Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

[nova temple]

5-10 is where my instinct was at

[dawn spindle]

yeah, i was gonna do 2x but figured that wasn't enough

I had done 2x for ||Simon, and for the first phase it was still ridiculously not enough. Obviously once I reached phase 2 I moved it back down to 1x ||

I say this but obviously my speed is just so high that I don't get to parry, which is where most of my damage is

[dawn spindle]

E33 all /end ||got e60 journal||

||did they just go around naked???||

Ah yep, confirmed right after lmao

[dawn spindle]

I think maybe I should have left most of this area for 1x

like it's hovering in the inbetween not getting oneshot but not adding any entertainment to the fights anyway lol

I think I'm almost done now though

[nova temple]

Could also drop it to 2x

[dawn spindle]

I think the next flag i find will be the last

okay well ||creation kicked me and the poor thing got disintegrated, maybe I do need 10x||

[errant wedge]

Finally safe for Usha ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-W7hVF_L4U||

[dawn spindle]

All/end ||Renoir's looking very hot here for some reason 😳. Though everything he says makes me blood curdle||

||is the curator's abs a representation of Renoir's? 😳 ||

I've had to abandon battle because one of the hair models got very buggy and it's fluttering maniacally over my entire screen

Also this entire area has had massive fps drops for me 😭

Which is a bit anticlimatic

E33 all/end ||this isn't gonna go well I feel||

[nova temple]

||No, it's fine, the vibes are great||

[dawn spindle]

||I see Verso moving in the background during this whole cinematic||

||No, what||

[sullen quartz]

||What "what"||

[dawn spindle]

End ||Verso went in through the portal which I had no idea where it was going||

End/achievements ||I got the all music achievement. Think I'm only missing one journal, reaching lvl 99 and the tower after||

And that's the game

seeing the credits does remind me that I mentioned this in books but Jennifer Svedberg-Yen will be at the literature fair I'm going to in July 👀

[nova temple]

nice

[brisk orbit]

End ||Which ending did you choose||

[dawn spindle]

||fought as Verso||

||I'll redo it later||

[dawn spindle]

E33 all ||Verso's journal is hard to listen to||

||this was sadder than the ending, perhaps because of the ending||

[nova temple]

||Context makes some of these worse||

[dawn spindle]

Yep

I went back to ||Endless tower||

Ugh, I don't wanna do this 😩

[errant wedge]

||Play the other ending.||

[dawn spindle]

Nah, I'll do that after

[errant wedge]

||Endless Tower is mostly just throwing hands with various fools||

[dawn spindle]

I know

I hate this fight 😩

Im leaving it for tomorrow

[rancid dagger]

"tomorrow"

[nova temple]

tomorrow comes?

[dawn spindle]

I didn't need to know that 😩

[dawn spindle]

tomorrow means "next time I fire up the game"

which won't be long because I'm a sucker for 100% and missing only 2 achievements is gonna nag me more than not finishing the game

[pulsar citrus]

|| I think the Top of Endless Tower counts for the trials in the black painting and not the super bosses just ahead of it.

It might be possible that you might be okay with doing those compared to the Super Bosses. The final trial is interesting.

But if you have done it or have no intention of doing it then fair enough.||

[dawn spindle]

I have

No idea why you're talking about

Which means I don't think you should be telling me whatever it is you're trying to tell me

[pulsar citrus]

Yeah probably

[dawn spindle]

@rancid dagger Soia Soia, it's tomorrow! And I'm launching the game

https://tenor.com/view/tongue-cropped-lilo-tongue-out-gif-6164371428742648504

the fight is easier today but I still hate it 😩

okay this isn't so bad, I can get this within 10 tries I think (I just jinxed myself)

4th was so short lived, do I have to count it 😭

it was 6 tries 😌

[rancid dagger]

tha gif seems to caputre that emotion so perfectly

amazing

[dawn spindle]

I have to say... Act 3||Endless tower|| ||the freaking bloom is hurting my eyes and every time the camera pans to the right and I get all these white crap in the bakcground I fail parrying cause pain||

(that is a gorgeous image on its own though)

aaand there's the audio bug that drives me insane, again

||reached 11-1!||

||Dualliste! again.. ||

[dawn spindle]

||I was hoping this place would give me a bit more XP, I guess Im going to have to grind to get to lvl 99 after 😩 hopefully not much||

Act 3 ||Endless Tower|| ||I do not recall the Lampmaster shooting its lamps at me on its first turn and I got killed by that 😭 ||

||I don't think even the canvas one did that? I don't recall, oh well, now i know||

[nova temple]

||It can happen, but the abilities are random, so sometimes you just don't get that||

[dawn spindle]

||no, it does it after every attack||

||it's fine, very easy to parry, you get to parry it twice which means I'm doing crazy damage, I just got caught by surprise the first time||

||I think the other 2 would only attack with the lamps if you didn't do the shooting them in order thing||

[dawn spindle]

Act 3 ||Endless Tower|| ||I... reached 11-3... Painted love 🤮 we don't do that here! Must murder. Also this version of the song I don't love very much, it's not bad but... yeah||

fight's fun...

just the song doesn't work very well for me

||Doesn't seem very hard but I do wonder if I kill one of the two before the other (if that's possible) if it'll go into some frenzy or whatever||

[pulsar citrus]

|| first phase of Lampmaster did that in Act 1. It stops in 2nd Phase. You fought the 1st Phase one in the tower. ||

[dawn spindle]

Maybe

it has been nearly a year

||These attacks are so slow, are they trying to be romantic? 🤮 ||

[pulsar citrus]

||It is possible that you might have finished the fight before any lamp shooting happened before.

plus if you shoot the lit lamps then it doesn't shoot. So you might have done that||

[dawn spindle]

||you can take a nap between animation start and first hit 💤 ||

||fun, I have so much muscle memory over the meteors and rocks that I parried them all first try ||

[dawn spindle]

Act 3 ||Endless Tower|| ||Done ✅ ||

now... what's the best place to get levels? 😩

||okay I went further up the tower, that'll do for now ||

||these combos have like 20+ attacks sheesh||

This is killing me, one I'm missing one

Tomorrow 😩

Act 3 ||Endless Tower|| ||I know you ||

||he's attacks are sooo slow I failed everything lol ||

This is confusing my training 😭

[pulsar citrus]

Act 3 gen || so I remember us discussing burn damage here some time ago and the Defense being a factor mentioned. Turns out it was either false or unintentionally big that got cleared out.

Fun video from Alpha dropped
https://youtu.be/uZs2FtMUaLM
||

[dawn spindle]

It currently shows multiple stacks

So I guess you can see each set of stacks from each source

Idk when that happened

[pulsar citrus]

Is that happening for you for all enemies?

[dawn spindle]

hmmm

only bosses, enemies don't last more than 1 hit so there's no stacks

but all bosses yeah, I don't use it much

but yeah it'll show like (31) (10) for example

[pulsar citrus]

A t 3 || Endless Tower|| || cuz I think that would be cumbersome to do as you would get three seperate stack marks on a single enemy.

Besides I have a suspicion that it might have been just Painted Love and Duollistes as those are the only duo bosses and they have seperate burn counts for their characters. ||

[dawn spindle]

no, it was happening with others before

[pulsar citrus]

Ah okay then, must be new

[dawn spindle]

||like the levels with just chromatic enemies ?||

I can recheck again

I wasn't paying much attention since this isn't something I'm particularly purposely using

[pulsar citrus]

Can I ask when was the first time this started to appear for you?

[dawn spindle]

No clue

[pulsar citrus]

Ah ok

[dawn spindle]

I'd say yesterday? I hadn't played in quite a while before that?

It was definetely there yesterday

I played on the 16th then again yesterday

[pulsar citrus]

I was planning on just asking the YouTuber directly on the Discord while they might be active.

[exotic ember]

Giving me beating Outer Wilds energy

[dawn spindle]

I only dared you to play it not to beat it!

[brisk orbit]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBKqxPYVJGk&list=RD7hVavvVmj40&index=13

[sullen quartz]

I had the E33 soundtrack on shuffle yesterday, and it resumed today when I got in my car to leave home. I turned on Bluetooth, not remembering what track I'd last left off on, and was pleasantly blasted in the face with "We Lost". What an epic way to start the morning. 😁

[brisk orbit]

E33 Act 2 final ||I occasionally rewatch the last Painted Renoir encounter because it's so good.||

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/lorien_testard/status/2019787372695568851

Lorien Testard (@lorien_testard)

Today is the official release day of the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 vinyls and CDs. 🎶🎷

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for welcoming the music of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 into your daily lives.
I’m deeply grateful to every person who made this physical edition of the music possible, thank you so much.

It feel a little surreal to see and hear the vinyls spinning on your grammophone.

It’s an immense gift and an honor to share our music with you.

Thank you for this unique bond that connects us through music and videogames.

vxTwitter / fixvx · Feb 6, 2026, 2:56 PM

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/Roblox/status/2019221626387312810

Roblox slop bot has consumed Flying Waters. 😔

Roblox (@Roblox)

↪️ Replying to @Roblox

In our research lab, we are building “real-time dreaming” - the ability to generate fully playable video worlds prompted from any text or image.

Our real-time, action conditioned world model (currently running internally at 16fps at 832x480p) is trained on a combination of data, including proprietary Roblox 3D avatar/world interaction data.

World models are different from multiplayer engines in that they store state and memory in video latents. Roblox is multiplayer, and we are actively researching optimal ways to simultaneously store state for thousands of players, and keep them in sync with their environment.

Our world model leverages database technology which stores all user interactions on Roblox in a vector format that can be used to re-render video and interaction from any camera angle.

