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

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BradeRunna said:
I looked into this game because I see a lot of people saying how good it is, and I do like RPG's. But I saw it uses UE5 and I kind of have a personal rule to avoid games that use UE5 as an engine since STALKER 2 turned out to be such a mess. Also because of the reputation of UE5. If it drops down in price I might try it. If it's UE5 slop, I can always just refund it.
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Most UE5slop runs like absolute trash because the coding gets outsourced to low IQ jeets or Chinks or brownoid DEI hires who have no fucking idea what the word "optimization" is and make all games have this weird washed out UE5slop look. This game is one of the rare games that not only runs well, looks well but from what I remember is around 40GB in size. You just know that if Wang Cao and Visajeet worked on it it would look like oversaturated shit, make your computer run like a jet engine, you'd have to turn on all the AI fake frameslop and it would be at least 120GB in size.
 
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jje100010001 said:
A bit of a open-ended question at the end:

In the Maelle ending, what’s stopping Renoir/Clea from eventually jumping back into the painting and kicking Alicia out? It’s shown that 1.) They are far more skilled painters than Alicia, 2.) Clea probably knows where the painting is, and 3.) Aline rentered the painting even after she was kicked out as the Paintress, to briefly lend support to your party against Renoir.

I guess the ending’s only really definite if Alicia is going to die soon since she needs to now support the entire painting, Clea doesn't care (I don't think this is true), or if Alicia has total control over the canvas now and is significantly more powerful within that reality since she's the one painting now instead of Verso?
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To my understanding, Painters are powerful inside a Canvas, but not omnipotent. Their power is fueled by the amount of Chroma they posses. At the end, Maelle is the king of the hill of Chroma, so she holds a huge amount of it. The other family members can try to get her out, but it won't be easy and it won't be quick.
Also, I believe a Canvas world does not depend on the Painter to continue it's existence. Once a Canvas world has been made, it can continue exiting in a self-sufficient manner. The piece of Verso' soul, the Young Boy we meet in our journey, was put there by original Verso, but not as a means of sustaining the Canvas, but rather as a form of dedication to it. They took the saying "pour your soul into your work" quite literally.
When Renoir started his kill switch, he needed huge amounts of Chrome, because he needed it to overcome Verso's soul, who's continued painting worked against his erasure. Once he stops paining, the kill switch will continue it's trajectory, like a huge flood once the dam is broken, and erase everything.
I still have more to say on the ending, but I'll do it in another post. This one was mostly to address your question, with how I perceived the story,
 
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Finished it today. I'm usually not a fan of turnbased combat, but I liked it for the most part of the game. Got a little stale once you figure out what works, but for the most part the system is solid and fun.
The art direction has highs and lows.
Some areas look gorgeous and unique, while others look very genetic.
What I really didn't like were the some of the human character designs (Maelle, Sciel and Verso), they seem off compared to the quality of the others.
Enemy visual design was great and varied.
The voice acting was a mixed bag for me, the female voice cast was decent for the most part, Gustave, Verso and Monoco were uninspired in my opinion.
I blame the directing, I get they were going for a somber and grounded tone, but they just sounded bored with a samey delivery.
The music I liked, especially the more upbeat tracks.

Now for the biggest gripe of the game:
For a game that so desperately tries to tug at your heartstrings, I didn't feel a thing for any of the characters, which is a shame.
And at some points I wish they would tone down their artsyfartsyness, sometimes it made me laugh with how "first year art student" it was.
Overall a solid game, and a really good first effort of the studio. Not the game of the year that a lot of people hail it to be, but a recommendation for anyone who likes to explore a unique world and setting.
 
Finished the game. While absolutely fantastic, few choices kind of bring it down. It's pretty amazing how much of it parallels Final Fantasy 10 and Inception. I really like the character writing, they feel a lot more real than usual games (or media), having actual faults and depth without going too HBO-esque. The plot itself has a lot of interesting points, but also shoots itself in the foot in couple of ways. I really want to do a NG+ with the amount of revelations by the end.

Combat is fun, but can get annoying with some really annoying attack telegraphing, a lot of "lol I'm not hitting you yet" shit from Elden Ring. The game turning more into a boss rush by the end also makes learning parry windows tiring when attacks are long, missing is extremely punishing and you have multiple phases to learn. Having a lot of builds summed to nuking the boss shows the limits of this method of game style, and I'd have prefered more playing with turn timing, more options to synergize between party members and having only specific kinds of attacks being able to be negated.

Music wise it had a lot of nice sounding tracks, but aside of the manor theme I didn't find any memorable.

