If you're paying attention they didn't hide that it was the Lampmaster. You can see its statue the very first time you go and you restore its parts each time you finished one. Plus it wasn't actually killed at the end of Act 1, so this is closure and a glimpse at what a raging cunt Clea is.
I recently finished this game after playing through it slowly in small doses over the course of 7-8 weeks. This was easily the best game I've had the pleasure to play through in the last couple of years. Aside from Balatro, I don't think there's been anything I've logged more than 10 hours into since at least 2022. The soundtrack was captivating, the visuals ranged from good to stunning, the plot was genuinely interesting throughout, and the mechanics like parrying and allocating lumina points felt very rewarding when done right. I don't think it fully clicked for me until I encountered the "Chromatic Troubadour" early on, then at that point I was all in and knew I'd be exploring 100% of the game.
I'll definitely keep an eye out for whatever these devs put out next.
Shill Up made a video about Sandfall Interactive that includes interviews with the devs and answers pretty much all questions about how the game was made from start to finish. Also Fact-checks a bunch of clickbait titles/statements that were made by video game "journalists".
10 fucking minutes of near-zero tolerance for mistakes and like 100 dodges/parries later (because I think one-shot builds are boring) - fuck you Simon View attachment 7550132
I managed to kill him on my first encounter but it almost felt like his AI was being kind of screwy. He spent all 5-6 of his turns sucking the shields off my characters and then lowering one of them to 1HP without ever doing any massive combos that wipe out the entire party. I hadn't totally spoiled it for myself but I was aware heading into the end of the game that he was a big optional boss at the end. I was expecting something really awful so I hit 99 before fighting him. In retrospect I probably should have tried him at 60-80 because stacking burns with Corpeso worked a little too well.
The fact you can dodge away entire attacks fuck me so bad. I wanna restart every fight where I don't make it through without taking damage, because in theory I should be able to. Had it been a 20% dmg reduc, fine. I feel like this is the same mechanic that turns me off BG3. I'll survive a fight just barely, simply needing to camp up to regain hp, but I feel like I should've done better.
The fact you can dodge away entire attacks fuck me so bad. I wanna restart every fight where I don't make it through without taking damage, because in theory I should be able to. Had it been a 20% dmg reduc, fine. I feel like this is the same mechanic that turns me off BG3. I'll survive a fight just barely, simply needing to camp up to regain hp, but I feel like I should've done better.
The fact you can dodge away entire attacks fuck me so bad. I wanna restart every fight where I don't make it through without taking damage, because in theory I should be able to. Had it been a 20% dmg reduc, fine. I feel like this is the same mechanic that turns me off BG3. I'll survive a fight just barely, simply needing to camp up to regain hp, but I feel like I should've done better.
I 100% the game last night. Just had to grind the last 6 levels to 99.
I used the “forever stall” strat on Simon and went with the Verso ending. It sucks to lose Monocco and Esquire, but there wasn’t really anyone left in the world by the end and anyone Maelle brought back aside from maybe Gustove would have just been a imitation copy of the actual person, as when Verso helped her bring back Sciel and Lune, he was pretty clear that you have to really know their “essence” to restore them.
Although Verso’s biggest mistake was letting Gustav be killed, I absolutely believe he would have been able to help them reach some kind of compromise.
Also, aside from the one time they make you do it in the prologue, I never dodged. Only parry.
I agree.
For me, RPG battles are a puzzle, as I put more emphasis on builds and mechanics, rather then my own reaction time.
If Simon brought his bullshit to the table, then I decided to bullshit him back. I kept him stun locked with End Bringer, then did Sciel's End Slice once he dropped under 50%.
I'm not one of those faggots, who says "you didn't beat the game because you didn't use MY single player arbitrary rules".
As long as you used the tools the game provided you, all is fair.
Typical clickbait journalist Jason Schreier that prefers woke games like Avowed, over fun games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. (Archive) View attachment 7565250
@Null regarding your tweet about video game music. I will once again shill this game because I believe it to be one of the best soundtracks in a video game ever. Also since you mentioned on MATI about possibly doing more media reviews, this would be a good one because it has gotten insane critical acclaim, but there is still a small contingent of people that decry it as “woke” and “mid”. Also it was a game made by essentially all French white people that were actually proud of their heritage (a rarity it seems today).
I 100% the game last night. Just had to grind the last 6 levels to 99.
I used the “forever stall” strat on Simon and went with the Verso ending. It sucks to lose Monocco and Esquire, but there wasn’t really anyone left in the world by the end and anyone Maelle brought back aside from maybe Gustove would have just been a imitation copy of the actual person, as when Verso helped her bring back Sciel and Lune, he was pretty clear that you have to really know their “essence” to restore them.
Although Verso’s biggest mistake was letting Gustav be killed, I absolutely believe he would have been able to help them reach some kind of compromise.
Also, aside from the one time they make you do it in the prologue, I never dodged. Only parry.
FUCKING FINALLY!
FUCK YOU SIMON, YOU FRENCH FAGGOT!
