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

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Großmann said:
Wait, so you only agree with Maelle if you’re mentally retarded or severely autistic?
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God of Nothing said:
what she did to herself was just foul though
that and my nigger simon
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To herself?
You didn't pay attention or didn't talk with the phantom in the tower.
The Clea inside the Painting was overwritten by outside Clea, because she didn't like that portrayal of her. Outside Clea is a real fucking cunt.
 
God of Nothing said:
but we all treat verso like the real one and barely regard either alicia differently
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Well, we've already established everyone in this thread is autistic and/or mentally deficient. So, I say let's not make communication any more confusing.
 
God of Nothing said:
but we all treat verso like the real one and barely regard either alicia differently
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There may be some fuckery with Verso and the piece of Verso inside the painting having some kind of connection/resonance/whatever that makes him more like the real Verso than other painted people. We saw in the GOTY update the real piece of Verso was communicating with painted Verso in subtle ways. Add that up over 67 years and its reasonable to think painted Verso is more like actual Verso than Aline knew. Or Aline thing is that she paints reality, not what she wants to paint necessarily. Would make sense that being able to paint actual factual 1 to 1 copies would be a thing for the "strongest" painter. It really sucks if you are a citizen of Lumiere though! Given how similar Alicia and Renoir were, its probably the "Aline paints reality, not just what she thinks a thing is" theory.

The REALLY fucked up thing about the Maelle ending, is that everyone in the family tried to get Aline out the painting. Even Clea. Its looking like they are gonna let Alicia rot inside of her painted reality though. We dont see Aline come back in either during the ending.
 
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I suspect that if you were to add up all the damage I've dealt over the course of the game and break it down by how it was dealt, at least 90% of it would be from Stendahl. I probably deal more in one cast than I did in all of Act 1.
 
namelesstacotruck said:
The REALLY fucked up thing about the Maelle ending, is that everyone in the family tried to get Aline out the painting. Even Clea. Its looking like they are gonna let Alicia rot inside of her painted reality though. We dont see Aline come back in either during the ending.
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In the end it's shown that Renoir understands Alicia's viewpoint, she's severely disabled from the fire, being in the painting is the only way she'll ever live something resembling a normal life. As for Clea, she blames Alicia for Verso's death, and she's just a cunt in general, so it's not hard to see why she doesn't care.

What I can't explain is why Aline doesn't return to the painting when we're told she always will if given the chance, especially because she briefly returns to help Alicia fight Renoir in the 3rd act.
 
i want to replay the game from the beginning without ng+ to try things differently but remember the gestral bits
ugh
Squawking Macaw said:
What I can't explain is why Aline doesn't return to the painting when we're told she always will if given the chance, especially because she briefly returns to help Alicia fight Renoir in the 3rd act.
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Likely extremely fucked up health wise after that to go back in.
 
Verso's Osquie outfit animations are the funniest thing I've seen in a video game in a long time.
 
God of Nothing said:
i want to replay the game from the beginning without ng+ to try things differently but remember the gestral bits
ugh
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As someone who did that several times, it gets surprisingly easier in subsequent games.
Knowing what to expect and knowing what works, changes your mentality a lot. You're a lot more calm and you won't succumb to frustration.
The downside is that the feeling of discovery and accomplishment is almost non-existent.
First times are always a memorable experience, and everything after that is mechanical repetition. I'm not saying there's no enjoyment, but it's not the same.
 
Finally finished after a long break and it bums me out how little I enjoyed this game. Really looked forward to it, waited all year to buy it until I knew I had time for it, didn't see 1 spoiler outside of a few random memes the first week it was out, I expected this to be a game i'd pull out to play once a year, and i'll never install it again.

It was mostly the battle system. Fights are fun until you know the timing then they quickly became a slog fighting the same enemies. Don't even feel I can judge the story because by the time they really dump it on you I was so sour on the game you couldn't have paid me to care. Happy other people enjoyed it so much and wish I did the same.
 