We see several immediate uses for our Roblox world model. We will use it side-by-side text, image and video prompts as a way to launch auto-gener…

▶ Play video

vxTwitter / fixvx · Feb 5, 2026, 1:28 AM

[errant wedge]

In good news: https://www.ign.com/articles/from-expeditioners-to-knights-clair-obscur-expedition-33-developer-receives-french-cultural-honor

Sandfall are now Chevaliers of the Order of Arts & Letters.

[sullen quartz]

They've been knighted? Awesome!

[exotic ember]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DT6IY8_CEno/?igsh=MWEyNG16dmM4N3E5MQ==

marie_celestine_

Wait for his low note 🤍
Dress: @linennaive

Father-daughter duet - Lumière Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 Cover @callmemichael.official
.
I like the ending, so I figured I‘d leave it in haha
.
#fatherdaughter #lowbass #clairobscur #expedition33

Likes

247457

Instagram

[errant wedge]

Unexpected extra Carbot is here (E33 DLC): ||https://youtu.be/dO64vMF9Soo?si=Tcm3T0gdcWa3PBlf||

[pulsar citrus]

I just watched it. Honestly... Doesn't capture the same charm as before.

[brisk orbit]

https://youtu.be/XrsG5qZys0Q?si=XKBTx2HgYb2B5c0J

https://youtu.be/4-AN7p5nrKY?si=26eJfFyERl8n_ruH

[sullen quartz]

My current favorite tracks outside of the usual are "Tout Ce Que Je Suis, Pour Toi" and "Rouge D'iris".

I've been listening to the soundtrack again today. I can't escape it.

[brisk orbit]

https://youtu.be/O1Gibk8EeY4?si=uB0EWqvso2sG-IKY

I love the sense of melancholy of it

[sullen quartz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoAc7hFAJiI

This is another of my less-popular favorites. It has such a sense of melancholy to it as well.

[sullen quartz]

Huge props to the violinist for their soulful playing in both of these tracks.

[brisk orbit]

huge props

[errant wedge]

(@nrcgrayart on Insta)

[dawn spindle]

Wtf

[halcyon elbow]

Goosetav is a very early meme in the E33 lifecycle

[sick yew]

So how long is this thread gonna stay open for? I'm going to be starting this game soon, but also I'm traveling next week so it's not gonna be until after I get back. So ~2 weeks from now at the earliest.

[pulsar citrus]

There is a chance it might at least stay open for that at least

It is not as frequent as before but still gets some entries time to time and when a new person starts playing then other people start engaging with with their reaction messages so it does get a bit lively

[dawn spindle]

I am still playing

Tho admitddly ive nothing to say since I'm just leveling up

[pulsar citrus]

Yeah that is true that once you finish through the story beats and finish with the more interesting bosses there is not much to comment. But hey, that is kind of true for every game

[dawn spindle]

No, I've done just about everything

I did comment through almost anything

[pulsar citrus]

Yeah, makes me excited for whatever next DLC they have in store.

[dawn spindle]

As long as its better than the current DLC 😬

[errant wedge]

The current DLC is great, you just hate joy

[exotic ember]

Have they confirmed more DLC? 👀

I figured they would be on to the next game

[errant wedge]

There has been no mention of any further development on E33, they've talked about starting on their next game a couple times tho.

[errant wedge]

It will probably remain open by the mercy of Argent, if he hasn't closed Hades yet he won't close this one.

[exotic ember]

I should get back to work on the rest of the super bosses next time I’m home

[pulsar citrus]

I might be wrong but I remembered that they have talked about a DLC which would at least have an additional playable character. So even if some of the contents from that DLC was provided for this one. It must not be the final one as we already knew that kepler was trying to not call it a full update earlier on but then decided to play along to make it easy to be called than just Thank You "Update"

I might be wrong though so I would have to try to search where I had seen that

[dawn spindle]

It isn't joyful

It's the colour of my youth hangovers when i mixed too many drinks and then threw it all up 😬

[pulsar citrus]

I can criticise some aspects of the DLC but I do find some of it great.

I just find it in an awkward spot for the scaling for the people who have finished the game

[dawn spindle]

DLC ||the status effect of making you do 1 damage is also sort of just... there? It doesn't make anything harder just tedious what's the point????||

[pulsar citrus]

DLC || Verso's Drafts || || I find that while a little cute earlier that some of the pictos were behind the minigames and parkour. I soon started to be frsutrated at it when I learned just how crazy those Pictos are. (Gradient Overcharge, Trigger Happy, the Jumping one)||

[dawn spindle]

The music is also slightly annoying for like, walking around and some of the regular fights

[dawn spindle]

I did get most of those, that was fine. I Just really don't dig the aesthetic or music or mechanics

I wasnt really doing it for the rewards

[pulsar citrus]

I|| do think it is actually some of the more smarter of the status effect they have implemented. It had really made me reconfigure my playstyle in some really fun ways that I actually enjoyed||

[dawn spindle]

Tho DLC ||i didn't manage to do the one on the thing you have to jump because i dont get what the game wants me to do. Timing seems janky and rough and I just couldn't be arsed||

[pulsar citrus]

DLC ||Verso's Drafts|||| Endless Tower + || || Neither was I but I did decide to go get them when I was doing the Ultra Bosses since I was extremely crippled without so many necessary Lumina ||

[dawn spindle]

This feeling just, kept building up until I decided i was simply not having any fun

[dawn spindle]

Ive no clue what you're trying to say with this

Ah

[pulsar citrus]

I just entered the message too quick so I just spoiler barred as quick as I could

[dawn spindle]

You edited the text in lol

[pulsar citrus]

and then added the rest later

[dawn spindle]

Mhm

[pulsar citrus]

DLC ||Verso Draft|| || I was malding at the balloon shooting game for more than 1 and a half hour. The parkour for gradient overcharge also took me 4 hours (1:15 the first time, 1hr a different time, and the rest the final time on another day) . Compared to that I was surprised that I did the See-Saw on my 3rd try as I had heard people struggled with it a lot. Monsiuer Frappe was the only one I would say I felt fun sort of challenging to get the picto out of.||

[dawn spindle]

||i only struggled with the seesaw, since i just never did it. The shooting took me like 3 tries and honestly I think it was a trash challenge, but it didn't take me long. I just enjoyed it negatively||

[pulsar citrus]

DLC ||VD gen|| || I did like the vibes of the area a lot. Actually a lot more than maybe some of the other areas. Felt very lively. Even the music was killer for me. One thing to say about it is well summarised by the new Carbot animation of it when he says that there was nothing much for Lune, Sciel, Monoco to interact with (other than Spinning Ride(Which I absolutely loved)) ||

[dawn spindle]

||my issue with the seesaw was that I didn't even understand what I was doing wrong. Couldn't tell in which direction my tempo was wrong so how tf am I supposed to fix it???||

[rancid dagger]

one of these days I will return to this game

[dawn spindle]

Dlc ||the spinning ride was funny||

I think i liked the vibes of every single area, gen ||or overworld area|| in the game except the DLC

E33 ALL ||i didn't love any of the full gestral areas but the vibe itself was fine. I just found the fights boring and/or annoying||

[pulsar citrus]

||I wish I had recorded myself doing it. I had luckily had a whole day to give it a go so I did. I was genuinely malding at it just because I couldn't at all shoot 6 of them by the end. If I kept my cross-hair too low then I wouldn't get enough time to react to when the balloons are arriving and miss them. But I can't keep the cross-hair too high either because then the shot won't register on the balloon and the extreme bright colour of the sky made it hard to see the balloons as well. Not only that sometimes the characters are positioned in a way while shooting that they cover too much of the area where the balloons actually would appear thus making me loose even more knowledge that I should be getting.

I was trying so many sensitivity variations and combinations. Mouse based play, Controller based play. Tried to look for hints online.

Whenever I missed 3 or more early balloons I would just give up and have this dejected feeling where I would just wait for the next character's turn. When I did get at least 3 to 4 early balloons is when I would start to become anxious and after missing then go in a miserable combination of crying and raging. ||

[dawn spindle]

😬 id have just left

Too many things to do in life to be miserable over a game (not in that way)

Like most things I struggled with in E33 the struggle was fun

[pulsar citrus]

||I had loved the main Gestral Village, would place Sanctuary ones in a bit lower tier as they are good enough for just fights but they don't have much interactions with beings. This made me realise that another reason I find Verso's Draft is how there is a lot of combat area elements (majority of the areas in the game) and interaction area elements (Gestral Village, Monoco Station) and combines them very well.||

[pulsar citrus]

||It is because I do find genuine fun in making my own combos and trying to find ways to create a playstyle with skills and luminas but for that I need to at least know all the luminas and have them. This not very fun element of the game was kinda blocking me from enjoying the other actual fun part of the game was a bit sad. Especially because I am the type to just give up on a mini game if I don't enjoy it. I have never given the Gestral Beach games a time of my day. That is because I know the reward is purely cosmetic. Same with the weird diving board game. Another game that I couldn't get, but at least all the time I had applied myself to it was purely for my own sake and nothing to do with a reward, so I could easily give up on it as I had truly done so.||

Hollow KNight Silksong all || In this regard, I found the mini games in SilkSong a lot more enjoyable. They still have and should have the same problem as the above since

The lady bug shooting game is necessary for tool pouch upgrade
The 3 Flea Games are needed for Pale Oil.
I don't remember any reward for Swift race

But those are much more fun and smoother to play. Even the most difficult for me ((Flea Juggle) was still fun and sometimes I wish to do those just to do them.||

[dawn spindle]

I have loved E33 and the combat and the immersion and all that, but now that I've finished the game, I can confirm Silksong worked better for me as a whole, there were also less things I disliked in Silksong though neither game is perfect ofc.

