The art direction of this game is sensational!
the music is peak and varied, gameplay gives a bit of a challenge for a turn based veteran like me, and there’s still plenty of humour and light-hearted moments in a game full of melancholy, sadness, and struggles.
I can understand it’s not for everyone though, the parry system is quite a bit tricky to get a good timing.
I would say it’s really not about reflexes at all, and it’s actually timing based dodge mechanics. Anyone who says reflexes is incorrect imo. Good reflexes can allow you to avoid learning the mechanics, but that’s really it.
I’ll give you an example:
While driving in the USA, at a red light at a four way intersection, the stoplight will typically turn green after a certain amount of time. Each stoplight is different, and assuming there are no other indicators, trying to go exactly when it turns green is a reflex (unless you memorize every stoplight pattern in the country).
In Europe, when stopped at a red light, it will actually give you a yellow light before the green, giving you an indication that a green light is proceeding. It’s no longer reflexes and is now timing based, which is more predictable.
Expedition 33 is the latter timing based situation. Some enemies are more frustrating than others, but they typically telegraph their moveset (that you learn over time) and then you try to time a dodge or parry. For the first hour or two of gameplay it’s more important because your stats are low, but as you progress it becomes less critical.
To summarize, you really don’t need good reflexes, and you don’t need to nail the dodge mechanics to play and love it! It’s just helpful to dodge a few times when possible, and once you learn it it’s actually quite gratifying i think.