Combat in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one of the most compelling and divisive features of this year’s runaway hit, hasn’t always looked like it does in the game today.
Developed by Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an adventure RPG drawing inspiration from the JRPG genre. With its 12 nominations in the 2025 Game Awards categories, it is also a current record holder for the most nominations in a single year, a feat like no other.
The fighting is definitely a feat in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, too. Turn-based combat, flexible fighting builds, and casting resource management are familiar elements that are all but expected in a game with heavy JRPG influences. What is more unorthodox is the implementation of the real-time parrying and dodging to complement the turn-based mechanics. Their incorporation into the combat of Clair Obscur has earned the game flattering, but perhaps misplaced comparisons to Dark Souls and equally challenging games of the Soulslike genre.
It’s true, though, that the numerous unforgiving boss fights and the precise timing required to perfectly execute the defensive moves at the player’s disposal in Clair Obscur can pose a challenge even to more seasoned players. For newbies not used to quick-time events and split-second precision? The combat can be straight-up overwhelming.
Michel Nohra, Lead Game Designer at Sandfall Interactive, notes that combat in Expedition 33 was always meant to be a lot more demanding than in “regular RPGs.” In his recent talk at MIGS, he spoke at length about the evolution of combat mechanics and the many iterations the team went through to arrive at the memorable combat experience Clair Obscur delivers today.
Turn-based combat was initially bloated
The turn-based component of the Clair Obscur combat evolved the most from its earliest form. Instead of AP, mana was the original source of power for each character’s turn. It also juiced magic attacks and defences before it was completely removed from gameplay.
There were over one hundred consumables to assist health management, companion aid, and energy expenditure in the early versions of the game. If you played Expedition 33, you wouldn’t know it, as there are now three and only three consumables, called tints, that heal, revive, or give AP, greatly streamlining the companion survival experience.
Nohra admits that the initial turn-based setup was much too complicated to be enjoyable or even manageable overall. In addition to consumables and mana, the characters each had 40 unlockable skills (compare that to the existing 25) and numerous stats to keep track of, including mastery, accuracy, magic attack, and magic defence. Plus, the potential army of enemies you could fight at any given time included four foes (now pared down to three). Add all of these together, and you have the perfect storm of sensory overload before real-time elements even come into play during each encounter.
Parry and dodge were too overwhelming in early playtests
The real-time mechanic certainly underwent many changes as well, although in its case, more was added rather than taken away to reduce frustration and increase the variety of combat in Clair Obscur.
The beloved (or hated) parry wasn’t in the early game at all. Dodging served as the main defensive mechanic, and enemies used to have their own dodging mechanisms as well. Once introduced, the parry system was “stolen directly from Sekiro,” FromSoftware’s acclaimed 2019 action game, which gives one a good idea of the level of challenge it would pose.
The real-time element was crucial for combat, but the early playtests quickly showed that it was overwhelming the players, who found it hard to keep up while also engaging in complex tactics necessitated by the abundance of character skills, stats, and consumables. Given that the game was short by JRPG standards (roughly 30 hours to complete the main story), players also complained about not having enough time and practice to learn systems and get good at applying them in various combat situations.
Helping the player focus
The fights were hard in the early development, but they were also not well-balanced or satisfying. For Sandfall, it was clear at that stage that they needed to build the turn-based mechanics around the real-time elements and keep the player focused at all costs: “We wanted the player to engage in the turn-based element because the real-time was more demanding,” said Nohra.
The end goal experience would combine real-time combat mechanics with the classic turn-based component in an engaging and entertaining way that would provide both a challenge and a sense of triumph for the player.
Reducing the “noise” in what was and still is the core part of the game was the key first step. The decision not to introduce an “inspect enemy” button, to limit available actions each turn, and to remove character stats that were initially included all worked to help the player lock in and efficiently deal with the challenge at hand. The jump action and the epic gradient counter, “much easier than regular parry,” were added to the real-time move arsenal to reduce player frustration further.
Dialling in on animation quality
The animation team employed a host of instruments to make combat immersive and make the encounters feel varied and urgent. Time dilation, focal length, camera shakes, and camera movement punctuate the important moments and give players cues on how to react. The hit animations during an enemy’s turn are emphasized over other movements to nudge players towards the parry button.
Playing Clair Obscur, you notice very quickly that paying attention to enemy attack animations is key to timing the parry or dodge right. Initially, many of these animations were hard to read and thus to defend. Nohra had an example of enemies attacking with 6-hit combos that needed to be parried in quick succession and often led to a cascade of failure: a player would miss one, then two, then three, and so on, increasing the damage taken and the frustration felt.
By Nohra’s admission, seeing that in playtests was “a wake-up call”: they had to make some animations easier to help players get at least one parry in at the end of the combo and make them “feel good about managing at least something.” Not only that, if a given enemy’s attack was difficult to read, less damage was awarded. If they delivered more hits, they dealt more damage total. However, if the player successfully defended the combo and followed it with a counter, a massive amount of damage and a satisfying animation were the reward.
For players who struggled to parry, non-combat options, or “parry helpers,” including defensive skills and Luminas, and, ultimately, different difficulty modes were introduced to help everyone experience the game to completion. The principle of “triumph over challenge” rewarded players who persevered through each hit, parry, attack combo, and encounter overall, giving satisfying material rewards upon every win, plus an epic victory screen with “a juicy freeze frame.”
Balancing the combat difficulty
Combat balancing involved a lot of back-and-forth, playtesting, and feedback. Some of it was done by hand in a literal Excel sheet for maximum granularity. Each combat encounter currently in the game has a level and damage progression. The damage dealt and taken is proportional to the character level. The combat HUD is minimalist and focused. Every encounter has a multiplier per level, per archetype, per enemy, and finally per attack. As most players of Clair Obscur know, even Simon, the ultra-difficult secret boss, doesn’t deal the same amount of damage every time—some of the attack sequences are definitely heavier-hitting than others.
Ultimately, when it came to combat in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the developers aimed for the combination of “real-time hard but juicy and turn-based simple but with depth.” Good internal tools and continuous playtesting made it easier to add content and balance each element by hand when needed. A lot of care went into it all. Like, a lot, a lot.
“Combat was essential to what we wanted players to feel,” says Nohra.
Images credit: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (screenshots)
