2025 was indeed the year of gaming, and just like any year, I wanted to try the Game of the Year again. But this time was different. Being neutral towards turn-based RPGs, I wanted Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to guide me into an unfamiliar territory.
But there is a certain kind of disappointment that only comes from wanting to love something. Expedition 33 puts you on the staircase of greatness from scene one and comes with a tiring catch. This is a ‘video game’ that begs to be admired from a distance and applauded for its taste like a movie, and then quietly feels distant as soon as you grab the controller. It looks and sounds important. It wants to be important. But the moment the gaming part begins, the illusion cracks.
This is not a disaster. It is worse than that. It is a confident (and deliberate) misfire that mistakes presentation for purpose and motion for meaning. Clair Obscur is a drama that grabbed my attention without earning my time.
Art, Music, and Storytelling That Belong on an Oscar Stage
I have watched over 200 movies this year, and trust me, if Clair Obscur were a film, it would be an awards season darling. The art direction is lavish, mournful, and purposeful. Every frame feels composed, as if someone paused the world just long enough to paint over it with grief and elegance. The color palette speaks in whispers, like Da Vinci had a meltdown at night over Monalisa being stolen. The environments feel curated rather than lived in, but that curation works in its favor here.
To add more depth to that UE5 art utilization, music plays a major complementary role. As someone who grew up as a fan of French music, I knew the game’s theme would fit if it were that sort of overdramatic, choir-style music. And it delivered.
The music carries real weight. It does not beg for emotion. It assumes you already brought some tissues with you. There’s no rise and fall in the background score. Instead, the crescendo lets silence do as much work as sound. It is the kind of score that would sit comfortably under a long, wordless montage in a prestige drama.
The narration seals the deal and perhaps tells one of the most heart-wrenching stories I have ever witnessed in video games. And no movie is perfect if the actors do not perform well. So, yes, for the most part, I was going through the same experience as a Dark or Inception. Yes, the story of Clair Obscur is that good. And that is also supported by a strong performance from an excellent cast. A cast that got half the nominations in their category at The Game Awards 2025.
The voice work is exactly how it should be, guiding the story with patience and matching the tonality of the motion actors. This is where Clair Obscur feels closest to top-tier cinema. It is like awards era dramas that trust the audience to sit still and listen. The game understands pacing when it comes to mood and theme. It knows how to hold a pause. It knows when to linger.
For a while, that is enough. You believe you are about to experience something rare. Something thoughtful. Something that respects restraint. Then you start playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has a Turn Based System Frozen in Time
The moment interaction takes center stage, Clair Obscur loses its footing. The turn-based combat is beyond familiar; it is like being on a strict diet to lose 50 pounds. This is a system that feels preserved in amber, untouched by curiosity or risk. There is no real twist, no mechanical philosophy, no fresh angle that justifies its existence beyond tradition.
Every encounter in Expedition 33 feels like an obligation. There are no interesting choices; if you know how to play turn-based games well, it is just a one-clicker at best. The rhythm becomes obvious too quickly, and once it does, tension evaporates.
One of the major disappointments I kept feeling from the first fight was the layout of the combat. Battles do not feel like extensions of the story, especially when you have so much to do in exploration, but nothing comes in handy in the combat part. They feel like speed bumps placed between narrative beats.
Worse, the entire structure feels mismatched. The game plays like a movie that has been awkwardly stitched to a mobile card game skeleton. I constantly questioned: what if Marvel’s Spider chose a turn-based combat when the exploration is so agile and vast. That is exactly what the developers went for in Clair Obscur. Nothing in the combat reflects the emotional stakes the story insists on selling.
This is where Clair Obscur becomes frustrating rather than dull. It wants you to feel loss, urgency, and reflection, but it asks you to express those feelings through a combat loop that has said nothing new in years. The result is a constant disconnect that made me watch the cinematic cutscenes of the gameplay on YouTube, instead of completing the game. You are told this world matters. The gameplay does not act like it believes that.
At times, it feels as if the developers were making a proper RPG game with all the proper mechanics of it, but the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 made them reroute the combat. So they added JRPG systems. Familiar systems. Safe systems. Systems that win your awards (or perhaps guarantee it).
The Overrated Narrative and the Comfort of Sympathy Ruined the Potential of Expedition 33
Clair Obscur has benefited heavily from the modern habit of treating indie games as inherently virtuous. The tone of the conversation around it suggests bravery where there is mostly caution. The narrative is not bad, but it is treated as profound simply because it is serious and sad. Melancholy has become a shortcut to depth.
The art is constantly praised as if beauty alone is innovation. It is striking, yes, but the praise often feels inflated, repeated until it hardens into consensus. Once that happens, criticism becomes impolite rather than necessary. When games like Hades 2 or Blue Prince take risks in the art style, a Clair Obscur comes and tries to look visually superior.
And why not? When half the gaming population approves the safe route of worthy, why wouldn’t the devs go for convenience? That is where the awards that claim critics choose it make it more confusing. When games like KCD 2 exist as an RPG game that is genuinely a complete role-playing package, just changing clothes in the name of RPG should not win that category. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 offered systemic depth, player agency, and mechanical ambition that actually justified its scale. Clair Obscur offered taste and tone, then asked to be rewarded for intention.
There is a difference between a good story and a good video game. Clair Obscur is often defended as if pointing this out is missing the point. But that defense admits the problem. If the best argument for playing a game is that it feels like watching something else, then the medium has failed its own strengths.
On top of that, the game is also drowned by its own fandom. Clair Obscur should be judged as an individual game and not by its studio or its backstory. Yes, they deserve their flowers, but I play a video game to enjoy it, not to judge its entire portfolio. So, yes, the sympathy marketing did work for Sandfall in terms of The Game Awards, but it is not convincing me to try the game further (here goes my one month of Game Pass in sewers).
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not worthless. It is just marketed in a genre that does not belong with it. It should be watched, studied, and maybe even admired. But played? I would rather go for my 100th replay of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Rishabh Sabarwal
Ishan Adhikary
