Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hits Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on April 2. Metacritic score: 92. One of the highest-rated games of 2025, from a 30-person French studio nobody had heard of, and you can play it for the cost of your existing subscription. Claim it.
What Is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
The setup is genuinely weird and it works. Every year, the Paintress wakes and paints a number on her monolith. Everyone of that age dissolves into smoke and fades away. This year she’ll paint 33. The people left alive are sending one last expedition to destroy her before the cycle continues. You play as Gustave and a rotating party of companions who know, going in, that they have one year — or less — to live.
Developer Sandfall Interactive is a 30-person French studio. This was their first game. Publisher Kepler Interactive (the same people behind Sifu and Tails of Iron) published it on April 24, 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X. It released to near-universal acclaim — Metacritic 92 on PS5, 91 on Xbox Series X, 91 on PC, based on 84+ critic reviews. IGN gave it a 10. James Stephanie Sterling called it “one of the best pieces of media I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.”
Normally $39.99 on Steam or Xbox. On Game Pass Ultimate starting April 2? Free.
How the Combat Actually Works
It’s turn-based, but it doesn’t play like one. Your party takes actions in sequence — skills, attacks, items — but enemies telegraph every move with a text prompt before it lands. You dodge or parry in real time. Dodging is forgiving. Parrying has a tight window but rewards you with a powerful counterattack if you land it right.
IGN’s reviewer finished the main story in about 35 hours and called the combat one of the tightest implementations of real-time mechanics in a turn-based RPG ever made. RPGFan’s review described boss fights as “rhythm game moments where pattern recognition and timing combine into something genuinely thrilling.” Chains of counters, perfect parries, and mid-combo QTEs on your own attacks all stack on top of each other. You can start on easy and just experience the story, or crank it to Expert and treat every fight like a puzzle.
The Pictos system handles progression. You equip items that teach your characters abilities — Final Fantasy IX vibes. A single character can carry a full solo run on Expert difficulty if that’s what you want. The game doesn’t force a specific party build on you.
How Long Is It?
25–30 hours for the main story. 50+ hours if you do side content, optional superbosses, and New Game+. RPGSite called it “a perfect length — captivating without overstaying its welcome.” For context, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (also on Game Pass right now) takes 60–100 hours. Expedition 33 is a meal, not a commitment.
There’s no quest log, which sounds like a flaw but ends up working. Side content feels discovered, not tracked. You stumble onto journals, hidden areas, and challenging encounters rather than pulling from a checklist. Post-game superbosses are genuinely hard. If you finish the main story and want more, there’s more.
The Setting and Story
The world is French-influenced art nouveau — think Belle Époque Paris filtered through a fever dream. The Continent where the Paintress lives is a surreal, painterly landscape. Characters have French names. The tone is literary in a way that most RPGs aren’t, dealing directly with mortality, grief, and what it means to live with a fixed deadline.
RPGFan flagged that the game’s 25–30 hour runtime lets it stay tight: “Every single interaction feels deliberate, with zero wasted space.” That’s not always true of the genre. There’s no section where you’re grinding to level up or clearing filler dungeons to pad runtime. The Jimquisition review put it plainly: “even the menus go hard.”
The story takes turns you won’t see coming. Deliberately vague here — the less you know going in, the better. It has the kind of writing you’ll want to talk about after you finish it.
What Game Pass Tier Do You Need?
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate only. That’s $19.99/month and includes PC Game Pass, cloud streaming, and EA Play. It does not include Game Pass Core ($9.99/month) or Standard/Essential tiers for cloud streaming. If you’re on PC Game Pass ($9.99), this is included. If you’re on Game Pass Core or the base Essential tier, you’d need to buy it separately at $39.99.
Worth noting: the Xbox physical version is also available. If you want to own it outright, it’s available on Amazon around $39.99. The Deluxe Edition adds an OST, artbook, and bonus content for an extra $8.79.
Is It Worth Playing If You Don’t Like JRPGs?
Short answer: yes, probably. The barrier to entry is lower than most games in the genre. You don’t need 100 hours of JRPG literacy going in. There’s no 15-minute tutorial explaining the history of a fictional world. The first hour drops you into the story and trusts you to figure it out.
The real-time combat also makes it more accessible than pure turn-based games — there’s something physical happening that keeps you engaged even if you’ve bounced off games like Persona or Final Fantasy before. If you played Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth on Game Pass and liked it, this is a shorter, tighter, more story-focused version of that experience.
If you’re brand new to Game Pass or wondering whether it’s worth paying for, we covered whether Game Pass Ultimate is worth it in 2026 — April is one of the strongest months in a long time.
Any Weaknesses?
The world exploration is less structured than some RPG fans prefer. No quest log means you’re navigating by memory and intuition. Some critics flagged a slight lull in Act 2 pacing. A few negative Steam reviews cite difficulty spikes that feel inconsistent on higher settings. None of these are dealbreakers, especially at $0.
It also only runs on Xbox Series X|S — no Xbox One support. PC players need a reasonably modern setup (GTX 1070 minimum per Sandfall’s requirements).
The Bottom Line
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the best game on Game Pass right now. One of the best-reviewed games of 2025, from a studio that had never shipped anything before, available for free on April 2 if you have Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass. The 25-hour runtime means you can actually finish it. The combat is good enough that you’ll want to replay bosses after you’ve learned the patterns.
Claim it. For the full April Game Pass lineup, check out the March/April Game Pass Wave 2 roundup — Resident Evil 7 also drops on March 31, and Castlevania Anniversary Collection is free on Epic March 30.
