In Expedition 33, you can easily ruin the final battle. Because those who use the normal “gamer logic” make a mistake.
Like many others, I have played a lot of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in the last few days and I basically think that we already received our game of the year in April. I am very enthusiastic about the story, the art style of the world, and the combat system.
However, a problem crept in for me that has ruined many JRPGs and slightly spoiled the final moment of Expedition 33: I prepared so thoroughly for the final battle that it became ridiculously easy.
Much to do before the final battle – but that was not a wise decision
I want to avoid spoilers here, so I won’t go into the story – just the gameplay circumstances that ruined the ending for me a bit.
There is a point in the game where you are unmistakably informed that the final battle is approaching and that you should prepare “as well as possible.” For me, this translated from game language to:
“Aha, before I set off, I should take care of everything else. Every side quest that is still open and every unexplored area should be completed!”
Since you also unlock the ability to explore the game world largely freely at the same time, I did exactly that. Because there were still many hidden places, additional dungeons, and levels that I had not explored. Many of them still had a red “Danger!” marker, but if you work your way through step by step, a quite sensible order emerged in my view.
This meant that I spent another roughly 20 hours exploring and completing side missions. Since these also repeatedly brought (quite relevant) story details and had some cutscenes, it felt coherent and right. At least I thought so.
Because when I then made the decision to set off for the last battle, I realized right at the first enemy that this might have been a mistake. While the epic music blasted around me, making it clear that this was really for everything, it took just one attack to take down the enemy.
Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case, but all enemies between my party and the final boss were no more than cardboard cutouts that posed no challenge at all.
Final boss taken down with a one-hit
Just to express this in numbers: When the hint for the final battle came, the members of my expedition were about level 40. In the final battle, they were all clearly beyond 90. They not only had more than double the character stats but also such strong Pictos and so many Lumina points that ordinary enemies collapsed at the sight of them.
When it came to the last fight, the battle lasted exactly one single round – my character only had to make one single move to already decide the match. The stats of my Maelle were even so high that she could have attacked multiple times in a row before the boss could act even once.
A few targeted shots to the enemy’s face were enough to send him to the ground. Something that would hardly have scratched most enemies I fought otherwise. The grandiose battle music ended before it could really take off.
This significantly took away the drama and tension from the otherwise so emotional scene and spoiled the game’s finale for me a bit. The story is still grand, of course, but if the big enemy is just low-hanging fruit, it does diminish the experience a bit.
For my next gameplay run, I know: I can do the final battle first. That way, it won’t disrupt the exciting story and will ensure that the battle really feels like a final battle. Because I really messed that up.
So if you reach the point in the game where you are explicitly told that the final battle is imminent, I can at least give a small warning: You can simply continue following the story and do not have to complete “everything else”. Because even though the game implicitly claims this, it is actually logical in terms of difficulty to complete many of the endgame contents after the final battle of the main story. A lesson I had to learn, which unfortunately made me ruin the emotional climax of the game.
If you’re interested in our review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you can find it here.
