When it launched earlier this year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was a smash hit, quickly garnering millions of players and spawning endless conversation — not all of it pleasant — among players. But even among fans of the game, there were a few sticking points in the otherwise acclaimed game. Now, one of the biggest critiques of Clair Obscur’s combat has been changed in a patch, taking inspiration from one of 2024’s most beloved games.
Clair Obscur got as much praise for its turn-based combat as it did for its story, but the rhythm component of its battles weren’t to everyone’s liking. As with games like Paper Mario, hitting a button at the right time can strengthen your attacks or boost your defense, which can make fights much more difficult for players who struggle with the timing. While that might be part of the game’s appeal for some, others found it frustrating, especially given how long combat can drag on. Some players called for an option to restart a failed battle instantly to save time, and now developer Sandfall Interactive has responded.
“We’re super excited to bring you the Battle Retry option in this update, which has been one of our most requested quality-of-life additions,” the developer wrote in a post about the latest patch.
As of an update on July 30, the Battle Retry option now appears once you’ve been defeated in combat. Selecting that skips you back to the beginning of the current fight, rather than requiring you to return to an earlier checkpoint and make your way back to the battle that ended you.
One reason a retry option may have been on Clair Obscur players’ minds is another hit RPG, Metaphor: Refantazio. Atlus’ popular 2024 release featured an option to restart battles at any time from the pause menu, without even needing to be defeated first. The new update to Clair Obscur may have been even more welcome if it went that far, but the fact that the option is being added at all is at least a step in the right direction.
Clair Obscur in particular benefits from a quick retry option due to its timing mechanics. While it’s not strictly a rhythm game, it is similar in that repeating patterns multiple times is the best way to learn, especially since enemy attacks can vary widely in their tempo. Mess up one too many times, and you could lose a good deal of time getting back to where you were slain.
But Clair Obscur isn’t the first game to become more approachable in a post-release patch, nor should it be the last. While some people still resist the idea that games should offer options to tone down difficulty or frustration (Metaphor Refantazio’s retry option had some detractors as well), more players do seem to be coming around to the idea that adaptable difficulties are a better solution than simply telling less-skilled peers to “get good.”
Even developers in genres that have typically seen a large amount of gate-keeping are starting to come around to that line of thinking. While FromSoftware itself hasn’t budged on difficulty, the Soulslike Lies of P recently launched a new DLC, and along with it released a free patch that adds two more forgiving difficulty options for the entire game. As someone who was intrigued by Lies of P when it first launched, but was quickly turned off by its difficulty, these new options have given me a way to enjoy a game that otherwise wouldn’t be for me. Other titles like Another Crab’s Treasure go even further, adding a suite of configurable difficulty modifiers that let players do everything from increase their own health to slow down the entire game.
What this new wave of options proves is that difficulty is not a one-size-fits-all problem. No two players come to games with the same experience and skill, and likewise, developers are each finding their own ways to make them more approachable. For some it might be scaling down damage, while for others, just a quick way to retry lost fights is enough. Either way, giving more players a chance to experience some of the best games in recent years can only be a good thing.
