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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33–the actual review, part six

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This is definitely the last review post on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). I am saying it with my tongue firmly in my cheek. Yesterday, I was talking about the level design–which I think is the worst element of the game. Easily.

By the way, Ian sent me an article about how parrying is the worst thing in any video game. I don’t agree with all his points, but I do appreciate that he is saying many of the things I feel about the parry. I don’t agree that it’s the worst thing in video games or that it should be abolished completely, but I fully agree that it’s limiting and having it as the main/only defense mechanism makes a game too constrained in scope.

Interestingly, he mentions that many people who have issue with the parry in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 like parries in general–just not how they are executed in this game.

I appreciated that he brought up the point because so many people just want to gush about how great parrying is in games and don’t think about the negatives of the parry. I really wish someone would point out that it’s ableist as well, but I don’t expect that, honestly, because people in games overwhelminly don’t care about those kind of things. Or any kind of diversity, really. In fact, many gamers are rabidly anti-diversity in their video games, which is not the point of this post.

I’m trying to wait it out because I know that sooner or later, the industry will move onto the next hot thing. In the meantime, though, I heave a huge sigh of annoyance when I read or hear the words, “parry mechanics”.

Back to level design. I’ve written about it ad nauseum because I hate it so much. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten lost because everything looks the same within an area. Yes, there are lanterns lighting the main path, but there are also lanterns lighting certain side paths, and sometimes, there are no lanterns at all. By the end of the game, I was cursing every time I had to go back and forth to find the right path. Which was plentiful.

I hated the level design, I’ll be honest with you. That hatred came very early, and all the ‘the level design is so clear’ chatter in the forums did nothing to sway me. I wasted so much time going down paths that looked all the same, only to end up back where I started. Plus, while each area was distinctive, the space within each dungeon started to blend together. Especially late in the game where the levels were littered with enemies in an artless way. Yes, you can farm them for good mats, but as I’ve said before, I didn’t need materials at that point of the game.

The level design was barely adequate in the beginning, and it only deteriorated the further I got into the game. By the time I reached the last dungeons, I was just gritting my teeth and plowing through. The enemy placement was so graceless, I was astonished. It hadn’t been good at any point in the game, but it was terrible at the end. I wonder if they ran out of time and just started tossing the enemies into the game–with their eyes closed.


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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33–the actual review, part five

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I’m back for the final part of my review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Well, that’s my plan, but I’ve been known to milk a few extra posts out of a topic. In the last post, I listed what I liked about the game and part of the first big thing I didn’t like about it–the combat. I’ll pick up where I left off beacuse I have more to say about the combat.

Combat

The combat never gelled with me because it’s so heavily parry-based. Yes, you can dodge, but then the fight lasts twice as long because you forwent the damage the counter gave you–which was a lot. By the end of the game, I parried all the time except when I hit the really tough optional bosses that had a million attacks in a row. Then, I just needed to survive until I could have my one (Maelle) turn.

People insist that there are audio cues for every attack. That may be true, but I could not hear them half the time. In addition, the audio cues were a lie–what do I mean? They weren’t consistent as to when you should parry. This is probably one of my biggest complaints about the combat, if not the biggest. All the attacks are timed differently, and it’s frustrating as fuck. I have said that I had to turn off the video I had playing on the second monitor when I was in a boss fight because that along with the combat music made it impossible for me to hear the audio cues. Even when I turned off the combat music, I still couldn’t always hear the audio cue.

If I did hear it, I didn’t necessarily know what it meant. Or rather, when I was supposed to parry. I still didn’t know by the end of the game. My solution was to have many ways to heal party members/the party, to employ the revival mechanics as much as I could, and at the end, to one-shot the hardest optional bosses.

I also didn’t like the gazillion different attacks/skills/pictos/luminae that they added throughout the game. I didn’t appreciate only being able to have six skills in a fight. They should let you choose from the whole list you unlocked as long as you had the AP to use the skill.

