Board 8 > Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Really not understanding Sciel even all these hours later. Does she not shine until getting late game abilities? Her big giant hit is like 5k damage total with full setup right now.

She's been doing good damage for me. I'm running the weapon that lets you automatically get them to max stacks in exchange for taking 2x damage. So you can get them to 20 stacks in twilight with marking card and apply mark. With 20 stacks she can unleash a phantom blade (if you want break) or sealed fate (for damage since it can go past 9999 since it's multiple hits). I expect twilight dance will be better later but I haven't unlocked it yet. She's easy to keep at max AP since the Sun mode gives you AP for spending stacks and they're always at 10 stacks with that weapon

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e8bb2421.jpg

I'm guessing that's a picture of the dev team? That's adorable lol

Just when I thought I was getting my feet under me, the game goes "Haha, you have to parry now or die, and it isn't even the original parry button! Have fun, suckas!"

_stingers_ posted...

I just got to act two. Trying to figure out how to deal enough damage to kill that giant sapling (on expert) was a bitch but I finally did it. That was a satisfying challenge

I also literally just got to act 2

Just got into Act 3.

Yeah I got no clue what's going on, not following this at all lol.

I'm like 99% sure this is as much as you get from the info dump that is the start of Act 3

super duper spoilers written at 3am so apologies if I get some details wrong. Also maybe have someone read it first and confirm that this is all in the act 3 start, don't think I mentioned anything that is said after that point but I could be wrong. Act 3 is a little bit of a blur to me

Entire world you've been playing in is a painting. In the 'real' world, Verso saved Alicia (Maelle) from their house burning but died in the fire and Alicia got all burned up and mute. The painters (and some vaguely referenced Writers probably) have the power to put their soul into an art piece, creating a new world that they can control using chroma. Verso, while not alive, has the last bit of him left in the painting from the part of his soul he used to make this world in the first place. Mom doesn't know how to grieve so she enters the painting where he's still 'alive' to be with him forever. Dad Renoir doesn't like this because she will eventually die in the painting, refusing to leave because she doesn't want to live in a reality where her son is dead. Power struggle ensues and the actual erasing of the people of Lumiere is real Renoir slowly taking power back from Mom, slowly erasing the world, and therefore the painting, to force her out. The numbers are Mom trying to warn people that she's losing to Renoir. Maelle, as Alicia in the real world, went into the painting after them to get them both out but is overtaken by her moms power and is reborn as Maelle, a painted version of Aline, with no memory of her past until she 'awakens' in Act 3. Oh also the Renoir you've been seeing is the Moms painted version of him that she's using to defend herself from anyone who would try to stop her, and the real Renoir is the one who shows up at the start of Act 3 who finally has enough power with her defeat to emerge from where he's been stuck while feuding with her over the power of the painting.

I think that's pretty much it. Did not say anything about the ending in that, but I do apologize if I got some of it wrong. It is kind of a big exposition dump at the start of Act 3, and it gets you like 95% to the finish line.

I definitely appreciate that, mainly because I assume that means the stuff I don't know just hasn't been answered yet!

What exactly is the masked version of Alicia, just her painted copy? Who are The Writers? What's the deal with the sister?

That last one was giving off framing vibes of, like....final boss energy back in the real world.

Man I just got soft locked walking over some trees after the forgotten battlefield before you go up the mountain. It got me stuck in-between two areas and I had to load an old save to keep going. Thank God for that feature

stingers remembering he could load an old save: an advantage

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I definitely appreciate that, mainly because I assume that means the stuff I don't know just hasn't been answered yet!

What exactly is the masked version of Alicia, just her painted copy? Who are The Writers? What's the deal with the sister?

That last one was giving off framing vibes of, like....final boss energy back in the real world.

Masked Alicia is painted by the mom. Sister is basically the Yojimbo of the game.

If you want all the story, apparently the optional quests provide a lot.

Chromatic Ramasseur is so dumb tbh

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Wow is it really like "now done everything on the entire map or go beat the game"?

Comparative to the overall length of the game, this might end up being the biggest side quest dump ever proportionally, huh?

I suggest beat game first then cleanup.

Heading into the final area now, since Deltarune is hitting and I will not be able to avoid starting that right away. Definitely going to come back to the rest after.

The Endwalker dungeon vibes are off the charts right now.

Finito.

The ease at which I completely obliterated the difficulty for the last area by just respecing and regearing Maelle perhaps speaks to this game's balancing issues. I don't THINK they want you to one shot AoE every single encounter in the final dungeon with zero grinding lol

What an incredibly well presented good and bad ending contrast. When this game wants to do excellent scene direction in the real cutscenes it absolutely nails it.

