I have a hunch this might be my last post about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Why? Because I just fought a major boss early(?) in the second act, and I hated every loooooong minute of it.
I know this is a thing with JRPGs. Boss fights that take an hour, I mean, and don’t have checkpoints. I mentioned it in a previous post. Not in the last one, but in that one I mentioned how much I’m starting to dislike the story. I thought it was very mid from the start, but it was serviceable then. Now, however, it’s hot trash. I’m so mad about it because the acting is so fucking good.
I have had a love/hate relationship with the game since I first started playing it. The one thing that has always kept me in has been the acting. I was able to ignore how blah I found the story and how much I hate the combat because the acting and the exploration kept me going. I was able to grit my teeth and move on.
I could overlook many of the things I disliked about the game such as the confusing level design (I often times get lost and don’t know if I’m coming or going. That’s partly because I have a horrid sense of direction, yes, but it’s also because the level design is confusing.
I want to be very clear. The art direction is gorgeous. The environments are lush (or barren when need be), diverse, distinctive, and memorable. Though, to be fair, I can’t actually tell you which is which now that I’ve done them. I will give them top marks for atmosphere–environments and music, specifically. 10/10 in this category, no notes (not including the level design, I hasten to add).
Before I get to the boss fight I just attempted, I want to talk about a few more little things that annoy/irk me about the game. One, there’s no way of noting which areas you’ve completed and which you haven’t. Of the side areas, I mean. And there are a ton of them. It would be nice to have a checkmark next a cave/dungeon I’ve completed. Also, a marker on the map for each NPC would be nice as well. And if you’ve bought out all their inventory, please let me know that so I don’t make a special trip to see them again. I can’t remember which I’ve visited and which I haven’t. And there are some that will have more inventory when I find an expeditioner, so I will have to go back again.
I’m starting to feel that open world burnout. This is on me. I cannot do the storybeats for the life of me if there is a single scrap of side content that I can do instead. In Elden Ring, I did not make it to the first big boss until maybe twenty hours into the game. Which meant that I did not go to the Roundtable Hold until then (which was bad (not getting there for so long)). That’s where the baby pyro incantations were).
So, again, it’s partly on me. I don’t have to do all the side content, but, yes, I do. It’s the way I am, and I don’t see it changing any time soon. It’s why I burned out on Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. I was 100%ing the game, reached about three-quarters of the way done, and then they sprung a whole new area and a new protag (whom I liked). I said, “Nope”, put the controller down and never picked it up agian.
I am reaching that point with this game. I don’t want to say much about the last boss I just fought because it’s a pretty important one. Except, my god. I mentioned in one of the previous posts that I was tired of multi-phase bosses–and I blamed FromSoft for this. They weren’t the first ones to do the multi-phase boss fight, but they are well-known for it.
In the past, they were very sparing with it and used it to great effect. Then, again, sadly, I feel they’ve bought their own hype a bit. Now they’re using it more and more. There were many two-phase boss fights is Elden Ring (in fact, the last three main storyline boss fights each had two distinct phases. When it becomes the norm, it’s no longer amazing.
In this case, it started with the last boss of the first act. Which, fine. They wanted their set piece, I can give them that. I don’t like it, but whatever. Now, however, I’m just bored with it. And more to the point, it annoys the fuck out of me. I don’t want to fight a boss for a half hour. I don’t care how much a spectacle it is. Oh, and I finally had to look up how to use a the fourth party member properly. Nearly twenty hours in, and I’m reluctantly learning the actual mechanics of the fights.
I hated this boss. I was given the choice to fight the boss right away or go through the level first. You’re clearly supposed to go through the level, but I decided to take a peek at the boss. Oh, by the way, there’s an NPC who tells you to go talk to the boss. Just talk. But we all know that’s not the case, right? There’s no way the boss is going to be chill and cool with us killing it to take what we need from it.
I was right, of course. There’s a cutscene and then the fight begins. One of the mechanics of the fight is that the boss has minions that does the attacks for the boss. Each has a different elemental-based attack, but there are also ones that can buff the boss. I was doing chip damage to the boss (that’s another thing I hate. When the damage I do takes nothing off the health bar), and I could not dodge any of the attacks, let alone parry. Oh, and my weapons are +14. I’m getting +9/+10 weapons from the area around, so I think I’m at least properly leveled for the area.
It took fifteen to twenty minutes to kill the boss, and then, of course, I did not get any kind of victory sign. It was only phase one, and phase two was even harder. I yelled, “Oh for fuck’s sake” as the second phase started beacuse I was almost out of shit.
The way the combat works, you can have three out of five party members in your party, and if they all fall, then you can have the other two take over. I have five health potions and five revives, I think? And all my characters save one have a heal/regen spell, if not two.
I didn’t think I was going to beat the boss in one try, but when I got the second phase down to about a quarter health, I started to believe. Except that I was pretty much out of everything and I was constantly on the back foot because I could not figure out its attacks. at all. Since it had five or six sseparate attacks, I could not figure any of them out.
Now. I want to say, I know this boss is supposed to be hard. It’s part of the story how hard it is. And I know I’m probably supposed to go through the dungeon first before taking on the boss. But, my god, I HATE the combat so fucking much. I cannot tell you how much I hate it. One of the reasons I keep doing side content is because I don’t want to do the main story bosses. Every time the cutscene starts, I just inhale deeply and resign myself to hating my life for the next half hour.
If I could actually checkpoint after each phase, I would feel a lot better about it. Or if I could get the dodges/parries half the time. Just half! That’s all I’m asking. The only enemy I find I can parry at least half the time are the mimes because they only do two attacks, and both of them are fairly easy to read.
This boss, though, has seven or eight hit combos. And if I miss the first one, I’m pretty much not getting the rest. I have a hard enough time with two or three hit combos, let along seven or eight. I can always bump it down to easy mode, I guess, but I’m just so deflated at this point. I mentioned before that I felt they were adding too much shit too quickly in the first bit of the secodn act, and that feeling is getting stronger as I go.
I have even more to say, but I’ll save it for tomorrow.