Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025)

Just cleared the missable side quest for Karatom this morning, and that Ultimate Sakapatate battle was a pain in the ass!

Not sure if my Gustav build was underpowered or if they intended you to struggle because the robot was resistant to electricity and Gustav's Overcharge did crap for damage. I had to bide my time, execute perfect parries/dodges, and chip away the Ultimate's lifebar millimeter by millimeter. The fight lasted 40 minutes.

I was told this isn't even a tough battle, that battles get crazier in Act II.
I can't wait. Dark Sou- err, Clair Obscur, here we come!

There are literally moments where three orbs fall simultaneously on the Gestral climbing wall which means it’s guaranteed you will be sent back to the beginning. The controls are too unresponsive, and you can't see where you are on the wall. That dev who designed this is kind of a dick. I say that in the friendliest way possible, but still definitely a dick.

It's fun knowing I'll never get the last achievement in the game because I don't want to complete any more of these loathsome challenges.

Strangely I am digging the interactive combat with the parry, dodge, jump, and augmented strike mechanics. My view on turn based RPGs is set back in the old days of the original FF7 and I haven't seen much of the evolution over the year. Maybe these mechanics aren't so new to this genre, but it is new to me.

Don't much care for plot of the strange puppet like creatures in the Gestral Village as they are entirely too silly and distracting from the main plot. It is good to have these more comedic diversions in your RPG but it feels too early on to do this, and too long a sequence. I would rather be learning about the Nevrons and the Paintress.

Rolled credits on Clair Obscur, and sadly I've gotta say that I liked it less and less from the start of Act 2 on.

The initial premise that hooked me is largely discarded in favor of a tired and overdone twist, which massively narrows the focus of the game's world for little benefit. Said twist is unsubtly hinted at far too early and revealed far too late, leaving a huge stretch of the midgame where the plot furiously spins its wheels. The big new character introduced in Act 2 is deeply boring/repellent, and his dull story sucks up most of the rest of the game's runtime. Worst of all, the painted characters are given less and less to say as the game goes on, culminating in an ending where they aren't allowed to speak at all.

The game's complete refusal to give the painting's inhabitants any say or agency in resisting their own annihilation, along with its intimation that an endgame decision is a noble and necessary cruelty, creates an inadvertently fucked-up subtext that kinda destroys the whole story for me. Some human lives are just inherently more valuable than others, it seems to say, and if thousands of downtrodden folks have to die to help a privileged white family heal emotionally, then so be it.

On the gameplay side it's not much better. Parries remain fun and there's some decent dungeon design throughout, but the equipment and skill systems quickly push the combat into a mindless nothing. Characters have a solid selection of skills and weapons to choose from, but besides Lune they've all got 2-3 best-in-class options that you'll spam over and over til the end of the game. There's dozens upon dozens of passive buffs that your party can equip, but so many of them offer free damage and AP increases that there's very little reason to ever consider using the more niche options. And all that free damage compounds upon itself to the point that every enemy and boss you encounter starts going down before they get a single chance to attack, even on the harder difficulties.

The music's near-constantly great, and the art direction's excellent outside a few repetitive environments, but the rest of Clair Obscur sorta fell off a cliff for me.