Heads up, this is going to be a massive spoileriffic post, and this is a game that thrives in its mysteries, so read on only if you've started Act III of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (I'm literally just past whatever cutscene follows that title card), or if you truly, truly don't care about spoilers.
So far, I've actually been pretty good at avoiding them myself. But let's get into it:
Spoilers Ahead:
When I first got into D&D, the distinction between Devils and Demons was a novel one to me - the words are generally interchangeable in most contexts, though I tend to think of "Demons" as being the more collective term and "Devil" being the term reserved for the ultimate evil in several Abrahamic religious traditions.
But D&D has a complex cosmos and with it, a complex ecosystem of fiends - and yes, they employ "fiend" as a catch-all term for beings from the lower (read: evil) outer planes. And, among these, you have multiple groups, from Devils and Demons to Yugoloths, Demodands, and others.
One of the rarer varieties has a whole bunch of curious asterisks attached to it.
As mentioned: many of these fiend subtypes are kind of defined by their home plane - Devils from the Nine Hells, Demons from the Abyss, Yugoloths from Gehenna (though it appears the folks at Wizards have never been fully consistent with this, as there are also Baernoloths from Hades, which are Yugoloths but kind of outside the standard hierarchies).
The Rakshasa is from South Asian folklore, though D&D's version is largely its own thing.
Actually, 2025's version of the Rakshasa expands out from the narrow idea presented in earlier D&D - while we've generally always seen them as tiger-headed humanoid-shaped fiends with hands/claws that are inverted (the fingers essentially bending the other way,) the new Monster Manual is a bit more open in terms of what they might look like, with the art showing other Rakshasas (though the tiger one is in the center) with other animal heads.
The thing that I find kind of fascinating about Rakshasas is that they are from the Nine Hells, but are not Devils. There are plenty of unclassified fiends - Succubi/Incubi (which are now quite different stat blocks, but linked to one another) have ping-ponged between devils and demons (perhaps devils because they're very much about luring and ensnaring mortals, but demons because they're often associated with Grazz't) and in 5E have always been unclassified. But they're not given a clear home plane, and don't have the Fiendish Restoration feature that specifies how they come back from death if killed outside their home plane.
Now, the Rakshasa is a single stat block. There are, I believe, some alternates in other books (I believe Eberron) but this is just the one thing.
However, if you want to throw something at your party that is going to be truly scary, let's break down just what the Rakshasa brings to the table:
They're CR 13, which means in theory that a party in high tier 2 could handle them. In theory. Because let's talk about what else they have.
Greater Magic Resistance is going to make your spellcasters truly panic when it comes to these guys. While the 2014 version was immune to spells of 6th and lower level, the new version's magic resistance works differently: they automatically succeed on saving throws against any spell or magical effect. (On top of that, they have blanket immunity to any spell that can detect its thoughts, creature type, or alignment, or view it remotely.) And if you thought you'd deal with all that by using attack-roll spells, sadly these also automatically miss. (That said, True Strike would work, because the attack is actually a weapon attack.)
Now, in a weird, way, I think you could interpret this as a nerf. In 2014, if you hit one of these with a Lightning Bolt, they just would nope out of it, utterly unaffected. In 2025, they automatically succeed on a saving throw against Meteor Swarm, but they still wind up taking half damage from it. Even a simple 1st-level Burning Hands would do some damage to them (unlike their diabolic neighbors, they don't have fire immunity).
Thus, the optimal option here is to go after it with weapons. And in this case, there's even a little beneficial asterisk: if you deal piercing damage to it while you're under the effect of the Bless spell, they have vulnerability to it. This, apparently, dates back to older editions when a good-aligned character who hit it with a crossbow bolt would deal double damage. In 2014 this just became "piercing damage from a good-aligned character using a magical weapon," and here, as both "magical weapons" and caring much about alignment when it comes to mechanics are both kind of out, we have this one.
So, this Greater Magic Resistance clearly makes them tough to fight - at least for spellcasters. A martial-heavy party might not actually have too much trouble with a Rakshasa's very manageable-at-hight-tier-2 17 AC and its decent but not insurmountable 221 HP, especially if they have a Cleric or Paladin to cast Bless on them and they wield weapons that have piercing damage.