3 FUCKING HOURS OF MY FUCKING LIFE.
YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE A NIGGER FAGGOT WITH YOUR FAGGOT SKILLS? WELL, I AM THE KING OF NIGGER FAGGOTS IN THIS FUCKING GAME!
EAT SHIT!
Verso and Sciel are my MVPs.
Lune was there I guess.
Maelle and Monoco jacking off on the sidelines.
All is right in the world.
I equipped Verso with the sword that stays at rank A maximum.
I equipped every member with Cheater and Breaking Death (this being the most important).
In second phase, I got lucky and didn't eat any light speed attacks and once he killed one of my niggers, Breaking Death activates and using End Bringer from Verso, I would keep that asshole perma stunned until like 40-45% health, in the meantime, Sciel was consuming Foretells and I kept adding Sun charges.
Once I brought that asshole to like 40-45% (that is when I noticed he nuked my shit) I popped Twilight for mega damage and popped End Slice for a cool 28mil damage.
Eat my fucking dick, Simon, simp faggot!
I finished this earlier this week and I don't really like this game. I loved the music and art, but the combat system is absolutely shit. The story is original and interesting, but it falls really flat and is poorly executed.
I just got done with some other combat games and was looking for something more relaxing and turn based. This looked neat from the trailers, but I should have read more reviews. The combat system Sucks Donkey Cock. I don't want fucking twitch mechanics in my turn based RPG. People go on about loadouts and strategy, but this isn't remotely Unicorn Overlord. The parry system is less forgiving than fucking Stellar Blade (and I liked that game). Trying to figure out loadouts just felt annoying. I was constantly looking up parry timings because, even with the music off, I still had trouble with the audio cues. By the middle of act two I was so fucking over the combat system. Too many battles are unbalanced. Some of them are just painfully long. It was all either boring or frustrating. It sucks and I fucking hate it.
Some of the enemies have a speed so high they get like 4 turns before it gets back to your team. If you can perfect evade all of those, at the beginning you get some great counters. By Act 2, even perfect evasion counters kinda suck. If you grind enough you can push your health up enough to get past the fucking broken evasion mechanic, but it was still horribly painful at normal (expedition) difficulty. Some of the battles were just so damn long! Parts of Act 3 I turned down to story and that just got kinda boring, but at least it wasn't frustrating.
The Story
I kinda liked the ending at first. I did the Verso ending; seems right. Get over your grief. Flush the booze down the toilet. But the more I thought about it after I finished the game, the more it just really falls apart. Your booze is just liquor. Here you're flushing an entire magically created reality the gods created. All their hopes and dreams.
And yea, the real/unpainted father does seem tore up about this. He talks to your party of how they're caught up in his family's grief; how oblivion is a terrible thing to offer but it's all he can. But then a few scenes later he doesn't seem to care at all about the painted world.
Verso lies through his fucking teeth the entire time like a damn psycho. He lets Gustav die. Why is the rest of the team not angry as fuck? Do they just hold out hope that Alicia will bring everyone back? In the Verso ending, they're not even screaming, "We don't want to die!" They just have some cheap lines about grief.
I will say the concept of the story is a fascinating one. Stop escaping into your grief. That makes sense. Then you add in the insane dynamic: your grief is a fantasy world of souls. Not some AI/VR world, but a magical one where the player is lead to believe they all have agency. I know the family does talk about this a lot, like on the side mission where you get rid of the painted sisters. But it still feels like it goes no where. Like they don't really understand they are Roman Gods .. or .. French .. Roman Gods.
I understand there are no good endings. The ending of Maelle staying is haunting; a Verso who looks like a slave forced to play as Maelle/Alicia is consumed by her crack (paint) addiction. But what about how she saved this entire world? Do these versions even know what happened? Are their memories intact? Does Verso not love Sciel from the campfire?
I know the Expedition 0 people came back and tried to warn everyone the paintress was not the enemy, and that turned out like Plato's Cave with distrust and disbelief. I think it was Expedition 66 that saw Verso survive a moral wound and turn on him and try to tie him up? It's a classic Matrix/Gnostic story. They came back with the truth and no one believed them, so then painted Renoir just murders each expedition to keep the nevrons from sealing off their energy. But if they do that, then why does the number still keep going down? I thought if they weren't killed by Clair's Nevrons the energy went back to the world/her. Why does the real Renori/The Curator even need them to destroy the massive Axions he created?!
I hope I'm not nitpicking, but I feel like the game designers had a really interesting ... French concept. And they worked backwards from it to a story that ultimately feels broken .. like the fucking combat.
If either the combat or the story wasn't broken, I'd be alright with this game. But both suck ass. I don' get why people are calling it a masterpiece. I love the music. I love the art. I hate how there's literally no minimap (although there are high locations you can get a lay of the land, so I guess the levels are designed around that. Once again: interesting concept. Still fucking hate it).
I don't get the love of this game. It really peaked in Act 1. Act 2 was okay and 3 was a rushed horrid pile of quicksand, where core missions that are needed to explain what's going on are somehow optional. None of it fits together and feels meaningless by the end. It's a 5 out of 10 at best.
