Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a lot of moving parts in its turn-based battle system. Though the RPG does a decent job of introducing things to you slowly, by the time you have a full party, you’re juggling pretty distinct characters with bespoke playstyles and trying to find some way to make them fit together. Part of the fun is experimenting with different characters, ability sets, and combos to find what works best for you, so I won’t try to influence your playstyle too much. Still, I do have a few early game tips to help you on your expedition.
Street Fighter 6’s Modern Controls Are Great For The Game
You unlock the camp…later
One of the odd design decisions in Clair Obscur is that you will start getting items that can be used at “camp” before you actually unlock the ability to set one up. So if you pick up items to upgrade your weapons and you can’t figure out where to do that, it’s because you probably haven’t unlocked it yet. You can set up camp once you reach the overworld map that lets you travel between hubs. This will come a few hours into playing, and after you have a team of at least three characters.
Free aim shots don’t end your turn, but use them wisely
Each character in Clair Obscur has a free aim ability that lets you aim and shoot projectiles at enemies in real-time. This is helpful for taking out flying enemies that will dodge your standard sword strikes, but it also doesn’t end your turn like an attack, ability, or item will. Your “ammo” is your AP, which fuels most of your abilities, so there is some risk vs. reward involved in just unloading bullets into your enemies. However, since they don’t end your turn, they’re a good tool to fall back on when an enemy has shields that will withstand several hits. If your enemy has shields up, they’ll reduce all incoming damage until a set number of attacks breaks them. These attacks don’t have to hit a certain damage threshold to break the shield, they just have to reach a certain number of strikes. So you can unload several bullets into an enemy to take down their shields, clearing the way for you to use more powerful attacks in the same turn.
Pictos have stat buffs alongside their base effect
One of the most important tools in your arsenal is Pictos. These are equipment that give each character passive buffs and effects, but they’re often more complex than simple stat boosts. Some examples include giving you additional AP for each dodge or parry, letting a character go first in battle, or boosting your standard attack’s damage after a free aim shot. But on top of this, they do often still have stat boosts as well. You have a lot of control over your stats, as you upgrade them manually with each level. However, a good Picto with a buff can make up for not dumping points into one stat or the other. I gave Gustave a Picto that greatly increased his health, freeing me to dump points into strength, defense, and agility. So while the passive abilities that come with Pictos are the draw, keep an eye on their other benefits.
Don’t rely just on dodging, especially against long combos
Clair Obscur’s turn-based battles are built around timing mechanics. There are QTEs to increase ability power, as well as dodge and parry mechanics to avoid and counter incoming attacks. For much of the early game, I relied on dodging more than parrying because the timing for those felt more forgiving. However, as I got further, I would run into enemies that would string together vicious combos that were so fast that by the time my character returned to their default position after dodging the first attack, the second one was already making contact. This is the kind of scenario in which you have to learn to parry with precision, and perfectly parrying enemy combos will allow you to throw some of that damage back at an enemy. You can mix both of them into your response, but if you commit to parrying, you’ll get the added benefit of countering.
Make time to talk to your team at camp
Sometimes you’ll be forced to set up camp for story reasons, but it’s worth heading to camp of your own volition just to check in on your party. As the game goes on, you’ll unlock social events to learn more about your crew, as well as optional scenes of the whole group reacting to the latest development. So make sure you head to camp to see how folks are holding up.
Make sure your team has status effect abilities that you can build combos from
Almost every ability in Clair Obscur has an additional reaction to something else. Sometimes an attack will get a passive buff if it’s used on an enemy afflicted with a status effect, or they’ll build off one of your character’s personal mechanics. Juggling all these combos and moving parts can be overwhelming, but when you get the hang of it, that’s when the game’s combat really shines. As you’re upgrading your team and assigning their abilities, look for combo opportunities even if the individual move might not seem that great on its own. I gave Gustave an ability that “marks” enemies for higher damage, despite it not really doing much beyond that. Maelle was then able to follow it up with an attack that would further increase damage to marked enemies, making it easy to reach the 9999 threshold with one attack. Gustave has an attack that self-heals when he strikes an enemy afflicted with burn, so I would have Lune unleash fire spells that would affect the whole enemy team right at the beginning of a match so he could leech off them. These combos are laid out pretty clearly in the battle UI, but there are so many different status effects and individual character mechanics that initially I would often stumble upon these interactions without realizing they were in my toolset. Once I started paying more attention to these, new strategies formed as I moved down the skill tree.
Burn is your best friend
Set your enemies on fire early and often. The Burn status effect deals decent damage at the beginning of every enemy turn. The effect stacks, so you can theoretically keep it going for an entire battle until the enemy is burnt to a crisp by reapplying fire spells and abilities before the status effect ends. This is especially useful when fighting fast enemies who get multiple turns in a row, as it will use their speed against them and deal more damage.
Maelle is much more powerful than you think
The only piece of advice I will give you in terms of party composition is that Maelle, the rapier-wielding party member, should always be on your team. Homegirl’s stance-shifting kit allows her to pivot between stat distributions in the middle of a fight to prioritize attack or defense, and the trade-off for that flexibility is that her stance changes are tied to other abilities. For example, some attacks will automatically shift her to one stance or another, and that means moving into the desired one can sometimes require a few turns of setup. But once you lock her into the Virtuose Stance that doubles her attack power, you are set up to take out nearly any enemy with a flick of her wrist. Managing her stance shifting requires some forethought, and that can make her challenging to use and strategize around, but once you figure out how best to utilize her abilities, she will mow through the most powerful foes you’ll face in Clair Obscur.
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