Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an irresistible melting pot of old and new ideas, combining classic JRPG tropes with modern storytelling sensibilities and new gameplay flourishes. It’s in some ways fitting, then, that the 2025 GOTY contender includes optional challenges inspired by Final Fantasy’s most infuriating minigames, like chocobo racing and lightning dodging in Final Fantasy X.
Throughout players’ journeys in Expedition 33, they’ll encounter Gestral Beaches which are home to unique minigames from playing volleyball to climbing massive skyborne towers. Completing them rewards you with swimsuits, which offer no tangible benefits beyond having more outfits to choose from. Some of the challenges are now infamous, in part because they lean into some of the worst parts of the game, focusing on movement and demanding platforming precision when the controls aren’t really designed for it, and also because they are often ridiculous and require an absurd amount of dedication for no real gain.
Sandfall Interactive game director Guillaume Broche explained the inspiration behind them in a recent podcast interview with YouTuber Xavier “MisterMV” Dang (via Reddit). It’s in French, but the gist is that he liked how certain minigames of the past were so bad, they live rent free in our memories forever. He referenced the chocobo race and lightning dodging in Final Fantasy X specifically. The final race requires players to get a time of 0:00 by collecting only blue blitz balls, which in turn requires using the least responsive steering controls of any PlayStation 2 game in existence. The lightning minigame, meanwhile, requires successfully dodging bolts of electricity 200 times in a row without missing.
Both are notoriously infuriating tasks, though unlike in Expedition 33, they are necessary to unlock two of the strongest weapons in the game. Is that better or worse? “There’s a kind of hatred but love that can be felt,” Broche said (via a Google translation of the interview). He added, “If you make a rotten game that you have rotten minigames [in], well, it doesn’t work too well, but if you have a game that you were attached to and you have this kind of challenge, a little bit extra on the side…it’s funny.”
He admitted the Gestral Beaches were his idea—“I personally insisted on putting them in the game and so yes, Gestral volleyball, if you want to insult me, it’s me, I’ll take it”—but some fans are praising the development team for achieving the desired effect with the annoying challenges in an otherwise excellent game. “Spent an hour climbing the vertical tower one, and got Monoco’s swimsuit at the top,” one player wrote on Reddit. “There is no better possible reward for all of that pain than something as hilariously asinine as Monoco in a speedo. It is just absolute perfection, totally carries the spirit of those old stupid FF minigames. I love that they’re there. I love that they’re stupid. I love that I have the music stuck in my head forever now. THIS is quality and love from the developer.”
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