I'm almost 5 minutes into Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and I'm finding it really hard
It's all just so unrelentingly French. If I have to watch that man wiggle his head Frenchly one more time I'm not letting him dodge or parry for the rest of the game.
Honestly I'm enjoying it. Between the music and the story I can put up with the bullshit dark souls esque dodge-parry mechanic.
I think we really need more games similar to this from around the world. I want to culturally osmosis swear words from every country on earth. A different swear word for every occasion!
The bullshit dark souls-esque dodge-parry mechanic was actually one of the things that interested me - not because I particularly like either dark souls or dodging and parry, just because it does something to mix up the standard turn based formula. It's like Shadow Hearts adding a ring mini game to combat or Lost Odyssey's QTE's, it just adds a little bit more active engagement to the combat.
This is true. At least to me it makes it seem like we're edging closer to the gamer singularity where all genres blur together elements and incorporate elements from everything and lose all the distinctive aspects that define them...
Wait a minute am I a game genre racist?
"RPG elements" were a mistake
Hard disagree
nah they just made RPGs worse and shooters worse.
Oh wait I misread that initial statement.
Hard agree.
'fraid so, time to head to c/selfcrit
Seriously though, there's only so many base mechanics, genres, stories etc to go around, so they are going to blur together as they get combined in different ways, but that doesn't make the gestalts created from them a problem in themselves. The actual problem is the profit motive driving bland combinations with mass appeal - the PS2 era was a golden age for it, but you do still see developers combining them in interesting ways that improve the experience rather than just watering down both parts.
I wouldn't have bought it if it were merely a turn based RPG. Mastering dodges and parries means I get to do more cool shit on my turn and off my turn and spend less time worrying about healing