battles punctuated with impressive particle effects. The environments are lovely, too: this demo takes place underwater, though mysteriously the characters can breathe and talk. The visuals are striking - aquatic plants sway with the currents, the characters cutting around and across shipwrecks and the remnants of some flooded civilization.

Much of the storyline remains a mystery to me, though the base concept is fabulously simple: your cast of characters, all 33 years old, are doomed to die in one year. The party heads on a journey - an expedition, if you will - in an attempt to slay a god-like being and save their lives.

There’s much to like here - characters that immediately appeal, an intriguing narrative hook, and enemy designs that are interesting from both a visual and combat design perspective. Looking at the characters, all in their expedition uniforms, I sort of wish each had a more distinct individual look - but for all I know that might be coming with time, as I didn’t get a look at any gear or equipment systems.

In short, though, it looked good. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s reveal trailer showed us style - all that peacocky showiness of Persona 5, but filtered through a Western perspective. A first hands-off look at the game running shows us that substance is also present in carefully-considered combat systems that want to do more than copy what came before - there is ambition here towards evolution.

The real proof will come when we get to go hands-on, of course. Hopefully that comes soon. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is releasing for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X & S at some point in 2025.