Couldn't escape the "everyone get in a line against the boss like 2 feet away and then whip your weapon out and slowly inch forward until the transition screen hits" problem that plagues every human size boss encounter in this game, but can't win 'em all! Was very funny when they first did it against Francois, and it was supposed to be, but then they did it before every serious boss fight, too!

I could nitpick this game for days, certainly a lot of issues, but it's a case where it's more than the some of it's parts, I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the game and it absolutely stands out amongst the crowd. Nobody has ever made anything like this, and of course I don't mean that in the sense of it's individual parts, but more about it's positions as a release in this genre. It's super special, just can't bring myself to really care about most of my problems (even though I do have them).

The hyperbole I saw around this game definitely did it some harm, though. Lots of people saying it's the best videogame of the decade, an unrivaled masterpiece, easily could be a mainline numbered Final Fantasy game. None of that passes the sniff test to me at all. Doesn't mean it isn't great, but we saw this kind of thing happen to the genre on a smaller scale when Tales of Arise came out, don't let a bunch of folks who don't actually have the same love for a genre or series you do tell you when that genre or series has supposedly "been fixed". This game is indeed it's own kind of masterpiece, and doesn't need to be put on a pedestal like that to be worthwhile as it's own thing. The devs put everything they had into this and it shows, they absolutely adore this genre and using it to try and tear down the rest of the genre like I have seen in several other places feels like a slap in the face to them.

I don't know how well I'm getting my point across there. It might be getting a bit muddled, bleh. I guess to oversimplify it I have more issues with how people are talking about the game that I do with the game itself, which is a good thing! Game was very good. Has problems I hope aren't present in their next release. Music was somehow better than the game itself, though! They just found this guy in SoundCloud? Absolutely fucking wild.

The praise is de strongest from people who absolutely hate JRPGs. But hey, maybe after a couple of these they'll go back to the old FFs with a new appreciation.

I do think the biggest genre achievement they did with this game is make it only 20 hours long. It's shorter than the new Doom game. That alone is pretty magical, and I'd love to see more RPGs with this pacing & density.

But I want it to be longer :(

junk_funk posted...

I just saw this game yesterday when I was looking up some stuff on Oblivion (which I've never played). Now I don't know which game to buy.

This game looks pretty epic though.

Alright about a month later I beat Oblivion (110 hours, all quests, Id give it an 81%) and am now playing Expedition 33.

4 hours in. Having fun for sure. Hit a chromatic lancelier and have to rethink what Im doing here strategy wise.

Act 2 mid-late(?) location spoilers:

Inside the monolith is way too long and monotonous. Needs some cutscenes or some kind of gameplay gimmick to break it up

having a good time otherwise

Dang, were almost to 500

So my party was roughly level 30-35 I hit a spot before old Lumiere where you can easily farm the material you need to upgrade weapons to level 19. I spent a couple hours farming material and upgrading weapons.

By the time I got level 19 weapons for verso, lune and maelle, they were all level 50. Even Sciel and Monoco (who I have barely used) are in the low to mid 40s.

The damage cap might help but a lot of my attacks now are hitting 9999 damage. hopefully I didnt trivialize the difficulty for the remainder of the story (optional content excluded of course). I thought about leveling up weapons for sciel and monoco but Im not gonna do that and be like level 55-60 with everyone lol

I think my takeaway is if the game is too easy now, oh well, I should do an expert run eventually anyway

wallmasterz posted...

hopefully I didnt trivialize the difficulty for the remainder of the story

I did literally zero grinding whatsoever and one shot every standard enemy type but one in the final area with no final act side quests sooo......yeah.

Final boss didn't get a turn on one of their phases.

I mean you don't HAVE to go nuts with the Picto builds to make that happen, frontloading all the extra vulnerable for damage up and stuff. It was definitely my fault. But the game gave me the tools to do that with zero effort.

yeah grinding will make the story stuff pretty much a cakewalk

if you up the difficulty to expert you might at least still get killed by stuff that you don't one shot and the story bosses can still provide a challenge if you never break the damage cap until you beat the story stuff (and dont do any more side content until then lol)

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I did literally zero grinding whatsoever and one shot every standard enemy type but one in the final area with no final act side quests sooo......yeah.

Final boss didn't get a turn on one of their phases.

