• Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:

    1. The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
    2. Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration

    Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Started this!

Story, setting and world, visuals, and music are all strong as hell. I'm impressed with the characters, the drama, the unique setting. I do wish they hadn't designed the characters with a uniform that makes it...not harder to tell them apart, really, but definitely less visually distinct.

There is a LOT going on with the mechanics right out of the gate. Pictos and Luminas and skills and stats to level up freely all kind of get thrown at you. I'm glad they provide at least a few respec items so you don't feel as much pressure right away, but I still worry that I'm allocating my stats poorly and I haven't done anything with like, shifting pictos around after mastering them. But I only have like, six of them right now.

There's also a TON going on with the battle system. Lune's stains and spell chaining alone seems like it'll take the whole game to master, and that's just one character, and that's without worrying about how OTHER characters interact with her stuff (like consuming a mark), and that's without each of the other characters and their unique mechanics in their own right!

I do, in fact, suck at dodging and parrying, but I might be getting used to it a bit more. I'm not entirely sure I won't end up dropping the difficulty down at some point to just focus on vibes and being powerful and not get frustrated when I miss yet another dodge/parry for reasons I can't quite discern.

I REALLY wish they included a minimap or an area map because I was having trouble telling where I was going despite the relative lack of complexity. The aesthetics are great but they don't make for clear and unambiguous navigation. Who knows, maybe that's on purpose to evoke the feeling of being lost on and exploring a strange and fantastic continent. It works to do that...but doesn't feel great.
 
Peklo said:
Unless taking an extremely literal stance of who's part of the team at Sandfall, this game was never made by that amount of people. Dozens if not hundreds worked on it, including folks like the Korean gameplay animation team whose contributions are integral to what the game is.
Click to expand...
Yeah this rhetoric I think is probably misleading at best. Maybe the core programming team or something at their HQ is 30 but it really gives me deja vu for other such claims I’ve seen regarding media in the past.
 
Peklo said:
Unless taking an extremely literal stance of who's part of the team at Sandfall, this game was never made by that amount of people. Dozens if not hundreds worked on it, including folks like the Korean gameplay animation team whose contributions are integral to what the game is.
Click to expand...
Ah, OK, that makes a lot more sense. I guess it really does take a village to make a video game... or something.
 
Paul le Fou said:
I REALLY wish they included a minimap or an area map because I was having trouble telling where I was going despite the relative lack of complexity. The aesthetics are great but they don't make for clear and unambiguous navigation. Who knows, maybe that's on purpose to evoke the feeling of being lost on and exploring a strange and fantastic continent. It works to do that...but doesn't feel great.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this is something I've grappled with too. Overall I've come down on the side of liking it, though. I think because I often, in RPGs, MMOs, open worlds, etc. have found myself wishing I could turn off quest objective markers and HUD pointers and such -- the hand-holding has gotten so heavy in game design that it feels patronizing. (Borderlands 3, oh my god. If you don't spot the thing you need to shoot to complete a puzzle within ten seconds, an NPC starts screaming the solution at you.) So it's been refreshing, playing a game that lets me get turned around and accidentally re-traverse an area a couple times before I find the critical path.
 
I don't mind the lack of a mini-map because each area is relatively straightforward. Even side paths tend to loop back to spit you out in a place that is on the "beaten path", somewhat akin Dark Souls navigation. What I would have appreciated is some kind of on-the-map list that popped up whenever you entered an area, so I can tell at a glance if there's bosses/mini-bosses I did not defeat yet, number of Pictos or Lumina not found, etc. I gave up after about an hour of trying to find a side boss I had skipped but I couldn't remember where it was located.

Another minor quibble, and it's not unique to this game by any means, is that low-level enemies will still try to attack you if you go back to earlier areas. There's no level scaling here that I can see so it's a waste of time. My kingdom for Earthbound low-level baddie mechanics in more RPGs.
 