I still haven’t seen any of the level 3 gradient attacks in combat. Hell, I haven’t see half of the level 2 gradient attacks. If you’re shit at defense the way I am, you won’t be able to obtain the AP you needed in order to get the higher leveled gradient attack. And when I made it so I one-shot bosses, well, that made the whole gradient attack system moot.

I’ve already written quite a bit about how I did not appreciate that on the defensive end as well. Adding pretty significant attacks for the enemies/bosses late in the second act/after the game ends, well, that doesn’t sit right with me.


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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33–the review, part three

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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 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.


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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33–the review, part two

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This is part two of my official review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Here is part one where I mused over my feelings about the story in the game. My feelings are very different from the majority of people who played it, and I’m fine with that. It’s often the case; I’m comfortable in my minority opinion. There wil be spoilers in this post, most likely.

Before I get back to the story, I must say that doing the overworld stuff now that I’ve beaten the game feels pretty hollow. There are several dungeons that are just crammed with chromatic versions of hard bosses, which is pretty boring. I just Maelle them to death and go about my merry way.

I will say that I’m over-leveled now, and I’m just fine with that. When I get into a stituation where I can’t just Maelle everything to death, I get miffed. “What do you mean I have to actually fight the enemies? No! I will not be doing that, thank you very much.”

I can do 11,000,000+ damage with Maelle. Granted, I did it once, and I’m not sure what got me that number, but I’m gettting 2,000,000 easy with her. Plus, I have pictos/luminae equipped that means I can play her three times in a row or more.

I just went into a dungeon that is fighting the same mime fives times in a row, but with every different party member in order to get a cosmetic. The first time you fight him, you get a picto that gives you 100% crit chance, but only 1 health. Not really an exchange I’m willing to make. Oh, and you get the cosmetic for the expeditioner you use. I chose Maelle, of course. Then I tried it with Verso. I died once because I did not have him properly kitted out with revive and survival pictos, but then I got the mime on my second try. He does so much damage and I didn’t put anything into the vitality of some of my characters because–

See, it’s like this.

Each weapon has three stats that boost its strength. Two will have grades next to the sword which indicates how well that stat boosts the weapon. One has a sword with no grade, and while it also boosts the power, it’s not as much as the other two. In the beginning, I did what I usually do–spread my points fairly even across the stats. Late in the game, though, I read that you really should just dump all your points into the three sword stats and make up for the other stats with pictos and luminae. They buff everything from health to AP (action points, I think?) to how many times you can go in a row. They are very powerful, and it’s essential to have the right load-out for each character and each situation.


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One last post about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, part eight

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I think this will be the last post I do about Clair Obscur: Expedition 22 (Sandfall Interactive), at least for now. I rudely got spoiled about something in the RKG Discord channel, and while it was not unexpected, it really put a sour taste in my mouth. That’s mostly on me, though. Even though the spoiler was poorly marked, I should have just continued my avoidance of all spoilers in that channel.

That’s not why this will be the last post, though. Not directly.

Forgive me because it’ll take me a bit to get to my point. More than usual, I mean.

I played a bit earlier today in what I think is the last area of the second act. I sighed every time I had to fight enemies, and was so impatient if I took more damage than I thought I ought to. I took some time to grind for the upgrade material I needed to get everyone’s weapons to +19, too. I need a different material for that +20 upgrade. Hey, wait. I assumed it went to +35, but it’s +33. I really don’t like that. And the next upgrade material is what’s needed for all the rest of the upgrades save one. Huh. That’s interesting.

I may grind some more to upgrade a few other weapons to +19 (there’s a creature in two of the side paths in a late second act area that is a guaranteed drop for this material, and the fight isn’t that hard. One is right next to a bonfire, and I can avoid the two groups of enemies that are irritatingly parked in front of it.

By the way, I hate that some of the enemies have insane aggro ranges. If I run by them, I should be able to escape them eventually. Also, you can flee from a fight, but if you don’t immediately run away, you just get thrown back into the fight again.