I mean you don't HAVE to go nuts with the Picto builds to make that happen, frontloading all the extra vulnerable for damage up and stuff. It was definitely my fault. But the game gave me the tools to do that with zero effort.

better
nerf
it

This game is a rollercoaster of me thinking "maybe I'm finally getting the hang of defense in this game" and then getting my ass completely handed to me in a way that doesn't even feel fair.

I just finished Old Lumiere, truly phenomenal game, but

The biggest thing I am missing is a more expanded journal.

1) Give me a bestiary to complete where once you beat an enemy once, they are recorded and it gives you a quick bio and details (weaknesses, immunities etc.).

2) Give me a quest log, some kind of way to track all the optional bosses you stumble upon but want to come back later. Or even stuff like the gestral who wants you to do 9,999 in a single hit, but you may or may not be strong enough.

3) I respect the decision to not include a minimap. BUT they should have included a map as a key item in each area, and have it hidden somewhere near the end of the level. Make it something you can toggle. If you want to force exploration, force it when players go through the first time, but let folks have it for clean up and additional exploring

I can accept no minimap. I don't even know if a minimap would help the reasons why it's so easy to get lost in these areas. Despite how beautiful and varied they between different zones, they're very, very samey WITHIN the zones, and sometimes it's difficult to even see paths until you're on them.

No NORMAL map for the areas I do consider unnaceptable. Major game flaw. I should be able to pull up a map screen, that's not gonna ruin your "vibe".

And yeah, should be able to add markers and objectives to the world map when you're on it. Really, really frustrating that you can't. The game gives you no tools whatsoever to keep track of anything, which I imagine is going to be fucking hell on earth when I do go in for all these Act 3 sidequests since it was annoying enough beforehand.

Also the Picto screen really is a fucking mess. Favoriting Pictos doesn't actually do anything, and isn't even character specific! No loadouts is insane for how huge this list gets.

If I wanted to be super fucking nitpicky, I have enough issues that this is like a 7.5, 8 at best for me right now.....but again, I just like it so much I can....I don't forgive the problems, I'm just able to ignore them. It's like when you love a movie even though it has a huge plot hole and you guy "eh, whatever, I can ignore it". It's not that you don't admit it's there, you just don't care.

It does however mean that all the "best game of the decade stuff" continues to rub me the wrong way. I can ignore these problems because I love the game so much, but I can't critically ignore them in direct comparison to something. Even withing the recent genre, do I like this game more than FFXVI? Yeah probably, unless the rest of the last act side stuff sucks or something (which I doubt). Do I think it's actually a better game? No way.

wallmasterz posted...

3) I respect the decision to not include a minimap. BUT they should have included a map as a key item in each area, and have it hidden somewhere near the end of the level. Make it something you can toggle. If you want to force exploration, force it when players go through the first time, but let folks have it for clean up and additional exploring

the lack of a minimap makes me less motivated to explore tbh so I don't understand that decision to exclude it to encourage exploration or whatever. I could maybe forgive not having a minimap if I could at least pull up a map

ngl it might legitimately be the reason this isn't an all-timer for me

lol if it bothers you that much pull up a collectibles guide

"You can just go on the internet" is never an acceptable excuse.

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

lol if it bothers you that much pull up a collectibles guide

that would do literally nothing to solve the problem!

As someone who tends to pull up the game map very often in games like this I'm personally glad they didn't have one so I could just explore naturally.

But yeah at least add a map after you finish an area or something. I missed some big weapons early on that probably would have changed my play style on some characters which was annoying.

Games that don't put collectibles on the map when you're at endgame is a pet peeve of mine too. I'm not going to go through every area again looking in every corner. If I missed something the first time around then I'm probably going to miss it going back through the area so just help me out!

Fine with no minimap, but the game desperately needs an objective marker or something in the areas to tell you that you're headed toward the destination and not a side-path. So like a countdown compass or something like in Rebirth.

I love no minimap, no objective marker I love it all. I'm sad that people want one so badly because it makes me feel a lot more engaged to have to remember where I've been and gone and have to retrace my steps its just satisfying

The only thing I do really want is a bestiary and a questlog for all the nevrons. They can add a questlog 'in-canon' pretty easily by having Maelle write it into the journal. They can give it flavor. So I would have really liked that.

Got to the end of act 2, and gawddamn that took for freaking ever.

I have beaten Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Great game! I think the shortness of this game is dramatically exaggerated. I clocked in 50 hours doing maybe half of the side content.

Story spoilers: There's a lot that just doesn't make sense (like Verso in general), in my opinion, but the themes are good and I liked the endings.

