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I finally beat Clair Obscur: Expedition 33–the review

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I beat Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). The end.

Ha! Of course that’s not the end; it’s just the beginning. I haven’t written about this game since I finished ACT 2, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been playing it. There will be spoilers, maybe, if I decide to get deep into the story. Which, ah, well, I’ll get to that in a bit.

I have been fucking around since the last post which was *checks* a week ago. In that post, I said I was going to write about the story, but I mostly did not do that. I am going to talk about the story in this post–probably.

In most of my posts about this game, I have talked about my very ambivalent feelings towards said game. Or rather, my wildly vacillating feelings about the game. I ended the last post after I finished the second act, and I did not want to go into the third. I knew what was waiting for me, and I was not about it. At all.

*MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD*

I fought the big baddie at the end of the second act before taking on the (arguably) bigger baddie. Strap in as I try to explain the story as simplified as possible. I have mentioned before that the story really became a hot mess in the second act, and it only got worse in the third act. “It’s a dream, but it’s not, really. But it is!” Maelle is Maelle, but she’s also Alicia who is the sister of Verso, but the Verso in the game isn’t the real Verso. He was created by the Paintress (the bigger? baddie) who was mourning the death of her son–the real Verso.

I’m not really being fair because it does make sense in the context of the game–if you accept the premise. Which I don’t. I mean, I accept that it was the premise, but to me, it wasn’t as brilliant as everyone else thought it was, apparently. I have heard so many people gush about it and how it’s a 10/10, no notes.

I, on the other hand, thought the prologue was strong (though the premise of the story was very thin), then disappeared for much of the first act, and then was strong at the end of the first act, but immediately crumbled upon a closer look.

I have said many times that the acting was so excellent, it papered over several problems with the story. I still think that’s true, even though Sciel’s character remained weak. I tried to warm up to her, and I know I said that she was an integral part of the party, but I wil say now that I have always thought she was the weakest member, character-wise. I never vibed with her story, even though it was a tear-jerker, and I was so surprised when she and Verso suddenly hooked up.

Someone in the Discord said he put off bonking Sciel because he wanted to get with Lune. I did not tell him that wasn’t possible, of course, but there was a point where I thought maybe it could have happened. Lune seems to show interest in Verso, but pulls back and says she’s glad Sciel found happiness. Hm. maybe if I didn’t hook up with Sciel, I could have gotten with Lune. I’ll have to see if the guy in the Discord gets a different option than I did.

If he is able to hook up with Lune, I’ll be really mad. She’s my favorite by far, and that never wavered. Even when I decided not to use her in the last act, it was because Sciel worked better with Maelle.

I did what I said I would do. I got the weapon for Maelle that was OP, even after the nerf. I was worried about it because you have to do a million points of damage to an NPC in order to get it while avoiding her very hard hits in return. The first time I tried to fight her, she wiped me out in one hit. That was in the first act, though. In the third act, I was more equipped to deal with her (including some truly wild pictos and luminas that allowed me to do exponential damage and not take damage). I did die to her once, but then I loaded up on my protections, and I got her with ease.

This weapon is sick. Yes, they nerfed it by 70%, but I can still do 7 million points of damage (with buffs). I can regularly do 2 million points of damage. At this point, that trivializes most fights. It’s a bit trickier if I’m not just fighting one boss in a boss fight, but I have another skill, Phantom Strike, that does massive damage to all the enemies in the battle.

My whole build is based on Maelle now. Is it boring? Kinda. Does it work perfectly? Yup! Did I one-shot the last boss? Well, kind of. The way the fight is set-up, he has to survive in order to prock his wife (the other baddie) to join the fight–against him.

Here’s the deal. This whole family is immortal. Or rather, they are painters and the game is one of their canvases. So none of them can actually die in this world–at least not permanently. Oh, and the Curator, the guy who levels you up in the first and second act is actually the father (which I sussed out soon after meeting him). He has a connection to Maelle that is obvious, and I knew she was his kid way before the big reveal.

The end of the third act was strong, but the story itself still wasn’t. And then after you defeat the father, you have to make a decision that I did not want to make. I put down the controller (carefully, because the backpedals can trigger things) and thought about it. I had a big reason to go for each of the two different choices, and I was torn. I really wanted to do one beacuse it meant I could see my favorite character again. But, I agreed with the other choice more. In my heart, I mean.

