Clair Obscur player tanks their way through the entire game without dodging or parrying to prove a point: You can finish it without 'gamer reflexes'

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Nobody believed them until they posted proof.

A dark haired character from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 stands in the sunlight looking upward with her allies standing behind her
(Image credit: Sandfall Interactive / Kepler Interactive)

If Dark Souls is any indication, people take a lot of pride in mastering hard games. There's nothing wrong with that until the moment they make it about ego: getting smart and finding creative solutions through hard games can be so much more interesting than getting good. General sentiment seemed to be that it was impossible to finish the entirety of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 without engaging with its demanding dodging and parrying mechanics—that is until Reddit user HunterIV4 spent the last week proving the naysayers wrong.

"I've seen a lot of posts from people about how hard this game is and how you need to get perfect at dodge/parry in order to survive," HunterIV4 wrote at the start of their post last week. "But there are plenty of people out there who may be turned off from the game thinking 'Well, I suck at Souls games and action games in general, I like to take my time with turn-based combat, should I skip this game?'"

HunterIV4 says no, you do not in fact have to skip Clair Obscur if you aren't a dodge and parry god, and they have proof. They played it on Story mode and beefed up their characters with as much health as possible, and found that enemies aren't as scary as people claimed. "I got most of the way through act 1 without ever touching a button during the enemy's turn," they said. “So if you are interested in this game but worried you don't have the ‘gamer reflexes’ to get those insane multi-hit parries and no-hit boss kills, relax!”

It took a while—longer than they cared for—to finish act 1, but it was more than possible with some patience and a crew of characters built for pure defense. Not every person in the comments was convinced you could actually complete the whole game, however, pointing out that some optional bosses would be insurmountable.

No Dodge/Parry: An Experiment, and What to Do If You Think You Suck from r/expedition33

HunterIV4 took that as a challenge. And while the doubters were right about some of the optional bosses, they came back a few days later to explain how they hit credits without using a single dodge or parry, and even took down some of the optional (and brutal) Chromatic boss fights. They played with the auto QTE feature and avoided the 'one-shot' builds that the recent patch just nerfed. Most of their strategy revolved around using a weapon that can block hits and buff party members automatically.

The key is playing in Story mode, which replaces tricky boss mechanics, like one that removes a character from the fight, with regular attacks. As long as everyone can survive for long enough, all the story-critical fights are beatable.

Doing it on higher difficulties probably isn't feasible without abusing broken builds, HunterIV4 admits. "But the point was to see if someone who didn't go for the absolute best builds or have good reflexes could still beat the game," they said, "and while I'm sure there are limits to how bad your build can be and still succeed, I think I demonstrated that most people can beat the game with minimal or even no dodging at all."

Tyler Colp

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

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