Kinda lost interest after beating act 2 yesterday. Someone say something to encourage me to finish. (A great choice would be "you don't need to parry anything any more." That would 100% get me to go back...if I actually believed it.)

Act 3 is as short or long as you want it to be. It's a bunch of side content you can skip and just go to the final dungeon if you want.

azuarc posted...

Kinda lost interest after beating act 2 yesterday. Someone say something to encourage me to finish. (A great choice would be "you don't need to parry anything any more." That would 100% get me to go back...if I actually believed it.)

make the Maelle nuke build and parrying is mostly optional

I don't know what the Maelle nuke build consists of, specifically, and I don't want to look at guides because the last time I did that, I learned that Maelle has an ability named paintress.

there's a few variations but the one I mostly used was along the lines of this basically triggering every attack boost possible on Maelle and then using Stendhal if it's a single enemy or Phantom Strike if it's multiple enemies. Most damage I ever got in a single turn was 75 million.

Build Check - The way this will work is Monoco will be first, he will cast portier crash to break all the enemies which will also mark them all, then skip his 2nd turn. Maelle will then cast guard down and shoot any flying enemies if present. She will then save 1 AP in order to finish with last chance. If no flying enemies, then use guard down followed by last chance straight away. Sciel will then use fortunes fury on Maelle and then intervention. Back to Maelle, she will kill all the enemies with phantom strike or stendhal. If any are remaining afterwards, then cast another phantom strike or stendhal as she should have enough AP.
Party Order - Monoco, Maelle, Sciel.

Monoco.
Weapon - Joyaro.
Skills - Chapelier Slash, Portier Crash.
Pictos - Any.
Lumina - Auto Death, Cheater, Energising Break, Energising Revive, Energising Start 1, Energising Turn, First Strike, Marking Break, Painted Power, Second Chance, Shielding Death.

Maelle.
Weapon - Sekarum.
Skills - Phantom Strike, Stendhal, Last Chance, Guard Down.
Pictos - Cheater, Second Chance.
Lumina - Aegis Revival, At Deaths Door, Augmented Aim, Augmented First Strike, Auto Death, Breaking Death, Burn Affinity, Burning Death, Confident Fighter, Critical Burn, Critical Moment, Critical Stun, Dead Energy 1, Energising Revive, Energising Start 1, Energising Turn, First Offensive, First Strike, Full Strength, Glass Canon, Greater Defenceless, Greater Powerful, Immaculate, In Media Res, Inverted Affinity, Last Stand Critical, Longer Powerful, Painted Power, Piercing Shot, Powered Attack, Powerful Revive, Powerful Shield, Rewarding Mark, Shield Affinity, Sniper, Solidifying, Solo Fighter, Stun Boost, Tainted, Teamwork, Warming Up.

Sciel.
Weapon - Any.
Skills - Fortunes Fury, Intervention.
Pictos - Any.
Lumina - Auto Death, Cheater, Energising Revive, Energising Turn, First Strike, Painted Power, Second Chance.

(some of these Luminas are only available in Act 3)

azuarc posted...

Kinda lost interest after beating act 2 yesterday. Someone say something to encourage me to finish. (A great choice would be "you don't need to parry anything any more." That would 100% get me to go back...if I actually believed it.)

I was basically at that point and just beat the final sequence. The ending is pretty nice and worth it. Definitely reduce difficulty to easy though, since the final boss makes you parry like 12 times per attack.

Sweet...just what I wanted to hear... (Thank you for the tip, though. Perhaps I will. I've been very stubborn about not until now, and it hasn't always made me enjoy the game.)

I mean

You could turn it to easy

Or you could just do some Picto finagling, equip that Picto you just got at the end of the act to everyone, and one shot every enemy and every boss in the final area with zero grinding.

But that kind of ruins the experience lol.

I never figured out builds to one shot everything like people in this thread did (I don't think they make it easy to figure out, especially since I hate looking at the convoluted picto/lumina menu) (the menu in general is a disaster), but I did think the main story content of Act 3 was weirdly easier than the end of Act 2. For some reason there are regular enemies in act 2 that hit REALLY hard.

For those who come after!

colliding posted...

I never figured out builds to one shot everything like people in this thread did (I don't think they make it easy to figure out, especially since I hate looking at the convoluted picto/lumina menu) (the menu in general is a disaster), but I did think the main story content of Act 3 was weirdly easier than the end of Act 2. For some reason there are regular enemies in act 2 that hit REALLY hard.

BETTER NERF IT