So I chose the sccond choice, and it was gut-wrenching. Someone in the Discord said she chose the first choice beacuse the other characters in the game had agency, too, even if they weren’t real–and they should be allowed to make their own choices. Which I could also see. On my side, though, I wanted to let the tortured soul go in peace and to allow the family to move on with their life in the real world.

I don’t think there is a right or wrong choice, but I’m pretty sure that the choice I didn’t make is the canon choice–or at least the one that–ok. I read up on it, and woof. I ‘m not sure it’s the canon ending or the good ending after reading it. I may watch it at some point, but I’m not sure I need that in my mind.

The Verso ending is gutting, but it felt right to me. Given the shitty story and how little I was expecting from the end of it, it was about as ‘good’ as it was going to get for me. I put good in quotes because it wasn’t good at all. But I thought going for possibly healing and moving on was better than living in a fantasy world for the rest of eternity.

I did not like having to make that choice, and I felt it was kind of futile to kill father if I was just going to be given a choice to do what he wanted to do in the first place. And it undermined having Verso in the party at all. Well, not exactly. Because he wanted to get rid of the world to start with, to free the real Verso, and that meant killing the mother. But going through the father first. Who was protecting the mother, even though they have been feuding to a standstill for several decades.

I’m done with this for now. More tomorrow.

 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, part nine

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I finished the second act of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), and boy, do I have a lot to say about it. First of all, they had a cutscene at the end that went on f-o-r-e-v-e-r. This is not a bad thing, necessarily, but it was, ah, self-indulgent, to put it kindly. Oh, and this is the post from yesterday.

*SPOILERS*

I’m not going to get into the specifics of the story, but I will say that I saw much of it coming. Not the exact storybeats, but the themes, and some major character reveals. To be fair, they were heavily sign-posted, so I don’t give myself kudos for figuring it out.

I have to say I was not pleased that the end of the second act was very combat-heavy. There seemed to be groups of enemies every foot or so, and it was so monotonous. Even though the enemies differ in each area, they’re basically skins of each other. And look. I’m not hating on the repetition, exactly, because FromSoft does it, too. It’s how many enemies there are and how varying their aggro ranges are. Not just how far they will chase you, but how close to them you can get before they will be aggroed.

Side note: I found out that the game itself tracks how much time you’ve played it. I’ve put 67 1/2 hours into the game, and I’m honestly surprised it’s not more.

There is one particularly egregious example of two groups of three enemies that are placed in such a way that once I finished fighting one group of enemies, I took one step and was thrown into a second fight. I heaved a huge sigh and did it, albeit grumpily. And, yes, you can flee from a fight, but the enemy get to have their complete turn first (I finally figured that out today).

I have never liked the combat. I’ve said it from the beginning. Some of it is because I cannot parry for the life of me, and that’s the backbone of this game. Sure, you can dodge instead of parry, but then you don’t get the counter–which is also really important in this game. At some point in the second act, I resigned myself to parrying for the most part and just taking the damage when I miss (which is roughly half the time, if not more–missing, I mean). Wait. Let me clarify.

I still cannot get the parrying down with any consistency. There are some enemies I have down pretty well, but there are others that I miss every single parry. And some enemies do six or seven attacks in a row. I’m not exaggerating. And at some point, I just give up.If I can’t get the first two or three parries, I will not get the rest.


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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one last time (part seven)

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Back again with yet another post about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Here’s yesterday’s post in which  I talked about some of my frustrations with the overworld. I want to be clear that I think the overworld is mostly pretty great. It’s just has a few things that make it excruciating, sixty-plus hours into the game. I mentioned some of them yesterday, but they are still irritating me.

I. Want. Markers. In. The. Fucking. Game. For fuck’s sake! Even when I was looking at a guide as to how to get the Lost Gestrals (don’t ask), and I had no idea where some of the areas named were. At all. Even when I looked at the map, I could not remember the places. I literally had no idea where they were or what they contained.

To be clear, some of these were one-stop caves that didn’t have much in them. Which, I have to say is another thing I do not love about the game. There are several side dungeons that, quite frankly, feel like filler. Some of them, a half-a-dozen or so, aren’t actually dungeons in the classic sense. There aren’t enemies to fight or a boss at the end. Instead, there is just one item to pick up. That’s it.

To be fair, they are usually really good items. Still. I wouldn’t have missed them if they weren’t there (I mean, if I knew about them. Obviously, if they weren’t there, I wouldn’t miss them because I’d never have seen them). And with a game that has so much other contente, I don’t think they were needed.