I really appreciate the game with letting the player actually take Renoir's side. It's pretty rare to make a "villain is totally right" well, and while the game maneuvers you into this ending, the game absolutely makes you feel like an asshole for choosing it.

Philosophically I saw it more as the denizens of Lumiere being soulless. They are basically AI that behaves by Verso's soul fragment. The second child Verso stops painting it all stops. And it's extremely meta since that what would happen to the game once the player stops playing it (at least the non crazy ones). Sadly it hurts all the build up of the characters since they don't end up mattering and it all comes down to the family drama (hence the Inception parallels).

Hopefully next game have you go through several paintings and written works with actual real characters.

Funny how Synthcels try to argue the game is woke when it's incredibly based in its message. Also why the fuck do people don't use the French VA.
 
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Finished the game as well! Very great game, though I really wish I didn't do literally every single piece of side content available so I wasn't just completely shitstomping the final bosses. They really should've added some form of scaling for the final dungeon or at least the final boss so I literally didn't kill every single phase with one move. My thoughts for the most thought have been littered around the thread in all of the posts I've had so I feel no need to reiterate myself. I have no shame in admitting that I just had Maelle 1 shot Simon. I put a lot of time into building Maelle to be a literal force of nature who could obliterate anything in sight.

By the end parts of the battle tower I started to feel a bit burnt out from the gameplay, but that mainly has to do with every boss in that dungeon being a complete damage sponge with millions of millions of HP. The attack patterns were starting to wear on mentally, though I really have no one else to blame but myself for that, I effectively blitzed through the game in about 2-3 weeks.
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Funny how Synthcels try to argue the game is woke when it's incredibly based in its message. Also why the fuck do people don't use the French VA.
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It kind of bummed me out that the animations were fitted for the English voice acting because it took me out of a couple of scenes to not see the mouths going with the voices. Either way the French VA was fantastic and it the definitive way to play this game.

Does anybody else think that the Verso/Renoir ending is way more optimistic than the Maelle ending? It's much more healthy for Maelle to leave Verso's painted world while trying to find happiness for herself. Also if she's a painter she could always bring them back at any time which a way more lighthearted message and having a 16 year old commit suicide by escapism. Either way. I'm glad the game never spelt out to you which one is the right ending and I really liked how both sides had very legitimate cause for fighting for their side.
 
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HexFag said:
Does anybody else think that the Verso/Renoir ending is way more optimistic than the Maelle ending? It's much more healthy for Maelle to leave Verso's painted world while trying to find happiness for herself. Also if she's a painter she could always bring them back at any time which a way more lighthearted message and having a 16 year old commit suicide by escapism. Either way. I'm glad the game never spelt out to you which one is the right ending and I really liked how both sides had very legitimate cause for fighting for their side.
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Pretty much, yeah it's sad to see the cast go, but Maelle has a future and a family that loves her. Being enslaved to an idealized fake world is just cope with her physical deformity.
 
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Been keeping an eye on this game. Seems good but you can never know with Western games these days. What is the general consensus? What game would you say it's similar to (I've heard people say the story is like Xenoblade).
 
Fox Girl Enjoyer said:
Been keeping an eye on this game. Seems good but you can never know with Western games these days. What is the general consensus? What game would you say it's similar to (I've heard people say the story is like Xenoblade).
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Storywise FFX doomed world, futile journey to try and stop an eldritch evil, all that. Gameplay wise its kind of its own thing, hence the accolades its getting. You'll either like it or you won't, no way to predict it.

The only people that I have seen that reviewed it negatively were synthetic man and his circle who had to hate the game because it had black people in the intro. But there's been plenty of critical views on it I can see where they are coming from. The ending will be divisive, and I think that's intentional because the creator strikes me as a French-Kojima, wants to insert philosophical ideas into video gaming, hence why it will be divisive.
 
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Ok, having finished the game and giving it some time to settle in my brain, here's my take.


I've seen both endings.
One is black and white, without sound and one is colorful with sound. The developers weren't exactly subtle here in what they think is the correct choice.
This, I believe, is flawed. I have a feeling they wished for both endings to be somewhat bittersweet, but the execution wasn't that good.
We have the prologue, Act 1 and pieces of Act 2 and Act 3 where we get to learn and see what this world and it's inhabitants are alive and have free will. The fact that they send wave after wave of expeditions, year after year, fighting against the wishes of their creators, proves without a doubt they have free will. Even ink-Verso, at some point, in a Journal entry says they deserve to live.

