I have more to say about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), apparently. I’ve done several posts with ‘quick looks’ at the game, plus two review posts. Here is the second one in which I was talking about how the sum is way more than the parts.
I did a bit more exploring today because I knew there was one over-world boss I had not seen yet. I had read a few of the spoilers (my bad), and I knew that this boss was the hardest in the whole game. I knew the name of the boss, but that was it. By the way, it’s not a name that comes up anywhere else–unless I missed it. Which is possible because you have to mash the A button at the end of every sentence of dialogue (of which there is a lot), and I sometimes jump the gun because I’m impatient to move on.
I could not find this boss, though I had a hunch where they might be. I finally Googled it, and, yup, the boss is buried in another dungeon. I had guessed which one, but that’s not really a triumph on my part because there were only a few dungeons left. I went into the main dungeon and heaved a huge sigh when I saw the groups of three absolutely littering the area. Again, there was no grace to the design. It’s as if the developers said, “We’re just going to make it hard as fuck because.” I did not want to fight the enemies for materials I would never need. It would just be using Maelle to nuke everything and trying to survive in between her turns.
There’s a dungeon called Endless Tower. It’s not endless, but it has multiple levels (Guess how many. 33, of course), and each level has three stages. It’s a boss rush, essentially, with mostly chromatic bosses as the enemies in the third stage of each level. Which, *sigh*. I do not want to do it, so I stopped. Again, the rewards are upgrade materials I don’t want or need, and cosmetics. I want the latter, but not enough to suffer t hrough all those stages and levels.
Back to the hardest secret boss. I just read a list of the 7 hardest bosses, ranked. The mimes I mentioned in the last post are on the list, as are a few of the other bosses I have talked about. #2 is a boss I hadn’t heard much about, and I assume that boss would have been really hard if I didn’t use the Maelle nuke to one-shot said boss. Apparently, the mechanic of that boss is to heal themselves, at half-health, which is an infuriating mechanic. And summoning Nevrons (all the non-human enemies) to fight on their behalf.
I finally found the super-secret, super-hard optional boss–buried in a dungeon within a dungeon. I girded my loins and went into the fight. I got the boss in one with Maelle! I got the victory screen. And then…nothing changed. I hadn’t celebrated too heartily because I had a feeling that they were going to pull a Sekiro and have a second phase that was after the victory screen. There was no way people would rage about it as they have if the first phase was all that happened.
And I was so right. Oh, boy, was I right. The boss came back to life because of utter bullshit and in the second form, they were a complete nighmare. I was saying I did know how to do around 7 million damage in one hit. That was merely tickling this boss’s belly. When they attacked, they did seven-or-eight hit combos with each one doing something like 5,000 damage. Plus–
I have to talk about an attack that a few bosses have including this one–the abliity to make a party member disappear from the fight once they’re dead. It’s called something different by each boss, but it’s the same thing. I can’t revive that party member, which is utter horseshit.
I quicked peeked into the forums about this boss because I was curious what other people thought. Most people agreed the boss was trash, but of course, there were a few who were defending the boss and calling other people babies. The first comment even said he (assuming it’s a he) beat the boss on his first try in expert (hard mode). Sure, chief. I’m sure you did. Actually, he probably did. I don’t doubt there are people who did, but anyone can say anything online.
To me, this boss was indicative of many things that are wrong with the game. First, it buys its own hype a bit too much. It’s a really good game, but it’s not quite as good as it thinks it is. Two, it’s trying to outdo FromSoft, which I see with a lot of soulslikes. Even FromSoft goes too far sometimes, and this boss is definitely in that camp.
I read a description of what the third phase (not a separate phase, but definitely a phase) was like, and I just had to shake my head. Yes, it’s optional, but still. If it’s in the game, people are going to want to beat it. Some people talked about trying to beat it for hours on end, and I, myself gave it about six or seven tries. Oh, and someone mentioned that some of the bosses at the end introduced mechanics we had not seen in the game up to that point, and this boss certainly did that.
Lorewise, yes, this boss adds to the lore, but in a retro-fitted sort of way. There is one other mention of this boss elsewhere, and that was a very cryptic mention by Verso. In Sekiro, the hardest boss is also optional–and has three actual phases. There is a deep lore to that boss, and having to fight the boss after becoming close (or as close as Wolf can get to anyone) with the person meant something. When that boss talked to me at the end of the long and grueling fight, it tugged at my heart.
In this case, when the boss talked to Verso at the end of the fight, I kinda shrugged and said, “Thanks for the sword.”
How did I do it? I looked at the best builds for Maelle, and I followed one primer minutely. That same post (in Reddit) said they used Verso and Sciel, and they noted what they used with those characters, too. And the party order. That was very important. I followed their guide to the T, but I couldn’t figure out how they were being able to use the two skills with Sciel that they were using, back-to-back. I tweaked it some more until I got it to work.
I did over 50 million damage and one-hit that fucker in the second phase. If I hadn’t been able to do that, I probably wouldn’t have beaten this boss. There was no way I was chipping away at nearly 50 million HP in the second phase on skill alone.
This is a bad boss. I’m going to come out and say it. I get wanting the hard boss that pushes the player, but this is beyond that. This is the devs allowing their ego to rampage out of control. This is the ‘We need to make our mark in this genre’ boss, and every soulslike has one.
Well, I’ve meandered all over the place again. See you tomorrow for one last post.