Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Final Fantasy/Persona inspired FRPG

[Road Work Ahead]

I hope it isn't a 150+ hour bloated marathon like Metaphor.

It's about 30 hours for the main story and another 20 or for all the optional content.

 

[Rebel Wilson]

Holy shit this game is incredible, and I'm still in the first act.
I'll now hide and ignore anything about the game since I managed to stay unspoiled and go finish it. I hope it isn't a 150+ hour bloated marathon like Metaphor.

No, not even close to 150+ hours. But yes, run from the internet. Let youself draw your own conclusions about the way the plot develops. There are multiple endings so depending on how you feel about the plot, one ending might seem much more appropriate than the others to you, spoiling that experience sucks.

 

[Estate]

Also I genuinely don't know if it's possible to beat the Gestral chief she does so much damn damage you have to be like late 80s-90s or build a ton of HP to even have a chance against her.

I should visit her again.
In the meantime, 3rd gradient attacks don't mess around.
Finally got this nigger.

The optional bosses are shithosing me so I thought I might be able to try some alternatives. Right now I'm trying the fire build on maelle but I must say I am disappointed in its power. Spamming the flurry in virtuose state seems to work a lot better than setting up the burns and then consuming them. I'd expect the attack that consumes 10 stacks to hit like a truck, but it is really mediocre.

You're right. The attack that consumes Burn is a trap.
I would recommend parking Maelle until Act 3, when she gets the remaining skills unlocked and you go over 9999.
Once that happens, she will hit hard, real fucking hard and with a type of damage there's no resistance to.
If that is not an option, pick the low cost Fire skill and the Virtuose stance switch, and try Sword Ballet or any skill that has multi hits. Until you break the 9999 limit, multi hit skills are simply better.

Holy shit this game is incredible, and I'm still in the first act.
I'll now hide and ignore anything about the game since I managed to stay unspoiled and go finish it. I hope it isn't a 150+ hour bloated marathon like Metaphor.

This thread stayed away from spoilers and such, so you're safe. That is, unless you click spoiler tags or play videos of fights you don't want to see.
It's just discussing the mechanics, builds and opinions on some optional bosses.

 

[Hiphopopotamus]

Don't worry, later enemies mix it up and you'll have to learn a different rhythm.

Oh I know, what I mean is I don't use dodge, I only use parry.

Finally got this nigger.
View attachment 7330917

Cheater is so good.

 

[King Of Braves]

Don't know how I just thought to check if there was a thread for this. Beat the game over the weekend and have been working through the optional/post-game content. Killed the weaker of the two superbosses (unless you count the fights at Trial 11 of Endless Tower and the fucking asshole bald mime) and now I'm grinding up the team for the other one. Absolutely incredible game. 10/10, probably GOTY now that GTA6 got delayed. Some of the cutscenes look incredible, almost photorealistic.

Alright cool man, you proved my point. You know that the game has DEI and you’re seething.

Saying the game has DEI is a retarded take, especially considering the setting being an alternate universe. The main cast is predominantly white, no one glamorizes faggotry or troonery, most of the women are attractive, and the black guy died in the first 20 minutes lmao.

Speaking of damage. What do you guys run? I use maelle, sciel, lune. Stuffed them with energized start. Maelle starts with the AOE defenseless attack, lune follows with Hel (I have the -1 fire AP weapon and enough energizers to start her at 8 AP) then sciel does the fire bond spell (hit all burning enemies). For basic enemies that wipes them before they have a turn.
For bosses I don't really anything special. Maelle goes to virtuose stand off of hitting a fire target and spam fleuret flurry to keep pumping out virtuose damage.
Lune does thermal transfer into lightning into genesis.
sciel marks targets for maelle or just spams her high power spells as well.

I predominantly used Verso, Lune, and Sciel until Act 3 when a lot of dark resistant enemies showed up so I swapped Sciel for Maelle. You want to use her anyways since her level 3 gradient attack can be boosted into the stratosphere.

Once you have a level 33 weapon, you want to respec all your stats into your weapon's scaling and let pictos cover the rest. For example:

 

[Estate]

Also I genuinely don't know if it's possible to beat the Gestral chief she does so much damn damage you have to be like late 80s-90s or build a ton of HP to even have a chance against her.

