I’m back for the final part of my review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Well, that’s my plan, but I’ve been known to milk a few extra posts out of a topic. In the last post, I listed what I liked about the game and part of the first big thing I didn’t like about it–the combat. I’ll pick up where I left off beacuse I have more to say about the combat.
Combat
The combat never gelled with me because it’s so heavily parry-based. Yes, you can dodge, but then the fight lasts twice as long because you forwent the damage the counter gave you–which was a lot. By the end of the game, I parried all the time except when I hit the really tough optional bosses that had a million attacks in a row. Then, I just needed to survive until I could have my one (Maelle) turn.
People insist that there are audio cues for every attack. That may be true, but I could not hear them half the time. In addition, the audio cues were a lie–what do I mean? They weren’t consistent as to when you should parry. This is probably one of my biggest complaints about the combat, if not the biggest. All the attacks are timed differently, and it’s frustrating as fuck. I have said that I had to turn off the video I had playing on the second monitor when I was in a boss fight because that along with the combat music made it impossible for me to hear the audio cues. Even when I turned off the combat music, I still couldn’t always hear the audio cue.
If I did hear it, I didn’t necessarily know what it meant. Or rather, when I was supposed to parry. I still didn’t know by the end of the game. My solution was to have many ways to heal party members/the party, to employ the revival mechanics as much as I could, and at the end, to one-shot the hardest optional bosses.
I also didn’t like the gazillion different attacks/skills/pictos/luminae that they added throughout the game. I didn’t appreciate only being able to have six skills in a fight. They should let you choose from the whole list you unlocked as long as you had the AP to use the skill.
I still haven’t seen any of the level 3 gradient attacks in combat. Hell, I haven’t see half of the level 2 gradient attacks. If you’re shit at defense the way I am, you won’t be able to obtain the AP you needed in order to get the higher leveled gradient attack. And when I made it so I one-shot bosses, well, that made the whole gradient attack system moot.
I’ve already written quite a bit about how I did not appreciate that on the defensive end as well. Adding pretty significant attacks for the enemies/bosses late in the second act/after the game ends, well, that doesn’t sit right with me.
I never liked the combat, but I knew that was an issue with me rather than the game. It’s how I felt about Sekiro, a game it has obviously taken its cue from. In the RKG Discord (in the proper channel), people are saying they had issues with some of the audio cues, too, or just not getting the parry. I feel better that I’m not alone in this, even though it’s still mostly how bad I am at the combat.
There were a ton of things I did not like about the combat. There was very few things I did. And yet, I kept playing. And not even begrudgingly. In the beginning, I could only play an hour at a time, but by the end, I was playing for several hours straight. But I never really enjoyed the combat. I just…did it. Because I was doing it. Because I could not not do it. Because my brain gets obsessed now and again.
At the end, I hated it so much that I crafted Maelle one-shot builds because I did not want to do the combat any longer. And when I ran into situations where I was forced to fight with other characters, I was mad. I so did not want to actually engage in the combat any longer, but I had to at least do all the major over-world bosses.
I know that me being shitty at the combat colors how I feel about it, but even without the heavy reliance on parrying, there are so many little tihngs about the combat that were not great. As I said, the audio cues were inconsistent, the visual cues were confusing, and there were just way too fucking many different components. Luminae, pictos, skills, gradient attacks/gradient parries, parries, dodges, jumping (as a defensive move), not to mention each party member has a different combat system.
The tutorial is not great, and they throw so much at you in the beginning–and yet, do not explain them to you more than briefly. And, yes, I know that FromSoft does this, but I don’t like it about them, either. They are not gods. You don’t have to slavishly follow everything they do.
With all the mechanics and systems the game throws at you, there was still something missing at the heart of it for me. I didn’t enjoy the combat at all. Which begs the question why I kept playing. I really couldn’t tell you why. I have some hunches, which I’ll got to later.
I give the combat…here is where I have difficulty because I know that much of my dislike for it is because I don’t have the ability to do the parry. That’s 50% of the problem for me. However, all the other issues/frustrations add to my impatience with the combat. Argh. I’m going to give it…a 6.5. I know that it’s probably low, but it’s what I feel in my heart.
I want to talk about the story, but I’m not going to do it in this post (which mean, yes, another post). And level design. Which I also don’t want to–you know what? I’ll start that one now.
Level Design
It sucks. My god. It’s so bad. I don’t understand why or how it’s this bad. It’s as if they actively decided to make it bad. Look. I get that they did not want a map because they wanted to make the experience more organic. Or something. They talked about back in the day when men were men and didn’t need no fucking map in their video game! Something something being babied something something it’ll put hair on your chest!
And I’m sure in the back of their mind, they were like, “Well, FromSoft didn’t have maps in their games before Elden Ring*!” Now that FromSoft put a map in Elden Ring, I will accept no substitute. The map is fantastic, and it still allows for exploration without holding your hand. And, it feels more respectful of the player’s time to be able to actually see where you’re going. The Elden Ring map still makes you work for it, though. The map is fogged out until you get the map fragment for the area in which you are. Even then, it’s not filled out. It has landmarks, but no names until you visit them.
Hm. I’m done for now. I’ll continue this tomorrow.
*Exept the joke map in Sekiro.