Yeah, after I finished the second zone I managed to find my way back to the first zone to pick off the extra/side baddie there that had wiped the floor with me the first time... and I paused at the zone door because I really just didn't feel like navigating my way back through the zone again, then turned back. Maybe next time.

I'm maybe starting to figure out pictos and luminas, and skills. Only six skills already feels so limiting! Ack! I want mooooore
 
A compass is always displayed on the world map, and within areas you can pull it up with triangle/Y along with the other party status overlay information.
 
Peklo said:
A compass is always displayed on the world map, and within areas you can pull it up with triangle/Y along with the other party status overlay information.
Click to expand...
Over 40 hours in and I'm just learning this now. Thanks! 😅

I haven't had massive issues with navigation, but there have been a few times where having a compass would have helped me get my bearings relative to somewhere I was trying to go.
 
There were plenty of "End of Act I" spoiler blocks in the other online communities I frequent, and yeah, I got there.

There were a fair amount of metagame reasons to expect Gustave to make an exit at the end of Act I, so it wasn't that surprising, but it was nice of the game to have Verso step in immediately without any disruption in activity. The amount of fleshing out of Verso's kit compared to Gustave's is quite welcome, as midway through the Act, Gustave ended up on a build focused on Aim and Basic Attacks instead of his abilities, and later in the act was, as I expected, on the bench with the Solo Pictos/Luminas as a last stand.

I'm getting a lot more comfortable with using parries instead of just dodges now, I've realized that hitting earlier is more reliable than whiffing late. Having some points in Vitality and Defense actually goes quite a long way towards smoothing out making defensive mistakes in combat. (I've been allocating one point to Vitality or Defense, and two across Might, Agility, and Luck on most level-ups.) I've also gone out of the way at the start of Act II to try and take down a few of the optional encounters around the map, and I like that I've needed different strategies or compositions for handling them. Not so fond of the busywork in shuffling my Luminas and other abilities around in order to set up those strategies, though.

Story-wise, I still can't really predict where it's going to go or how to interpret the white haired-woman(Alicia?)'s words in one of the camp cutscenes prior to the end of Act I. I expected humans living in the lands of the continent would be immune to Gommage, but I didn't expect them to be from the first Expedition Did the survivors of Expedition Zero who returned to Lumiere include any members of Renoir's faction, or were they completely split? If the latter, why wouldn't the Lumierans know about the folks who stayed behind? Or was there a concerted effort among those survivors to return to the continent, which is why there aren't any Expedition 9x journals to find? Maybe there is some kind of duplicate real/fake beings thing going on, especially with the similarities between Maelle and Alicia, or Gustave and Verso. There's still plenty of game left to go, so there'll hopefully be some kind of explanation from Act II onwards.

EDIT: I just remembered, there was also an event at camp where I built up a relationship point with Esquie? I didn't expect Social Links / Heart-to-Hearts to be in this game. Also, another note I wanted to mention, is that I hope I find a damage limit break Picto soon. Maelle's been rubbing against the 9,999 limit for her single-target attacks in some cases, and I'd like to get full value out of those meaty hits.
 
Last edited:
I am just getting to the point where going all-in on Might or Luck is biting me in the ass. Can't pull off Maelle's fancy guaranteed 9999 damage Percée if she never gets a turn because her Agility is a third of anyone else's. XD
 
I like how high damage Percee is just a universal experience among people I've talked to. I liked opening up with a first strike + augmented first strike + the sword that starts you in Virtuose stance Percee and just baleeting enemies. Too bad said sword has been outclassed by a few levels now and I can't upgrade it enough yet, so I've been doing a burn build with the fire sword, but she's still got the lowest current weapon level out of my group. Wait no, the character who just joined (5th in my party) has one lower still.

