Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Reliance On Parrying Undermines Its Entire Combat System

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Matt Arnold

Published Apr 27, 2025

Followed

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 deserves the critical praise it’s getting right now, sitting pretty෴ at 92 on Metacritic at the time of writing. It’s a beautifully-crafted RPG that keeps you hooked from start to finish, andꦫ its introduction of soulslike elements like limited items and respawning enemies at rest points are a fun twist on a venerable genre.

A Gestral Merchant at the Gestral Village in Clair Obscur Expedition 33.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - How To Get And Use The Strange🌟 Pictos

The Strange Pictos from ♒Lumiere is certainly an enigma until you meet someone who can do something with it.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: ꧋

Its combat takes this concept even further, interweaving traditional turn-based battles with timed dodges and parries. Combined with Clair Obscur’s ele🏅gant Lumina system and compellingly unique combat styles for each character, it makes for a fresh re-im🦋agining of the age-old formula of “Fight, Magic, Item, Run.”

Or at least, it would, if parry🐭ing wasn’t so critical to success that it completely overshadows ev𒅌erything else.

Parry This, Casual

Timed inputs in turn-based games are nothing new; off the top of my head, the earliest example I can think of is 1996’s Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars. Usually, these games give you a damage or defense bonus for hitting a button at just the right time during an attack animation. They’re helpful, and truly mastering the game usually means lear♎ning the timing as part of your muscle memory, but they’re not always strictly necessa🌼ry.

Clair Obscur’s pa𝓰rries are something else entirely. I don’t have anything against the concept on paper; if you hit R1/RB at exactly the right moment (the fraction of a second before an enemy’s attack connects), you can negate the incoming damage ent🍷irely, and even get extra AP to spend on Skills when your turn comes up.

If you parry every single hit in an enemy’s combo, you retaliate with a powerful counterattack. At the start of the game, it has a bit of a learning curv🐎e but it’s a fun gimmick, and the counters a༒re hands-down the most satisfying combat moments in the entire game.

The problem arises the f🧸urther you get into the campaign. Most late-game enemies, especially bosses and overwhelmingly powerful optional superbosses, unleash deadly attacks and combos that can one-shot party members or even your entire team if they go unblocked. Even on lower ♚difficulty settings, if you can’t get the parries right, you die.

Technically, dodging is also an option, but the input window is only a hair longer, and there’s no AP reward like there is with parries. Your experience may vary, but♊ I generally found that against all but a handful of attacks, dodging wasn’t worth it.

Nice Loadout You’ve Got There

Gustave is cornered by a Noire in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

It’s a shame that parrying becomes so overbearing, because Clair Obscur’s character customization system is well-designed, fun to play with, a𝐆nd provides opportunities to make lots of neat builds. Whether you come up with a straightforward, min-maxing setup or an unorthodox combo, though, it’s all for nothing 🔥if you can’t parry.

Even with Luminas like Second Chance, which revives a character with it equipped once per battle, it’s likely that you’re going to have to retry a lot of late-game fights just to learn the parry patterns before you can even think about putting your meticulously-crafted build to use. The game stops being about using all the cool Pictos that you’ve found, and just becomes about whether you can consistently hit the b⛦utton at exactly the right time.

While it seems that developer Sandfall Interactive’s intent was to make parrying a system that complemented the more traditional turn-based structure of Claiওr Obscur’s combat, and also have it play a part in your AP curve, it instead created a monster th🐎at I foresee driving a not-insignificant percentage of players away from a game that they’d otherwise love.

lune gives the white demineur its mine in clair obscur: expedition 33.

𝓰 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Where To Get The Demineur Mine

Take the time to help the White Demineur as you pass throug🅷h Flying Waters in Clair Obscur: Expediti꧋on 33.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网🔯: ꦐ

This Isn’t Sekiro

monoco counters the chromatic ballet's enchantment attack in clair obscur: expedition 33.

There’s an argument to be made that Clair Obscur’s parries are just a part of the difficulty, and that beating it requires learning how to handle them. I can appreciate that on the merits, and for other titles I might agree; I’m no stranger to hard games, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I like a challenge, but split-second reflexes and precision inputs aren’t what draw players to turn-🥂based RPGs.

Clair Obscur could have offered plenty of difficult, ജdangerous battles that asked🥀 the player to reconsider their loadout, or their approach to spending their AP, or even use Recoats to completely respec their team. Instead, it feels like every late-game enemy’s challenge comes down to parrying and parrying alone.

The game’s reliance on parries also presents a major accessibility issue. Players who simply don’t have the motor control for the kind of inputs the game is asking for don’t really have any other options if they want to play it. In fact, I’d argue that players who turn to turn-based games specifically because titles like Sekiro are a lost cause to them are pote▨ntially in for some serious disappointment after looking forward to Expedition 33.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible to finish the game’s story, at least, simply by overleveling and tanking your way through unblocked hits via brute force alone, but that requires a lot of grinding and is probably more trouble than 💧it's worth.

I don’t believe that Sandfall designed its combat system to turn players off. Why would it? At 🐬the end of the day, though, Clair Obscur’s reliance on parrying as a difficulty driver becomes a crutch that stifles its otherwise-engaging combat. It’s one of the few blemishes on the game’s lovely, haunt𝓀ing canvas.