I keep thinking how they would have benefitted from an outside voice saying, “Hey, this doesn’t need to be here.” I maintain that I appreciate that they had a vision and stuck with it, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be some tightening up here and there. I would have cut out all the one-item dungeons. They didn’t really add anything to the game and they were difficult for me to navigate through because–well, I’m not exactly sure why. There was something about the dimensions that fucked up my brain.

I’ll be even more honest. I didn’t feel the need to have the extra dungeons that were just a few rooms and then meet the boss. I can’t think of any that really stuck out. I mean, there were a few that did, but not in a good way (because they had those damn charismatic bosses I mentioned in the last post). The rest just blended together.

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Yet another post about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, part six

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Not surprisingly, I have more to say about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). In yesterday’s post, I was mentioning a few things that I didn’t like about the overworld. I was Googling something related to the game (spoiling myself about some of the bosses in the meanwhile, unfortunately, but this is always a risk when Googling), and I came across people who were not happy about the lack of markers on the map.

That was something I mentioned yesterday, and I was gratified that some people echoed what I had said in my last post. One was that it was hard to find optional bosses that they had left for later because they were not marked on the map. I have been reduced to keeping a map of the game open with the NPC/boss I’m trying to find marked on said map. One guy said he was keeping a journal of all the NPCs.

I’ve thought about doing the same, but I don’t take good notes. I’ve tried and tried, but I just don’t. Partly because I have awful handwriting, but mostly beacuse everything is important to me. I tried to take notes when I first played Elden Ring (before they patched in where the NPCs were), and they were awful. I read them back, and I had no idea what the hell they actually said.

I beat that boss yesterday, and I wanted to clean some stuff up. I found one of the charismatic bosses (waay fucking harder than the area and pretty fucking annoying)–or rather, I went back to fight him. I had fought him earlier, and he destroyed me. That was several hours earlier, and I was much stronger now! And he destroyed me yet again. And I got sent waaaaaaaay back to the last place I camped. So I had to travel waaaaaaay across the map to get back to him–and I could not find him.

My god. I was frustrated. I looked it up and kept the map up so I wouldn’t get lost again. I found him, camped (so that would be my save point) and rejiggered my party. And I utterly destroyed him. This happened with the other three or so chormatic bosses I fought as well. I struggled the first time, mixed things up, and then destroyed them. Part of that mixing was looking the boss up to see what they were weak to and then making my party fit that.

I don’t like these bosses. I understand why they’re in the game, but they’re just tiring. And boring. Endless combos with erratic rhythm–actually, this is one of my problems with the bosses in general in this game. I know that it’s on purpose, but my god. Long and erratic combos are not fun (for me, obviously).


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There’s something about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, part five

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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.


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I can’t quit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (part four)

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I can’t quit Clair Obscur; Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). I keep saying I’m going to quit in, and then I think, “Hm. Maybe I’ll do a bit more.” And then I do a chunk more. By the way, I’ve apparently played 18.3 hours according to Xbox Game Pass. This can’t be right. I’m pretty sure that’s what it said several hours ago, and it said I last played two hours ago. I played later than that–wait. Maybe not? Huh. I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure I’ve played more than 18 hours.

Or maybe not. It certainly feels like I have. In both good ways and bad ways.

I asked in the RKG Discord (in the appropriate channel) how far I was into the second act. I feel like I just got in it, but I’ve done a ton, too. Someone told me that I was 3/4th of the way through  the main story (or rather, would be after beating the boss I struggled with), which is wild to me.

I also read a forum thread about the boss I beat tonight (a really tough big, both literally and figuratively,  mainline story boss), and they were saying they were level 50 or higher by the time they got there?? They haughtily said they did all the side content before that point. Well, so have I. I have rinsed the side content as much as I can (there are some world bosses that are clearly for later), and I’m level 35 or so. Well, I was when I met the boss I talked about last night.

Someone in the Discord said she did the same thing I did, then went and did the dungeon proper. Said it was much easier on the second try because of doing the dungeon. I knew it would be that way, but honestly, I did not want to do the whole dungeon. I am tired of the combat, even with the new and varied enemies. I will give the game credit for that–the enemies are different for each area and fitting of the area.

In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how weary I am of two-phase bosses or bosses that are just straight up back-to-back boss fights. I blame this on FromSoft, quite frankly. They do it all the time now, and I’m tired of it in their games, too.