I really appreciate how this game isn't afraid to be goofy and funny at times. Like everything about Esquie. The Gestrals, the 5th character to join (The "There's going to be a lot of fighting..." conversation), the Grandis fashion designer wearing a huge beret whom you have to beat in a poetry competition to unlock outfits... Verso knows magic to just cut himself in half and walk both halves around?? What?? They really hit that Final Fantasy mix of seriousness and melodrama combined with goofy fun asides.

If I had one complaint it's that the early game at least feels a little padded - there are a lot of sidequests whose only function appear to be to give you another dungeon/area to go through, not to serve any actual forward plot momentum. I dunno, I guess that's normal, having to go through a cave between two towns just 'cause, especially in classic FF games etc. Something about it here just strikes me as a bit more noticeable though.

Oh and I still suck at dodging and parrying, but luckily that hasn't made it too rough difficulty-wise so far, which design I'm thankful for.

Now to figure out how to fit new skills into my arsenals and design new skill rotations and such. Differently for each character, of course. There's certainly no lack of complexity or battle mechanics to engage with. (They keep introducing new ones too! Dodge and parry weren't enough, you have to jump too, and then there's a whole new gradient counter. And just now they introduced gradient attacks too, just 'cause!)
 
Rolled credits. I don't know if I'm going to do the hardest boss or not. I did almost all the optional content, though. Some small quibbles about the end, though:

I think Act 3 could have been handled better. They let you go ham on optional content, which is pretty cool, but it also trivializes the endgame to a laughable degree. They had a better example of how to handle this in Chrono Trigger, which lets you do optional quests before facing Lavos, but in a lot of ways they're not really optional at all - you'll get smoked by Lavos if you try to go for him too early. It should have been similar here.

Also, the endings were a gut punch. Both of them. It's apparent which one is the true ending, but it doesn't make it any easier. In a lot of ways, the game deals a bit with themes like To the Moon did, and I honestly hated how that game glossed over creating a fantasy instead of confronting reality as it was. Here, at least, you get that option, and the alternative shows the dangers of escapism.

Anyway, overall, I think it was a fantastic time. I'm leery giving it all-timer status - I think I'll need to stew on it longer before I put it in that category. But that it's even in consideration is certainly a feather in the dev team's cap.
 
Sarge said:
I think Act 3 could have been handled better. They let you go ham on optional content, which is pretty cool, but it also trivializes the endgame to a laughable degree. They had a better example of how to handle this in Chrono Trigger, which lets you do optional quests before facing Lavos, but in a lot of ways they're not really optional at all - you'll get smoked by Lavos if you try to go for him too early. It should have been similar here.
Click to expand...
I haven't played this game yet, but I watched most of it being played via a stream. The thing the streamer I was watching did to maintain a decent difficulty was to just, on his end, was to basically just nerf himself. Take off OP equipment/skills or whatnot, so that the difficulty could be maintained.

The power scaling did seem completely ridiculous, but I've noticed in general, a tendency in the Gaming Discourse to have these kinds of discussions around end-game power creep with RPGs. And it honestly kinda blows my mind. A lot of gamers seem to want a consistent or increasing difficulty as they play, and get upset at RPGs where when you overlevel, the difficulty becomes trivialized. And to me that's like... the entire point?

The whole point of assigning numerical values/levels to a character's abilities/personal growth, is to make the abstract concept of a character growing stronger into something more concrete. And the reward for the hard work of growing stronger is that you can defeat stronger foes that previously would have wiped the floor with your butt. I think there's something to fine tuning/calibrating your growth curve so that things don't be come laughably easy/trivial, especially to undermine whatever dramatic story of conflict and struggle you're trying to tell. But growing stronger than your enemies through hard work is part of the story. And if your enemies grow at the exact same pace you do, pegged to your character's levels, all you've done is completely trivialize/nullify the point of having levels to begin with. Just go full Zelda at that point and remove levels all together, because you've effectively made them pointless.

It's really weird to me to watch people demand that a core aspect of RPGs be essentially nullified and removed from the experience all together. To me, it's like playing a first person shooter, and demand guns be taken out of the game.
 
