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

Wonder if I'll find a physical copy anywhere. It's been a while since I risked buying a game at release for full price.
 
Kino is loaded, now we wait.
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I like the designs for the characters, they just look normal? Like no weird dei shit, no super strong women or soy looking guys, just normal humans. Shit is bad when i have to praise the design of something that should be something common.

Will probably play it on Hard or its equal since i like to get a mile out of games nowadays.
 
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I like the designs for the characters, they just look normal? Like no weird dei shit, no super strong women or soy looking guys, just normal humans. Shit is bad when i have to praise the design of something that should be something common.

Will probably play it on Hard or its equal since i like to get a mile out of games nowadays.
I don’t even think Lune or Sciel are particularly super attractive, it’s more so Maelle that looks really cute, but they look like fairly normal women. Their body shapes are feminine too. Wow, that’s crazy. Women in a western made game that don’t have male body frames.
Kino is loaded, now we wait.
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I have the game on ps5, and it’s nice just sitting there and listening to the music.
 
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These are serious spoilers. Genuinely don’t click on this unless you don’t care at all.
another for extra measure in case you clicked on this accidentally.
So being how I am, I found a video on YouTube that has all the cutscenes in the game. (It’s surprisingly low, so I don’t think anyone has to worry about this being a movie game) anyway, Gustave gets murked by Renoir halfway through the game and Verso takes over as the protagonist. It’s not really too surprising if you’ve read the trophy list, but I still thought wow, I really spoiled myself.
 
So, any of you fuckers have a trustable reviewer for this game? I refuse to believe for even a minute anything coming out of IGNs ass.
 
So, any of you fuckers have a trustable reviewer for this game? I refuse to believe for even a minute anything coming out of IGNs ass.
Not going to say much, but from what I’ve spoiled myself on, I haven’t seen anything woke. Of course it could be in there, but overall it seems to be safe from that shit. Not sure how the overall story quality is. Gameplay videos can be seen online and those are a good way to determine if you’ll like the game.
 
So I had to take a break to eat and charge my controller, so I'll give some initial impressions from the 4 and a half hours I've been playing.

Performance;
First thing I'd like to note is how well optimized this game is, I am running this on a fucking potato thats below minimum reqs, and I've only encountered a few graphical hiccups and no noticeable stuttering but again I am below the minimum requirements so I imagine people with mid range hardware wont have any of these issues. Normally this would not be very noteworthy but in an age where every AAA and even some indie releases want to just eat up all of your VRAM and run like shit, I just wanted to give props for actually taking the time to make sure this game was actually playable on release.

Combat;
Anyways, on to the game proper. I'm having a blast, the combat is really fun and the gun plays a lot bigger role than I originally imagined.
So on the surface its your standard 'Attack, Skill, Item' combat system.
Attack being just your unga bunga hit with stick that dont require any Action Points, Action Points being a form of combat currency earned through performing parries or successful attacks, to use.
Skill being the specialized skills that each character has that require Action Points to use, whether those be stronger attacks or buff/debuffs. Item being, well items, you know the deal.
But then you have 'Aim', now Aim is where this starts to get interesting.
Aim is used to attack flying enemies that can easily dodge other attacks, hit enemy weakpoints (more on that in a sec), or as an additional attack before your regular attack, at the cost of Action Points (one shot = one AP). This creates an interesting dynamic between your gun and skills, do I want to use my gun to target a weakpoint, or save my AP for a skill that could debuff a particularly tough enemy, or even, I dont have enough AP for a skill so I could use the gun to fire a shot or two at the enemy and chip off a little extra hp.
This gets even better when you find out that weakpoints can do a lot more than just force a critical hit on an enemy, but can also cause debuffs to surrounding enemies. For example you have an enemy that carries a mine around, you can shoot the mine and deal damage to the other enemies, or another guy whose weakpoint causes the attack damage of enemies to decrease for a number of turns, really fun stuff.
Then of course you have your defensive options, Dodge, Parry and Jump.
Dodge is a dodge its the easiest to time during battle, and you recieve no damage on a successful dodge.
Parry is much trickier as the window is much shorter on these, but a successful parry will gain AP.
Jump is only for certain attacks that require it, but a successful jump will open the enemy for a counter attack.
real simple, real straight forward, takes some practice to get used to but its great once you get the hang of it.

Story;
While I'm very much in the start of Act 1, I can say so far I haven't had any problems with the story. Nothing felt dumb or out of place, everything has had a rhyme and reason for happening the way it did. There's a ton of mystery and intrigue involving the world and it's inhabitants. While the characters can be chummy, it never felt like it got to the point of Marvel writing where it just felt dumb and out of place. There's a good amount of emotions, fellow frenchman David Cage would be proud, but it didnt feel forced. And so far I haven't encountered any force DEI nonsense, everyone just acts like people and no one asks you about your pronouns.

Overall, while still very early, it's been a good time, and I'm excited to play more.
 
Overall, while still very early, it's been a good time, and I'm excited to play more.
Good to hear. I am just firing it up now since I'm old and can't stay up for midnight releases anymore. Looks like it will break 50K on steam the first day, pretty damn good considering how other games have been doing this year (Avowed and Shadows) and it had a 30 person dev team. I would assume its probably already broken even.
 
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Square should allow this studio to make ff17. They cooked
It actually is impressing me. The particle effects are a little much at times and I turned off the post processing and camera shake and it make it much, much more bearable. I recoomend turning off camera shake, motion blue, chromatic aberration, film grain, vignette if its bothering you. Made a world of difference for me.

Justice for Catherine, super gruesome end.. Amandine's glasses made me laugh.

Definitely a lot of....representation at the beginning of the game, but the only nonwhite you interact with so far is Lucien and he is only in the intro if people are concerned about that.

The first area is VERY imspired by the island of Besaid in FFX. even the music sounds similar.

There is stuff hidden everywhere too.

And lastly before I dive back in after lunch the full 8 hour OST dropped:

 
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It actually is impressing me. The particle effects are a little much at times and I turned off the post processing and camera shake and it make it much, much more bearable. I recoomend turning off camera shake, motion blue, chromatic aberration, film grain, vignette if its bothering you. Made a world of difference for me.

Justice for Catherine, super gruesome end.. Amandine's glasses made me laugh.

Definitely a lot of....representation at the beginning of the game, but the only nonwhite you interact with so far is Lucien and he is only in the intro if people are concerned about that.

The first area is VERY imspired by the island of Besaid in FFX. even the music sounds similar.

There is stuff hidden everywhere too.

And lastly before I dive back in after lunch the full 8 hour OST dropped:

It’s good to hear that kiwis like the game. That’s one of my few trusted sources to find out if a game is good. Definitely excited to play it after work. Wait… what did I just say? I’m excited to play a modern game? Holy shit, it’s unbelievable.
 
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