I read in an article that you should do the other dungeon first (there are two that you hav eto do for story reasons). They made it seem like it would help with the fight I did yesterday, though now I don’t think that’s true. I did not like the other dungeon, either, to be honest. I’m pretty much done with the biomes. I still think they look gorgeous, but I dread them because I know it means more of the combat I hate.


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Some thoughts on Balatro–and, indeed, on life

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I can’t quit Balatro (LocalThunk). Every time I think I’m out, something pulls me back in. In fact, I am thinking about buying Monster Hunter Wilds (Capcom) just to tear me away from Balatro. And because everyone is loving it so I have some FOMO.

But I kept going back to Balatro. I was working on doing the stakes on the different decks. A person in the Discord forum had gotten his last gold stakke win and decided to look at the challenges. I had asked him about it because I had done 17 out of 20 of them, but could not do the last three. He said he was not going to even look at them before he got all the gold stakes.

I said that the first seventeen weren’t too bad, but he did mention two I had forgotten. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t easy, either. He got to eighteen, and he acknowledged it was harder than the rest. Hearing him talk about it spurred me to try it myself, and it wasn’t as hard as I remembered it. It wasn’t fun or easy, either, but it wasn’t too bad. It is having to beat each round with one hand–which is one of the big bosses in the vanilla game. There’s also an economic aspect to it that made it a hassle, but not that big a deal.

The next was Cruelty, which had very strict restrictions such as only 3 jokers (though there are ways to game that) and no reward money from either the small blind or the big blind. That one fucked with me the first time around that I tried them, but it wasn’t as bad this time around. In fact, I think I found it easier than the one before (called Golden Needle).

It was the same with this one. The guy in the Discord announced he had finished this one, and I buckled down to do it myself. Not as a competition type of thing, but as a spur/encouragement. I got a few tips from him for the Golden Needle, but I beat Cruelty before he had time to respond.

Then, there’s the last one. It’s called Jokerless, and you can’t have any jokers in the game. Well, there is one way supposedly that you can get one. It’s very fiddly, though, and not worth counting on. If you’re saying that sounds really hard, you would be right. To make it even harder (and I did not realize this until my second day of intense trynig to beat this challenge) that you can only get one of two bosses for this challenge. One is the one that gives you 3 times the total you need to meet (300,000 v. 100,000), the one I call Violent Vessel. It’s actual name is, ah, *quick Google*, Violet Vessel. I actually came up with that on my own, but wanted to double check it.

The other boss is my most hated final boss, I think. It’s called Cerulean Bell (it is). It forces you to do something with the card it picks–either use it or discard it. When you’re running a straight build as I was for this challenge, that can be a heartbreaker. As I found out the first time I reached the final boss.


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I’m channeling my inner Veruca Salt (martial arts)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about the connection between my obsessive nature and my love of martial arts weapons. It’s been a long and bumpy road in discovering my neurospiciness. Now that I know that I am some flavor of ND (and probably more than one), I have to make the decision if I want to get a diagnosis (diagnoses) or not. I’m not here to talk about that right now, though!

I’m Veruca Salt at the moment (and, yes, I’m including that scene below yet again) in that I want it all now. Every weapon form at this very moment. I don’t want to have to take time to learn them; I just want the knowledge to be magically implanted into my brain by osmosis. As I noted in yesterday’s post, I am currently obsessed with the Double Fan Form. I don’t know it yet, mind, but I really, really want to learn it.

Here’s the funny thing about the Fan Form. It’s the most feminine of the forms  I know. I am not a feminine person at all. And yet, I have always been drawn to the fan. It’s the weapon form I most wanted to learn, and I kept pressing my teacher to teach it to me. She kept pushing back, but would not say why. She did show me some fan drills, but that was as far as she would go.

What I have learned since then is that the weapons are not her thing, and she does not feel as confident about teaching them as she does the Solo Forms and other non-weapon-related Taiji. to her credit, she hid it well and did her best. As she always says, anyone with more time in the practice than you had was a master to you.

It’s similar to how when you’re a kid, you think your parents know everything. Or in my case, you think that your parents are normal because you have nothing to compare them with. Actually, it was more that I thought I was broken and just utterly wrong because that’s how they treated me. They were the gold standard, and I fell short all the time.

Taiji helped me in that it gave me some self-esteem, confidence, and at least a willingness to try to set boundaries.. Unfortunately, my mother does not know the meaning of the word ‘no’, and her M.O. is just to batter you until you give in. My broethr and I have learned that it’s easier to pick your battles. In other words, we give in on the little things and then stand up on the things that we really don’t want to do. That can only be once every year or so because my mother doesn’t take well to it–at all–and will become incredibly nasty in a very passive-aggressive way.