I was browsing 4chan (lol) when I came across a twitter screencap thread (lol x2) that showed a JRPG fan with a Xenoblade avatar saying that Expedition 33 is the “J”RPG for the “I hate rap but love Eminem” crowd and it got me thinking about what elements of this game resonate with people that are normally not receptive to JRPGs. Here’s my attempt to think through it.
  • Not a sequel and doesn’t have a confusing title (mostly). Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 keeps it fairly simple and isn’t a part of a larger franchise, with the only point of confusion being what “Clair Obscure” means for most people. However, when you look at most of the JRPG market in recent times and you’ll either see sequels or a game with a title that is inaccessible to all but the most weeb of weebs.
    • Ys Memoire: Oath in Felghana (sequel with names in the title that most worldwide would find hard to pronounce at first glance)
    • Dokapon! Sword of Fury (sequel with a Japanese name that doesn’t provide non Japanese speakers with much information about what it is)
    • Mercenaries Lament: Requiem of the Silver Wolf (another sequel with a somewhat corny title)
    • KAMiBAKO — Mythology of the Cube (weird capitalization of a Japanese name that serves to confuse more than it does to clarify)
    • The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II (sequel, title’s too long)
    • Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon? Fulland of Water and Light (literal anime game with an overly long title)
    • Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land (sequel, long title)
    • Death end re;Quest: Code Z (confusing title that looks more like a code string than something that pitches the game’s idea to me — also, why do Japanese devs and anime/manga writers have such a weird hard-on for random punctuation and attempts to make their story title look like nonsensical code?)
  • Doesn’t look like a JRPG. When people say “JRPG,” a particular looking game usually pops into one’s head.
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  • Before a weeb freaks the fuck out, I’m not trying to say that the anime visual style is bad, but I am saying that the anime visual style severely limits your audience, since more people than not do not connect with anime — moreso when it’s clear that the developers or publishers are targeting the types who buy figurines and spend $100s on gacha games. COE33 has stylistic visuals and character designs but they don’t push it so far that you have to work hard to suspend your disbelief like most anime-styled JRPGs demand of players. “But anime gatekeeps t3h n0rm13s!” Okay, I will accept this, but then weebs can’t get assmad that no one gives a shit about their game and likes something like COE33 instead.
  • The story is accessible. What I mean by this is not that COE33 has a simplistic or dumbed down story, but that it does not shoot itself in the foot to appear grand and complex the way many JRPGs living in SquareSoft’s shadow end up doing. While the game has some jargon and concepts that are unknown to the player in the opening, by the time 30 minutes or so have passed, everything clicks into place and you immediately get what’s going on and what the stakes are. Contrast this to your average JRPG in anno domini MMXXVI where you either get:
    • An extremely jargon heavy opening led by a narrator telling you about the D E E P lore of the setting before plopping you down into a boring tutorial section that “eases” you into the setting for two hours before anything consequential happens
    • An extremely jargon heavy opening in media res that moves so fast that you can’t find the will to care because the writer(s) are trying too hard to make the setting seem complex
  • The story goes further by being largely a personal story about family rather than about a large-scale conflict with literal world-ending stakes that dwarf personal concerns. Most JRPGs forget to make actual characters rather than plot devices.
  • The game is made with knowledge of the genre but without blind adherence to the trappings of the genre. You don’t have those eye-rolling cliches of JRPGs pop up in this game because the developers have writers that have done other shit besides write for and watch/play anime/JRPGs. No waifus (there is romance in the game but you don’t feel like the publisher is trying to convince you to buy figurines the whole time), no dark versions of the protagonist, no high school age teens (other than Maelle but it doesn’t matter since the story doesn’t try to make the setting some high schooler shit), no fighting the big bad empire/church/god (although you kind of fight god in a way), no cringy melodrama that is characteristic of hack Japanese writers that only read manga and watch anime, and no overly complex combat systems that detract from the experience more than they enhance (like Xenoblade 2 taking nearly half of its playtime to role out all of its combat features when it all really devolves into elemental orb management).
Do I want every JRPG to be like this? No, I just want JRPG developers to stop letting anime and past JRPGs shackle them to making games a specific way every time with no experimentation or risk. I want to see more types of JRPG stories, gameplay, and visual styles. I want more mature and cutting edge presentation and story telling. I want JRPG fans to stop accepting slop just because a pretty anime girl is on the cover. I want JRPGs to be great again instead of a “niche” genre like its been for the last 15 years outside of a few brief flashes of life over the years.
 
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