It looks like Sandfall Interactive has a hit on their hands with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as the single-player RPG continues to receive praise. With real-time mechanics while being turn-based, the new game offers a mix of new and old ideas that appear to have resonated with gamers and reviewers alike. It took only two days for it to sell over 1 million copies, with half of that in the first day, and there was some doubt it would do well given it released on April 24, a few days after The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which has also done extremely well. In the end, though, it seems the two titles may’ve inadvertently supported each other by giving RPG fans an expanded range of choice and experiences. Publisher Kepler Interactive expressed support as well and was seemingly not surprised by the success of the new game.
“We were confident in that. And it went as well as it possibly could have done in our eyes. And, actually, proximity to Oblivion didn’t seem to harm us at all. In many ways, I think it just drew attention to quality RPGs that week and everybody was thinking and talking about the genre.”
Matt Handrahan – Kepler Interactive Senior Portfolio Director
The team behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also garnered praise from French President Emmanuel Macron on their accomplishment with the game, which is inspired by France’s La Belle Epoque (The Beautiful Age) historical period (~1871-1914) that followed the Franco Prussian War, by saying (via VGC), “Congratulations to Sandfall Interactive and all the creators of Expedition 33. You are a shining example of French audacity and creativity.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33‘s current rating on Metacritic sits at 92 with a user score of 9.7 from 7,009 user ratings. Meanwhile it has a modest count on SteamDB with a all-time peak of just over 129K players, currently just under 119K. It has had similar scores in the 90s (via VGC) on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC so it appears to be doing well on all platforms with its $49.99 price.
Discussion (3 replies)
Join Discussion →Don’t know what to make of this one
It looks like BG3 or original Dragon Age on the surface, but every time I read a review it sounds like a Souls game
It's definitely no souls game. It has some soulslikeness to it in that you have to learn the patterns of the enemies to successfully counter them, but it's not frustrating like a souls type, because it's more forgiving than that,
To be fair, I think the gameplay is mediocre at best, what sells it is the art direction, character designs, and the soundtrack above all.
It's turn based combat with real time parry and dodge mechanic. I've seen some reviews write it off as a QTE game, but it's not really QTE unless you consider blocking enemy attacks in every game a QTE.
For a studio of 30 people the game looks amazing, easily AAA quality. Of course the trade off is that the world is static and the maps linear.
I've played about 4 hours, and while the intro / prologue hooked me, I'm struggling to find inspiration to pick it up again, but this might be a me problem not necessarily the game's fault.
No marketing shenanigans here, just a straight up number.
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