But here's the one-two-punch that makes a Rakshasa a profoundly difficult monster to deal with:
First off, their attack inflicts a curse, and it's one of the nastiest curses out there: while cursed by them, a creature doesn't benefit from short or long rests. While I think you might still not die of exhaustion from getting no sleep, you won't regain HP, and worse, spellcasters who might prepare, say, Remove Curse, won't be able to.
This curse has no saving throw: it just lands on the target if they hit with an attack roll, so there's little you can do about it if they get to you.
Now, the true nightmare:
Rakshasas, like devils, demons, and yugoloths, have Fiendish Restoration, which means that if they die outside of their home plane (the Nine Hells,) they reform there instantly with full HP.
And Rakshasas have a 1/day Plane Shift.
Now, as a DM, I would advise against this, but you could, in theory, have the party beat a Rakshasa only for the very next turn have the fiend Plane Shift back to wherever they were defeated. Now, again, without a specific Teleportation Circle, the destination of a Plane Shift spell is more general - I think any fair interpretation would at least give the players a chance to flee or hide.
Still, a Rakshasa is a potentially truly relentless threat. The only way to permanently deal with one is by killing them in the Nine Hells (which happens in Critical Role's first campaign, and is the closest they came to a TPK).
So, how do we use one?
4 10th-level characters would consider one of these a high-level difficulty (though just north of the moderate cap). A 5th party member drops it to moderate. However, these are not legendary creatures, and so I don't think you'd be likely to get a satisfying "end of tier boss fight" out of it.
I think we need to lean into the idea that they're from the Hells but not devils. Their relationship with Asmodeus and all the diabolic hierarchy is thus less clear - if you're a devil, there's a really clear and delineated rank you hold, and the form you have is based on that rank. Rakshasas, I like to believe, are tolerated by the devils because of their freedom to act outside of official channels. Their immunity to spells also means they have an edge when dealing with their infernal neighbors.
Rakshasas are Lawful Evil, fitting for their home plane. But they don't seem to be as concerned with collecting souls, recruiting into the ever-expanding diabolic pyramid scheme. I think they're likely to be more interested in individual goals. Indeed, a Rakshasa need not be an antagonist - they could be a useful, if difficult-to-trust ally.
Again, if you want the party to fight them, a Rakshasa will probably be not quite as good as a true boss fight unless it has lots of help. It's more likely to be a memorably harrowing encounter, and the curse they leave becomes a real problem the party will need to solve. In a lot of ways, the fight itself is not even the scariest thing - it's after you've taken one down and are racing to get the curse cured so that you can properly recover.
I realize I incorrectly abbreviated the game's title initially, so here's a fix.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has one of those high-concept premises that immediately invites the player to question what, exactly, is actually happening.
To explain:
Decades ago, the world (and it does seem like it was probably our world) was shattered in some kind of supernatural transformation. The people of Lumiere, which appears to be a shattered, surreal version of Paris, have a view across the sea (yes, despite seeming to be Paris, which is quite far in-land) of a profoundly huge monolith upon which an entity known as the Paintress paints a number each year, ticking down. When this occurs, everyone that age and older evaporates into red petals. As the number ticks down, the people of Lumiere know they have only limited time before humanity is wiped out.
Each year, people who have one year before their "gommage," (French for "erasure") can volunteer for expeditions across the sea to try to stop the Paintress and save humanity.
Our heroes are members of Expedition 33, the 67th of these expeditions (they also mention that, ironically, while 99-33 have been in descending order, Expedition Zero was what they called the first one. Surely not important, right?)
The expeditions take them out of the city of Lumiere, and into the beautiful-yet-deadly realms beyond.
Let's get spoilery. I'm just starting Act Two of the game. Spoilers ahead: you have been warned.
I'm only a few hours into Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 (which I'll henceforth abbreviate because who has the time?), a game that I don't think I'd even heard of a week ago, and boy howdy, this is one of the most exciting new titles I've played in a long time (no offense to Lies of P, which I did enjoy a lot).