The main main thing for both games is e33 all + silksong all ||E33 act 3 is extremely w/e for me while silksong act 3 was extremely compelling to me 😔 ||

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/Dexerto/status/2021546772640977166
https://www.reddit.com/r/expedition33/comments/1r0vyqt/my_expedition_journal_art_book_was_detained_by/

Nevrons under investigation in Iraq.

Dexerto (@Dexerto)

Iraqi customs allegedly seized a fan's copy of the 'Clair Obscur: Expedition 33' art book for being “possibly ancient”

The letter says the book has been sent to the Iraqi Museum / Technical Committee to be examined

vxTwitter / fixvx · Feb 11, 2026, 11:28 AM

[pulsar citrus]

https://tenor.com/view/you-call-this-archaeology-archaeology-indiana-jones-sean-connery-harrison-ford-gif-8387325798714373688

[brisk orbit]

Video games can never be art.

I immediately thought of how E33 immensely proves this statement wrong.

[dawn spindle]

So many games do

Even pretty bad games

[rancid dagger]

I'd argue Tennis for Two proved that in 1958

[errant wedge]

And Ebert was only 16 back then.

Even very respected people can drop the occasional batcrem insane take, and the whole "games can't be art" was his.

[nova temple]

Bonjour

mon ami

[fallow geode]

Pictos Seller

[sullen quartz]

No pictos?

[nova temple]

No, you are confusing that with this

[sullen quartz]

Oh, dear me

[dawn spindle]

Maelle is more like "do you have any games on your phone"?

[errant wedge]

https://fixvx.com/Laced_audio/status/2022370704465813774

Laced (@Laced_audio)

🍷 Mes amis!

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the first original soundtrack from a video game to reach No.1 in Physical Albums and Vinyl Albums Charts (France, UK), the Independent Albums Chart (UK), and Official Scottish Albums Chart (UK) 📈 Its positions in the Top 100 Albums Chart for France, UK and Germany are the highest to date for an original video game soundtrack!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you 🌹

vxTwitter / fixvx · Feb 13, 2026, 6:02 PM

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/now-clair-obscurs-soundtrack-is-breaking-records-charting-above-bad-bunny/

Another W

Not surprised that there is this much overlap between Clair Obscur enjoyers and vinyl listeners.

[exotic ember]

Spoilers for all E33 https://youtu.be/1Bel_6RUZ9I?si=AA94tv_nCAqHm1Ak

E33 general || Monoco comes in saying what I was thinking 😂 ||

[dawn spindle]

I was watching a playthrough and E33 all ||Relistening to the poem/thing Alicia says in the second Maelle dream where she says "we are fellows with those who know not that they are not" had me like ||

hindsight, what a beautiful thing

[nova temple]

I do like that scene a looot

[dawn spindle]

Yeeeeeeaaah

I mean I loved it a lot

but only now it clicked

[exotic ember]

Oooooo dang. They cooked so hard

[sullen quartz]

Same tags ||That line was actually my first hint that this world was some kind of simulation, which, while not entirely accurate, was my running theory for most of the game's story. Part of the theory came from her saying that. That's also one of the scenes that lives in my head rent-free. The black-and-white imagery, her voice, the "Alicia" music in the background... that scene was magical to me even before I really understood it.||

[sullen quartz]

You know what I did to celebrate my birthday today?

I played Expedition 33 for the first time!

I have no console to play it on myself, but I have a friend who loves it and wanted me to come over and play it myself sometime. Today was a convenient enough day to do it.

Now, I already love E33, just from knowing its story and listening to its music on repeat, but... it hits different to actually be playing it. Which I can gladly now say I've done.

[brisk orbit]

you only watched it in yt or something?

[sullen quartz]

Act 1 ||Spring Meadows, Flying Waters|| ||I finished the Flying Waters area; Eveque(?) was a pretty good boss fight, not too hard. I unfortunately struggled very much against the first "Chromatic" enemy I encountered. I don't remember it's name, but a single attack would one-shot either of my characters. I got "Expedition Failed" 3 times while playing today, all against that one enemy. Lucky for me it was optional. I found a good stopping point after playing for three hours right at the entrance of Flying Waters.||

Oh, and Prologue ||Lumière, where else?|| ||I spent well over an hour just in the prologue, trying to explore all I could. I inspected every trash can, knowing there wouldn't be an option to interact with trash cans unless one of them had something special, fought a mime, solved a bunch of mini side-quests, and yes, I cried a wee bit at the Gommage scene. I'd watched it on YouTube before, but somehow it still hit me in the feels despite knowing what would happen. Maybe it was the fact that this time I'd spent an hour playing as Sophie and bonding with her character.||

[rancid dagger]

I need to force myself to continue playing this game otherwise I'm gonna lose track of everything I learned so far

[dawn spindle]

I played this game over like 10 months and surprisingly the parry was engraved enough into my muscle memory that I didn't lose it much

That said I should go in and see if i can get another level

imma do just that, right now

[rancid dagger]

meanwhile I'm probably back to SC2 anyway

[dawn spindle]

I just went in and my controller died mid fight and for some reason my PC or game isn't recognizing it while plugged (which it should) and I went "meh keyboard it is"

and I've not played with keyboard this game ever

[sullen quartz]

I learned today that I suck at dodging and parrying, haha.

[dawn spindle]

and parrying with THE WRONG hand is terrible

[dawn spindle]

you are now experiencing what it is like to start the game haha

[sullen quartz]

I must say, I'm not the biggest fan of this gameplay and turn-based strategy in general, but I also liked it a little more than I thought I would.

I see why zis game is so tight.

End of Prologue ||Right as the cutscene on the continent began and we heard the first clacking of the cane, my friend said "You kidsh wanna shee why thish game is sho tight?" 😆||

[errant wedge]

This sounds cursed.

I used a mouse for free aiming, controller for everything else, and keyboard never.

[dawn spindle]

It is very cursed

but i did manage for a couple of fights

it isn't even that the button feels wrong which it does because muscle memory

but it is my left hand instead of right

now my controller has charged just enough for what I wanted to do tonight so I'm back on it

E33 ALL ||I went back to fight Simon for the hell of it. This makes me so happy, also I am dying to him but I am parrying almost everything perfectly 😌 ||

and the music?

Doing this is just pure bliss?

E33 all ||Who needs sex when you can just fight Simon?||

[sullen quartz]

I was playing E33 with an Xbox controller, which wasn't great for me. I'm used to the interact button being the one on the right and the "back" button being the one on the bottom, but with this, "back" is right and "interact" is left. I got so mixed up I was constantly jumping instead of talking to NPCs.

[dawn spindle]

I am making the dumbest mistakes E33 all ||Speeed of light attack? no problem, regular short easy combo? incapable of parrying ||

[dawn spindle]

sweet

E33 all ||I think the first time took me sooo many hours and now it was just like coming back home and only took me... 1h? I can do this again 👀 ||

If I could do it fully hitless though....

well my controller died, more tomorrow

[sullen quartz]

I noticed something odd while playing Expedition 33 yesterday (spoilers for the Prologue and the entire soundtrack) ||While you walk about Lumière, you can go by Lune, who's playing the guitar. In the soundtrack, one of the tracks for this area is a guitar solo variation of "Continuer A T'aimer" played by Lune, but in-game, I clearly heard a guitar solo version of "Aux Lendemains Non Ecrits" instead, which is the second to last track in the entire OST. I found that a bit odd. Any ideas as to why that may be? I should mention I don't know the in-game context of "Aux Lendemains Non Ecrits".||

||But I'm spoiled enough on the game's story that I don't need to worry about spoilers related to that song. I'm just curious as to why what's in game differs from the OST.||

[pulsar citrus]

Is there a list anywhere of how all the song are numbered in the game? There is a chance that it was wrongly numbered and people checking for errors couldn't catch it because just something that could pass as sensible.

[dawn spindle]

1 hit! I took 1 hit! dammit

[sullen quartz]

Oh, I have no clue. I just now how the songs are numbered in the OST.

I also want to say, I really really like how user-friendly the user interface of this game is.

[dawn spindle]

I think some songs just seem to be lumped at the end?

[dawn spindle]

So, E33 all ||I'm fighting Simon repeteadly because it's fun, and a way to get XP and does he ALWAYS start by lowering Verso down to 1hp? I thought he was going in order at first so I switched the order but seems he always just starts by Verso, is there any sense in this? a stat?||

[rancid dagger]

I have about 50min before I need to start working. Should I play?

I haven't played in like a month

[dawn spindle]

yes

it'll come back to you pretty fast

[rancid dagger]

I played

Funnily enough, E33 general || Last I played I was in camp and had a ton of "spend time with" backed up apparently. So I spent most of my time talking to everyone . When I looked at the clock I had 10 minutes left so I went out into the world desperately looking for a fight . Got my butt kicked twice by some generic enemies out on the map, until things kind of clicked again and I destroyed them the 3rd time ||

[pulsar citrus]

You just lucky

[dawn spindle]

No? I want it to NOT do that

just anything but that

[pulsar citrus]

Luck as in you hitting a very low chance event to occur, not in the desirable event to occur

[dawn spindle]

ah, it's happened like, 20 times in a row now

So I'm not sure how can that be rng based 🤔

I've swapped him of position now, he was at the ends first

now in the middle

it's still always him first

[pulsar citrus]

I just couldn't find a term to describe it in 1 word without applying positive or negative connotations sadly.

[pulsar citrus]

Huh... That high? Then maybe there is some interior logic to it

[dawn spindle]

yeah, I think he has the highest speed, so I was wondering if it was something like that? but Idk

[pulsar citrus]

Hmmm could be

[dawn spindle]

I can't find anything online

[pulsar citrus]

It has been a long time since I played the game so I don't remember but I do remember|| Simon targeting a variety of characters.

