Yes, I’m writing more about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) because I can’t stop playing it. I want to stop playing it, mind, but it keeps pulling me back in.
The game still said I had played 18 hours, and the last achievement I got was from something late in the first act. I logged out of Game Pass and logged back in, and everything immediately updated. Now, it’s saying I have played 2.6 days, which is roughly 62 hours. Do I think I played that much? No? But, ah, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. I have trawled the overworld so many times and gone back to clean shit up.
By the way, I have many small complaints about the overworld. In general, I really like it. But, my god, it’s agony to travel from one end to the other. I really wish that there was a way to just go to a dungeon once you light the bonfire. Er…I don’t remember what they’re called in this game, so bonfires it is. The developers explained why they didn’t have a map in the dungeons. They wanted you to explore and not depend on Google Maps, as it were. Which is nice in theory, but we’re back to the fact that the level design is probably the weakest aspect of the game.
This ties into another small negative I have with the game. All the backtracking. Now, I don’t mind the backtracking itself. It’s the fact that there’s nothing to indicate what is left to do in old areas. I got a new ability in today’s play session. It’s punching paint spikes in order to go to a hidden path/area behind it. Which is cool, but I have been to a couple dozen dungeons and so many places in the overworld. There is no way to know where there is a paint spike I can punch.
I Googled it because I was not going to go through every old area looking for a paint spike. I mean, I tried in one area, and I got hopelessly lost. Level design is shit. Everything looks the same. Yes, there is some lighting of the main path, but other than that, there is no way to tell which way to go.
When I was doing the area in the arena before the boss I could not beat last night, I went looking for the one path that I had missed. I could not find it for the life of me, not even after I Googled it. It took me a hald-dozen times to find the missing path. Also, in this area, you had to have a short cutscene to open a door when you wanted to move forward and the door behind you would slowly shut. If you accidentally tried to go backwards, then you had the same cutscene in reverse.
First time? Fine. But not every fucking time! I get that they wanted their world to feel a certain way, but that was a bit much. Someone should have said, “You know what? We don’t need to do that.”
Let me say that I would rather a developer fly too close to the sun and get burned than play it safe and make a boring game. One thing you can say about the game is that it has a very distinct style to it, unapologetically. One of the devs used to work for Ubisoft, and it’s pretty clear that he was tired of the formula that Ubisoft was churning out.
That said, if you are going to not have a map in your dungeons, you NEED to make the way forward crystal clear. Again, I am not the only person to say that they struggled to find the way forward. Blessing from Kinda Funny Games said he spent too much time trying to find the way forward.
I really want to be able to tell if I’ve done a dungeon or not without going to it. And if an NPC has something to sell me. Not to mention a mark on the map if there’s an NPC there at all. This is something FromSoft added to Elden Ring in a patch because people were complaining about not being able to find NPCs in the world.
FromSoft had never marked NPCs in their previous games, but it was inexcusable not to have them in Elden Ring. Before they were marked on the map, I actually started taking notes by hand. They were shit notes, though, and didn’t really help me find the NPCs. Once FromSoft patched it in, it made everything so much better.
In addition, they made it so you could warp to any bonfire (except in very specific circumstances) from anywhere on the map. That was a game-changer as well, and I will accept no substitute in future games.
Yes, they still have obtuse things that could do with some updating (their menus are still not optimal, and the upgrading of weapons is too unnecssarily weirdly named), but in general, they have sloughed off several clunky things that have more than served their purpose by now.
Unfortunately, games still mimic their clunky ideas as if they are written in blood. They are not immutable facts, and I really wish developers would update those aspects of the From games.
Back to the boss I fought for forty-five minutes last night. Or the night before? Night before, I think. The fight left a really bitter taste in my mouth. I know that’s part and parcel for the genre–spectacle fights, I mean. And I can’t even say it’s not true for FromSoft games. They do love their setpiece boss fights, and they do love multi-phase bosses.
It’s not the same, though, I can’t really tell you why it’s different. They’re not as bombastic in From games, though they are elaborate. Nor are they (usually) as long. Although, to be fair, with this boss (in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), I totally destroyed it in about five minutes on my first try of the night (second try total). I feared there would be a third phase when the second boss talked to me after I killed them, but no–they were just mouthing off.
Then there was a cutscene, and there was another cutscene in the camp after–but I’ll get to that later (or in the next post). I shouted some nasty things as I finished the fight, very relieved to be done with it.
Before going into the dungeon, I grinded to get my fifth party member up to level 40. The rest were already on that or over. I read an article that said you should be level 50-60 for this boss (and the boss before). Someone in a forum thread said that they did all the side stuff and was roughly 45 for the fight. Then talked about how easy it was on expert. Ok, keyboard warrior. Someone else said they were 40 and could not beat on easy the boss I beat last night.
Still others said that level didn’t matter, it was pictos, and weapon level that mattered the most. Interestingly enough, beating the second boss (the one that I fought for forty-five minutes the other night, improperly) gave me the weapon I needed to go forward–and it was level 15. That’s the level of one weapon per character in my party already.
I will just say that I looked up the boss before fighting it again. In addition to doing the dungeon (which I had done), there was another gimmick to the fight that I kept in my back pocket. I futzed around doing a bunch of other things first (including trying to find aforementioned paint spikes. I gave up on that because it was so unfun to do. I did get a couple of good things for it, but they were below my level).
I could not put it off forever. Or rather, I did not want to put it off forever. It was hanging over my head, and I wanted to get it over. I fiddled with my layout a bit (made sure I had the right skills equipped for my party members), took a deep breath, and then went into the fight.
The first boss, even though it gave me some trouble the first time around, wasn’t that bad, really. Oh, and I turned off the video on my other monitor so I had less conflicting audio input.
I’m done for now. More tomorrow.