Maelle's most infamous attack in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was actually "very bad" during development, and Sandfall made it super powerful by trying to fix it and not testing the change properly

A screenshot from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 showing Maelle fighting an enemy. — (Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

If you were an early buyer of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and paid particular attention to Maelle, you likely picked up on just how ridiculous her Stendhal move is. The late-game ability essentially nukes one target, and if you stack that damage, oh boy, it's a world of hurt. This blast of pain actually stemmed from a swift pre-release change by Sandfall, because it was originally considerably weaker.

The team admitted such during a chat with Edge magazine. "[Maelle's Stendhal skill] was very bad during all the playtests," Guillaume Broche, creative director on Clair Obscur, stated, "and we decided to change it at the last second [before launch] so we didn't test it properly."

This proved to have the hilarious side-effect of essentially handing players a weapon of mass destruction, if you noticed the potential. Maelle gets the attack in the transition between acts two and three, and at first, it just seems like a powerful bomb to lob around. But gradually, people learned it's easy to upgrade in battle, and because the damage inflicted is physical, it’s a threat to practically every enemy.

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Uh oh. There are ways and means of making Maelle churn out tens of millions of damage points in just one turn. A game-altering revelation that many did indeed make use of, before the inevitable nerf that dialed it all back to more regular levels of carnage.

Stendhal really came in clutch for the post-game, where there are some devilishly hard encounters, as you'd expect from something drawing heavily from JRPGs. These superbosses, such as Simon, a member of Expedition Zero who's been stuck in the Abyss for years and years, require your team to be nearly max level, with high-end equipment. Nukes are only a benefit in such situations.

Sadly, it's much too late now to enjoy the full benefit of just blowing Simon to smithereens. You'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, by grinding and strategizing. The horror!

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's title of Metacritic's highest player-rated game comes under threat from seminal Nintendo DS classic Cory in the House: "The gaming industry peaked with this game. Anyone else saying otherwise is delusional"