Yesterday, there was an instance whe I just finished a fight, turned, and somehow ended up in another fight. SIGH. I was not in the mood. I will say I was able to take care of the second group of enemies handily, but that’s not the point.

The level design is awful at times. I have to say it. This far into the game, and I still cannot tell which way is forward and which way is back. It all looks the same, for fuck’s sake. I was feeling alone because almost everyone I know LOVES this game. LOVES it. In the Discord, I mean. And everywhere else online. People talking about it being their GOTY so far and how brilliant it is.

Whereas I, well, I’ve talked plenty about my feelings about the game already. I’m used to being the weirdo, but I get nervous when my opinion is solidly the outlier. The praise for this game has been consistent and constant. Well, Ian did say that he thought it was good, but not great, and he’s not gotten very far into it. I was relieved to hear that from him! I needed to have someone on my side.


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Balatro–my final review, part seven

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It this point, I’m just amused by my neverending review of Balatro (LocalThunk). We all kknow that I will write another post about Balatro at some point because that is how I do. In fact, I am going to write one now and give my completely arbitrary rating for this game. I explained my rating systnems in the last post, but I’ll briefly sum it up here once again.

I have two different systems. One is for FromSoft games and the other is for all other games. The lowest rating I’ve given a FromSoft game is a 9.0 for Sekiro, and the highest rating is a 9.75 for Elden Ring and Dark Souls III. I am not gonig to go into it again about why those two games are basically tied at the top for me.

On the other list, at the top is Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall). I would give it a 9.5 off the top of my head. Then Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games), which would be roughly the same. Maybe a 9.4 as NitW is the absolute pinnacle of non-FromSoft games to me. Spiritfarer is very close behind. Both of them made me crry buckets and think really hard about things. I platted the latter, but not the former because the former included a really difficult video game within the video game that was just no fun to play.

I’m grading Balatro in the non-FromSoft ranking system, of course, as it’s not a FromSoft game. It’s funny because before I started the grind, I probably would have given it a 9.3 or so. It’s really good and quite addictive. It has that ‘just one more run’ feel to it, and one run turns into hours. It’s such a good game.

I just…wish it could be a bit better. That’s not a knock on this game specifically beacuse you could say that about any game. Any game could be a bit better, really. Even Elden Ring, probably my favorite game in the world, I gave a 9.75. That’s just me–I will not give a game a 10. Nothing is perfect, and I know that most people use 10 to mean a game is as good as it can possibly be in relation to other games, but that’s not how I see it. To me a 10 is inattainable, and I’m fine with that.

Back to Balatro. I just got Big Hands (the achievement for which you have to get 80 cards in your deck), and it felt very hollow. Why? Because it was all down to chance. I got the Magic Trick voucher early on which allowed me to buy playing cards in the shop. Then, I got the Rocketjoker that gives you a dollar at the end of every round, and it increases by two dollars after beating every boss. Plus, I had Midas Mask which makes every face card gold, and if you hold them in your hand at the end of the round, each one gives you three bucks.


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Balatro–my final review, part six

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Yes, I’m back with part five of my ‘final’ review of Balatro (LocalThunk). Today, I have been grinding out the Big Hands achievement (getting 80 cards in a deck), and I haven’t geotten close. Well, I have gotten maybe 70 once? There are not as many useful tips when I Google as there were for Tiny Hands, the last achievement I grinded/ground out.

By now, I’m decent enough at the game that I had a vague idea of what I needed to do. Adding 38 cards to the deck meant, once again, radically changing up my play (and the deck I would use to do it). Also, I had to be careful because I was looknig for the Hanged Man tarot card and the Immolation spectral card when I was going for Tiny Hands. I did not want either of these for my current achievement hunting, obviously. Both these cards got rid of cards (2 and 5 respectively), which would be counterproductive for my current purposes.

Instead, I was to eschew the tarot cards completely as none of them add cards to the deck. Instead, spectral cards are my best friend, and only the Ghost Deck gives you a realistic chance to get them because they have spectral deck packs and spectral cards can show up in the shop. There are no spectral cards that straight-up give you more cards. You have to destroy one card to get two enhanced aces, or three or four enhanced cards (depending on the spectral card).