I'm still figuring out some of the game's systems - I have a number of items that "can be consumed to..." do things like upgrade weapons or permanently learn various "pictos" skills, and either I missed some tutorial or there isn't one or maybe it comes surprisingly late.
But I'm getting a feel for the combat, and... just... this feels like an amazing evolution.
Like a Final Fantasy game, the heroes and monsters all line up facing one another, and take turns based on their agility.
Each character can use a basic attack that is free, and relatively low-interaction, but will build an Action Point. Ideally, you're doing that infrequently, and we'll get into why shortly.
Each character can also free-aim a ranged attack. This costs an AP but doesn't actually cost your turn - you can burn through your AP if you have sufficient targets to hit. Some flying enemies can frequently dodge your normal attacks, so it's not a terrible idea to use this to take them down, but the real benefit is that many enemies have weak points that can explode, dealing them and sometimes their allies a ton of damage.
Now, you can build up AP with basic attacks, but the other way you can gain them is by dodging or parrying incoming attacks.
This becomes a big part of the game - you can fully avoid taking damage from, I think (or at least so far) every attack monsters throw at you. But doing so also means you can use your cool abilities as well. Figuring out the timing and tells of enemies seems a big part of the game - not entirely unlike learning to dodge or parry in a Souls-like.
However, there are also many layers on top of this in terms of strategy:
Each character has their own unique skills, but these can interact with each other in interesting ways: Gustave, for example, can hit a target and put a mark on them, which then Maielle can use to do insanely high damage with one of her abilities. Likewise, there are elemental status effects, like burning, which some abilities key off of in fun ways.
Most skills have some kind of quick-time-event associated with them, and there's a narrower window to get a perfect effect, which seems to increase the effectiveness of the attack or other ability you use.
One of the most thrilling things is that some enemies have jump attacks: these can't be dodged or parried conventionally, but if you see the little icon that pops up when the jump attack comes at you, you can hit the jump button (X on a PlayStation) to have the entire party leap over whatever shockwave is coming at you, and then have all three party members strike back with a counterattack.
Enemies sometimes attack in multi-hit combos. It seems that if you successfully parry all of these in a row, you get a counterattack (if there's only one hit in the combo, I think you still get the counter for the one necessary parry). Enemies will delay their attacks sometimes, so you need to figure out the rhythm.
Currently, I'm kind of flailing around with what skills I'm equipping to each character, and I'm hoping that the items that allow you to re-spec your character won't be too hard to come by as I find a way to refine my builds.
Still, I've got to say, there are tons of ways that the folks who made this game are breathing life into the turn-based RPG that has me super-eager to play more.
Also, this isn't what the post is about, but it's also a freaking gorgeous game. I think I mentioned this in the previous post, but I'm in a kind of underwater-except-for-the-water-part region, with beautiful shades of blue and green and purple.
Shortly after beating Lies of P, I started a new game with a cumbersome title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Set within a world enduring an ongoing doom - the "gommage" (French for "erasure") of anyone above a certain age. Within the city of Lumière, which appears to be a fantastical and magical-cataclysm-beset Paris (complete with warped Eiffel Tower and shattered Arc de Triomphe,) our central protagonist, Gustave, prepares to be with his ex-girlfriend Sophie as she awaits her gommage, having become old enough to be taken by a being known as "The Paintress."
This heart-wrenching opening sees Gustave doing his best to be there for a woman he clearly loves, and must watch as she and hundreds if not thousands of others evaporate into what looks like rose petals.
Gustave has volunteered for Expedition 33, the latest in a number of annual expeditions to sail out and slay the Paintress, with those who only have a year left to live trying to make that last year count for something (I'm given to understand that each year, the age limit goes down, so in theory two years' worth of people would be lost each time).
Gustave and the other expeditioners head to the continent (Lumiere is somewhere in the middle of an ocean, apparently transported there after the cataclysm that befell the world). Things immediately go to shit when an old man (and remember, no one is older than 33 in this world, or at least that's what we thought) attacks and kills most of the expedition.
Gustave awakens lost in the forest on this strange continent, and must find other survivors to continue his mission.