For me, earlier Maelle was my big hitter and Verso was my fastest one while Sciel was support with middling speed.

I had seen some very much equal amount of targeting maybe a little favoured towards Maelle ||

[pulsar citrus]

Oh yeah now that you are playing can you confirm if the individual burns still happen?

I have asked a few places about that Convo we had and I found nowhere that such a thing had happened.

[dawn spindle]

I have not seen it again

So I think you might have been right that it was ||2 enemies with 1 single hp bar?||

But I don't generally purpose use burn so

[dawn spindle]

||during the first couple of months all enemiese always targeted Maelle first, I think that was kind of buggy, now that doesn't happen and it feels more RNG, and it does attack characters at random! It's only the "gathers chroma" that it always starts by Verso||

[rancid dagger]

was about to say hopefully this gets me rolling and back to playing every night but I got class tonight and Zweihander tomorrow, so rip

lets see if Im back on friday!

[errant wedge]

Zweihander? Is that a TTRPG or are you doing HEMA?

[pulsar citrus]

|| there is a possibility that the character has an internal logic selection that does a bunch of calculation to select who to target and has a random noise value that overrides that to sometimes pick a different being.

But maybe for you that noise is 0 for some time and then gets working again for some reason. ||

|| I have seen enough bugs in the game to believe you ||

[rancid dagger]

the former

piano classes are already killing my wrists, imagine if I was doing HEMA as well xD

[halcyon elbow]

Zweihander is kind of a fork off of the Warhammer fantasy TTRPG

Hence the name

[rancid dagger]

kinda off topic here, but this is the game where my character is essentially a catholic priest wielding a musket, therefore Venator XD

I havent fired the musket in a while though, ever since I picked up the overpowered magic sword

[nova temple]

I think it's time for this expedition to end - again. Any E33 thoughts can now go in #1342603794370007050

https://tenor.com/view/carbot-carbot-animations-carbotanimations-expedition-33-expedition-33-goblu-gif-11632816350890667913

[nova temple]

Back by unpopular demand

[dawn spindle]

https://tenor.com/view/fire-gif-10341555270454130792

Thanks Argent!

[sick yew]

Yay!

3 minutes left on my download

[nova temple]

I better be entertained

[dawn spindle]

I'm doing the same fight 20 times which is peak entertainment

I think @rancid dagger is also still playing, right?

[sick yew]

https://tenor.com/view/sweats-gif-25346666

[halcyon elbow]

https://klipy.com/gifs/are-you-not-entertained-gladiator-2

[dawn spindle]

Ey, E33 all ||I'm repeteadly beating Simon with only parries, I got it down to a couple of minutes per fight now but still can't manage an actual perfect fight!||

[sick yew]

Download complete.

Oreos in-hand

Glass of water refilled.

https://tenor.com/view/backstroke-of-the-west-game-time-started-anakin-starwars-rots-gif-21545376

[dawn spindle]

🍿

[sick yew]

E33 ||I love a good Rule 34 cutscene.||

||Man I'd managed to forget that Charlie Cox natively has an english accent.||

||Me: Trying to walk slowly and cinematically.||
||Maelle:||

https://tenor.com/view/the-bugs-bunny-and-roadrunner-movie-the-bugs-bunny-and-road-runner-movie-road-runner-roadrunner-gif-11247078020177937150

E33 ||In typical Paris fassion, there's a mysterious blue substance encrusting everything.||

[halcyon elbow]

This is widely memed

[merry lance]

||Ah yes, the Sacred Blue||

[sick yew]

E33 ||Good god Maelle, those are not the kinds of questions you just casually ask someone.||

||Why is there an interact prompt for "A normal trash can" ||

[brisk orbit]

yay

[sick yew]

Mechanics question for folks: How important/QoL is the recenter camera button? I don't like the default binding for sprint, and want to change it to something else.

[nova temple]

||How else are you gonna know it's not an abnormal trash can?||

[dawn spindle]

I'm not sure I've ever used it

[nova temple]

Didn't know such a button existed

[sick yew]

Great!

Also does anyone know if there's a "hold/press to sprint button?"

Nevermind, found it

[rancid dagger]

https://tenor.com/view/guilty-gif-5332537

[sick yew]

E33 prologue ||Found the door with grunting people behind it. ||

||"I was so enthralled I completed the painting in an instant" ||

[nova temple]

make sure you click on it 33 times

[sick yew]

I uh. Okay.

[nova temple]

Have fun!

[sick yew]

That was uh. Something!

E33 ||Also I just got one-shot by a mime||

||Oh I was using the wrong button to parry. Oops.||

E33 ||Well that was heartbreaking. And that was just the start of the game.||

||So if I'm understanding this right, everyone 33 and older got schwooped. And next year it will be 32 and older....Yeah that's uh. Huh.||

[nova temple]

mhm mhm

[sick yew]

E33 ||Are all the parry/dodge timing windows as tight as they are on Maelle? I can't seem to figure her out.||

:(

[reef iron]

||once you figure it out, it all falls into place, but i was in the same boat, at the beginning i found it SO fast and difficult||

||but it WILL click||

[sick yew]

I'll...I'll keep trying I guess. ||I really don't have good reaction times. And I guess I can adjust the difficulty if I keep not enjoying it.||

[dawn spindle]

It takes a bit but then it clicks

[sick yew]

||Wish there was a way to quick-restart a fight.||

[errant wedge]

Glam has begun E33. 🎉 🎉

[errant wedge]

Parry window is 150 milliseconds iirc. Dodge window is I think either 250 or 300.

You'll get used to it, there are various techniques to dial it in.

[sick yew]

I want my charms from Ghost that extend that window. 😭

E33 ||Okay, Maelle got a little easier with practice. Dodging windows aren't the most intuitive for me, but I'll just have to practice each boss I suppose.||

[nova temple]

That's kind of how it goes

[errant wedge]

I'll copy over the parry guide I wrote for an IRL friend when I get home, if that helps generalize things a bit.

[pulsar citrus]

There should be in newer version.

If you paise the game there is an abondon battle button and then you get asked about Retry.

So funny enough, those were not things that were present for upto 4 months after the release at least.

So you had to let the enemy kill you, wait for the death screen to occur and then initiate the fight again.

[sick yew]

Prologue ||In the duel with Maelle, the abandon battle button didn't give me an immediate restart option. Had to go through the whole death screen and re-start the dialogue prompt. I'm guessing it's different for non-tutorial fights.||

[fallow geode]

General ||oh-oh-oh Clair Obscur 🎵 ||

[nova temple]

Could be

[fallow geode]

https://tenor.com/view/not-again-ptsd-shaking-remember-oh-god-gif-20228656

[errant wedge]

...obscuuuuur

[errant wedge]

Well I just screenshotted it on my phone lol:

It's all ultimately sight, sound, time-sense, and practice.

[halcyon elbow]

Most melee attacks have the same audio stimulus underneath, once you learn how to hear it

[fallow geode]

supposedly, there's a common sound cue buried in every attack

I have yet to hear it

[sick yew]

Act 1 intro ||wtf was that.||

||damn, there goes...the whole expedition I guess. Gustave, and I'm guessing Maelle survived. Glad I didn't really learn everyone else's name ||

||Gustave's heart is acting up...broken rib or something else?||

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||....do I want to know why Lune's barefoot?||

||Oh she glides. Interesting.||

The environment so far is very pretty.

It does look and feel a bit Unreal Enginey in terms of lighting and texture (obviously), but the art design is pretty distinct.

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||Another mime???||

||Will I get a chance to come back here and fight it again?||

||Because I'm barely scratching it lmao||

[halcyon elbow]

Act 1 ||The only missable mime is the one in Lumiere||

[sick yew]

Cool.

||I beat that one||

[halcyon elbow]

Hint, if you want it ||You can reasonably kill it, you are missing a piece of the puzzle||

[nova temple]

To be fair, I think the game does a poor job at communicating the relevant mechanics

[sick yew]

||By first instinct is that there's some kind of way to emote, so you basically do some miming yourself. But I haven't seen a way to emote...||

[halcyon elbow]

ACTUAL ANSWER, if you want it (don't feel obligated, this is more because I'm walking away from my PC) ||At the beginning of the fight, the mime builds a wall. If you stagger it, the wall breaks and you do more normal damage||

[sick yew]

||Oh, that's more pedestrian than I was expecting.||

[errant wedge]

🖐️ 😐 🖐️
🔨 🔨 🔨
🧱🧱🧱

[sick yew]

||...is there a special way to stagger it? Or do I just need to fill up its break bar?||

[halcyon elbow]

||Fill Break bar and then use a Break ability, eg Gustave's Overcharge||

[sick yew]

||....my reward is a baguette outfit?||

|| ||

[errant wedge]

[sick yew]

Things are starting to click into place.

[halcyon elbow]

Gotta have some clair amongst all the obscur

[merry lance]

Hmm, I wonder how far is safe enough to show Glam the french trailer...

[halcyon elbow]

Act 2 at the earliest

[exotic ember]

I didn’t know there was one

It has begunnnnn

🍿

[sick yew]

This game does need a few more QoL tweaks

Namely, restarting a battle needs to automatically skip the cutscene.

And while the restart battle thing is faster than it was in the tutorial, it still does feel like I'm staring at a screen longer than necessary.

[sick yew]

E33 ||Eveque down. That was fun.||

Gonna call it there for the night. But is an exciting start.

[sick yew]

E33 act 1 ||Did a bit of noodling around this morning, got as far as the manor entrance.||

||I uh, where did....how did the phonograph just appear at camp?????||

||It certainly wasn't folded up in Gustave's tiny backpack.||

[halcyon elbow]

||It was always there||

[sick yew]

Huh. Well that's convenient.

