Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

pandora's box said:
btw those on nvidia 5000 series card - smooth motion works fantastically in this game. Using it with the game maxed out (post processing on high vs epic as it causes severe blurring on epic), dlss quality and i went from 100fps at 4k to 150-18fps. visually and latency wise, no impact to having smooth motion on.
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Smooth motion is the most underrated feature of the 5090.

With many of the slightly older titles in my library (recent games that don’t have frame-gen… games that still push the hardware) smooth motion is the answer.

I’ve been combining it with DLAA for spectacular results.
 
GOTY 2025 frontrunners: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 vs Split Fiction vs Kingdom Come Deliverance 2...will Half Life 3 spoil the party?
 
I keep getting roped into the optional shit because I can't help myself

It's just a couple of fights... then this dungeon looks neat... then I wonder if I can stomp this guy now...

Still don't think I'll complete it all... but there's definitely a decent chunk of content...
 
Did not expect this...

OUCH this dialogue

This and the Alicia sequence right before were both a gut punch

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This dungeon was awesome though, I loved the design
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The Act 3 balancing gets a bit wonky though... dulled the moment a little when I smacked her for like 300,000 on my 2nd turn and instantly ended the fight.

One you do some of the content, you start getting strong enough to mulch anything that isn't one of those enemies that's utterly ridiculous. Like at some point the scaling just goes through the roof and you leave everything totally in the dust besides for them.

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Completed this about 45 hours in. 10/10 - Every single aspect of the game was exceptional (except maybe some occasional clunkiness in the UI) and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment from start to finish. Agree with everyone saying GOTY so far, puts tripleA titles with 10 times the budget to shame.
 
Finished act 1 a couple weeks ago and was starting to really get into this game. Took a break due to work, and now I'm getting absolutely crushed in act 2. Like I can't even beat the first random trash enemy encounter on the story path. Do I just completely suck, or did I miss something? It feels like the difficulty level went from somewhat challenging but still enjoyable, to downright impossible.
 
izzypizzy said:
Just do it!

I didn't anticipate liking it, so I pirated it just to give it a demo. After a couple of hours of play, I had already fallen in love and decided I had to support this studio and purchased it through Steam. It's become one of my all time favorite games.
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Pirating really isn't an excuse to "demo" a game anymore, though, now that Steam offers a <2hr refund window. I mean good on you for buying it, but your initial scenario of being unsure is precisely why that policy exists.
 
CaptainClueless said:
Finished act 1 a couple weeks ago and was starting to really get into this game. Took a break due to work, and now I'm getting absolutely crushed in act 2. Like I can't even beat the first random trash enemy encounter on the story path. Do I just completely suck, or did I miss something? It feels like the difficulty level went from somewhat challenging but still enjoyable, to downright impossible.
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Are you actually setting your pictos and lumina's? They make a huge difference. I've seen numerous posts around the Internet of people just not really paying attention to this and it eventually catches up to them.

Pictos start adding serious stat gains.

I don't think I remember a huge spike, or it evened out quickly. I think I was around level 20~ at that point?
 
Lateralus said:
Pirating really isn't an excuse to "demo" a game anymore, though, now that Steam offers a <2hr refund window. I mean good on you for buying it, but your initial scenario of being unsure is precisely why that policy exists.
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Normally I would agree with you but there's barely any combat in the first two hours. Impossible to get a feel for it in that time frame.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Normally I would agree with you but there's barely any combat in the first two hours. Impossible to get a feel for it in that time frame.
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Not that I was aware of that going into this game, but absolutely, and speaking from experience with other games I HAVE demo'd through Steam, the 2 hour limit can be very constraining, which is why I opted for the route that I took. I stand by it, if it gets you to give the game a shot and you're willing to invest money into it after you realize you like it, why not?
 
So is the Combat fun? I still haven't picked this up by the Reviews are though the Roof on Steam.
 
Lateralus said:
Pirating really isn't an excuse to "demo" a game anymore, though, now that Steam offers a <2hr refund window. I mean good on you for buying it, but your initial scenario of being unsure is precisely why that policy exists.
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Wish I'd pirated starfield, 2h not enough for some games.

After watching gameplay and reading opinions on [H] this will be my next game, if I ever get the time.
 
mQzz said:
finally in act 3, what a game. its SO good. my god. noone should be on the fence about this one.

and i have never liked jrpgs.
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The end of act 2 is awesome, probably one of my favorite segments I've ever played in an RPG.

The camera framing right as the second stage of the fight is about to start was chef's kiss.

When you're looking through the hole in The Paintress and see the warped tower of Lumiere as it pans back to show the party.

I was so hyped.

Then the fight starts and you get that "The Paintress rips apart reality." notice and the camera pans like 500 feet away to cover the attack.

Which is pretty funny that you can actually parry, somehow.

The Lumiere raid is pretty damn badass too.

They were just absolutely cooking at this point.
 
socK said:
The end of act 2 is awesome, probably one of my favorite segments I've ever played in an RPG.

[SNIP]

They were just absolutely cooking at this point.
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The end of Act 2 was epic. I just marveled as the story played out and came together. I was so excited, I tried to give a sinopsis of the story to my wife but quit when her eyes glazed over.

Just wow.
 
PeaKr said:
Wish I'd pirated starfield, 2h not enough for some games.
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Lol, I'd shed no tears if anyone decided to pirate Starfield rather than purchasing it.

I agree with you guys that experiencing the first 2 hours of a game isn't always enough to cement a decision to purchase (*cough* RDR2), but that's not on Valve. I'd like to see more demos be available, and it's really up to the game studios to create demos that get players hooked enough to purchase the full title. Think of how poorly a lot of movies would do if their trailers simply showed the first 2 minutes of the film, which is often slow and/or expository as it introduces the world and builds the plot. Instead, the people who craft the trailers know that this is their one shot to generate interest, so they cram them full of exciting or intriguing scenes in order to pique the interest of the audience. I think it would be better if game demos did something similar, rather than following the usual formula of providing only the first bit of the game. Of course this would take a bit more work on behalf of the devs, but it would undoubtedly be worth it if it got more people to purchase a game.

