One of the reasons Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 stood out so much in early footage was how action-packed its combat looked, despite being a turn-based RPG. But while developer Sandfall Interactive has described the game as a turn-based RPG – and reinvigorated the genre, to some degree – not everyone was happy with that approach.
Veteran PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida revealed at the Busan Indie Connect Festival 2026 over the weekend that he warned Expedition 33 developers not to give the game that label (via Automaton).
Yoshida was impressed by the game’s combat, likening it to The Legend of Dragoon’s, a game he was the producer of. However, his advice was for the team to pick a different term to describe the game, since he believed ‘turn-based RPG’ is an outdated term to some players, who could end up dismissing the game as a result.
“It’s incredibly well-made, but it would be better not to call it a turn-based RPG. That alone might cause players to overlook it,” Yoshida said, as reported by 4Gamer.
Yoshida, who worked as an advisor to publishers and developers around the time of his departure from PlayStation in 2025, revealed the anecdote in a panel aimed at helping indie developers pick the right publisher for their games and making a convincing pitch. As part of his consulting work, he worked with Expedition 33 publisher Kepler Interactive, where he got to play a demo of the game two years before its launch.
According to the report, Kepler and Sandfall took his advice, using the more modern ‘reactive turn-based battles’ term to describe the game’s combat instead. As anyone who played the game will attest, Expedition 33’s brand of turn-based combat, which melds real-time mechanics like parrying and dodging with traditional turn orders, became one of the strongest and most-lauded aspects of the game.
Regardless of how much you think Yoshida’s advice helped, the success of the game is hard to deny. Expedition 33 initially managed to sell a fitting 3.3 million copies in its first month, before bumping that to 5.5 million copies by October 2025.
It’s also been one of the highest-rated games of 2025, winning multiple honours at The Game Awards that year, and ending up at number two on Eurogamer’s list of the 50 best games of 2025.