Now, about the Painters. They allegedly made countless Canvas worlds, but I'll only judge based on this one.
They're fucking cunts.
They're cruel, in a way that a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants is cruel. They live in a higher form of reality, with control over the lower one, so they give almost no shit about what's happing there or how their choices impact the inhabitants. This is mostly prevalent in Clea, who's responsible for so much shit, simply because she doesn't consider the Canvas people to be real, and can feel justified in doing everything to them, including brain washing her ink version.
The fact that the ink family, with the exception of Renoir, whom we kill, chose death over living, because of the actions of the "real" family, means something.

In the end, there's no good choice or bad choice in this game, it's simply sides. Every sides feels their position is righteous, and fights to have their side and their desired outcome come to fruition.
I've chosen to save the Canvas and if I were to do it again, for real, I would still choose that option.
Lune and her sexy hapa feet are reason enough, and also getting to see her face in the other ending, is gut wrenching.
Silliness aside, I see it as an exercise in free will. Choices and consequences. If Maelle wants to spend her life in escapism, that's something she should be responsible for. For as much as this game harps on this, even adding dialogue (in Endless Tower) about how Maelle should make her own choices, the fact that they portray the ending, where you go against her choice, as the better one, makes me wonder if this wasn't a case of too many cooks in the kitchen (writer's room).

Going on a tangent here, but this is why I don't look and expect great stories in games. Games should be about gameplay. If I want a great story, I read a book, because the presence of only one author is usually a key ingredient to a good story.
What I mean by this, is that I believe there's some inconsistencies in the story and presentation of this game. It's one of those cases where it looks good from afar, but if you squint hard and long enough, you get to see how it comes apart at the seams.
I'm not saying the story was bad or anything, far from it, but these are my grievances with it and even if I love something, doesn't mean it's above fair criticism.

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To be honest the creators have a lot of cool avenues they can go with this IP.

Spoilers about future ideas and ending:

Although another game set in a canvas would be cool, I would like to learn more about the conflict between painters and writers referenced in the game. A game set from a writers perspective and the abilities a writer has in their work would make for a cool game. Possibly have a different gameplay style to go with it. Another interesting idea would be seeing a game about a painter and writer working together while dealing with the overarching war between the two groups. Complementing one another and allowing interesting gameplay mechanics with the two together.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and how it made turn based more engaging. I liked the story for the most part, but I still feel meh about Alicia thought process in act 3 and ending. However Act 1 and 2 were really good and act 1 was my favorite.

Also why couldn't she resurrect Gustave but was able to resurrect older expeditioners or ones more maimed?
 
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I must say, the UI in this game is complete dog shit. Navigating menus shouldn't be this difficult, half the time I can't see where my cursor is - oh, it's obviously the slightly bulged out diamond among the 20 or so other diamonds.
I wish the game allows you to save loadouts - having to constantly go into the menu to config your setup because the enemies resist or absorb your elements, and requiring you to completely change your build, grinding gameplay to a halt, is annoying.
I also wish that you can see enemy resistances and weakness after you discover them; just have a button that opens a little pop up window in battle to show us, instead of having to commit everything to memory.
 
BibiLivesMatter said:
Although another game set in a canvas would be cool, I would like to learn more about the conflict between painters and writers referenced in the game. A game set from a writers perspective and the abilities a writer has in their work would make for a cool game. Possibly have a different gameplay style to go with it. Another interesting idea would be seeing a game about a painter and writer working together while dealing with the overarching war between the two groups. Complementing one another and allowing interesting gameplay mechanics with the two together.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and how it made turn based more engaging. I liked the story for the most part, but I still feel meh about Alicia thought process in act 3 and ending. However Act 1 and 2 were really good and act 1 was my favorite.

Also why couldn't she resurrect Gustave but was able to resurrect older expeditioners or ones more maimed?
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As far as Gustave it was because Renoir killed him not a Nevron, so he had control over his chroma, I assume he harvested the chroma from everyone else who died on the beach like Lucien, Tristan, margot and Alan.

But yeah Maelle should have been able to ressurect Catherine (she got killed by a nevron where Gustave attempts suicide) and Leo (got killed by Eveque)
 
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Eadred said:
What I really didn't like were the some of the human character designs (Maelle, Sciel and Verso), they seem off compared to the quality of the others.
Enemy visual design was great and varied.
The voice acting was a mixed bag for me, the female voice cast was decent for the most part, Gustave, Verso and Monoco were uninspired in my opinion.