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All I ever think about is Elden Ring

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Elden Ring. When I’m not playing, I’m thinking about it. I’m dreaming about it. I’m planning what to do next. For example, I need to find the sorcerer right now. I want the basic magic spells to complement my pyro. I know there is one from the trailers and the Closed Network Test, but I’m not exactly sure where she is. I may look it up because I should have found her by now. I was watching the Eurogamer co-op VOD and they ended up meeting her after defeating Pumpkinhead (a boss. Yes, they have a pumpkin for a head). The pumpkinheads are sprinkled throughout the lands and I don’t know what is their deal.

I like to find things on my own as much as possible, but there is no shame in looking things up. I hesitate because it’s hard to find the answer to one specific question and nothing more. It’s either all or nothing; sometimes, all is the answer, but it rarely feels good.

I just played 3 1/2 more hours of Elden Ring I used the Eurogamer video to find the sorcerer because while I had the checkpoint they had, the actual boss fight is really hard to find. You have to turn the camera a certain way and it’ll reveal a golden fog gate (signifying a boss). I took care of Pumpkinhead fairly easily with my wolves and talked to Sorceress Sellen, buying the Ginstone Pebble sorcery. She has a big royalty fake head/crown on her head, which is a signifier of her sorcery lineage–although she’s an apostate. It had taken me so long to find her, I already had a scroll to give her–which allowed her to sell even more sorceries.

I went around a bit and then realized that I didn’t have a staff. I went back to Sellen–and she didn’t sell them. Wait, what? Why no staves, Sellen? What the fuck is up with that? All the teachers sold the wares needed to ply their crafts! That’s a given in these games. I was so irritated, I looked up where I could buy a staff. I could not. I had to find one in the wild. Which, come the fuck on! You want people to experiment with magicks and you don’t have a staff easily available for purchase? Not even a shitty basic one? Fine. FINE, FROM.


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It cuts like a knife…and it feels so right

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In the last post, I wrote about my love for blades and how it has happened. Before I continue waxing rhapsodic about the love we don’t talk about, I just want to say that I did the whole Sabre Form today (as much as I know), and my right arm definitely got a workout. That’s another thing people don’t realize about taiji–it’s exercise. Yes, it can be gentle and meditative (which is where the health benefits come from), but it can also get the blood pumping. In addition, the weapons are definitely weight-bearing, especially the sabre.

Side note: The saber is considered the most basic of the weapons. The sword is the second most advanced (the spear is the most advanced. This is to the best of my recollection), and I still find it amusing that my teacher taught the Sword Form to me first. Now, I knew it was probably because that’s the one she was taught first and felt most comfortable with, but it’s still funny. I do wonder if I was taught the Sabre Form first if my feelings about the two weapons would be flipped. I don’t think so. I loved the sword before learning a lick of the Sword Form, and it’s still the most comfortable weapon in my hand.

Side note II: I found out recently that my teacher is not a fan of the weapons. Or rather, they’re secondary to much of the other aspects of taiji. I could sense it on some level, but it was interesting to hear her say it out loud. She’s done a great job teaching me despite her lack of enthusiasm, but I’ve wondered if I should approach her teacher for lessons in weapons. He’s amazing, and when I saw him do the Sabre Form at the last demo, it was sublime. He made it seem effortless and his movements were minimal. That’s part of taiji–the least amount of effort for the maximum effect, but I had thought with a weapon like the saber, you had to move it more aggressively. He showed you did not have to, and it blew my mind.

These days, I have to choose which weapons I want to practice every day. I have to rotate them as the list of what I know/what I’m learning is growing. Right now, I’m learning the Sabre Form (two to three movements from done!), the Karambit Form (last section!), the Dancing Wu-Li Sword Form (new sword form! Just learned the first movement), and a drill for the Double Sabre Form (too hard to learn through Zoom, so on hiatus. I still practice it once in a long while, but it’s definitely on the back burner). I do the Sword Form once a week by halves (first half Sunday, second half Monday) and the whole Sabre Form once a week (Tuesday). I practice the last row or two rows of the Sabre Form every day along with as much of the Karambit Form as I know (it’s very short). I learned the first movement of the Dancing Wu-Li Form last Thursday, and I’ve been doing that every day as well. I do the Cane Form (first row, only row I know) every third or fourth day.


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