Now, let's talk gameplay:
Bringing joy to my heart, this is a turn-based RPG, where engaging with monsters (so far only the weird constructs called Nevrons, which come in many varieties) takes you to a separate battle screen, and you can take your time figuring out your next strategic move.
That said, it's not pure menu-navigation-based combat. Most attacks (other than your basic ones that just generate resources to spend on skills) have various timed "quick-time-events" that allow you to maximize their damage. Likewise, when foes attack you, you have a chance to dodge or parry them. Dodging gives you a wider window, but parrying with the right timing can allow for counter-attacks that can be quite effective.
It's honestly not entirely unlike Super Mario RPG, and learning to read monsters' tells and getting the timing right can make fights significantly easier.
There are definitely systems here I haven't totally figured out - I've gotten a number of resources to, for example, upgrade weapons, but I don't quite know how to use them yet. This is either something that hasn't yet been tutorialized or just something I've overlooked and will need to figure it out.
At this point in the game, I have two party members. Gustave fights with a sword and a pistol, and builds up an "overcharge" meter that he can then use certain abilities to unleash really big attacks with. Lune is your classic elementalist mage, and builds up elemental "stains," which can be consumed by spells of other elements, encouraging some kind of rotation of magic (something I certainly haven't gotten the hang of just yet).
The game is really gorgeous - I'm currently in an area that feels like the ocean, with colorful corral and sea life flying through the air.
And truly, if you're an old-school RPG fan, you might enjoy that this game actually seems to have a big overworld map, where you will encounter monsters sometimes, but that also breaks the regions of the game into discrete bits. My best friend is currently working his way through some of the PS1-era Final Fantasy games (he beat FFVIII around the time I beat Lies of P, and is now starting FFIX) and there's a nice bit of continuity there.
Anyway, despite the bleakness of the stakes in this story, it's really pretty and has a unique aesthetic. I'm eager to sink many more hours into it.
Well, I beat Lies of P.
As my first non-FromSoft Souls-like, it was really interesting to see what others do with the genre. Obviously, the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring share a lot of DNA, and even some re-used assets. With its over-the-top mechanical weapons and "city in chaos" elements, Lies of P obviously feels a little more closely tied to Bloodborne, though its narrative is a bit more explicit than FromSoft tends to get - aided in part by having a fixed protagonist (though still a mute one, in the grand tradition).
I worked to get the "best" ending for the game (and thus I think maybe the only way to fight the true final boss) which does sort of make me feel a little less inclined to actually go into New Game Plus (I've also just gotten a new game - Clair Obscur Expedition 33, which also happens to be set in a kind of belle epoch world - I played the first couple minutes, barely past the initial combat tutorial, and then figured I should give myself more time to digest this game before getting swept up in a new one).
The final boss of the game was a bit of an extra challenge for me, given that I've been leaning on the crutch of specter summoning for I think every single major boss, but one cannot summon them for this final boss (one can for the "base level" final boss). This last boss really forces you to get a lot of perfect-parries, which is very tough, though obviously gets easier as you learn its patterns.
Let's get into the spoiler territories:
I think there's a reason why the Pinocchio story is such a common one that artists and storytellers come back to. The crux of it is about an artificial being that yearns to be human - and that journey, that quest, is one that forces us as both artists and as audience to consider what it actually means to be human.
One of the central ideas in Lies of P, and visible right there in the name, is the idea that a human is capable of lying. The "puppet" we play as has the capacity to tell lies. Of course, in the original story (and the Disney cartoon that I imagine is most peoples' more direct reference,) Pinocchio is punished for lying by seeing his nose grow longer. Pinocchio is a boy, exposed to a world that demands moral behavior while enticing him to all manner of vice and sin, and lying is the most cardinal of all those sins, it would seem - the sin that can cover up all other misdeeds.
Lies of P leans into the classic science-fiction trope of what it means to create sentient, artificial people. In many such narratives, robotic minds are incapable of nuance and abstraction, and have to act in some preordained pattern. Truth, as in the statement of fact, is something that flows logically, and would thus seem easier for an artificial mind (in theory) to do (of course, in our current age of generative AI, we've seen that machines are fully capable of making stuff up that has nothing to do with the truth - and yet, the messiness of its output may in fact be one of the reasons people are so convinced that we've truly, or are truly on the cusp of, creating genuine artificial intelligence - whatever that means).