Now for the biggest gripe of the game:
For a game that so desperately tries to tug at your heartstrings, I didn't feel a thing for any of the characters, which is a shame.
And at some points I wish they would tone down their artsyfartsyness, sometimes it made me laugh with how "first year art student" it was.
Overall a solid game, and a really good first effort of the studio. Not the game of the year that a lot of people hail it to be, but a recommendation for anyone who likes to explore a unique world and setting.
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I thought maelle and sciel were fine. Maelle has a barely modified uniform since shes still quite young and developing her personality. The way she moves her sword also makes a lot of sense once you know she's a paintress
Sciel is a bit weird. Her jacket is two different fabrics at the front, but then at the back it is normal. Her pants are baggy but it turns out she has a big butt. The missmatched nature does fit her easygoing nature though.
Voiceacting is good with the french dub. Verso sounds pretty quiet and brooding in some of the more emotional moments, and sciel is miles better than her english counterpart.

I actually felt something for sophie. You only spend 30 minutes with her, but between the dialog and various events (talking to other people, doing the paint brush duel) I was invested enough in her to feel bad when she got erased. The scene at the sirene boss and some of lune's moments were also pretty good. I also thought the moment when maelle gives gustave's students his diary, and they realize he didn't make it back, was quite touching. The family story left me cold though.
It's not a 10/10 but at the same time most of the modern games leave me completely cold, E33 might win because its competition is so pathetic.

wtfNeedSignUp said:
Having a lot of builds summed to nuking the boss shows the limits of this method of game style,
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Honestly I think that's a problem with the parry/dodge system. If a player can avoid all damage with correct timing, how can you kill them except by making the patterns convoluted and extremely damaging. You also stimulate people just going 100% offensive since that makes the fight last shorter, and the damage is so high HP/def barely helps.
wtfNeedSignUp said:
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I really appreciate the game with letting the player actually take Renoir's side. It's pretty rare to make a "villain is totally right" well, and while the game maneuvers you into this ending, the game absolutely makes you feel like an asshole for choosing it.

Philosophically I saw it more as the denizens of Lumiere being soulless. They are basically AI that behaves by Verso's soul fragment
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The game pushes the renoir ending hard. The entire story is about letting go and going forward. It starts with you seeing Sophie off. The Renoir ending has color and shows the family together. The Maelle ending is black and white and shows a sad Verso, and Maelle struggling to maintain her connection to the canvas. The only part that doesn't support Verso is that it seems that till the end you're fighting against the erasure of the canvas. Although I disagree with the Lumeire denizens being soulless. They reproduce, have their own culture and community and have their own dreams. Even at the end they didn't show them behaving like puppets. Renoir during the final confrontation also seems to accept they are complex people. He is just willing to sacrifice them if that fixes his family. If he believed they were illusions he would say so. Instead he says something along the lines of "I want my family back, even if that means destroying this canvas".
Honestly, I'm disappointed with how black and white (hah) it is. Instead of making the hard choice of saving the people you fought with, the people that also deserve a tomorrow. The future they fought for for 67 expeditions, or mending a broken family, they say "either Maelle lives in a broken world that refuses to feed her escapism, or you mend the family.".

Estate said:
This, I believe, is flawed. I have a feeling they wished for both endings to be somewhat bittersweet, but the execution wasn't that good.
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I agree. If the people in the canvas are an illusion, automatons brought to life, the story is rather limp. It turns the ending into "do you want maelle to self-destruct on these fake people or move on", as well as turning the entire struggle of the Lumieres meaningless. If they are really complex people then the choice becomes more interesting. Are you willing to genocide the Lumieres for the Dessieres. I get the feeling that is the choice they want to make the players make, but then using the language of film to imply the Maelle ending is bad and the Verso ending is good. I think it would be a lot better if Maelle's ending had the warm colors. Everything seems warm and happy, everything went well and you see your party members back. Even Gustave is back with Sophie, but somewhere you know Alicia can't stay here forever. While the Verso ending is sad but shows Alicia outside the canvas.
 
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Estate said:
Ok, having finished the game and giving it some time to settle in my brain, here's my take.
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I wanted to add another thing, about Verso.

Again, I'll criticize the inconsistency in how the story developed him.
At the end of Act 2 and start of Act 3, Verso, who's lies and hidden agenda got out, is trying to find forgiveness and redemption with his party members. Lots of camp scenes revolve around this. We even have him coming out and telling he let Gustave die because he just didn't want obstacles in his way and with the whole relationship development system, we're told, via text, that their friendship and trust is unbrokable.
Then, at the end, this nigger flips and betrays everyone again, basically telling the Canvas people "I want to die and I'm willing to sacrifice you all for this".
Now, if we add in the mix Julie's and Verso's journal entries, we learn that he betrayed previous expeditions, but somehow with the intent to save them, since he thought back then that they deserve to live, all of them.
So, I'm left to conclude this nigger is some schizophrenic serial betrayal, doing whatever at the drop of the hat.
If I'm wrong, please correct me, but his story arc is very inconsistent and I'll blame it again on several writers doing bits and pieces and nobody to tard wrangle them in the editorial phase.
 