The other meta is to hopefully find the DNA joker because that duplicates one card per round and either Blueprint or Brainstorm (copies the joker to the right and to the leftmost, respectively) to copy that one card. Or both! Then you get two cards. Of  course, if you’re using your Blueprint and/or Brainstorm to copy a card, that means it’s not helping you win the hand. No, I’m not trying to win these runs, but I have to survive long enough to get the achievement.

The other other meta is to get really lucky and be able to buy the Magic Trick voucher in the shop. That allows playing cards to appear in the shop, which, obviously, means you can buy them. And they’re only a buck, so it’s usually pretty feasible to buy them. The upgraded version of Magic Trick can only be unlcoked if you buy 20 cards in the shop (doesn’t have to be in one run, fortunately). But you have to find Magic Trick on a run and then be able to last the run until you have the economy to buy the cards you need–and they show up.. There are playing card packs, too.


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Balatro–my final review, part five

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Ok. I promise that this is the last post about Balatro (LocalThunk)*. In the last post, I talked about the grindiness of playing for higher stakes wins and

*SPOILER*

chasing my white whale, Stuntman (the last joker I needed to complete my deck). Now, I’m trying to do two of the last five achievements I have–well, one of them first. It’s called Tiny Hands, and you have to whittle your deck down to 20 cards. The best bet is to start with the Abadonned Deck because it doesn’t have the face cards. That’s twelve cards left from the rip. Then, you have to get enough Hanged Man cards from the tarot deck (destroy two cards) and Immolate (spectral deck) that destroys five cards for $20.

There are a few problems, obviously. One is getting all the special cards you need to trim your deck that drastically, and winning enough hands to be able to sustain losing so many cards. Some people suggest other decks (oh, and by the way, it’s always recommended to use white stakee, the lowest stake, whenever you’re trying to get an achievement) beacuse they have more chances to get tarot and/or spectral cards, which I may try next. I have not come even close to trimming my deck that far. You can also make glass cards which then have a chance of breaking.

This is s ofucking tedious. I have just done a few hours and gotten nothing for my trouble. The closest I got was down to maybe 35 or so? The closest I’ve gotten overall is 30. I hate this one. This one is so fucking boring. The next one is Big Hands, and you have to get your deck to 80 cards. I’m expecting this one to be as painful. Oh, for Tiny Hands, there is a joker called Trading Card. If the first discard of a hand is one card, that card is destroyed (and you get three bucks). I have yet to see this in any of my attempts, by the way.

Unfortunately, the hundo chievo (for the whiny PlayStation stans who get mad if you say you got the plat, but not on PlayStation) in this game falls into the same trap as many plats do–make it as unpleasant and grindy as possible. A lot of devs seem to forget that you still want your player to like your game by the time they’re done getting the plat. Or maybe they don’t care. It’s quuite possible that some don’t care how you feel once you plat the game because they’ve wrung every ounce of emotion out of you that they possibly can.

FromSoft is notorious for this. I have platted five of the games, and until Elden Ring, they were terriblewith their plats. And I think it’s because they don’t care about them or actively don’t want to do them, but feel they have to (and by them, I mean Miyazaki. He is FromSoft, basically). Elden Ring is different. It’s their first try to be a commercial and mainstream success (while sticking to their ideals/beliefs/tenets). I believe that’s why they made the plat so much easier. I got everything I needed except the three separate ending in my first run. If my save-scumming had worked, I would have been able to plat it in one playthrough. That’s so different the rest of the games! Of course, my first playthrough was over two-hundred hours, which was double my time for the first Dark Souls–with DLC.


