I am so tired. I think I’m done with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). For the first day since it came out, I did not play it as soon as I could in the morning (afternoon, really). I did dip in a bit before writing this, but I just felt empty as I did it. Here’s my post from yesterday in which I talk about my growing dissatisfaction with the game, especially the story.
*SPOILERS*
I’m going to be talking about the story a bit and other things that might be considered spoilers. After I finished the second act, I flew around the map (we unlocked the ability to fly on Esquie during the last boss fight of the second act) quite a bit. I love Esquie, but he says exactly three things as you fly (when you hit RT to accelerate): “flashing through the sky”; here we go”; and “hang on tight”. Along with some sounds. Because I am pumping RT all the time, that means he says these phrases every three seconds or so. Which, as you might guess, is annoying AF.
Here’s the thing. Getting the ability to fly was super-cool. But 90% of the things are for later. MUCH later. I am in the high fifties, level-wise, and I can get one-shot by some of these enemies. And doing chip damage.
Beating the last boss of the second act unlocked the dagame cap (it was 9,999 for the first two acts). I was so excited for it, but I’m not doing the millions of damage I’ve seen other people do (and that I need to do in order to kill many of the world bosses I can reach now). I just had a look-see, and the things I need to have these incredible builds are farther down the road. Except for a skill that I did not unlock, even though I could have quite some time ago. I may go ahead and respec Maelle to optimize her build.
Because, you see, if Im’ going to continue playing ,I want to be able to finish the combat as quickly as possible. I hate it so much. SO much. I know the third act is much shorter than the first two, but man. Something inside me rebels at doing it.
I also deepened the relationships between different characters. I’m of two minds with this mechanic (it gives you perks like unlocking gradient attacks–the deadliest of attacks). On the one hand, the chatting between the different party members is one of my favorite things about the game. Partly because the acting is so good even if the writing is shaky at times and partly because it means I don’t have to do the combat.
By the way, I am about to give up and min-max the hell out of my characters jsut to get through the combat more quickly. I have enough respec items to redo every character, and I just might do it. That’s how much I hate the combat. I don’t want to struggle, doing thirty-thousand damage when I could be doing millions. I want to one-shot bosses so I don’t have to grind out a win.
I did one of the chromatic bosses today, and it was really difficult with my puny damage. I managed to eke it out, but I died three or four times (which is way more than I’ve died to most other bosses). People in the Discord were saying it was disappointing to be too overleveled for the final boss, but I don’t care. I want to be that overleveled. Though I’m confused as to how one person got to level 100 before taking on the final boss. I’m almost level 60 with each member of my party, and I’ve done a hell of a lot of grinding.
When I mentioned in a previous post that you could level your weapons up to 33, I did not realize that it was mostly for after rolling credits. I’m reading that 60 would be a fine level to go into the third act, but I want to stomp on the final boss.
And there’s the rub. I tromped my way through Act 2 with a few bosses giving me a bit of trouble. In general, though, I was rolling through the game–which is exactly how I wanted it. When I ran into a little bit of trouble with the penultimate boss because he has a dick move that can make an Expeditioner vanish from the fight (which means they cannot be brought back), and I cannot gradient counter it for the life of me, I raged mightily into the night.
By the way, I am so annoyed by the whole gradient attack/counter system. It’s one of the half-baked systems that doesn’t really work in this game. If an enemy does one to you, it does massive damage. You counter it by hitting RT at the same time as when you would parry (so ignore the screen dramatically gray out). When I tried to hit RT during the grayout, I could not get it for the life of me. After reading a tip about ignoring the grayout and just treating it like a normal parry, I did better (but still not great).
And, yeah, doing a gradient attack is cool, but it takes so fucking long to get enough juice to use the 1 point one, let alone the 2 point one. And now I just unlocked the 3-point one for a few of the characters. I’ll never see them. (You have to spend AP points to build up the counter.) I know that’s because I suck at the game, but it’s still frustrating.
I feel like they could have pared back one or two or five of the systems in this game and it would have made for a better experience. Again, I’m happy that they had a vision and they stuck to it; I just hope they tighten up their shit in their next game.
I’m so mad about the story. It completely fell apart at the end of the second act. It’s the equivalent to it was just a dream, but even worse somehow. And when you start picking at it, it completely falls apart.
I need to go to bed, so I’m ending this here.
i haven’t played the game myself. only watched one play through in english and am now 3 or 4 hours into a french one. the first guy i watched played it on hard difficulty and i thought, this game looks too hard for me, i probably won’t play it. then i was curious about lune’s name so i looked up french let’s plays and the first person i saw was playing on normal. which made me think i might be able to play it. i have no problems playing games on easy if that makes them fun.
when i started watching the first let’s play i thought the soundtrack was the only good thing about it.
the voice acting is good but i kinda hate all the english speaking characters. it might be the writing. or the translation. or the direction. all the characters seem overly dramatic. and i seem to have a completely different impression of sciel than everyone else. i thought she was way too melodramatic always almost about to cry. everyone is. they can’t even say something simple like “something feels off” in a normal way. it has to come out like “something… feels… off” in a breathy voice.
i’m not really far enough into the french let’s play to decide for sure but so far the cutscenes seem to be less cringey. but that might be because i understand english better than french.
i think the story is shit. and i don’t know if i will actually like the combat. so maybe the soundtrack is still the only thing i really like about it. but i still want to buy the game and see if i manage to get a parry. i already know i would not want to finish the game. i’ll probably spend hours in the middle of combat getting distracted on my phone while listening to the soundtrack.
i started reading this thinking that i’ll probably cure myself of wanting to buy the game by the end of it. but i want to try it even more now. even though i agree with all the negative points you mentioned and i don’t even like the characters as much as you. i don’t know why. i’ve watched multiple people play alien isolation and bloodborne and i like both of those games better than e33 but i have never even had a hint of desire to buy either of them.
anyways, thanks for agreeing that the story is shit. i don’t get why everyone likes it that much.
Hi, Mi. Thank you for commenting! I did finish the game and remained frustrated with the story. I REALLY did not like the ending at all nor am I’m not excited about the upcoming sequel.
And yet. There was something about it that spurred me to keep playing until I firished it. As you pointed out, there is something compelling about this game that isn’t there in many other better games.
But, yes. I will continue to think that the story was a hot mess, and I also don’t understand why people loved it so much.