FieldPiece said:
*AHEM*
SIMON IS A DOUBLE NIGGER!
That is all.

Edit: WHAT THE FUCK HE HAS A THIRD PHASE?
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Here's my personal notes from doing him on expert. It's mostly a stream of conciousness for the most part that I scribbled to organize my thoughts as I was actively doing the fight. TLDR being there are probably minor errors here and there.
Also keep in mind these notes are for expert difficulty with MANY personal build limitations and restrictions imposed on myself that had no systematic basis and were just based on anytime I had a gut feeling of "this shit is going to ruin fights for me".
You and others still on the Simon pain-train might find some use for it though. My autistic scribbles are probably more accurate and easier to parse than the fuckin' trashfire that is Fextralife at least.
Simon Boss Notes PNG.webp

Edit: fixed a major error stating that you can avoid his bonus actions through parrying and counterattacking to not mislead people & removed double pasted phase 3.
 
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Estate said:
To my understanding, Painters are powerful inside a Canvas, but not omnipotent. Their power is fueled by the amount of Chroma they posses. At the end, Maelle is the king of the hill of Chroma, so she holds a huge amount of it. The other family members can try to get her out, but it won't be easy and it won't be quick.
Also, I believe a Canvas world does not depend on the Painter to continue it's existence. Once a Canvas world has been made, it can continue exiting in a self-sufficient manner. The piece of Verso' soul, the Young Boy we meet in our journey, was put there by original Verso, but not as a means of sustaining the Canvas, but rather as a form of dedication to it. They took the saying "pour your soul into your work" quite literally.
When Renoir started his kill switch, he needed huge amounts of Chrome, because he needed it to overcome Verso's soul, who's continued painting worked against his erasure. Once he stops paining, the kill switch will continue it's trajectory, like a huge flood once the dam is broken, and erase everything.
I still have more to say on the ending, but I'll do it in another post. This one was mostly to address your question, with how I perceived the story,
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I think this all points to the Maelle ending not being totally definite or as dark as it seems, even discounting cope and any overarching thematic narrative. And that's also discounting any sort of intervention by the Painter's Guild, though that starts getting into the narrative sticks.


I think that it's also easy to forget that the Verso we play as is a painted version created by Aline formed formed from her last memories of him, not the real individual. Considering that Aline painted darker versions of the other family members (to the point that Clea disliked her depiction and painted over it), what's to say that this version of Verso is perhaps not totally reflective of the real Verso, maybe being more selfish to survive?

Perhaps the tragedy is that he's trapped between the real world and the canvas and despite being closer in nature to the inhabitants of the canvas, believes that he's just make-believe while discounting the agency of the other inhabitants of the canvas and engaging in similar machinations as the rest of the real Dessandre family (i.e. not saving Gustave to get access to Maelle). His ending is possibly more an act of personal suicide than it is of freeing Verso's soul- which Maelle also seems to have done in her ending.
 
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Just beat the game, really quick take on the ending, I'll probably write a deeper take on the game tomorrow after I had more time to think.
The ending choice was really hard for me, probably one of the hardest choices I've seen in a game. I chose Verso because it seemed like the best option, but it was really heart breaking letting go of all the characters and the world you fell in love with. It was specially hard because I loved Gustave, and wanted nothing more than to see him again. I felt like this was the best option since the game is all about grief, and when it comes to grief, eventually you have to move on.
After reloading and picking the other ending I felt justified on my option. If I have a criticism is that they made it a bit too obvious that Maelle's ending is the bad one. Bringing Verso back to life again and having him play a piano concert, like they had talked before, was kind of a fucked up scenario.
This might be my favorite JRPG ever, I haven't played that many, but enough to know that this one is probably one of the best of all time.
 
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Regarding the ending(s)
One thing I really like about Versos ending is that it actually makes sense he would want to die. Normally the whole "boohoo I'm sad I get to live forever" things completely falls flat. But with Verso it actually makes sense because him living not only involves seeing everyone he knows die but it's actively killing Alicia, Clea, Aline, and Renoir. He's basically a sentient everlasting crack pipe and his whole family are Bossmanjack
 
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