Latest news with #Expedition33Sandfall
Forbes
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Should You Play New Game Plus In ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'? Here's What You'll Find
Expedition 33 Sandfall Given that it's entirely possible that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may have just become one of my favorite games of all time, it took about all of two days before I couldn't resist heading back into it for a New Game+ run. I just finished it up and if you're wondering if it's worth it, I can tell you how it goes. Spoilers follow. The Important Things Carry Over – This means all your weapons, all your Pictos and Lumina Points, your level, your moves, your outfits and you even start with your full team (which makes some of the story points very funny). But make sure to activate them to play in that screen. It's Faster – This is sort of a given as you know how to navigate the major levels and you know which side missions exist, so the only way things may be slower is if this time you want to 100% explore each zone if you didn't last time. One bummer here is that you do not save the ability to smash through those blue spire rocks, so you will have to find four lost Gestrals again. Expedition 33 Sandfall You Will Find New Things – I can almost guarantee this. I really, really hunted for extra zones in the endgame of my first playthrough, and in NG+ I found at least two more major ones. No, they were not added specifically in NG+, but giving the map another pass I am almost sure you missed things unless you were using some elaborate guide in your first run. XP/Chroma – These are increased in NG+. XP is increased dramatically with fights giving you millions pretty early on. Getting past these fights is going to rocket you to 99 pretty quickly, albeit getting Lumina Points is a different story. Chroma is increased as well, but not as crazily. Difficulty – This may be what you want to know, and the answer is: it depends. How strong are you going into NG+? If you simply beat the story at 50-60 and head straight in, you're going to have a tough time. That may be what you want! I was the opposite, where I went in at 99 with a ton of Lumina Points and 98% of the fights were cake, even not using Maelle nukes. It was actually fun relying on other teammates this time. I used Monoco a lot when I barely touched him before (yes, you keep all his feet). Expedition 33 Sandfall Simon – I will make this a separate category given that he is the hardest fight in the game. Even with all my power, he was tough. I do not have a crazy Maelle death bomb nuke build which will still one-shot him. But trying to do it a more normal way, a lesser Maelle Stendhal opener only took him to half, and my teammates were only chipping him with millions of damage per hit. It took a lot of deaths and revives and ultimately, making Verso immortal on my reserve team with a Gradient to beat him. Loot – This is one that sort of disappointed me. With my best builds and best Pictos already set up, I was hoping I could push beyond them. But you will eventually just find 33 weapons and 33 Pictos which…will not fundamentally change your existing strong build if you want to keep that the same as 'best in class.' It frees you up for more experimenting but I hoped it would be more interesting. And I think there are only a few NG+ cosmetics like ending-dependent Gustave gear. Story – There are no new story turns, but there are so, so many instances of foreshadowing that it's amazing to watch it unfold now that you know where this is all going. Cannot say how many times I said 'aha!' when something was hinted at that I totally missed before. Enjoy. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33' Is Nerfing Its Most Game-Breaking Build
Expedition 33 Sandfall You do not often see heavy nerfs in single player, PvE only games, but sometimes things get a little too crazy, and something has to be done. That's currently happening with the beloved GOTY contender Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has announced it will be addressing its problem child, Maelle. Sandfall has revealed that it will be nerfing an aspect of the most popular, strongest Maelle build that involves the high-damage move Stendhal and stacking a zillion buffs to rack up anywhere from 20 million to 3 billion damage in one hit, depending on how it's set up. With the hardest phase of the hardest boss of the game able to be one-shot with 50-60 million in damage, this erases the entire endgame's challenge if you choose to use it. I wrote up the build literally yesterday, but it's being nerfed tomorrow in a new series of hotfixes. I mean, yes, this is justified. We don't even know how strong this nerf is and cutting it down to 95% of what it was still could be overpowered. The goal, Sandfall says, is to make it in line with other big damage, single-hit skills, rather than be 1000% better than everything else. Players are still discovering more and more builds for all characters every day, and even perusing YouTube, you can see millions in damage from other characters from Sciel to Verso. But millions is not 50 million or 3 billion, and it's not clear if anything close to Maelle's nuke can be drafted in the game with other characters at this point. But I've played these games long enough to know that someone is probably going to figure other things out. Expedition 33 Sandfall Again, Maelle is no doubt still going to be strong. Even post-nerf Stendhal may still be overpowered. But you will be surprised how little even a few million damage can move at least some of the health bars really late in the game, and it seems you are going to have to actually…play. Well, I won't because I just beat everything with Maelle. I mean, it was just too tempting, I'm sorry. I'll start New Game+ and do it legally, I promise. So yes, you have one more day of this which may not be enough to fully craft the build depending on where you are, but this is entirely justified so I don't think players can be all that mad about it. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
I Hate Turn-Based Games, I Love ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33'
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Sandfall At this point, there was essentially no question that I had to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game I had heard nothing but praise for, and one that is now officially the highest user-scored game in Metacritic history. I wasn't expecting the best game of all time, but after a day of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I understand the hype, at the very least. And the most surprising thing the game has done has turned me, a notorious turn-based combat-hater, into someone who positively loves the system they've come up with here. The story is great, the characters are great, the environments are great, the upgrade systems are great, but focusing on the combat, it just works. And if other people like me are asking if they should play this as a turn-based game when they normally avoid the genre, my answer is an emphatic yes. The bones are relatively simple. You do attacks, you build up an AP meter that lets you do better attacks. But each character has their own little minigame to increase their power and make their strategies more complex. That's fun in and of itself, but it's not the main reason it works for me. Expedition 33 Sandfall That would be the stellar addition of real-time combat with the turn-based aspects. I understand this is not the first game to do this, from Yakuza from Paper Mario, but it's more central to combat and better executed than I've seen before. There are three main levels to this: Perfect Attack Or Defense – Almost all special attacks have a quick-time event that when landed correctly 1-3+ times can dramatically increase damage or add extra healing or defense with those types of moves. All have a different cadence you will learn the more you use the move. Dodge – This is the basic aspect of combat, where you learn the timing of each enemy move and are able to real-time dodge them as they come in, with things like Perfect Dodge sometimes offering you things like bonus AP. It's a way to take on tough enemies or win seemingly impossible battles if you're simply good enough at this system. There are also 'jump' dodges later that allow you to counterattack at the same time. Parry – The evolution of this system, for the truly timing-skilled is Parry, where if you manage to deflect a move perfectly or every hit of a combo you will retaliate with a massive attack that turns an offensive enemy turn into them receiving a huge chunk of damage. I am not very good at this yet, but perhaps in time. Expedition 33 Sandfall It's a balance. You learn how to synergize your skills, weapons and upgrades for the manual turn selection portion, but defense is almost entirely turn-based and if you lose fights, it's not purely because of bad skill selection strategy, and gives a different kind of player a leg-up. I know it's technically 'quick-time events' which a lot of people hate, but it genuinely feels good. I cannot recommend this game enough. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Bluesky Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