Yeah, I don't disagree. Honestly, I kinda knew going in I probably short-circuited the challenge. I know that power-leveling for some players is very much a thing, and for me, I wanted to experience as much of this content as I could before it ended. Which speaks highly for the game for sure! I was expecting there to be a large bump up in the endgame power level required, though, something where maybe if I waltzed in I'd get pasted and think... huh, maybe I should poke around a bit more. And while part of me wanted a little more drama, there is also part of me that was relieved that I wasn't going to have to learn some insane patterns to make it to the ending. Which, uh, I did with one of the hardest optional sub-bosses that heals for over 500,000 HP if you miss a single parry.

Now, do I take on the *hardest* boss in the game? I might just cheese that fight - I've seen one-shot builds flying around, and I can see a lot of Picto synergies that I could probably suss it out without following a guide.
 
What weapons and skill loadouts did you guys use? I feel like I've fallen into a really good burn-forward build with Maelle, who can pump out insane damage with her Stalum (The sword that adds self-burn to increase her overall damage) and a double-burn pictos, in addition to other damage boosters. My other four still do pretty OK-good damage, it's not like they're useless, but they really just can't match the crazy numbers Maelle puts out, so I'm trying to figure out some strategies for them. Anyone got any favorites?

For the record I'm around level 41 and my weapons are about 15-16 right now, to give you an idea.
 
Last edited:
When I played it on Xbox, Lune was the star. I had her critical rate fairly high, so I generated stains from Elemental Trick, and then used Mayhem as a follow up (or Elemental Genesis if you can guarantee the crits, although high AP cost.) I'm only about halfway through on PS5, and I've settled into Verso using Blitz and then Radiant Light, Maelle uses Fencer's Flurry (to apply defenseless to everything), and then Wildfire with Lune. Basically moving into AoE whenever possible.

Right now I'm using Pictos more for stat sticks than the actual effects but I've found In Media Res to be crazy useful and you can pick it up fairly early on. Halves your HP at the start of battle but gives you three shields. If necessary, you can just use HP recovery abilities at that point, so you have HP and shields, or you can just eat some attacks without worry about missing a parry or two. Added bonus is that shield removal does not count as damage (naturally) so you'll get the 20% extra XP at the end of combat. Also a good stat stack because it's level 21 and most of the pictos are around level 10 if you get it as soon as you're able.
 
Paul le Fou said:
What weapons and skill loadouts did you guys use? I feel like I've fallen into a really good burn-forward build with Maelle, who can pump out insane damage with her Stalum (The sword that adds self-burn to increase her overall damage) and a double-burn pictos, in addition to other damage boosters. My other four still do pretty OK-good damage, it's not like they're useless, but they really just can't match the crazy numbers Maelle puts out, so I'm trying to figure out some strategies for them. Anyone got any favorites?

For the record I'm around level 41 and my weapons are about 15-16 right now, to give you an idea.
Click to expand...
Maelle is definitely the most OP character, from my playthrough. And I did the same as you, using Stalum for self-burn, and setting up a quick transition to Virtuouse Stance for her stronger abilities. Early I was using Fleuret Fury to maintain VS, but later I started switching to the real heavy-hitting moves, especially when she unlocks her final abilities.
 
Weirdly, I never even use Virtuose stance. She does so much damage it's pretty much unnecessary. It's kinda nuts.
 
I'm only at the start of Act 2, but I don't see equipping Pictos for their stats as all that odd or disappointing? You don't otherwise have armor/accessory type equipment, so isn't it just the same as, like, gear in FFIX? -- you upgrade when you find newer stronger stuff, waiting only long enough to get the attached skills unlocked.

I guess later the cost of Lumina gets prohibitively high so there's some encouragement to use subpar Pictos for the free roll there? But it doesn't feel weird to me that the stats would be the primary consideration most of the time.
 
