Back again with yet another post about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Here’s yesterday’s post in which I talked about some of my frustrations with the overworld. I want to be clear that I think the overworld is mostly pretty great. It’s just has a few things that make it excruciating, sixty-plus hours into the game. I mentioned some of them yesterday, but they are still irritating me.
I. Want. Markers. In. The. Fucking. Game. For fuck’s sake! Even when I was looking at a guide as to how to get the Lost Gestrals (don’t ask), and I had no idea where some of the areas named were. At all. Even when I looked at the map, I could not remember the places. I literally had no idea where they were or what they contained.
To be clear, some of these were one-stop caves that didn’t have much in them. Which, I have to say is another thing I do not love about the game. There are several side dungeons that, quite frankly, feel like filler. Some of them, a half-a-dozen or so, aren’t actually dungeons in the classic sense. There aren’t enemies to fight or a boss at the end. Instead, there is just one item to pick up. That’s it.
To be fair, they are usually really good items. Still. I wouldn’t have missed them if they weren’t there (I mean, if I knew about them. Obviously, if they weren’t there, I wouldn’t miss them because I’d never have seen them). And with a game that has so much other contente, I don’t think they were needed.
I keep thinking how they would have benefitted from an outside voice saying, “Hey, this doesn’t need to be here.” I maintain that I appreciate that they had a vision and stuck with it, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be some tightening up here and there. I would have cut out all the one-item dungeons. They didn’t really add anything to the game and they were difficult for me to navigate through because–well, I’m not exactly sure why. There was something about the dimensions that fucked up my brain.
I’ll be even more honest. I didn’t feel the need to have the extra dungeons that were just a few rooms and then meet the boss. I can’t think of any that really stuck out. I mean, there were a few that did, but not in a good way (because they had those damn charismatic bosses I mentioned in the last post). The rest just blended together.
I would have kept with the main dungeons and maybe three or four more in each act. Along with what happens in the overworld as well. That would have been enough. As it is, and this is mostly my fault, I’m flagging. I’m in the last bit of the second act, and I don’t really want to go through the third. I don’t. I’m level 50 and arguably overleveled for the area I’m in (which is the way I play these kinds of games), and that’s because I’ve grinded (ground?) so much to compensate for my inability to play the game well.
It’s really interesting. In the trailer I included above, they’ve both said that Maelle is their favorite character. And she seems to be many people’s favorite as well. not just as a party member (she’s the most powerful, supposedly. My damage is still capped. I’m assuming it becomes uncapped in the third act or after the game ends) People have done millions of damage on one hit, and the devs are (mostly) fine with it. They nerfed Maelle’s most powerful weapon by 70%, and apparently, it’s still doing millions of damage in one hit.
James Stephanie Sterling did a video on devs allowing players to be crazy OP and why she loves it. In it, she mentions Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Edmund McMillen) and how she lost interest when it seemed like Edmund McMillen started actively working against the player. Meaning, every patch nerfed whatever was the OP meta to such a degree that it was no longer fun for her to play.
I have to agree. I fell off during Afterbirth (expansion) and really did not like Repentance (another expansion) at all. A large part of it was McMillen buying his own hype and trying to make the game as brutal as possible. I have always thought that one of the problems with these niche indie games is that the developer starts to get tunnel vision. They listen to the hardcore fans and make the game increasingly more for them. And in the process, strips out much of what makes the game appealing in the first place.
In a game that is single player, who the fuck cares if things are unbalanced? Let people be mega-OP if they want! I don’t understand people who complain about other people doing things to break the game. As Stephanie said in her video, they don’t have to use their best weapon or level up or anything else that makes them OP.
Hell, that’s a whole category of FromSoft runs–onebro (no leveling up) runs. In the strictest versions, you can’t summon, either. I have tried a onebro run in Dark Souls and Dark Souls III, and I allowed myself to summon because I can set my own rules, and I did not make it past halfway through either game (only roughly a third through DS III).
Every time there’s an OP build/weapon in Elden Ring, FromSoft would nerf it after a week or two. Some didn’t even last that long. And I had no idea why this was. Who the fuck cares if you can one-shot the final boss of the DLC with perfume bottles (true story)? Well, apparently FromSoft did because they nerfed the perfume bottles so it was no longer possible.
Anyway. I stil hate the combat of this game. I have found ways to make boss fights much easier with the pictos, luminae, and skills, and I’ll do it every damn time. I’m in a new area, which means having to learn new enemy attacks. I’ve reached the point where if I’m facing an important enemy/boss, I’ll turn off the accompanying video I’m watching on my second monitor.
I put off going into this new area until I had all my chaacters on level 50. And I still felt a knot in my stomach as I pierced the veil. Or whatever it’s called in this game. I feel this way every time I go into a new area–I just don’t want to do it.
Part of the grind was to get the smithing stones (equivalent of) I needed to upgrade my weapons to +19 (out of 20). Like From games, there’s a different material for different levels. And an increasing number of said material needed for each upgrade. This is one thing I wish FromSoft would streamline. To be fair, it’s much better than in the first Dark Souls. Back then, each different kind of weapon needed a different color titanite shard, and the upgrade paths were insane. I hear it was the same in Demon’s Souls as well. Actually, it was even more convoluted then.
It’s much better in Elden Ring, but there are still some unnecessary obfuscation. For a regular weapon, there are the smithing stones. A Smithing Stone (1) upgrades a regular weapon to +3, and it’s 2 for the first upgrade, 4 for the second, and 6 for the third. A Smithing Stone (2) does the next three upgrades in the same increments. This goes all the way up to +24 and then an Ancient Dragon Smithstone lets you upgrade it to the m ax of +25.
There are some special weapons that take Somber Smithing Stones to upgrade. Each level upgrades it once, so, for example, a Somber Smithing Stone (1) gives you the first upgrade. You will be surprised to hear that a Somber Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone upgrades it fully–at +10.
The system in this game is pretty much the same. I have a +17 weapon for each of my party members, and I have not yet seen a +20 smithing stone–if there even is one. In this game, it’s chroma I think? Oh. I just looked it up. Apparently, you can upgrade past +20. Huh. Anyway, I could keep grinding to get all the weapons up to +20, but that’s way too much grinding.