I’ve always been the kind of person to lower a game’s difficulty when I feel my patience wearing thin. There’s no shame in playing games on less punishing difficulty settings, but I’m perhaps a bit too quick to take the easy way out. I like to enjoy my games instead of suffering through the friction, but after playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I’m starting to learn to embrace challenges.

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Clair Obscur Taught Me Patience

I took a different path with Clair Obscur because my housemate started playing it before I did, which meant I had a free hype man and coach sitting on the couch with me when I struggled with it, mostly during the first few hours. He’d run down the stairs when he heard the battle music and watch, talking me through the intricacies of parry timing, cheering with me when I hit a particularly scrumptious counter, commiserating with me over annoying bosses, and comparing builds with me so I could finetune my Picto selection.

But especially during those early hours, when I grew increasingly frustrated with every death, the best thing he did for me was encourage me not to drop the difficulty. When I asked him point blank if I was just too bad at this game to finish it on normal difficulty, he scoffed at me and said, “No, just keep trying, it’s worth it.” So I kept trying, and he was right – it was worth it.

Clair Obscur is far from the hardest game in the world – in fact, it’s very forgiving. It’s possible to craft your build so that you can tank your way through the game, never having to parry at all. Its turn-based format gives you time between rounds to mentally prepare yourself for each enemy’s attacks, and you won’t get overwhelmed by having to finish one long fight in real time. And once you figure out the precise parry timing for each enemy, the game becomes far easier, and you can fall into a rhythm with it.

I’m living proof of this being true. I’ve always had terrible reflexes and timing that’s kept me far away from Souls games and Soulslikes, but I’ve learned to enjoy the process of grinding through the same boss fight over and over, patiently refining my technique until I’m hitting counter after counter. It turns out that frustration can lead to immense delayed gratification when you finally kick that boss’ butt, I just never sat with that discomfort long enough to figure that out for myself.

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Lies Of P Might Be More Fun Difficult, But Who Cares?

I say all this to explain why I’ve become more understanding of the backlash to Lies of P’s difficulty options. The game’s Overture DLC will add 25-30 hours of new content and bosses, a new region, a boss rush mode, and new difficulty settings, including an easy mode.

I understand why fans may feel like an easier difficulty dilutes the experience. I distatic.aayyy.com/topic/dn/’t lower my difficulty while playing Clair Obscur, and I feel like I’ve had a more satisfying time because of that. Sure, I could’ve cruised through the game instead of smashing my head against bosses for hours at a time, but that would’ve deprived me of the joy of knowing that I’m experiencing the game exactly as the developers intended, painful boss fights and all.

And Lies of P isn’t a particularly difficult game, by all accounts. I haven’t played it myself, but from what I’ve heard and read, it walks a fine line between difficulty and approachability, relying more on understanding environments and enemies than on whittling down massive boss health pools. In that way, it’s very similar to Clair Obscur. Both games rely on good game design to ramp up approachability.

That said, complaining is still stupid. I’ve written several times that adding difficulty options to a game makes it playable by more types of people, and I still stand by that. If you don’t want to play on an easier difficulty, you don’t have to. You control the buttons you press and the difficulty you choose. Some people aren’t able, or even just willing, to put that kind of work into playing a game. Will they get a worse experience? Maybe, but that’s their business, and it’s also up to the developers to make that easier mode challenging in its own right.

More approachability also means inducting new players into the genre, and that’s a good thing. I am likely one of those players – after realising that I can, indeed, git gud at a reflex-heavy game with enough patience, Soulslikes seem less unapproachable to me now. Lies of P could be that game for other people. In what world is that a bad thing?

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Lies of P: Overture

Action Adventure Systems Released 2025 ESRB M For Mature: Blood and Violence Developer(s) Neowiz Publisher(s) Neowiz Powered by Expand Collapse