Kalista said:
I'm only at the start of Act 2, but I don't see equipping Pictos for their stats as all that odd or disappointing? You don't otherwise have armor/accessory type equipment, so isn't it just the same as, like, gear in FFIX? -- you upgrade when you find newer stronger stuff, waiting only long enough to get the attached skills unlocked.

I guess later the cost of Lumina gets prohibitively high so there's some encouragement to use subpar Pictos for the free roll there? But it doesn't feel weird to me that the stats would be the primary consideration most of the time.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the intended design - wear the Pictos for their stats primarily, use Lumina to design your abilities primarily.
 
I mean, I'd say the intended design is for it to be two intersecting gameplay systems that lead to interesting decisions, which it is! Weighing the value of the stats versus the power of the ability and its cost in Lumina means that the choices are often not clear-cut, IMO.
 
Credits rolled, but now I'm going to poke at all the endgame/postgame content, and boy is there a lot of it! Act III is very short, story-wise; you basically go right into the final dungeon and boss. BUT, that's also where a ton of other stuff gets unlocked along with your ability to fly. Like, ten or more entirely new areas on top of any other optional content you've put off to that point. Some have more substance than others, of course, but still, there's no lack of stuff to do before or after the final boss.

Overall, I think the narrative is actually the weak link for me; though it has a few interesting swings and twists it overall feels a little stilted. The concept and the world are a fantastic setup, and make for a lot of excellent setpieces. But I never really liked Verso taking over the Protagonist role from Gustave; Gustave fit within the group and the story, and Verso's replacement of him felt forced, and making him your ostensible control character as The Cooler Gustave that everyone likes immediately limited the character explorations throughout act 2. I wanted more interactions between everyone in the group, but the social level interactions that dive into character exploration are all done through Verso's relationship to each character, and you get very little between the others. They should have let Lune or Maelle be the Main Character and maybe cut back on or changed the social link stuff to allow the other characters to interact more with each other. I also didn't like how much Verso knew and didn't say; there's one specific secret it makes some sense for him to have kept, and its revelation and fallout an interesting beat. But there was so much little stuff he just...didn't tell his party members for no good reason, up to and including hiding the "Esquie can fly" stone from them. And yet we're expected not just to sympathize with him, but to see the conflict and other characters through his eyes. You could argue it's part of his character, but that would just mean I didn't like his character.

I don't thiiiink I'm going to go right into NG+ after this, not sure if I'll come back to it later, but we'll see how I feel after I've gone through more of this plethora of side content. Has anyone done NG+? I'm guessing it's more of a Souls-style one where the content (and rewards, I have a hunch) scales up to your higher level rather than the Chrono Trigger style of just letting you run through the game at an OP level, but I haven't looked into it.
 
Last edited:
The NG+ is more Souls than Chrono Trigger, yes. There are no additional story elements or anything of that nature; the "+" part is mechanical - levels for Pictos, weapons, enemies scaling up, etc.

I'm now at the point I was on Xbox where I can just go to the final area/final boss or poke around. So I've been poking around and while I can do some of the endgame content, more of it than I care to admit are HP sponge enemies that, despite doing a lot of damage, still take forever to kill. Either I need more levels - and I'm having trouble finding a farming area for those levels - or I need to start min/maxing Pictos/Lumina. The groaniest of groans. I am not a min/maxer kind of person, I don't like pouring over items/stats and looking for synergies. I'm more of a whatever gets the job done kind of guy but a lot of the endgame content doesn't seem to allow for that.

I'll probably go to the end and finish the game, go look up builds online, and then use this treasure trove of Recoats I never touched to build around tackling the optional content.
 
A purely mechanical non-spoiler: Postgame and NG+ are also handled like e.g. Elden Ring, where after you beat the final boss and roll credits you can reload back into the world and continue on doing whatever optional content you like. Also like ER, you choose to start NG+ from a flag-bonfire somewhere at your leisure.
 
Well, I'm on to Act III after completing the spectacle that was Act II.