[errant wedge]

||The Pictos magic system involves storing stuff in magic hyperspace, it's the same as how they summon their weapons.||

Minor spoiler for Glam ||at one point a character summons a whole-ass piano||.

[sick yew]

Ah interesting.

Worldbuilding? ||I guess I had interpreted that as them summoning energy weapons made of magic, not putting existing physical objects in hammerspace||

[dawn spindle]

E33 ALL ||on the playthrough I'm watching I just realized one of the first conversations Verso has with Lune he tells her "after the fracture it was search and rescue, we didn't know about the paintress yet, we were trying to find our loved ones, like my mother" BRUH. I do remember a lot of this convos but some of the details I had forgotten and uh.... uuuuhhh ||

[dawn spindle]

E33 All ||goddammit||

||i got hit ONCE, OOONCEEEE 😭 ||

[nova temple]

||It's a lot of fun listening to Verso once you know the whole story||

all ||I love the early camp scene where Esquie is like "Verso is Verso's cousin, and Maelle is Maelle's cousin"||

[dawn spindle]

Yeaaaah

||But I had clocked that one a long time ago haha||

[dawn spindle]

||Also like I remember thinking "Verso is lying non-stop but sheeesh, leaving aside the scale of it... I had, by the end of it, thought he had been avoiding more than anything but nope, straight lies to their faces lmao||

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||I would die for Noco||

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||The characters in this game inhabit some cool archetypes, both mechanically and in terms of the mental health things they represent. So far, we got:||
||- The depression duelist||
||- The autism wizard||
||- The rebellious teen who's far too determined to stab things.||

[sick yew]

As someone who's last-played turn-based RPG is a 20 year old Bionicle flash game, coming into this game is a nice and refreshing experience.

It has the mastery and enemy depth of the action games I'm used to, thanks to the parrying and dodging. But being able to plan my attacks on my own pace is fun. Makes the combat feel like a neat puzzle.

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||Golbu's music was pretty groovy. Fun fight.||

||I appreciate how their faces are all still incredibly grimy. Like, none of y'all got a rag you could wipe the dirt off with?||

[halcyon elbow]

https://tenor.com/view/carbot-carbot-animations-carbotanimations-expedition-33-expedition-33-goblu-gif-11632816350890667913

[halcyon elbow]

Grime scales off current HP value most of the time

[errant wedge]

Chroma Elixir will clean em right up.

[sick yew]

Hmm. This was during a cutscene at camp, which I guess I didn't heal up before going to camp.

[sick yew]

What the heck

How spoilerific are the soundtrack names for this game?

[nova temple]

some

[halcyon elbow]

Varies depending on how much French you know

"Some" to "kind of a lot"

[sick yew]

Hmm. What's the name of ||Goblu's boss fight track? My searches keep returning the Flying Waters track which is very pretty, but not the actual fight music itself.||

[halcyon elbow]

||Flying Waters - Goblu||

||Several tracks start with "Flying Waters"||

[sick yew]

Huh ||That doesn't sound like the boss fight music to me though||

[merry lance]

||I did some digging for you, and I think this is the one you're looking for https://youtu.be/IunbXWab1_Y||

let me do some double-checking r/q though...

Okay, yeah, it looks like it

[sick yew]

Perfect, thank you

I'm sorry this game has how many hours of soundtrack?

Good gravy

[halcyon elbow]

Huh I wonder if those names got swapped

[sick yew]

I'm gonna have some good listening when I finish it.

[halcyon elbow]

Nine and a half hours plus whatever the DLC adds

[sick yew]

Apple music says 8 hours. Huh, must be a second album somewhere.

[halcyon elbow]

Yes

Its an hour and a half

[sick yew]

Yee, found it.

[errant wedge]

Yes

[halcyon elbow]

There's a rock/opera concept album type thing sprinkled throughout that's exactly 33 minutes long and you haven't heard any of it yet

(3 exactly 11 minute movements)

[sick yew]

Well hats off to them for knowing how to stick to a theme

iirc, this game is based off of both dreams and Reddit posts?

[halcyon elbow]

Based off dreams, made possible by reddit posts, yeah

The game director found who would become the lead writer by posting on reddit for placeholder VA

At the time she was an investment broker, an amateur writer, and had no VA experience to speak of. She offered to help with the English language writing (she's American) and just ended up getting more and more deeply involved kind of by accident

[sick yew]

Huh. Fascinating.

[nova temple]

This whole game's fake

[sick yew]

Damn a fake game swept TGA

[exotic ember]

The sweepiest

[dawn spindle]

omg, I'm doing clown pull after clown pull

... I'll come back to this tomorrow

[sick yew]

Ugh this weekend kinda hitting me like a truck.

I wanna play more but don't have time. Might have to wait until Monday. 😔

[halcyon elbow]

https://klipy.com/gifs/zuko-avatar-the-last-airbender-3

[sick yew]

Okay some plans were canceled, so I do have a little time to play today!

[sick yew]

This Gestral fight music is sending me

Just a pure and utter bop

[errant wedge]

Yup. Soundtrack has variety.

[sick yew]

It's called "Gestral Summar Party" lmao

This isn't boss fight music, this is beach party music

[fallow geode]

E33 Gen ||Fighting is how Gestrals party||

||And mourn, and play, and love, and ... ||

[dawn spindle]

One more level...

3 to go

https://tenor.com/view/bunny-roll-gif-25667469

[sick yew]

This game's combat is really fun, but man I wish it were easier to practice. Especially boss fights, there's so much button pressing to do to restart a fight.

I guess it could be worse, could be long run-backs like, say Hollow Knight. But still is a little thing that interrupts the flow of otherwise excellent gameplay

Act 1 ||The big Sakplate (I forget how to spell it) was another fun fight. Though I wish I'd used its rarer attacks a bit more often.||

[dawn spindle]

It was way worse before

I don't disagree with you mind you but having played before and after I'm like "BUT THIS IS BLISS, GLAM"

[sick yew]

#1stworldproblems

Act 1 ||Oh my god the dancing Gestral||

[errant wedge]

The legend

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||Huh found a different room in the manor. A kitchen?||

[fallow geode]

||sakapatate||

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||there's a gambling den and I can't even play a gambling minigame in it. 😔 ||

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||Another survivor. Sciel....idk, something about her feels a little suspicious.||

||Oh so she's Gambit||

[sick yew]

Ac 1 ||Okay finished in the Gestral village. Will probably call it there for the night. I feel I'm progressing rather slowly, but there's just so many good distractions in this game. I'm not even exploring all of them!||

Act 1 ||Mysterious dream/vision of a woman with white hair and wooden skin....is this the Paintress??????????||

||On wait, Andy finally?||

||Andy's daughter????||

||It's Maelle's fault? What?||

https://tenor.com/view/doctor-who-what-2023-david-tennant-regeneration-gif-17631921334377291702

||Gosh Lune is so autistic||

||Love to see it||

[errant wedge]

🍿

[sullen quartz]

🍿

Act 1 ||I love Lune 🥰 ||

[sick yew]

||She's such a girlboss||

[sullen quartz]

||I'd let her boss me around 🥴 ||

[brisk orbit]

how so?

[exotic ember]

I always did the save manipulation by editing my loadouts as close to the battle trigger as possible to minimize the run back

[dawn spindle]

I am close

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||She tends to focus on specific singular tasks/things. Insists on sticking to protocol (especially as a source of structure in and guidance in a time of chaos), and gets frustrated when Gustave wants to break protocol. After Maelle's vision, she misses the gentle hints from Gustave and Sciel to let Maelle be and only backs off when they explicitly say so.||

||Idk if the writers have any specific intent, a lot of the above are also common brilliant scientist/wizard tropes (gee I wonder why, lol). But she's a fun character and that's how I'm choosing to interpret her.||

[errant wedge]

||I interpreted all of those as a form of trauma response given the nature of the world they live in. But I can see where you're coming from. I don't have an automatic association of brilliant scientist/wizard with autistic tho.||

[brisk orbit]

||I remember thinking she was similar to me with my ocd||

[dawn spindle]

||I read that as massive coping, because I do the exact same thing under specific stress situations and I'm not autistic||

But I feel both reads make sense, or any other interpretation anyone came up with really

[merry lance]

||It's been long enough and enough of it was vibes based that I can't remember many specifics, but she definitely came across as (lightly) on the spectrum to me, with a variety of aspects about her that on their own mean nothing, but together, hint at the possibility of something more.||

[dawn spindle]

98 98!

[dawn spindle]

Act 2 general ||Can we talk about how sexy "phantom stars" sounds? 😳 ||

aaaaah

[dawn spindle]

Okay, I'm done-done with this game

E33 all (big spoilers) ||This ending sucks, I'm glad I instinctively had picked the other one||

But I'm curious about something

During TGA about the VA awards some of you said that my opinion was missing the fact that I hadnt heard some specific line yet at the time

So what was it?

ALL ||I think it was one of Verso's during one of the 2 endings||

[errant wedge]

||Verso genocide ending sucks yeah, I prefer the Maelle one. Even if she dies, Lumiere lives.||

[dawn spindle]

I think you understood me backwards

||I just did the Maelle ending and I hate it||

Great storywriting mind you like

I don't hate that it exists

[errant wedge]

My previous ending thoughts which I still stand by.

