Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – How to Parry Consistently

While Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features a lot of familiar role-playing game turn-based combat mechanics, the game developed by Sandfall Interactive twists them in some interesting ways to give players something else to do other than picking commands and watching characters carry them out. During both the offense and defensive phases, you will have to complete some straightforward quick-time events that increase the power of your attacks and completely negate damage from enemy attacks.

Completing these QTEs for attacks, however, is considerably easier than doing the same when defending against enemy attacks in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. And significantly less important as well. While losing some damage is, ultimately, no big deal, missing a parry or a dodge often means the targeted character will eat a lot of damage, making combat feel more frustrating and considerably less fun than it actually is.

Learning to parry and dodge consistently in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 requires you to do away with any preconception you may have regarding timing. If you’re a big action game fan who has completed challenging parry-based games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you will learn straight from the first training duel against Maelle that the timing for parries in the game is very different from that of action games. Instinctively, the first few times, you will press the parry button right as the attack is about to connect with your character, but that will not work.

Before you even attempt learning to parry in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you should focus on dodging first. The timing for dodges is considerably less strict than for parries, thus you will be able to pull them off more easily. At the same time, dodging will give you a better feel for the correct timing, and when you start pulling off perfect dodges, you will be ready for parries, as the timing for perfect dodges is the same as parries.

The secret to learning how to parry consistently in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is understanding how they work. Think of parries as putting up a barrier or a shield for a few seconds. It takes some time to bring them up. As such, parries are not active from the first frame of animation and require a moment before they become active. For parries to be successful, the enemy attack has to connect with the “shield” the character puts up after pressing the parry button, so you need to take the time it takes to put it up into account.

Judging from how parries work in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and how enemies often delay their attacks sometimes in an unnatural way, it’s clear that the developer didn’t intend for parries to be a defensive option that can be thrown out carelessly. Once you’ve got the general idea of the timing, you will need to practice a lot with each new enemy and learn which visual or sound cue can help you time the parry. Throughout the adventure, doing all this will eventually become natural, making fighting enemies in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 considerably more enjoyable.