I can see how the Steam refund policy might cause studios to lazily skip this process, instead relying on the first 2 hours of gameplay to sell the game and/or hoping that people accidentally surpassed the refund window and thus became ineligible for a return. I do find it interesting that a huge number of indie studios are able to provide demos despite being limited in terms of manpower, though. I have nearly 90 demos installed ATM. Some clearly aren't for me after playing, but many were enjoyable and several of them have spurred me to go ahead and purchase the full game.

Anyway - back to Clair Obscur...haven't played it but I'm very impressed with how well it has resonated with audiences - even players who weren't traditionally interested in this type of game. That's a sure sign that they did something right, so kudos to them for the amazing work here.
 
I just finished my playthrough at 60 hours. Almost got all of the achievements, but I don't know if I want to get the rest or move on. One of them would require replaying a bit of the game just because I didn't get all three tokens at the beginning of the game. Apparently that matters for one of the achievements... Still had an absolute blast and this is a 10/10 masterpiece.

I definitely feel like I'm getting too old to master parry timing these days, so I devised a plan to beat Simon without even giving him a turn. The plan worked brilliantly and I am astonished how broken both Verso and Maelle can get towards the end. I had Sciel in the party just for the double damage and intervention abilities. Was able to deal something like 30 million damage in a single hit at level 93.
 
Picked this up on a whim not knowing if I'd like the combat but quickly lost a good 5 hours to it. :)

Was initially disappointed with performance but then I discovered Smooth Motion - awesome. I'll give Nvidia credit where it's due and features like this are why I keep buying their top cards.
 
The first hour is pretty boring. I'll pick it up again tomorrow and see if it grabs me in the last hour that I can refund it.
 
RE: Nvidia Smooth Motion


AMD has had a similar feature called Fluid Motion Frames, for quite some time. Works well.
 
KickAssCop said:
Seems I also need to get past that as for me it was boring af qte fest.
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It's a turn-based RPG with QTE elements to allow you to do more or take more damage. Not strictly required, but recommended. You can turn down the difficulty and make the timing easier.
 
MavericK said:
It's a turn-based RPG with QTE elements to allow you to do more or take more damage. Not strictly required, but recommended. You can turn down the difficulty and make the timing easier.
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I will probably go that route as I can be lazy to learn new systems at my age.
 
I put a few more hours into it and its gotten better. I'm playing on Expert and some of the combat has been pretty tough. I was getting 2 shot by almost everything if I missed a parry so I've been going the souls-like route and throwing 50% of my early points into HP which has helped a lot. I find myself getting hung up on minute ground decorations while running and invisible walls are everywhere. So far every map has been had one path to the boss of the area with a couple more dead-end paths to pick up a random doodad. Graphics and music are pretty good. I'm torn on the combat; the parry mechanic does make it more interactive but it's still just basic 90s JRPG mechanics. I find the combat camera to be pretty annoying; it's always too zoomed in and at times it's so low that it makes it hard to see what the enemies are doing.

7/10 so far for me but I'm still pretty early (about to finish the water area).
 
Bankie said:
I put a few more hours into it and its gotten better. I'm playing on Expert and some of the combat has been pretty tough. I was getting 2 shot by almost everything if I missed a parry so I've been going the souls-like route and throwing 50% of my early points into HP which has helped a lot. I find myself getting hung up on minute ground decorations while running and invisible walls are everywhere. So far every map has been had one path to the boss of the area with a couple more dead-end paths to pick up a random doodad. Graphics and music are pretty good. I'm torn on the combat; the parry mechanic does make it more interactive but it's still just basic 90s JRPG mechanics. I find the combat camera to be pretty annoying; it's always too zoomed in and at times it's so low that it makes it hard to see what the enemies are doing.

7/10 so far for me but I'm still pretty early (about to finish the water area).
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Invisible walls can be so annoying. If you want to railroad me, throw up some cliffs or trees or something.
 
I dropped to the standard difficulty from Expert to see how combat feels. It goes from kind of frustrating (you get 1-2 shot a lot on Expert which is pretty annoying when the enemy is doing a 5 hit combo) to stupid easy. So balance is not great IMO.

The cutscenes are ugly AF; they're those low-quality pre-rendered videos and they run at 30fps. All they would have had to do was make them in-engine and they'd look great. It blows my mind that Blizzard had much much higher quality cinematics 20 years ago. It destroys the immersion when you go from 120fps high-quality graphics to a 10MB 360p Quicktime movie from 1998 that's being scaled up on a high-res monitor.

There's quite a bit of jank. Animations can be rough (jumping in particular), lots and lots of holding sprint down to get places, decorations on the ground that are the size of your big toe will sometimes stop all movement, climbing is the standard 'reach for the ledge and hit the action button' but doesn't feel smooth (might be animation related), the combat camera is all over the place and near constantly moves to a position that blocks your view (should have called it Camera Obscura), etc.

Overworld fast travel would be welcome. You'll trek about the map, find a dead end that you'll need to come back to later, and then after you run back across the map to find the item you need, you'll have to slowly sprint all the way back. Maybe they'll pull a Final Fantasy and give a mount or airship later but I haven't seen any suggestions of that in-game at this point.

The environments have 0 interaction with your character unless it's a button to be pushed.

I'm really enjoying the design and lore of the world but the character dialog is usually pretty juvenile and not very interesting.


It is an enjoyable game but I don't see how it could be even close to a 10 out of 10.
 
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