[dawn spindle]

I fully agree with that

||But Maelle's selfishness towards Verso has my stomach revolting||

[errant wedge]

||Whoever wins robs the other of agency.||

[reef iron]

endings ||iiii don't like either of them 😩 i get it's on purpose to have neither of them be like. good. but i don't like em||

[dawn spindle]

||I think she could have let Verso go though? Or would that destroy the canvas? It is really horrifying||

[errant wedge]

||She could have! She is not a good person tho.||

[halcyon elbow]

||That there are other options I think is in no small measure the point of the game||

[dawn spindle]

||Yeah, so that's my issue, it's revolting, rn||

[dawn spindle]

Well I'm not criticizing the game in any capacity so...

Not for this

I don't need to be told this is on purpose, and it means this or that

[reef iron]

all ||i don't consider it a criticism because it's clearly on purpose, but it's also why this game and its story was never going to be my favourite, i don't actually find this sort of thing meaningful||

[errant wedge]

Ending ||The Dessendres all suck IMO. Only Original Verso was kind of ok and he's super dead.||

[halcyon elbow]

||Maelle's ending is all upside for the painted people all downside for the Dessendres (including herself). She's Clair, she paints life. Verso's ending is all upside for the Dessendres all downside for the painted people (including himself). He's Obscur, he paints death. Only really Painted Alicia saw a different ending||

[dawn spindle]

||I do find it meaningful but since I thoroughly stopped caring about the story at the end of Act 2 it has been not impactful at all for me||

[reef iron]

all ||where i am with it now is kinda like, "...ahh... that sucks...." but more than that, i don't care to dwell on it. and like they HAD to make maelle be like that in the lumiere lives ending, it HAD to be that bad for painted verso, otherwise it would just be the obvious "yeah i'll do that one". it's the kind of story choice that pulls me out of the story and makes me look to make pretend eye contact with the writers and give them a stony look||

[dawn spindle]

I found the answer to this

[nova temple]

||I think Acts 1 and 2 do a really good job at setting up Maelle's ending - her issues around family and abandonment are really strong in the few scenes they are allowed to surface, but that all kind of disappears in Act 3. When I watch those earlier scenes, I feel like I get why she would choose a life to paint||

[dawn spindle]

||i think Act 3 is not very good, it's not bad but it's kind of empty. Even if you forgo all the side stuff and only do the 3 character quests and the ending its just really short and doesnt have much going for it but the ending itself. I wonder if it would have worked better for me if it was tucked into Act 2 instead of pretending it's a whole Act.||

||most of the resolution of the game happens in Act 2, ,it doesnt feel like there's any extra resolution in Act 3, you know what's going on you just have to do the big bad final boss and see who dies. ||

[sick yew]

Act 1 exploration ||About when can I expect to unlock the ability to smash through the black and blue rocks?||

||Oooh a beach!||

Act 1 exploration ||This isn't a game I would have guessed would have a platforming section, but here we are I guess. I think I get a swimsuit if I complete it??||

[sick yew]

||Swimsuits acquired. For Gustave and Lune at least.||

[sick yew]

Act 1 Exploration ||Found the hidden Gestral arena. Fought through the first two pretty easily, but I cannot for the life of me figure out the timing on Dominique Giant Feet's second attack.||

I think I hear the sound cue now though

It's a little *schwip* noise

Hmm. ||Gonna come back and beat the last one when I'm a bit stronger. He got hands.||

Act 1 Exploration ||Found an expedition journal mentioning someone named Dominique. The same name as one of the Gestrals I fought in the arena. Hmmmm||

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||Esquie is great.||

||Another cryptic nightmare from Maelle||

||Something really friggin weird is going on here.||

[sick yew]

Well that didn't take long.

[sick yew]

Also I gotta say, ||I'm just a bit disappointed that Lune's chroma tattoos don't extend over more of her body.||

Act 1 ||those who know not, that they are not||

||Gustav and Lune mentioned that Esquie has been around "for centuries". So it wasn't just our world before the shattering. Interesting.||

[pulsar citrus]

Act 2 || and I am glad for it because I was using that technique a lot in Act 2 and then 3 and I would not been bearing to do that if it was not as good sounding. ||

[sick yew]

Note to self: Don't play this game as a form of escapism when already tilted.

[dawn spindle]

yeah probably not a good idea

[sick yew]

Yeah the new enemies I encountered were cool! But I was getting worked up way too fast over missing timing windows.

[dawn spindle]

mhm, I think it works if you're the type of person that can channel one frustration into another but otherwise, yeah

I also play way worse when already annoyed at something, I'll start missing super easy things and get even more annoyed

[sick yew]

Okay took another stab at things. This time went better, but man this particular level is long.

Also the fights are a bit of a slog. ||Almost all of them are 3 enemies, usually at least one of which is a mini-boss with a health bar that takes several minutes to whittle down. Man I just want to explore a bit more.||

||Suppose I can come back and clean up once I'm more powerful. Significantly more powerful, perhaps.||

||The sword cultists are neat though. The back-and-forth shielding makes for an interesting fight dynamic.||

||Also makes Maelle's attack that removes all shields utterly indispensable.||

[sick yew]

And Act 1 finished.

||The Lampmaster was surprisingly easy fight, something about the timing of its attacks just clicked for me, it was far easier to hit the right timing windows than for most of the rank-and-file enemies.||

||RIP Gustave. For those who come after.||

||And hello Ben Starr.||

https://tenor.com/view/jdomi-bs-ben-starr-the-game-awards-ben-starr-the-game-awards-ben-starr-reaction-gif-4996628403819171936

Also, ||Is there something between Lune and Sciel maybe??????? 👀 ||

Hmm. ||The Monolith is to the north, roughly, of Lumiere, aka Paris.||

||Conclusion: The Monolith is London, and the Paintress is the Queen.||

[sick yew]

Open world ||This volley ball||

||Is the most||

||thing ever||

||None of it makes any sense. The timing. The hitboxes. The positioning.||

||I don't know how I got through the first two. But this last one is just.||

[dawn spindle]

Lol

We've all been there

[nova temple]

Ah, I see you've met the final boss

[rancid dagger]

The way people kept talking about how tight the game is, that's the kind of thing I never expected to find in this game. It's just bad

[sick yew]

It's the definition of jank on so many levels.

||If it was just a challenging parrying/rhythim mini-game, it'd be really interesting. But there's also so much confusing and fiddly things with the hitbox of your parry, the timing of when your parry is active, the way the gestrals accelerate for the second half of their arc. It feels random.||

||With actual fights, I can usually estimate "did I parry that too fast, or too slow?" and learn and adjust my strategy. With this, I have no idea if it was my timing or my positioning or the direction I was facing.||

[merry lance]

||It's unironically intentionally bad||

[sick yew]

||There are other, better outlets for one's sadistic streak||

||I keep alternating between getting this guy down to about half way and then getting 3/4 shot||

[fallow geode]

drop your FPS to 30, many have found this to help (still doesn't fix the underlying problems mind you)

[sick yew]

But this isn't a Bungie game??????

[fallow geode]

believe it or not, Bungie did not invent fps tied mechanics

[merry lance]

Oh yeah, I guess the console version might have pretty vs. consistent options settings

[sick yew]

Huh, I'm not seeing a FPS setting on PS

Just graphics mode, either "quality" or "performance"

[fallow geode]

ooh, I have no idea how to make it better on PS, sorry

[sick yew]

I've already been on quality, so performance will probably up the FPS if anything.

But I'll try it.

[merry lance]

I can imagine a world where performance goes for a lower, locked framerate

[fallow geode]

also, might be that stable fps is what you need, so it could still help

[merry lance]

since framerate changes are more disruptive than just low framerates

[sick yew]

Performance is definitely a higher frame rate. But it might be helping a bit?

Gonna keep on chipping away at it.

[merry lance]

Good luck!

[sick yew]

I've only been stuck here for...40 minutes?

[rancid dagger]

oh no

I tried like 4 or 5 times and realized it was just simply not fun

I saw absolutely no reason why I should subject myself to that

[sick yew]

Well A) I'm stubborn to a fault and
B) ||I really want a complete swimsuit collection||

[fallow geode]

https://tenor.com/view/rookie-numbers-gif-26135237

[dawn spindle]

I managed, so I'm sure you can, too

I did do it at 30 fps

[fallow geode]

there's also this tips video

[dawn spindle]

I absolutely could not at 60 or higher

[sick yew]

Also some meta commentary: I find it strangely amusing that this stupid mini-game is the thing that's generated the most discussion recently, and not the other game stuff I actuall care about/want to talk about.

[fallow geode]

god gamer usha 🙄

[fallow geode]

we all know your pain

[dawn spindle]

Didn't you do it too?

[fallow geode]

for those who come after

[merry lance]

We don't want to taint your playthrough with our opinions

[fallow geode]

at 30fps

[dawn spindle]

Well, I've been reading all you say but I don't wanna butt in

[merry lance]

But we know your pain.

[fallow geode]

I misread

[dawn spindle]

... so did I?

Lmao

Your skill issue was reading all along

and parrying

https://tenor.com/view/anime-smirk-gif-9810121

[sick yew]

Well yeah for the story stuff that makes sense. But I do kinda wanna talk shop about mechanics/gameplay stuff sometimes.

I guess that's my mistake for not playing the game sooner when everyone else was.

[rancid dagger]

Tbh for me the ultra high of the menu music and ultra low of this mini game were the two most impactful things to me in the game up to that point

[pulsar citrus]

E33 all minor || weirdly the only Gestral game I had finished ||

[rancid dagger]

I have some opinions on the other stuff, but they are not extreme in any direction so I don't particularly engage hehe

I can give you my mechanics hot take if you'd like xD

[sick yew]

Sure!

