After completing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, players will have the opportunity to start a New Game+ playthrough. The way to initiate such a playthrough may not be obvious, though, and some players may want to know more about NG+ before they pursue it. This guide is here to touch on all those topics, and it will give players a solid understanding of how New Game+ works in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
While this guide does not contain many spoilers, it does assume that the reader has knowledge of the game's core systems.
How to Start NG+ in Clair Obscur Expedition 33
Players who want to pursue an NG+ playthrough should begin by loading the save that was used to beat Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Players should then interact with any expedition flag and select the New Game+ option that is now at the bottom of the list. This action will cause two prompts to appear, and players must confirm their selection twice to initiate their new playthrough.
As the prompts suggest, starting a New Game+ playthrough will overwrite the save file that was used to complete the game. Players should thus make absolutely sure that there is nothing they want to do before heading into NG+.
How NG+ Works in Clair Obscur Expedition 33
What Carries Over
With respect to what carries over into New Game+, here is a list of what players will bring along with them into a new playthrough:
- All of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's party members (aside from Esquie) carry over into NG+, and they are accessible as soon as players complete the prologue.
- All the weapons, Pictos, and Tints that a player has in their inventory are retained for NG+.
- All Tint, Chroma Elixir, and Lumina upgrades follow players into NG+.
- Players keep all the outfits and haircuts that they have collected.
- The party members keep their levels, and the associated attributes and skill points, as well as any Gradient Attacks that have been unlocked.
What Does Not Carry Over
While story progress, obviously, does not carry over into NG+, as it sends players back to the beginning of the prologue, there are several other things that are not maintained. They are as follows:
- All side quest progress is lost. This includes any progress that has been made with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Lost Gestrals, and players who have unlocked Paint Break during their first playthroughs will find that the ability has not followed them into NG+.
- All relationship levels are reset. Fortunately, this reset does not cause previously-unlocked Gradient Attacks to disappear.
- Esquie's abilities do not carry over into NG+, and players will need to unlock them just as they did during their first playthrough.
- All quest items, including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's music records, disappear. Similarly, collected journal entries are not retained for NG+.
- The ability to instantly travel from any expedition flag to the Continent is lost and must be unlocked once again.
What is Different
While an NG+ playthrough is, in many ways, identical to a first playthrough, there are some key differences of which players should be aware:
- Enemies are much more difficult, having high damage output and huge health bars. This will be made very clear to players during their first tutorial battle against Maelle, as she has over 150,000 HP on Expeditioner difficulty.
-
Pictos and weapons that are collected from the environment, earned by defeating enemies, and purchased from merchants are replaced with higher-level versions. For example, the
Dodger
Pictos that players receive at the beginning of Spring Meadows is Level 1 during a first playthrough, while it is Level 21 in NG+.
-
Low-level Chroma Catalysts are replaced with higher-level variants in NG+. In fact, players will start receiving an abundance of
Grandiose Chroma Catalyst
as soon as they reach Spring Meadows, and they will earn
Perfect Chroma Catalyst
in the end-game.
- Players will receive much more Chroma when they pick it up off the ground in New Game+.
- All Shards and Shapes are back in NG+, allowing players to continue increasing their Tint and Chroma Elixir capacities. That said, Tints cannot be upgraded beyond "strong," diminishing the value of additional Shapes.
What to Do Before Starting NG+
With character progression, Pictos, and weapons carrying over to NG+, it is a good idea to get solid character builds established before initiating a more-difficult playthrough. Indeed, players are going to need to be capable of consistently dealing large amounts of damage almost immediately upon starting New Game+, and they may struggle if their party members are not equipped with strong weapons, Pictos, and Luminas, or if they simply do not have well-distributed attributes. That said, players can always lower the difficulty in NG+ if they need some time to improve their builds.
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 92 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- April 24, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Sandfall Interactive
- Publisher(s)
- Kepler Interactive
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Genre(s)
- Turn-Based RPG, JRPG, Fantasy