I was getting increasing suspicions that the world the game takes place in was some kind of false reality through the act, but seeing how it all came together in terms of the plot was a real treat. The setup of the Monolith dungeon and its boss fights were very much as a final dungeon in any other RPG, and the cutscenes certainly treated that part of the game with that kind of respect. The Epilogue presented at the end of Act II actually could have served as the end of the game and its story with a little bit of modification, even as a bit of a downer.

Of course, the game doesn't end at Act II, but the way that the final conflict to drive Act III is stated, it feels like just wrapping up loose ends, rather than a whole another story arc. The fact that you get the damage limit break Picto as a reward for completing Act II also lends Act III to feeling completely like post-game or "true ending" content. I've heard that it's pretty easy to trivialize the final story battles by doing too much of the Act III content, and the game was already pretty easy through Act II, so maybe I shouldn't do too much exploration before hitting up the final story location. Even though Act III might be done very quickly, maybe I'll wait to post my thoughts on finishing the game for a few days in order to hide how long it is. In case that matters for anyone in this community who hasn't gotten on board with the game yet.

I can appreciate that the game gives so much leeway for the player to break the game, though. For most of the first half of Act II, I was just using Maelle to alpha strike enemies since I had her Medalum giving her Virtuoso stance on Turn 1. Later, as her single-target skill damage was hitting the damage cap, I moved on to Verso, using Aim and Basic Attack strategies with Dualiso (extra turn after Basic Attack). And after putting some upgrades into Trebuchim (random stain on Aim hit), Lune was getting Mayhem strikes pretty much every turn. Monoco was quickly solid after setting him up with lots of Break-centric skills. Sciel took the longest to getting solid, but I eventually settled on her serving the party with empowered buffs and healing. Through all that, Maelle has actually fallen off quite a bit not only due to the damage cap, but also the finesse required to manage her stances. But maybe that will change now that the damage cap has been removed.
 
Optional megaboss down. Sheeeeeeeesh.

Simon is rough. Way worse than Clea. I ended up having to change strats a bit - I wasn't having much trouble with the first phase, but would get absolutely wiped in the second, without much time to learn patterns. So I threw more shielding stuff on, even if he steals them - I can always pull them off later, I just need some practice. But I never truly got good at even dodging - I'd need a few more shots at it, but I survived long enough to pull another strat.

Basically, load Maelle up with all the damage-boosting stuff I could. Increased damage on burn, confident fighter that disallows healing, the works. Make sure Cheater is on everyone. Try to use Verso to get burn and mark applied, use Last Chance to get into Virtuouse, and let Sciel double damage and give her second turn back to Maelle. Then unload with Stendhal. I managed to respec to the point that it would one-shot the first phase. The second, it did a bit more than half. So at that point, through 10-15 tries and a bit of luck, it was about surviving long enough to either get another setup like the first, or save up enough Gradient to use Gommage. It ended up being the latter, as Sciel died and got wiped from the canvas, but I managed to roll back to Maelle with a chance to go into Virtuouse and pop Gommage off, and it was enough to finish the job. Especially since he has an undodgeable attack later that wipes your whole current team off, forcing you to finish the battle with the reserves. Not great, Jim! Maybe a bit cheesier than learning all the patterns, which I do think I was starting to grok, but I don't care, it was harrowing enough as it was.

Anyway, that's the biggest thing that was still bothering me down. Not sure if I'll do anything else with the game - I know there's stuff I missed, Expedition logs and whatnot, but I may be finished. Still had a blast with it.
 
I finished the game last night and have been mulling over the ending all day.

So Maelle recreates Sciel and Lune at the start of Act 3, and they're treated as being really "them"; they retain all their memories up to the point where they Gommaged, and Maelle and Verso continue to treat them about the same as they did before, although they don't have much to do for the remainder of the story.

