There are two pieces of media I’d like to discuss today. There’s no real connection between them, except that they’re both a bit outside my usual wheelhouse in terms of interests, but that’s a good enough excuse to lump them together in my books.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Not to get all hipster, but I stumbled across Expedition 33 well before it launched and blew up like crazy (can’t remember how) and thought it looked interesting enough to keep an eye on. Despite that, and the universally rave reviews it received once it actually launched, I spent quite a few months waffling on if I actually wanted to buy it.

The problem is I don’t enjoy turn-based combat in video games, at all. It’s normally an instant dealbreaker for me. I was intrigued by E33’s introduction of real time mechanics to the formula… but it’s mainly precisely timed parries and quick time events, which are by far my least favourite parts of real time combat.

Still, it seemed like such a unique game I decided to give it a shot.

Sure enough, I didn’t love the combat. Conceptually I think needing to defend yourself in real time is a brilliant way to improve turn-based combat. Usually what kills turn-based for me is the boredom of sitting on my hands and watching the game play itself when it’s not my turn, and the real time avoidance completely eliminates that.

But I don’t enjoy the extreme precision that E33 requires. Bluntly, I’m really bad at it. My reflexes just aren’t that fast. I’ve always been a fan of needing to actively avoid enemy attacks in games, but I’m growing increasingly frustrated with the current trend towards requiring super precise timing for such things. I’m used to just running out of the way or keeping my shield up being good enough. The fact a dodge or block doesn’t count in a lot of recent games unless you do it at the last possible second is irritating.

I struggled to find a comfortable difficulty setting, as the dodge windows on normal were too unforgiving for my sluggish brain, but story mode was so completely bereft of threat that it became boring. I ended up downloading a mod that let me have easier dodge and parry windows without otherwise altering the difficulty (as well as a mini-map mod as the lack of such was frustrating me).

I don’t think I would have finished the game without mods, but with them, I managed to find a decent balance where the combat felt mostly tolerable, and even actually fun sometimes. One upside to this kind of JRPG style combat is the attack animations are truly spectacular (Crystal Crush, my beloved).

I settled on Sciel, Lune, and Verso as my go-to party, with Sciel largely carrying the team. I got her set up such that she could pump out massive heals, keep the entire party buffed with Shell and Powerful at all times, and still dish out huge damage. To the game’s credit, though, I did get the feeling that pretty much any character could end up broken with the right build.

My other major frustration with the game is that I don’t like how it handled open world exploration. While the instanced zones will warn you if you’re underleveled for them, there doesn’t seem to be any way to find out the intended level of open world mobs, so it’s easy (and common) to stumble your way into fights you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. At one point I spent a full hour exploring the map and getting into fights only to get absolutely curbstomped every single time. That was the most mad I’ve been at a game in quite a while.

Act 3 is kind of a mess in terms of game structure, too. There’s one story quest, which ends the game, but there will at that point still be tonnes of optional content left undone (some of which you’ll still be underleveled for, even). Up until that point it’s a very tight and well-paced RPG, but then it turns into this janky pseudo sandbox experience where you can either ignore a huge chunk of content, or completely kill the story’s momentum by ignoring the epic conclusion for another dozen hours or more of random exploration.

I ended up skipping most of the optional stuff and just going straight to the end. I am considering going back for the rest at some point, as you can at least continue exploring after the main story ends, but I’m in no rush to do so.

The story was the main draw of the game for me, and I mostly liked it, but it didn’t entirely meet my expectations, which is maybe on me as those expectations were very high.

I think it’s mostly that I never really felt surprised by anything that happened. I’m not going to claim I predicted the exact twists and turns, but the story clearly telegraphs that there’s more going on than seems apparent at first glance, and I’ve played enough Don’t Nod games to know what to expect from the ending of a French game.

For the record, I’m in the camp that views the Maelle ending as the (marginally) lesser evil.

I did enjoy the characters a lot. They feel very well realized, and Verso and Sciel in particular feel like some of the more authentic depictions of mental illness I’ve seen in media.

To put it more clearly, I enjoyed the combat a lot more than I expected to, but still not that much, and I enjoyed the story a little less than I expected to, but still pretty well. I think it’s fair to say I’m not as awestruck by Expedition 33 as most people seem to be, but it’s still a very good game, and I’m glad I took a chance on it despite it being so far outside my comfort zone. I’d give it about an 8/10.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

With a few minor exceptions, I’ve never been much for anime, but given my obsession with Elves, people kept recommending me Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and I decided to finally bow to the peer pressure.

Having finished the season, I’m honestly still not sure if I like it or not.

On the one hand, I definitely love the premise. A deep dive on the psychology of an immortal Elf as she struggles to come to terms with the mortality of her companions and the changing world around her is tailor-made for someone like me, and I think the writing mostly does a good job of illustrating Frieren’s alien perspective and genuine struggles to fit in among humans. I would really like to see more sci-fi/fantasy stories that centre non-human perspectives like this.

On the other hand, it’s an incredibly slow series. I think a lot of Western TV these days is too rushed, and I don’t mind a slow burn, but this is so slow I’m not sure it’s burning at all. Most of the time it feels like they’re going out of their way to avoid anything even close to dramatic tension.

I think they also waste the show’s premise a bit by not employing more time skips. The first half dozen episodes or so take place over the course of around eighty years, but after that everything takes place within a year or two. I think it would have been a more interesting series if it was constantly skipping through the years, showing how the world changes even as Frieren stays the same. They could have done a Doctor Who kind of thing and had her get a new set of companions every season, every season a new generation that teaches Frieren something new about the human experience.

Finally, I did find the attempts at humour quite grating. It feels like it has to have been a mandate from some studio executive to include X jokes in Y style, because it’s always totally out of the blue and wildly mismatched with the tone of the show. “This is a thoughtful, introspective series about processing grief and learning to be grateful in the here and now, but also here’s a random gag about how some dude has a tiny dick.”

I’d consider watching the second season when it shows up, but I wouldn’t be in any hurry about it.