Preview: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Looks Stunning, Hits Hard, and Feels Fresh on PS5

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an ambitious title heading to PS5 later this year from new studio Sandfall Interactive. However, playing through a three hour demo this week, we would have never guessed this is the French developer’s first project. Expedition 33 is a polished and AAA feeling experience that takes its inspirations from JRPGs, but then makes it its own with gripping performances, flashy, addictive combat, and some of the most creative world designs we have ever seen.

The story is what’s really going to grab you from the get. In a Belle Époque inspired France, the ominous Paintress paints a lower number each year, and everyone that age fades away to dust. The titular Expedition 33 is made up of those in their last year of life before they are painted out of existence. It’s not the first expedition to try and take The Paintress down, but hopefully it's the last.

Tragedy strikes almost immediately, though, as the crew travel to The Paintress’ home, The Continent, a twisted landscape made up of sunken buildings, floating rocks, and the littered remains of previous expeditions. What may strike you beyond its visuals (which we’ll get to), is how dark and serious the story set up is.

This is a world drenched in tragedy and death, and very quickly the severity of the situation is established. Even without all the context of the characters or world, we were struck by some story moments early on in our demo. There are moments of levity, but it's the willingness of the game to steep itself in the darkness of its plot that really stood out to us. It's a testament to the writing and world building that without the establishing chapter of the story, we were still locked in and eager to push the narrative forward.

A lot of that immersion comes from the visuals, and it cannot be understated how impressive they are. Running on Unreal Engine 5, character models are sharp and the backdrops are incredibly detailed. However, it’s not just from a resolution perspective that Expedition 33 impresses. The art direction is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Of the handful of areas we explored each had its own staple within this fantasy world. One saw an ethereal tree take up most of the skyline, whilst The Paintress’ canvas with the ominous “33” glows from afar. Another was an underwater area with air bubbles floating around us, giant sea creatures ambling above, chained up mines scattered across horizon, and the light refraction through the water, giving the whole thing a magical hue.

Then there's the level in between, which takes a sort of miniature tilt-shift style. It’s here that you’ll travel from one main area to the next. Expedition 33 is made up of several open levels, with short deviations from the main path allowing room for some exploration.

While from our experience you're never discovering anything major beyond a bit of loot or some audio logs, both really feed into the experience in a succinct way. Audio logs give us some insight into previous Expeditions, which we lapped up considering the mysterious nature of its setting. Then loot can help build your character, linking into one of the strongest aspects of our time with the demo: combat.

The combat in Expedition 33 is turn-based primarily, but Sandfall has incorporated real-time actions to spice up each conflict. Players can dodge, parry, and even jump — but the window for success is incredibly narrow. There are also quick time events as you deal more powerful blows, again asking you to really pay attention during combat. This particular writer isn’t overly keen on turn-based combat, so these tweaks made the system far more engaging.

It is easy to become a little overwhelmed with all the damage types, defensive stances, and abilities when the game is throwing tutorial after tutorial at you. After a few hours, however, we started to settle into it quite nicely. Each skill attack required a select amount of points, which could be earned with basic blows or successful parries. Like many games with turn-based systems, lining each character up to boost the other in a devastatingly damaging run for the enemy is incredibly satisfying.

And like anything else in Expedition 33, combat is gloriously stylish. Menu designs are spectacular, and the slick animations give each attack a real heft. We have to shout out the music, too. It’s brilliant throughout the whole demo, but is particularly rousing during battle.

The buildcrafting from our short time with the game has some great potential too. With each new level you are awarded three points to level up aspects like health and strength stats. Then you also earn skill points to unlock specific attacks, so you can focus on certain damage types or even healing abilities. Then you have your weapons that you discover in your travels, and passive buffs called Pictos to amplify those skills even further.

By the end of our demo, we already had plenty of options, and all of this is applicable to every character in your party, too. We imagine we’ll spend a lot of time tweaking builds and playing around with abilities upon the full release, especially since the combat itself is quick-paced and great fun.

Come the end of our demo, we were left eager to play more, yet almost a little disappointed that we’d had the beginning of the game spoiled by being dropped into the ongoing story. That, to us, is a sign of great writing, because first and foremost, we just wanted to know more about these characters and the mystery of The Paintress.

On top of that, Expedition 33 is good old fun, with snappy and addictive combat, a dense build system, and some of the best looking environments of the year — if not the generation. We're keen to see how the whole thing runs on PS5, and we have an inkling it’s going to benefit from the extra juice of the PS5 Pro.

What we have to compliment the most, however, is the balancing act that Sandfall is pulling off to make Expedition 33 a JRPG hybrid. It has all the hallmarks of the genre with parties, abilities, turn-based combat, and save-the-world storylines. But it’s doing all that with a much more nuanced and almost mature approach to its storytelling and characters. Match that up with the real-time combat elements, and its top of the line visuals, and you have a game that we think will have a much more western mainstream appeal than your typical JRPG.

Regardless of whether you’re a big JRPG fan or not, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game you should be looking out for. Its impeccable art design and high-concept premise make it incredibly easy to be drawn into its world. Great character drama and a growing depth to character builds and combat will invest you even further. We may have only scratched the surface with our demo time, but if Sandfall Interactive is able to keep it up over the course of the full game, we could be onto something truly special here.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is set to launch on PS5 April 26th. Are the game's sparkly visuals and tweaks to turn-based combat enough to draw you in? Let us know down in the comments below.