Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 thrills millions, but there's one thing almost everyone hates. „I just gave up”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has some really challenging bosses, but for many players, beach volleyball is the ultimate opponent.

Martin Bukowski

June 5, 2025 05:10

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 thrills millions, but there's one thing almost everyone hates. „I just gave up” Source: Sandfall Interactive.

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This year's unexpected hit, millions of fans, becoming the highest -rated game in Metacritic history. Although the French title has many pros, there is one stage that causes quite a bit of frustration among players - we are talking about beach volleyball.

Beach volleyball - the ultimate boss

Expedition 33 can be a challenge, especially during fights with some bosses, which require demonstrating good reflexes. For many players, however, the ultimate, most difficult opponent is the final stage in the beach volleyball gesture club.

You can find many more similar posts on Reddit. Many players in the comments also point out that this minigame is one of the worst experiences in the whole game, right next to the climbing one.

The rules of the game are really simple. The Gestral standing opposite the player throws projectiles at us (small Gestrals), which we have to deflect at the right moment with an attack. The problem is that it's hard to sense the right moment, and at the highest level, one mistake can ruin the whole approach. The fun is also made more challenging by the poor visibility of the projectiles.

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.

So it's no wonder that many players eventually give up this activity.

Community advice

However, if you want to get all the outfits available in the game, you have to grit your teeth and complete the mini-game. Fortunately, the community shared a few tips that can help with this, although the most important thing here is a sense of rhythm.

One of the tips is to enable automatic sprint in the options. This way we'll move at maximum speed right away, without wasting time on building up momentum. As for the deflecting itself, the most popular tip suggests that we should do it much faster than we think we need to. Another players also pays attention to the rotation of the projectile.

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 is available on PC, PS5, and XSX/S. The title is also available on the Game subscription.