Emerging as this year’s surprise breakout success, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has captivated a massive audience and achieved unprecedented user scores on Metacritic. While the French-developed title excels in numerous areas, a particular section has emerged as a major pain point for players: its beach volleyball sequence.
Volleyball Challenge – The True Final Test
While Expedition 33 presents formidable boss battles demanding quick reflexes, many players report the game’s true pinnacle of difficulty lies in its beach volleyball gesture challenge. This seemingly simple mini-game has become notorious for pushing players to their limits.
Online communities overflow with similar frustrations, with numerous Reddit threads ranking this mini-game among the title’s most poorly received elements, comparable only to its equally maligned climbing mechanics.
The core mechanics appear straightforward – players must time their strikes to deflect projectiles launched by an opposing Gestral entity. However, mastering the precise parry windows proves exceptionally demanding, particularly at higher difficulty tiers where a single mistimed input can sabotage an entire run. Compounding these issues, many note the projectiles’ visual clarity leaves much to be desired.
The most annoying part about this minigame though is that on the hardest difficulty, if you’re just a little bit late on one, the others are coming about exactly as fast as it takes the parry animation. So you miss every subsequent one by the same amount even if you mash the button as fast as you can.
My issue isn’t even the parry timing, it’s that 1) it’s visually hard to see the projectiles sometimes 2) the movement is too imprecise and slow to be able to keep up with the speed in which the final boss sends out the projectiles.
Given these challenges, it’s unsurprising many competitors ultimately abandon this optional content.
Player-Discovered Strategies
For those determined to unlock all cosmetic rewards, persevering through this trial becomes mandatory. Veteran players have compiled several strategies to ease the burden, though success ultimately relies heavily on developing impeccable timing.
Key recommendations include activating the auto-sprint feature to eliminate acceleration delays. Regarding deflection timing, consensus advises initiating counters significantly earlier than instinct suggests, while others emphasize tracking the projectile’s spin patterns for better anticipation.
It took me a few tries to realise that after the Gestral’s spin into an upright position in the air is when they launch and you can actually hit them. After that it didn’t take me too long.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 currently graces PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S platforms, with additional accessibility through Game Pass.