Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game that requires a lot of trial and error. Learning parry timing can take a few tries, even on normal fights, so it’s no surprise that the hardest battles in the game are true tests of patience and precision. On top of that, there are even bosses with gimmicks that you need to play around to have a chance at victory.
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From traditionally-tough bosses with high stats to the game’s truly devilish endgame challenges, we’ve ranked the ten hardest bosses in all of Clair Obscur for you to challenge yourself with… or avoid at all costs.
This list contains spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
10
Dualliste
Dualliste is a legendary Nevron that haunts the Forgotten Battlefield. According to Verso, it’s singlehandedly destroyed entire Expeditions… and it still has three hands left after that. With its twin swords and long combos, it will slice up members of your party before you have a chance to get your bearings.
Not only that, but Dualliste also requires you to use Gradient Counters, which you’ll have just learned to use in the same area, and is the first enemy in the game to inflict your team with the Inverted status effect. This nasty, unavoidable debuff causes healing effects to damage your party instead.
The Gestral Merchant in the tower just before Dualliste’s Ancient Bridge has a Pictos that makes Inverted characters more powerful. It’s worth seeking out to equip before the fight.
Even once you defeat Dualliste, you haven’t seen the last of it. Other Duallistes will appear in late-game dungeons, so you’d better hope you remember all those combos from back at the beginning of Act 2!
9
Golgra
Golgra’s reputation as a fearsome warrior precedes her when you first reach the Gestral Village in Act 1. Fresh off a victory at the Arena, you might think that the leader of the Gestrals could be another easy win with some good loot to pick up before continuing.
You’d be wrong.
Golgra is a boss designed for endgame characters to face in a one-on-one duel, just casually chilling out in the game’s opening chapter. Fighting her isn’t to the death, so there’s no harm in trying, but if you challenge her before reaching, say, Level 80, she’ll serve you up a slice of humble pie. To the face, with her foot, repeatedly.
8
Renoir
If you’ve played any video game ever, you know from the moment Renoir appears on the beach that you’re going to have to fight him eventually. As it turns out, there are not one, not two, but three boss fights against Renoir throughout the story.
That’s not counting the unwinnable fight against him at the end of Act 1.
While Renoir is weaker overall than a lot of Clair Obscur’s optional bosses (the devs actually want you to finish the game, after all), he can be tricky to face because you don’t really get a chance to learn his patterns. Fighting Renoir is a desperate struggle to adapt and survive each time, which fits with the game’s narrative nicely.
7
Sprong
Like Golgra, Sprong is an endgame boss waiting for unassuming players to wander into it on the Continent Map. At least this titanic Nevron has the decency to be the size of a skyscraper, at least hinting that rushing straight into battle with it might not be a good idea until you’ve leveled up a bit.
Once you’re powerful enough to survive its dishearteningly powerful smash attacks and laser beams, you’ll find that Sprong follows a predictable pattern. Knowing what it’s going to do helps, but you need to be ready to deal with the Exhaust status condition that it applies, preventing your party from regaining AP.
6
Sirene
When Expedition 33 decides to try hunting the Axons as a last-ditch attempt to reach the Monolith, Verso mentions that Sirene is the more dangerous of the two. As it turns out, that’s a bit of an understatement.
It’s hard enough to deal with the constant attacks from Sirene’s Ballet minions, to say nothing of the Axon’s strikes themselves, but Sirene’s truly insidious threat is that she constantly casts Charm on your party members, turning them against one another. She can even win the fight simply by Charming the entire Expedition.
Fighting and destroying the Tisseur midway through Sirene’s lair yields the Anti-Charm Pictos, which is vital for this fight, but even with the Lumina equipped to everyone Sirene is still perfectly capable of defeating you the old-fashioned way.
5
The Paintress
For 67 years, Expeditions from Lumiere have tried and failed to destroy the Paintress. This godlike figure seems to hold the entire world in her hands, and it’s Expedition 33’s job to bring her down for good. The ultimate confrontation with her at the end of Act 2 doesn’t hold anything back, nor would we want it to.
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Like Renoir, there are no practice rounds against the Paintress. You have to learn to dodge rocks, meteors, and her flying brushstrokes all in the heat of battle, while hoping that you brought the right loadout. Not only that, but she has multiple phases to fight through, with no breaks or checkpoints in between.
4
Serpenphare
Serpenphare is the name of the colossal flying snake that you see in the skies over the Continent as early as Act 1. You can’t actually reach it until Esquie gains the ability to fly near the end of the game, and that’s a good thing, because Serpenphare is one tough reptile.
Verso claims that Serpenphare has eaten him alive at least once, and according to lost Journals it’s been the demise of at least one Expedition.
Serpenphare’s attacks hit hard, but they’re among the easier ones in the game to parry. The real danger of this boss is the fact that it steals all your AP at regular intervals, forcing you to get creative without access to your Skills. Topping up with Energy Tints is a temporary solution, but the snake will gladly take any AP that you recover when its turn comes around.
3
Painted Love
We’ve established that Renoir and the Paintress can be tough bosses on their own; could you take them both at once? The final challenge of the Endless Tower asks you to do just that, combining Renoir and Aline’s boss forms into a single entity, Painted Love.
There’s a common strategy for two-enemy bosses; focus on beating one enemy so you only have to deal with half the attacks for the rest of the fight. That doesn’t work with Painted Love, as Renoir and Aline share a health bar. You’re stuck fending off Renoir’s sword combos, black holes, and void crosses alongside Aline’s flying combos until the bitter end.
The plus side is, attacks that hit both targets essentially deal double damage to the shared health bar.
2
Clea
It’s revealed late in the game that Clea, not Aline, is the creator of the Nevrons, and her painted counterpart is still making more high above the Continent in the Flying Manor. Just getting to Clea requires a gauntlet of minibosses, which is itself worth doing as it’s the quickest way to get enough Perfect Chroma Catalysts to upgrade your entire team’s weapons.
Once you actually start fighting Clea, you’ll find that she has an unbelievably fast healing rate. If you don’t disrupt her aura with counterattacks, she heals for over half a million HP every single turn. It’s possible to outpace her regeneration, but unless you master all of her combos (and she has a lot), you’ll need to rely on big hits to end the fight quickly, or you’ll have to watch in despair as Clea heals back up to full if your tempo flags.
1
Simon
A lost member of Expedition Zero, trapped in the Abyss deeper even than Renoir was bound, Simon leads a tortured, undead existence. This well-hidden boss is the game’s ultimate challenge, able to obliterate even a maxed-out party controlled by a skilled player.
Simon’s lightning-fast, relentless combos can drop a character that misses even a single parry; it’s not uncommon for an unblocked hit to deal seven to eight thousand damage. Even if you have characters built with ten thousand or more Health, Simon’s ready for you; he routinely drops characters’ HP to one, guaranteeing their demise if a single slash gets through.
Worse yet, if a party member is dead when Simon starts his turn, he simply removes them from the board. They’re gone for the rest of the fight. If Simon kills a character or two and then gets another turn immediately after because he’s just that fast? Too bad, this is now a solo fight.
If you survive Simon’s attacks and manage to bring him down, you may notice that the Achievement or Trophy doesn’t pop, and a cutscene starts playing. That’s right, he has a second phase, like the Paintress, with longer, faster, even more powerful combos, some of which can wipe out your entire party in one shot. Worst of all, if you die, you have to do the first fight over again before you can make another attempt at the second.
If you beat Simon, congratulations – you’ve truly mastered the Canvas.
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