Over the course of the game, largely through sidequests, Pinocchio has the opportunity to help various survivors in Krat in various ways, and often prompts some kind of question from them. Most of the time, the question is either a painful truth or a comforting lie.
Krat is in utter chaos, and death is coming for most of the people we seem to encounter. And so, while you are capable of lying or telling the truth, often the lie is the kinder thing.
And this actually has an in-game effect.
When you make these decisions, if you choose the more human option (which seems to mostly be the lie) you get a message: "your springs are reacting", and later, as your humanity rises, "the ergo whispers," "you feel warm," and finally, "your heart is pounding." These changes will affect the endings you can get (I haven't beaten the game yet, but I think I've got like two major bosses left) and over time, you'll eventually see a long nose grow out of a painting of Gepetto's flesh-and-blood dead son, who happens to look identical to Pinocchio. The nose eventually, if you attain a high enough level of humanity (and I was worried I'd missed out on it, as I made some non-humanity-raising choices, but I did just get it) becomes The Golden Lie, a weapon.
I'm reminded a bit of the story of Neverafter, a season of Dimesnsion 20, the actual-play TTRPG show on Dropout. Neverafter was, like Lies of P, a horror take on fairy tales, with each of the players playing as a classic fairy tale character. In the case of Pinocchio, the backstory involved the arrival of a terrible, monstrous individual in Pinocchio and Gepetto's community, who went to all the children and asked them where their fathers were, and when she found out, the fathers each dropped dead. Pinocchio lied to protect his father, but in doing so, was reverted back to his wooden, puppet form.
Children's stories are often light on nuance, because complex ideas are hard for kids to understand. Truthfulness is a virtue in most cases, but there are times when the ethical and the moral are not aligned. Consider the meme/notion that goes around on social media: that if you see someone shoplifting baby formula, no you didn't. Yes, stealing is generally wrong, but if someone is pushed to the point where they need to steal to feed a helpless infant, the moral thing is to allow them to get away with it - if anything, as a corrective to the society we have in which anyone would be in such a position.
Hard and fast rules are easier for a child's mind to understand, but the deeper implications - the deeper reasons we have those rules - are the reasons we have them.
Coming back to the idea of artificial life, we imagine that a man-made mind would be childlike and simple, and thus, we equate the ability to understand complexity, nuance, seeming self-contradiction, as a sign of humanity.
All the while, of course, there is the question of whether things are actually just nuanced or if someone is claiming complexity to justify misdeeds. We are, after all, good at lying to ourselves, and telling us that actions we take are for some greater good. And yet, we can't give into pure cynicism, either. Finding the right moral path forward is a lifelong journey for all humans, but that journey, rather than some perfected state of enlightenment, might be the truest version of humanity.
I'm convinced I'm very near the end of the game. The final "dungeon" is massive, and if I'm honest, a bit lacking in the charm and detail of the earlier parts of the game. Where we have been in a kind of nightmare-steampunk-Paris up until this point, the last area feels like a big ancient stone temple, with less of a clear sense of how each area is used by the people who inhabited it.
In terms of difficulty, I think the rate at which I'm making it through means it must be easier than most of the FromSoft games I'd compare it to, though of course, I have to account for the fact that when I first played through Bloodborne or Dark Souls, I was not nearly as good at these games. While I burned through a lot of Star Fragments on Laxasia, for the most part, after trying to solo bosses without a Specter to help, summoning one in made quick work of them. It's a big enough difference that they make me feel a bit guilty for using them as compared to, say, the summons in Elden Ring. But still - it's a game mechanic and I will make use of any edge I need to beat the game.
I did something perhaps unwise - I've been hearing great things about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and saw it was relatively cheap (50 bucks) on the PS Store, so I bought it. Unfortunately, that makes me feel a little impatient to finish Lies of P. I do think I'm going to make myself do so, lest I never get around to it.