After the final battle, in one ending, Maelle recreates Lumière as a peaceful and happy version of the city she grew up in, complete with recreated versions of everyone she knew there. If the Lune and Sciel she made before are "real", the Gustave and Sophie seen in this ending are equally real. Verso seems to know what's going on and he doesn't like it, but he didn't have a problem with recreating the other party members earlier and even helped Maelle defeat Renoir, only turning against her when it became clear she intended to spend the rest of her life in the painted world, and even then only because he wanted to end his own immortal life. So this ending does suck for him, and it doesn't seem that great for Maelle, either, since she can't really enjoy the kind of relationship with Gustave and the other people of Lumière that she had before now that she knows who she really is. And that's before she starts to lose herself in the painting the way her mother did, which seems to be happening already. But everyone else in Lumière is safe and happy and, importantly, very real.

In the other ending, Verso kills Maelle, forcing her out of the painting, at which point Renoir destroys the whole canvas and everybody dies. Lune, Sciel, Monoco, Esquie, all the Gestrals and Grandis and maybe even the friendly Nevrons were real people, and they're all gone now. Sucks for everybody except Verso, the one guy who wanted this. And I guess the real Renoir and Clea. Maelle is still alive in the "real" world as Alicia, but none of her family seem to respect her very much, and without the ability to speak, I doubt she'll ever even get them to call her by her chosen name.

I chose Maelle's ending in the moment (and Youtubed Verso's), and in my gut I still feel like it's the better outcome, but I can see a sort of utilitarian argument that destroying the world and killing everyone causes an enormous but finite amount of suffering, whereas forcing one person to live forever against their will causes a theoretically infinite amount. But I don't find either choice narratively satisfying. If the game just rolled credits after Act 2 and the "epilogue" and made Lumière and the Curator postgame challenges, I think I wouldn't have had any complaints. If they had to be part of the main story, having the conclusion be something like Maelle just going full Super-Paintress for a minute and remaking the whole world with herself and Verso as mortals, so that they live out their normal lives and then depart, he to the sweet release of oblivion and she to whatever life she has left in the real world, would feel a lot better and still be in keeping with the themes of the game up to that point, I think. Like, one of her moves is called Breaking Rules, the Painted Power Pictos benefits her more than anyone else and makes it feasible to get Cheater, which at least arguably benefits her more than anyone else. After forcing the other painters out of the canvas, she should be able to just do whatever she wants.

But, the available endings aren't about doing what you want - they're about moving on. Specifically, moving on from this painted world, and therefore this game. So although I'd probably enjoy playing the postgame and new game + and such, I'm not going to do so any time soon. I do still like the game overall, as the first two acts had me completely enthralled, and really the third did as well, all the way up to the end, but the ending definitely lowered my opinion of it.

Even though I'm done playing, I do have some lingering questions. Like, who are the Writers? Some group with a power similar to the Dessendre's, but for text, I suppose? I'd guess they're a sequel hook, except that the ending kinda quashes any chance of a story sequel and argh OK I need to stop going on about the ending.

So more importantly, is Sciel supposed to be connected to Clea somehow? They do look alike. Verso implies Sciel looks like someone he knows when they first meet, but that plot thread doesn't go anywhere. If she is a painted copy of Clea, Aline would have to have made her 35 years after her copies of Verso and Renoir, which doesn't make sense, and she'd be immune to the Gommage like Verso, which she isn't. She also can't be the "real" Clea inhabiting someone born in Lumière like Maelle, because she'd have to be younger than Maelle to have become such a person after seeing Maelle enter the painting. So what is the deal? I guess Sophie and Emma also looked alike, and there wasn't even a hint of an explanation for that.
 
Yeah, I don't think Sciel is connected to anyone else in any meta significant way, I think some of the models just look pretty similar.

Also, it's kind of ridiculous how much endgame/postgame content CO has. I've started going through the stuff I can, and I'm still finding more (including stuff that's well out of my level range, even as I reach and pass level 60).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top