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Balatro–my final review, part four

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I’m back for my fourth and definitely last post about Balatro (LocalThunk). I am sure I will be able to get everything I want to say written in this poist .Easy-peasy! (That’s sarcasm in case you can’t tell, given that this is the fourth post on the subject.) And, of course, there will be

*SPOILERS*

At the end of the last post, I talked about unlocking the final joker I needed. Before I get to that, though, I want to talk about the challenge runs for a bit. There are twenty of them, and after you get five wins on any stakes with any deck, you unlock the first five challenges. I do wonder if you can have challenges that use jokers you don’t have yet and then if you have to use them for the challenge, if you’ll get to keep it in the main game. I have no idea because after winning one challenge, I put them aside until a few days ago (after I got the last joker unlocked and bought).

It’s funny because when I tried out the challenges when I first unlocked them, they seemed so hard and undoable. Even the one I won felt more like chance than anything else. They all have a theme, which I liked. Such as, the first one has five egg jokers (they go up in sell value with each round) and you won no money. So the only way to get money was to sell the egg jokers, get a blind-skipping reward that was money-based, or buy jokers that gave you money under certain conditions.

I also like that when you win one, you unlock another one. I have over half of the twenty unlocked–I think maybe thirteen or fourteen? I had assumed that they would get harder as I unlocked more, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The last two I unlocked, I won fairly easily. In fact, I think I won both on two runs. And the one before that took three tries at most. There are some earlier ones that I still haven’t beaten yet.

They’re good fun. That’s the point I’m trying to make about the challenges. Most of them. And a nice break from the grind.

Speaking of the grind.

Let’s go back to the hunt for the last joker I needde to complete my decks. I still twitch when I think about it. It’s Stuntman, and it became my white whale. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, you have to get 100,000,000 chipps in one hand to unlock it. Also as I mentioned, the highest I got in one round was 7,00,000 chipps. You do the math and tell me how fucked you think I felt at the time.

I put off unlocking this joker beacuse I knew that it was going to fuck with me. I don’t like having to think when I play video games, and I knew this was going to be a thinking joker. I tried my best to do it organically, but I wsa not even coming close. I had to do what I hate to do–which is maximize my build. Again, I was using the Plasma Deck because I knew that was the one with the most potential for high scores. I was plugged in enough to the meta to recognize that.


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Balatro–my final review, part three

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I still have things to say about Balatro (LocalThunk), so this is the (probably) last post on the game. In the last post, I mentioned that I knew the game was deep, but I was having more and more dissatisfaction with how deep the game was. I mentioned that it took actual days to get two Legendary Jokers, which made the game not fun at all. In fact, in reading up on the best way to do it, someone said that you should just play the game and not worry about it because focusing on those kinds of things took the fun out of the game.

It’s so true. I just sat there mechanically playing the game, feeling no joy in my heart. I know the grind is real, but this grind felt so unnecessary. It really should not have been that hard to unlock them or that random. I mentioned in the last post how Baldur’s Gate 3 has something that I now know is Karmic Dice. I thought it meant it made your rolls better so you won’t have a truly terrible bad streak of rolls, but apparently, it also makes enemies roll better? Apparently, it’s a heated option, and there are arguments on both sides.

I do think in general, though, that the idea of bending the rolls (yes, rolls, not rules) so that the player does not fail a 90% roll three or four times in a row is fair play in a video game. I know that’s not how probabilities actually work, but I’m not going to play a game that does that to me over and over again. I know there are people who feel differently, which is why it should be an option and not the default.

In Balatro, I felt empty when I got the last Legendary. Relief, yes, but also just an intense weariness. It really should not have been like that, and while I realize that my luck was exceptionally bad, I can’t forget the hours upon hours upon hours of grinding I had to do to get two Legendary Jokers, neither of which I actually like. In addition, those two Legendaries are so specific, they’re pretty much useless. Well, not useless, but not very helpful.

*SPOILER*

You know what is a good Joker I slept on? And quite possibly the best overall Joker in the game? Hanging Chad. It’s a Common, and it replicates your first card twice (so you get all the effects of the first card three times. This includes any modifiers that card has and any other Jokers that are affected by the card. I didn’t know how powerful it was until I was going for my last Joker–Stuntman.


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