Took a bit to learn the parries, and gave Maelle some choice pictos and lumina, and here's the result.

I predominantly used Verso, Lune, and Sciel until Act 3 when a lot of dark resistant enemies

I use the same team, and while I'm tempted to switch Sciele, I've already invested a lot of Lumina in those three. And yeah, some enemies that heal or nullify Dark attacks are a pain in the ass. That's a reason I gave her a Light weapon and have skills that use the weapon's element slotted in.

 

[Rebel Wilson]

I think Verso and Sciel are the only 2 that have access to a Void weapon which basically nothing has resistance to because its typeless unlike physical

 

[King Of Braves]

I think Verso and Sciel are the only 2 that have access to a Void weapon which basically nothing has resistance to because its typeless unlike physical

Most of Maelle's strongest skills are void damage as well, including her level 3 gradient.

 

[Rebel Wilson]

Most of Maelle's strongest skills are void damage as well, including her level 3 gradient.

Good to know. truthfully I never used Maelle past the Gestral Village.

 

[The Punished Mitch]

Holy shit this game is incredible, and I'm still in the first act.
I'll now hide and ignore anything about the game since I managed to stay unspoiled and go finish it. I hope it isn't a 150+ hour bloated marathon like Metaphor.

It's nice and clean, there are optional bosses and endgame areas to explore but the main game is about ~20-25 hours or so, maybe ~35 hours to clean up everything else ( quicker if your dodge/parry skills are good enough ).

 

[Chapalapachapa]

bros we are so back

Spoiler

 

[Fae Supremacist]

Dumping some info on Sandfall I didn't see in the thread.
This is the original prototype of the game from 2019?-2020, after Sandfall's founding when it was a team of six, ex-Ubisoft Guillaume Broche and friends. The original title was "We Lost."

It isn't much, but it was enough to secure funding from unnamed angel investors and start hiring artists and continue development under the new name of Project W.

Around that time in Summer 2021 Broche gave his first interview and pitch for the game in an industry website, to show how cool that UE software was and why you should use it, because they had applied for an indie license to use their tools for free.

An entire year of radio silence later, Sandfall announces they'll present a vertical slice of Project W at GDC 2022, and they received a $50.000 grant from Tim "Fortnite" Sweeney himself.
Sadly, I haven't found any footage or photos from their booth on GDC 2022, or their Project W vertical slice. If you can find any, let me know.
And 4 days before GCD, Kepler announces they're partnering with Sandfall as a publisher, and it continues from there with Kepler funding development till release.

For those who never played Sifu or Pacific Drive, Kepler was founded by the ex-Ubisoft Alexis Garavaryan, who still serves as CEO and founder and CEO of Kowloon Nights, a fund which directed Asian investors into funding indie studios (and Godfall). Kepler was founded as its publishing arm by consolidating studios associated with Kowloon, which would each have equal ownership. With Garavaryan's background in venture capital funds like Makers Fund and his Chinese connections, Kepler bagged an early investment from NetEase, although ostensibly as a minority holder, as they'd have to disclose otherwise. The first Kepler published games were funded by Kowloon, but none since, so they're probably doing well financially.

And for the last piece of info, Kepler seems to have a very good relationship with Hollywood, since Sifu got an episode in that weird Secret Level Amazon series about games, alongside industry titans like Warhammer 40k and Concord. It isn't exactly a household name as far as indies go, so they must have pulled some strings or know some people and negotiated for adaptation rights from the Sifu developers.

Remember that Sifu movie that was announced some time ago? The production company attached to it is Story Kitchen, founded by the producer of the Sonic films of all people. And right on their website:

Hi there.

TLDR: Thank you China for my daily kino. Now that Tencent bailed out Ubisoft, I need NetEase to make their own Ubisoft and have a French proxy war.

