I am still playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) in one-to-two hour chunks. And I still go into every session with a sinking dread in my stomach. I don’t want to play it. But I do want to play it. But I don’t want to play it. But….
Look. I have very complicated feelings about the game, and I’ll get into them in this post. I wrote about it in the last post, focusing on the frustrations with parrying. I have written before about my weariness with games focusing on deflection/parrying as the main (or only) combat option. It’s all the rage since Sekiro came out, and I am so over it. I’ll say it once more for emphasis–not everyone can get the timing down. I don’t mind if the parry gives a great advantage (well, yes I do), but to make it so you *have* to parry?
Over it.
The fuck over it!
I know it’s devs prerogative to do this. I am not about to try to ban the parry. But I would just ask that there be some other way to make progress in the game.
I mean, to be fair, I’m still playing on normal, and I’m making (very slow) progress. I beat a really tough optional boss that I read (while looking up how to fight it after dying three or four times) can one-shot people on story mode. I was able to withstand one or two hits without parrying or dodging, but the problem was that the boss did three+-hit combos.
How did I beat it? I have several ways to heal in the fight, so I wasted half my turns madly healing the people in my party. You can heal the whole party twice outside combat (started with once), so I went into the fight after healing my party. Then, immediately got Maelle killed. If an attempt started out like that, I knew I was going to be on the back foot for the whole fight.
I did not get this boss’s attacks at all. And, I fucked up my buttons. I started pressing RB thinking it was B. B is dodge and RB is parry. There is no block. Oh, and A is jump. There are specific attacks that you MUST jump, and if you do it correctly, you have to hurridly press RT to counter. Weirdly, I do ok with the jump. Not great, mind, but ok.
I really tried the audio cues, but I can’t hear them half the time. Plus, as I mentioned yesterday, there is one enemy whose attack I can’t even see. Seriously. Plus, the camera angle is horrid. This enemy attacks three times with quick, quick, delayed, slow.
So. To recount. In order to beat the enemies, you have to know each of their attacks. There are anywhere from 1 -3 enemies Weirdly, it’s almost easier when it’s just the boss because I don’t have to worry about the other enemies. But I hate the boss fights because they have so much health.
I have included the launch trailer above. I have not watched all of it because it reveals a lot, even a minute in. That’s very FromSoft-like as well. I never watch From trailers until after I play the game. Yes, it’s hard to tell what’s
Back to this optional boss. Since I have to heal or revive every other action, the fight takes much longer than it needs to. You really want to beat the enemies/boss as quickly as possible because it’s the power of attrition. Heal-wise, I have two small heals and two small revives as ‘tints’. These replenish at the bonfire. I have a skill on Gustave that heals him upon attack. Lune has one that heals any person in the party. And Maelle has a shield that greatly negates damage. Plus, I have a skill on all of them that gives them a shield when their health goes below 50%.
There are way too many skills and lumina. WAY too many. I’m overwhelmed. Plus, the game doesn’t really explain what to do with them. I mean, they do a basic tutorial, but it’s way too little way too early. I had to Google how to do the lumina…wait. picto? Pictos and lumina. Skills are something different. That’s a whole tree in and of itself. So. You equip pictos, then as you do combat, you learn them. Once you learn them, you don’t have to equip them as picto any longer. You can equip them as lumina, and anyone can use it once it’s a lumina. At the same time. Pictos themselves can only be equipped by one person at a time.
Skills, on the other hand, are more your standard skills in any RPG. Do this much of this damage, heal someone this much, make an ally powerful, etc. You can equip up to six, I think. And you spend points at the bonfire to unlock skills. Of course, the more powerful skills cost more points.
The one thing I never thought I’d like is the turn-based part of the combat. Me and turn-based combat do not get along. I have tried it before, but it’s never clicked. In this game, it just feels right. It’s the one thing about the combat that does. What I don’t like about it, though, is that I stil have to do defensive stuff (parry and dodge and jump) while being attacked. I feel like the devs want to have their cake and eat it, too.
I also don’t quite understand why certain members in my party get skipped or when I get an extra turn. I know it has something to do with statuses applied, but I don’t have a grasp on that.
Someone in the Discord mentioned that they watch the character being attack and as soon as the attack touches the character, they parry or dodge. Which sounds sensible, and I will try it, but my problem is that my reactions are shit. So by the time my brain registers that something is happening, aurally or visually, it’s too late.
By the way. I have to stress again that I cannot hear the audo cues half the time. It’s not just because there’s battle music–I’m pretty sure there aren’t audio cues for every attack.
Here’s the problem. James Stephanie Sterling mentioned it in the video I posted from her yesterday. All the attacks are different. All of them. Some are faster, some are slower. Some are delayed, and some are without hesitation. There are ones that are super delayed, and there are ones that are too quick for me to dodge/parry. When I was fighting the difficult optional boss, I just could not get his attacks at all. I only got him because as I said, I’m ridiculously over-leveled and I have several different ways to heal.
I also got really frustrated because I could not find my way forward. I went around in circles several times (over-leveling more), and finally looked it up in frustration. Oh, I even went backwards (not intentionally), thinking it might be the way forward. It was not. I found out that I had done something pretty silly. I had found the next bonfire and lit it up, saw that there was what looked to be a boss area, and immediately went to explore the area some more (avoiding the boss).
I did this yesterday and forgot about it, apparently. I mean, I knew I found the bonfire, but I thought it was the one that leads into the area I explored today. Even though there is another bonfire not far away.
And this is what I mean when I say that the level design is lacking in a very important way–it’s really hard to tell what’s forward progress. Even though this was mostly on me, in general, the level design falls short.
Will I keep playing? Probably. Will I finish the game? I’m not sure. I don’t find the combat satisfying at all, which is a shame.