[sick yew]

For me the musical high point has been ||The fight song for the mid-section enemies in Ancient Sanctuary. Completley out of place but it's a pure and utter bop and it just somehow works.||

[rancid dagger]

Ah, yes, there has been some battle music that have been bangers. But I didn't get the same high as from the menu cause I'm in mechanics mode in those moments. In the menu I just sit and listen hehe

[sick yew]

That's the great thing about it being turn based, I can just pause during my turns and enjoy the beats

I FRIGGIN STORMING CREMING RUSTING LOWLY HIGHLY GOT IT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Yeah the higher, more consistent frames helped.

Also think the slightly worse graphics helped, made things more readable with less particle effects.

[dawn spindle]

I changed my outfit many times because I could not see myself

Nothing worked

I just couldn't see myself lol

[sick yew]

My strategy actually ended up being almost the exact opposite of what this recommended

Act 2 mini game ||I kept my d-stick pushed all the way forward, pressing myself against the edge of the map. I aimed by tweaking it slightly left or right. Also focused more on the middle of the screen instead of the lower part, so that I could set myself up and plan ahead. Because once I got into a rhythm, figuring out where to aim was the most important (and by far the jankiest) part||

[rancid dagger]

Ill spoil this just in case, but its the most basic of basic mechanics || So my hot take... Before I started playing I had heard a lot of praise for the "turn based but has quick time actions that keep you engaged" (and yes, I've also heard plenty about how so and so did it before E33) and thought that it did indeed sound interesting, as someone who has played a lot of turn based games but none with this mechanic.

In practice, given the way I tend to engage with game mechanics in general, I found that the dodge/parry gameplay has been a detriment to my enjoyment of the game. I found I have more fun with purely turn based like the jrpgs of yore. Yes, I know, I can build for that style of play, I like that that's an option. I have the pictos that gives AP when you take damage, I could spec into tankiness and healing, and beat the fights like if I were playing FFIX, but ... I just can't . It might be something I end up trying out later on, but I feel compelled to maximize my damage and assume I'm going to negate all their damage, so I care very little for survivability and have pidgeon holed myself into a playstyle that revolves pretty much just around getting the perfect parries smh ||

[sick yew]

I generally keep them in their expedition outfits, as that just feels like the most resonant thing with the narrative. ||This isn't an RPG, these are their own distinct characters and personalities, not my puppets/blank slates to dress up like Destiny, or even like single-player games like Ghost or Horizon.||

||But I do put them in their swimsuits when I find a beach.||

[dawn spindle]

No, I mean I did that only for that mini game

[sick yew]

Oh. Fascinating.

[rancid dagger]

|| Yep, same, I've found the cosmetic stuff highly ignorable for the same reason ||

[dawn spindle]

Because I couldn't tell the character apart from the background

Itd just blend in for me

[sick yew]

Heh. Interesting. ||It's funny, because I come from the opposite direction (having played a several action-combat games with parrying, but no turn-based RPGs) and also have ended up with a similar fighting style. I don't quite go as glass cannon as you sound like you are. But I meticulously work on getting the parrying down and often restart fights if I miss an early parry. Sure I could recover, but my combat bones demand getting the parrying right.||

[sick yew]

Oh yeah that was something I didn't get in to in my rant.

The visuals for the mini game (especially the last level) are crap. Lighting has almost no contrast, and also the camera angle is very hard to read.

They really worked hard on making this mini-game the perfect jank.

General exploration question ||For the portals to places that warn you "DANGER" if you try to enter, do you eventually level up/progress past that, or are they always gonna be that dangerous? Just looking for a yes/no answer.||

[merry lance]

||From what I remember/understand, the "DANGER" warnings are automated based on party level. Feel free to heed them or not.||

[sick yew]

Cool, ||so the former.|| Thanks!

[nova temple]

I don't think anything in the world scales, it's all fixed stats

[sick yew]

Act 2 world ||Welp, tried poking Sprong just for the fun of it. That was a mistake.||

||In my defense, I did manage to parry the first attack.||

[merry lance]

||"You think you can best me? SPROOOOOONG!"||

[dawn spindle]

||There's a few "danger" zones you can defs do early on. But the game doesnt say how much danger, it might be 5 levels off or 40 ||

[sick yew]

Think I'm gonna call it there for the night. Wasted too much time on the freakin Volleyball to start another level now

[errant wedge]

I see Glam has defeated one of the most powerful entities in the game.

[errant wedge]

I mostly used outfits that felt themetically fitting and diagetically appropriate, like the red outfit the one dude gives Gustave in the prologue.

[sick yew]

OH yeah about that

[brisk orbit]

dim dim da dada

[sick yew]

Prologue ||I forgot to give it to that guy's son in the prologue (despite wandering around the whole area, I guess I never interacted with who I was supposed to.||

||So I just didn't get Gustave's red suit.||

||And I'm guessing there's no way to get it now.||

||The quest version is just sitting in my inventory forever. ||

[brisk orbit]

what is ur favorite song Glamdring804

[sick yew]

In the game?

So far it's Ancient Sanctuary - Gestral Summer Party

Haven't listend through the whole thing obviously.

[sullen quartz]

I like that one

[inner valve]

Same. Every one I've found has been a no-go. I generally don't like appearing "goofy" even in games that are more expression-based like you mentioned. Most of the outfits are goofy. Or otherwise not resonant to the environment.
There has been one haircut that I think looks pretty nice.

[sick yew]

Listening to Une Vie À T'aimer, now that I'm done with Act 1

This has no right to go this friggin hard

While the rest of the studio was cooking at a normal rate, the music team was burning down the building

[halcyon elbow]

Lorien and Alice is the team, really

Crediting Alice is worth noting because she wrote most of her own parts

[sick yew]

Interesting.

[halcyon elbow]

The way she tells it, she expected to be singing the first time she met Lorien and was surprised when he shoved a stack of blank sheet music at her and told her to get to work

[sick yew]

So was it her idea to make me listen to her saying "oooh Claire....Obscure...." every time I die?

[halcyon elbow]

Possibly

[sullen quartz]

Truly. I relistened to it for the umpteentieth time just yesterday.

[sick yew]

Okay no, faces do have a degree of grimeyness in some cutscenes that independent of their health.

[fallow geode]

I think some are prerendered, and some are live

Whatever is going on, it's inconsistent

[exotic ember]

Literally will never leave my head

I heard that so… many… times…

And I still love it

What trauma?

Everything is fine

[sick yew]

Act 2 ||The sheer variety of things that expeditions tried is confounding. Cars. Radios. Giant rolling wheels. And trebuchets.||

[dawn spindle]

||It was a lot of expeditions ||

[sick yew]

Act 2||Okay I don't have the spoons/time tonight to pick away at Dualliste||

||Very cool looking boss though. Am a sucker for dudes with molten weapons.||

[nova temple]

||He is one of my favorite bosses. The move set really clicks with me, on top of the whole vibe||

[sick yew]

||I'll see how it goes! So far I really liked the Lampmaster, the first phase was...hmm easy isn't the right term, but readable? In that it felt more intuitive to master than others. And the second phase had less predictable attacks but also the cool lantern puzzle.||

[errant wedge]

||The situation warrants trying anything and everything. It's that or extinction.||

[sick yew]

||Though...they could have gone slightly more eldritch in the second phase for Lampmaster, I think it could have had a model switch with more random hands. ||

[errant wedge]

I remember when I first fought ||Lampmaster. My thought was "hah you're doing Oracles, I've seen this before" ||

[sick yew]

Act 2 ||My interpretation is that it's a slow dwindling of resources that Lumiere has to offer. Earlier expeditions had cars and radios, now those technologies are gone, but hey magical skills are perhaps more advanced.||

||I still haven't figured out what the state of the world before the Paintress was, whether it was our world or whether magic and whatnot existed and were accessible.||

Oh and post-Act1 thought I want to jot down for posterity ||I do fully believe Gustave is dead, but I don't think this is a situation where dead=gone. I'm expecting him to come back in some capacity, perhaps as a Nevron. And Maelle (who's somehow at the center of it all) is going to have to choose between saving him or destroying the Paintress. This is mostly based on genre vibes.||

And yes I know,

Like I said, for posterity.

[dawn spindle]

||I really liked Lampmaster!||

||Dualliste didn't do much for me past the concept||

E33 all/Act 3 (not safe for Glam) ||I think flying manor's was better but still it didn't do much for me. ||

ALL ||my fave boss has to be Simon, hands down, nothing came close. ||

[sick yew]

Oh that's tricky, posting different spoiler levels right after each other!

Just barely managed to avoid clicking

[halcyon elbow]

I remember thinking for this boss fight "man this music really took a turn for the Baroque" and then it turns out it literally samples Handel

Just, a lesser known Handel

[dawn spindle]

I put a lot of text in front to stop you lol

But I was also super vague just in case

[sick yew]

Yeah but habbits/momentum! lol

[nova temple]

||Lampmaster is up there for me, but a looot of that is aura||

[exotic ember]

Act 2 || Oof I remember when I hit him for the first time. I was at it all night long lol ||

[exotic ember]

I never thought about this. Super neat read

I am way too brainless about how I consume media

[exotic ember]

All || I still need to get back to the game and grind some levels on the backup squad so I can hit Simon 2 again. He was really cool.

I also still need to do 2 other of the new superbosses that came with the DLC ||

[exotic ember]

All || That first time against Lampmaster was sooooo good. And the lampmaster superboss was absolutely brutal for me ||

Gahhh you all have me wanting to play more E33 again

[sick yew]

Yeahhhh. I might take a step back and go level up a bit elsewhere first.