 

[Waffle Iron]

You're right. The attack that consumes Burn is a trap.
I would recommend parking Maelle until Act 3, when she gets the remaining skills unlocked and you go over 9999.
Once that happens, she will hit hard, real fucking hard and with a type of damage there's no resistance to.
If that is not an option, pick the low cost Fire skill and the Virtuose stance switch, and try Sword Ballet or any skill that has multi hits. Until you break the 9999 limit, multi hit skills are simply better.

I used her from act 1 to act 3 with swift stride to get her into virtuose stance, then either spam fleuret fury to shit out damage or or momentum strike if target is marked. She did good damage but it felt a bit basic. With lune I could stack up a ton of burning stacks, so i thought that the drawback of the -10 stacks attack would be minimal. But regardless of burning stacks that attack just sucks dick.
I already got the pictos that lets you go past 10k damage per hit.

Oh I know, what I mean is I don't use dodge, I only use parry.

You should regardless. I have no idea who balanced this game, but parries are so much stronger. You both get AP per parry, and you deal an absolutely ludicrous amount of damage with the counter attack. And to balance that they make lategame enemies do some whacky 8 hit combo that murders you if you even miss one parry.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

You should regardless. I have no idea who balanced this game, but parries are so much stronger. You both get AP per parry, and you deal an absolutely ludicrous amount of damage with the counter attack. And to balance that they make lategame enemies do some whacky 8 hit combo that murders you if you even miss one parry.

Well, the trade-off is that the window to dodge is way larger and more forgiving. So you can either learn the timing and be heavily rewarded, or choose to just survive fights but have them take longer.

There are some attacks that I just dodge because my brain can't figure out the correct timing to save itself.

 

[Hiphopopotamus]

You should regardless. I have no idea who balanced this game, but parries are so much stronger. You both get AP per parry, and you deal an absolutely ludicrous amount of damage with the counter attack. And to balance that they make lategame enemies do some whacky 8 hit combo that murders you if you even miss one parry.

But parrying is fun, dodging is only good against those fireice assholes that summon the orbs, I didn't know they just keep shooting if you parry but stop when you dodge (or get hit)

 

[FieldPiece]

If anything I highly doubt these devs will do something similar to E33 for their next game. They seem like the kindsa people to want to bounce around in terms of genre kinda like Moon Studios who have a similar origin story (Ex-Blizzard dev, hires a bunch of friend and amateurs to make a game in an underserved genre then hop to another genre when out of ideas). I wouldn't be mad if they made another RPG but coming up with as interesting of a scenario a second time would be hard.

 

[King Of Braves]

Well, the trade-off is that the window to dodge is way larger and more forgiving. So you can either learn the timing and be heavily rewarded, or choose to just survive fights but have them take longer.

There are some attacks that I just dodge because my brain can't figure out the correct timing to save itself.

Some of the animations are purposely animated to be hard to follow. Sound is the better cue for when to dodge until you get used to the animations.

If anything I highly doubt these devs will do something similar to E33 for their next game. They seem like the kindsa people to want to bounce around in terms of genre kinda like Moon Studios who have a similar origin story (Ex-Blizzard dev, hires a bunch of friend and amateurs to make a game in an underserved genre then hop to another genre when out of ideas). I wouldn't be mad if they made another RPG but coming up with as interesting of a scenario a second time would be hard.

Given the title of the game, I assume there's a whole Clair Obscur universe they intend to delve into.

 

[FieldPiece]

Given the title of the game, I assume there's a whole Clair Obscur universe they intend to delve into.

If they do I hope they follow Nier logic and it is merely a very loosely connected universe and not direct sequels/prequels because HOLY FUCK would that not work.

 

[Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus]

If they were going to continue the universe I'd assume they'd do the world outside the painting and delve into whoever The Writers are, why The Painters can do what they do, and why they set the Dessendre house on fire. Unless "The Writers" is supposed to be some meta reference to the devs which would be very lame.

 

[HexFag]

Maelle is already shitting out crazy damage due to the abilities she gets in Act 3. I can tell she's not at her full potential but I might put my Lumina points into her to make her as strong as possible. She's effectively mandatory in my party along with Monoco for BLU skills so I have to awkwardly choose between Lune and Verso for a third slot. I really wish there was a way to switch out party members in battle.