The All Purpose Video Game Thread Part Iv

[Overcast]

Great post.

Have you heard of Claire Obscur? It’s a modern love letter to 90’s square JRPG games, it’s full of emotion, where characters expressions speak louder than words spoken, graphics are beautiful and the story is top notch as you try to piece it together. It’s a minuscule development team (under 40 total ppl involved I believe) and the most impressive thing is how they’ve managed to make their characters facial expressions so human and real (a pet peeve of mine as nearly all modern games have elite graphics with each strand of hair and photon of light having their own dedicated CPU, but still have the stiffest most robotic and awkward faces). Even more amazingly, they have somehow captured the human soul and essence in the eyes of their models making them feel so real and vulnerable. Absolutely stunning work.

I've heard a lot of really good things about Clair Obscur, and from what I've seen it looks just as good. I've tried to stay away from as much info as possible because it sounds like something I'd enjoy and I don't want to spoil too much, but the battle system looked like a cool twist/update to the turn-based style of old JRPGs. There's like parrying/dodging or something? Kinda looked like Super Mario RPG's timed-button-press system to get a stronger attack/spell in battles.

 

[nyr2k2]

I've heard a lot of really good things about Clair Obscur, and from what I've seen it looks just as good. I've tried to stay away from as much info as possible because it sounds like something I'd enjoy and I don't want to spoil too much, but the battle system looked like a cool twist/update to the turn-based style of old JRPGs. There's like parrying/dodging or something? Kinda looked like Super Mario RPG's timed-button-press system to get a stronger attack/spell in battles.

Ha, Super Mario RPG is the first thing I thought of when I first saw the mechanics.

Really though the button presses when attacking are minimal, like maybe two per turn, and don't make that much of a difference. It's all about the enemies' turns: you literally live and die by parrying and dodging. To be clear, dodging is like a last resort because it doesn't really do anything for you other than spare you from taking damage.

However parrying is key. You need to parry to launch counterattacks which are where the real damage is done. Some enemies are easy to parry and some are f***ing hard. Eventually you get the timing and rhythm down, but until you do you'll probably die a lot. Like you might fight a group of three enemies, and if you don't know how to parry them, they will absolutely f*** you up. Like dead in a turn or two. But then you learn how to parry their moves and you go in and counter their first attack and suddenly they're 80% dead after one go. It's all about the parry. And they add some wrinkles later.

The other thing is you really need to focus on your character build. It's not just like, okay I got a new strong weapon, time to f*** shit up! Each weapon will scale with certain stats so it may have more base attack, but it scales with agility and luck, and you don't have those leveled up. But another weapon you have does scale with those, and so it's actually twice as powerful. And then with the pictos and luminas, the things you equip to add buffs and debuffs and other conditions, you can come up with some crazy shit. It can be overwhelming but once it clicks it's like man, I can do whatever I want. I'm getting the first attack with my character who by choice starts with 1 HP so she can do 500% damage with guaranteed crit and 4 burn stacks. LOL. Random stuff like that.

If you wanted a turn based RPG on the classic mold, which is what I was initially hoping for, this is not it. But it's something fresh, and innovative. And it's so well done across the board. Great game.