Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has no shortage of optional bosses which will test your skill, patience in resolve in various proportions.
One of the recurring examples are the Mimes, which are present for the entire game, including the prologue.
These tight-lipped bastards can be quite a nuisance if you’re not prepared for them, so… let’s get you prepared!
How to beat the Mimes
Thankfully for us, all Mimes fight in an essentially the same way, and so they can be fought in the same way.
Learn the attack pattern
Although they have clearly mastered the performance arts, they all dipped out of their combat classes, so they have just two tricks up their short sleeves:
- The hand-to-hand combo: it begins with a leaping punch with the right hand, a punch with the left hand, and a headbutt.
- The “strange” combo: it has the Mime pull out a psychic hammer and slam it four times
Both combos are pretty straightforward, there’s no trick to be wary of, just get the timing down and you’re good to go toe to toe. Just be mindful that mimes often hit hard.
Focus on Breaking the barrier
Regardless of your Speed and Lumina, the Mime always goes first, and begins by making a psychic barrier shielding it from harm.
Break it.
It’s not metaphorical, focus on filling the Mime’s Break meter with your attacks, and it will go down like a ton of psychic bricks. Just remember to slot in an ability with the “Can Break” attribute, or have a Pictos/Lumina letting your Base Attack Break the target. Just filling the meter isn’t enough.
Damage over time can help
Although direct damage is going to get severely reduced for much of the fight, dropping a few (or a few dozen) stacks of Burn can’t hurt you.
Maelle is particularly good at that, especially with her Medalum weapon (you can earn it early on in the Gestral arena if you pick Maelle to fight the final opponent) which doubles applied burn stacks and DoT from them when you’re in the Virtuose stance. Once you unlock her Pyrolyse skill, you’re cooking with chroma.
Is beating the mimes worth it?
Every mime is a strictly optional fight and you won’t be required to fight it. You might not even find all of them.
However!
If you choose to chase them down, there are some benefits which may (or may not) be appealing to you.
First of all, the mimes’ attack patterns are regular enough to get a feel for the dodging and parrying timings. They won’t serve you well in every fight, every enemy has a different way to troll you, but it is a decent way to get accustomed to spotting visual and audio cues the game uses to let you know when to defend.
Additionally, every Mime nets you a small cosmetic rewards, such as the Baguette hairstyles and outfits. An endgame mime even yields a Pictos which is going to be very attractive to crit-building masters of dodging/parrying, but we’ll let you see that one for yourself.
Now go and maim some Mimes! You know their weakness is having their defensive wall removed, build your fight strategy around it!