Alastor

Yeah, you meet a character that does it for you, you'll know for sure when it happens

I'm not great at parrying, there's a cave on the world map that let's you fight an enemy so high above you that it one shots you for 1000s of damage and you hit it for like 500ish a crit, it has so much health that if you shoot it's one time weak spot for a free 9999 damage it's like…. 10% damage?

Anyway I was fighting it for like 20 minutes lol, must have parried it over 100 times but it was only at 50% and then I died. After a few hours fighting this one guy I gave up. >_<

The point is though, if you have the timing you can definitely punch above your weight. I hear concerns that this negates need for strategy entirely, I disagree, the lumina/picto system is great and the way skills interact mean it's fun to try and see how much damage you can attain

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is absolutely blowing me away so far, at the risk of overhyping I think it's already a GOTY contender just based of the last few hours. I could go on about the amazing Nier like soundtrack that suits the game's tone perfectly, or the deep and engaging combat that both asks you to be able to parry attacks and has potential for inter party ability combos but I think it's the premise and tone of the game that really gets you first. The prologue was pretty horrifying in how it portrayed the 'Gommage', an event where upon reaching the age matching the number on a giant monolith out at sea (in this case, 33) a God called the Paintress awakes and takes your life, making you basically die on the spot, and this is their depressing way of life. This is where you come in, as one of a number of Expeditions that sail out from the Island to find a way to stop it.

What I like so far is how clearly the Gommage has affected the cast, not only is there a somewhat ensemble cast (big news for BG3/FF16 fans) meaning the voice acting is not only good but the facial animations are really good too, there's a scene where I swore for a split second the main character Gustave let his facade drop a bit and he showed how much the Gommage is really hurting him. (He's voiced by Charlie Cox aka Daredevil and for some reason the only voice actor I haven't seen a peep from in behind the scenes footage, what gives?) But yeah, very similar vibes to the Pilgrimage in FFX so far.

Aight' so far Expedition 33 is French as fuck and I'm here for it, I just had a fight against a big headed mime and parried all his attacks and countered him to break, this is really fun so far.

Well the PC community will take care of that sooner or later, I have to contend people trying to tell me it's 'the time of day' or just implying I'm being a hater. It's still a very nice looking game otherwise.