The short version
Sandfall Interactive's debut turns Belle Époque France into a painted apocalypse and builds one of the best turn-based combat systems in years around it — real-time dodges and parries layered onto classic JRPG structure. Some of the open-world detours between fights are the weakest thing here, and that's a very high bar to clear.
What works
- Turn-based combat with real-time dodge, parry and jump timing — never passive
- A painted, Belle Époque-inspired world unlike anything else in the genre
- A tight main cast and a script willing to commit to an ending
- Lorien Testard's score is one of the best in any RPG this decade
What doesn't
- Open-world exploration segments are the least interesting thing in it
- Some backtracking through earlier regions late in the campaign
- Series S and some launch-window console performance needed patching
- A late-game structural swing that not everyone will love
What it is
Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG built around one premise: a towering figure called the Paintress wakes once a year, paints a descending number, and every citizen of that age disappears. The expedition of the title is the 33rd attempt to reach her monolith and stop the cycle — most of the roster is drawn from people who are about to turn 34.
It's a first release from Sandfall Interactive, a studio founded by ex-Ubisoft developers, and it plays like a team that grew up on Final Fantasy IX and Lost Odyssey and wanted to prove the classic JRPG turn order still has room to grow rather than needing to be abandoned for full action combat.
Combat: turn-based, but never passive
The core idea is simple and it works: turns are still turns, but every enemy attack can be dodged, parried or jumped over in real time, and every hit you land can be extended with a well-timed follow-up input. Miss the parry window and you eat the full hit; nail it and you can stagger an enemy that would otherwise out-scale your party.
It rewards the same reflexes an action game does without giving up the planning layer turn-based fans come for — Gustave, Lune, Maelle and the rest of the cast all read as distinct toolkits rather than palette-swapped damage dealers, and the game is comfortable asking you to actually learn each boss's tells.
It's the rare combat system that makes 'turn-based' sound like a compliment again instead of an apology.
A painted world, and its weakest thread
Lumière and the Continent are rendered in a deliberately painterly style — closer to a moving canvas than a photoreal Unreal Engine 5 showcase — and it's the thing screenshots undersell the most; it looks like nothing else releasing this generation.
The exploration built around that world is the one place the ambition dips. Between story beats and boss fights, the open sections lean on fairly conventional collectible-hunting and light platforming, and by the midgame some of that starts to feel like connective tissue rather than a destination in its own right.
The story commits to an ending
Without spoiling specifics: the game is willing to make a real structural swing in its final stretch that recontextualizes everything before it, and it's the kind of choice that critics and players have been genuinely split on since launch — some read it as the bravest thing in the script, others as a detour from the momentum the first two-thirds built.
Either way, it's a script that ends on its own terms rather than softening into a safe, franchise-friendly close, which is rare enough in the genre to be worth calling out on its own.
Performance across platforms
According to Digital Foundry's technical analysis, Expedition 33 runs an accomplished Unreal Engine 5 build on every platform except Series S, which takes a visible cut.
| Mode | Resolution | Frame rate | Load |
|---|---|---|---|
| PS5 · Quality | 1296p–1728p dynamic | 30fps | — |
| PS5 · Performance | 1080p–1440p dynamic | 60fps | — |
| PS5 Pro · Performance | 1080p (PSSR) | 60fps | — |
| Xbox Series S | 900p | 30fps | — |
Accessibility and comfort
- Full remapping on all platforms
- Adjustable difficulty at any time, including a story-focused mode
- Subtitle size and background options, with speaker names
- QTE/parry timing window can be widened for players who need it
- Camera shake and some flashing effects can be reduced
Is it worth it
$49.99 for a turn-based RPG from a first-time studio that plays like a team with three prior franchises behind it. It picked up Game of the Year nominations across the board in 2025 and a Metacritic average in the low 90s — the exploration is the one place it doesn't fully live up to the combat, and that's still an easy recommendation.
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How we reviewed it
This review draws on Sandfall Interactive's own design and patch notes, Digital Foundry's technical breakdown, and the broad critical and player consensus that formed after the game's April 2025 launch — not first-party lab testing by this desk.