[inner valve]

Act 2, but a bit further than Glamdring I think ||Just beat my first Axon! Went for Sirene (completely arbitrarily, tbh). Had a very fun time honing in on her rhythms! Sciel was the Mvp for that fight, easily. I need to figure out how to make more use of Lune... and Verso tbh. The cutscene after was so... weird and stilted feeling though. The complete lack of dialogue was ODD. Made it back to camp and called it a night last night.||

[errant wedge]

Yeah this is NSFGlam

[exotic ember]

Oh yeah I never did that. I played in masochist mode. No dodges, only parries. Keep everyone at 1 HP and use all the luminas that want me at min HP to maximize damage and to almost always get one-shot by any hit. Bash head against the boss until I get the timing down enough to make it through.
-# Cry
There’s a certain boss that took me days to beat

Fun fact (Act 1 all) || When I fought the Lampmaster for the first time and found out there was a second phase I got up and went over to my girlfriend to tell her about how I just got my face smashed in by the second phase and how cool and exciting that was and she just looked at me and said “What’s wrong with you?”

It was not the first time she asked this in response to my excitedly detailing my evisceration at the hands of bosses in E33 ||

[errant wedge]

I played to win on Expert in as few attempts as possible and almost all the main story bosses took just 1. The certain boss Mareep mentioned took 2.

So I do not enjoy listening to the "oooh Claaaire... Obscurrr" except the time when it shows up as part of an actual song.

[errant wedge]

||There is one who might...||

[merry lance]

It's probably au, not oh

[sick yew]

I'm stubborn but I'm not that stubborn

I mostly stick to parries because the dopamine of getting those sweet extra APs is real.

But also I want to not spend 10 minutes fighting two trash mobs 💀

[dawn spindle]

If you do your build tpwards parry damage it doesn't take any longer

At least not for regular mobs

[sick yew]

I haven't come across any specific pictos or other perks for parry damage.

Just general damage.

[errant wedge]

Act 1 is like barebones builds. Act 2 is when the Lumina gravy train will start to take off. Act 3 goes batcrem insane.

[sick yew]

Also part of it is self-inflicted where I try to learn an enemy's moves the first time or two I fight them.

[errant wedge]

Question Glam for Act 1 areas ||did you do the Hidden Gestral Arena||?

[sick yew]

Yes. ||Beat the first three, got bored with the 4th and resolved to come back after I've leveled up a bit more.||

[errant wedge]

Yeah. So that place gives you some really powerful Luminas for when a character is fighting solo, lets you set up some builds that are great for when you need to kick a merchant's ass + some other special solo fights.

[sick yew]

Mmhmm.

Like I said, I plan on abandoning ||the big cool four-armed demon fight next time I play and just bopping around the Act 1 world map a bit, checking out levels, and doing stuff like getting that 4th Gestral in the hidden arena.||

[dawn spindle]

Have fun ~

[rancid dagger]

Oh yeah, I need to go back to Act 1 || The arena, I got my ass beat the first time I got there and forgot to return ||

[sick yew]

A meme I've been meaning to make for several days:

(vague Act 1 spoilers?)

[exotic ember]

Wait, which boss are you thinking? I was talking about (Act 2 ALL) || Paintress ||

[errant wedge]

Yup

[exotic ember]

Yeah I imagine that one was dozens and dozens of failed attempts

As many were for me

I probably never got a boss on first attempt

No regrets. What I lack in skill I apparently have in occasional tenacity

That reminds me I should get back to Elden Ring one day

I still haven’t beaten the first main boss

[errant wedge]

Neither have I lol, I bought Elden Ring because of my history with the Dark Souls series (and Demon's Souls, and Bloodborne) and it dropped right on top of The Witch Queen which was at that point the greatest most hype moment in Destiny history and I couldn't not full send on that.

And then I meant to circle back to ER at some point but then did not get around to it.

[sick yew]

Witch Queen ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

[errant wedge]

It's been 4 years and a day since Vow of the Disciple released.

[sick yew]

https://tenor.com/view/falling-falling-down-stairs-stairs-meme-funny-gif-21363126

I just took psychic damage from that fact

[errant wedge]

Also Horizon Forbidden West released at the same time as those two got immediately slapped from the spotlight by Elden Ring and even tho it is on PC, I have still not played that either. 😓

[halcyon elbow]

I feel like DS2 is your favorite of the Souls games due to the pvp element, but I wouldn't be surprised if Elden Ring's build variety makes it end up working out to being your favorite in the long run

[sick yew]

It turns out I had missed very little in ||Spring Meadows and Flying Waters.||

||Still a little lower than comfortable against the Chromatic Troubador. So will come back for that one.||

[errant wedge]

Did you do Act 1 ||Yellow Harvest||?

[sick yew]

Nope, not yet.

||Will probably head there after I get the mim and whatever that little scootin' pot thing are in Esquie's nest||

||Petank||

[rancid dagger]

Man its been so long I played this game I don't even have my controller plugged in my PC anymore

gonna play a bit before bed, though

[sick yew]

I just gotta say, the environments in this game are really pretty.

They are really weird too, and quite grotesque. But really pretty.

https://tenor.com/view/knives-out-it-makes-no-damn-sense-compels-me-though-benoit-blanc-daniel-craig-gif-18728195

[dawn spindle]

They have the perfect level of uncanny/nonsensical

crazy good designs

[rancid dagger]

I find them too noisy a lot of the time

gives me a headache when trying to explore

-# soia again with can't explore a 3d environment in 3rd person

[sick yew]

Act 1 world ||Did Yellow Harvest. That was fun. Pretty environment and cool enemies. Saving the mime and the chromatic thingies for later.||

[sick yew]

Act 1 open world ||Okay what. The Small Burgeon, after I helped it grow says that the Mistress is not the Regent, and implies that the Regent is who the humans call the Paintress. So who then is the one who painted the Nevrons? The...girl with the white mask?||

[errant wedge]

[sick yew]

Man. I really really wish this game had a straight up restart battle mechanic.

I'm trying to learn the moves of ||the 4th guy in the Gestral hidden arena.|| And I'm just spending more times clicking through menus to restart the fight than I actually am fighting.

It's so far been my only quibble with the gameplay of the game. But it's a pretty significant roadblock to my playstle.

[sick yew]

Alright. Mostly just did side stuff today. Cleaned up Ancient Sanctuary a bit.

Will go back through Stone Wave Cliffs next time I play, and then go somewhere fast and easy to do some lumina unlock farming.

And then after that, it will be time to attempt the Ancient Battlefield again.

[sick yew]

Welp, my tentative plans for tonight didn't pan out, so, we expedition!

[errant wedge]

[sick yew]

As I warned yesterday, not much exciting things tonight. Went back through Stone Wave Cliffs, and got most of the things. ||Didn't find the mime (though I'm probably not strong enough to fight it yet), and also there was a collectible in a sunken house near the end that I couldn't figure out how to get to.||

Might do some pictos farming later, go back to Spring Meadows and just bully the level 1 enemies there.

[rancid dagger]

alright, time to respec

[sick yew]

Okay did some build crafting. Have some builds that I'm very happy with and am excited to try against the boss I abandoned.

But it's getting late tonight, so that's a tomorrow problem.

[sullen quartz]

Can't believe no one said "Tomorrow comes" yet

[sick yew]

So I discovered a very silly glass cannon build for Lune

It's surprisingly simple too, with only three core components:

||Last Stand Critical, Elemental Trick, and Elemental Genesis. Plus at least one Energizing Start to make it possible to pull it off in the first two turns.||

The gameplan: ||Cast Elemental Trick the first turn. It generates a stain for each element that's a critical hit, so with Last Stand Critical and nobody else in the party, it instantly fills up on all four elemental stains. Then she just has to survive the turn rotation, and I get to cast Elemental Genesis the 2nd turn to just delete everything.||

The real question now is how does this fare against bosses?

[errant wedge]

This is good.

There will be something you can synergize with it not very far ahead of where you are to help with survivability if you need it.

Elemental Genesis is based and builds intended to power it quickly are very popular so you've solved for that blind lol.

(there are other ways to solve for it but this one is valid)

[sick yew]

Yeah I figured it's not the most revolutionary, but I am very satisfied having figured it out myself.

Okay time to try this against ||Dualltiste||. This is either gonna go great, or I'm gonna get spanked.

Also ||I hope he doesn't have a second phase.||

||Okay it chunks about half his health bar in one hit. But I need to learn his patterns if I'm to survive.||

||I'll send in the rest of my team and see how this goes.||

[sick yew]

🙄

Game devs are kinda predictable sometimes

Also ||how does he look even cooler now? Holy crap this is such an awesome boss design.||

[errant wedge]

||Idk if you've played any Souls games but Dualliste is actually a simultaneous reference to Demon's Souls and to Dark Souls 3, because he's basically Velstadt combined with Pontiff Sulyvahn.||

||Even his boss music is a Souls reference.||

[sick yew]

Huh. Yeah I don't know any of those names

Okay this is going good, I just need to learn the bosses combos a bit better.

||My goal is to get through phase 1 with just Lune. Then we'll see how the second phase goes, if she dies and I send in the rest of the expedition, great.||

||I do see why Argent likes this fight. The timing and moves feel like a dance.||

[nova temple]

I ran a version of this for her until the end of the game

[nova temple]

||There's a few bosses that every LPer gets to go and goes "what in the dark souls" and I think that's just very neat and it sparks joy in me||

[sick yew]

And done

[rancid dagger]

I, on the other hand, respecced so I can play this game like a good ol jrpg of yore...hopefully it'll make me have more fun

[sick yew]

That battle

Was cool as [censored]

[rancid dagger]

fights are technically more slow going, cause my dps plummeted, but Im banking on way less restarts (and less frustration) so time-wise might be a wash or even positive

[sick yew]

Act 2 ||Gustave's funeral ||

[nova temple]

yeah

[sick yew]

Okay Act 2 general ||I'm encountering relationship levels...A) is this a game where you can date the rest of the expedition as Verso, and B) if so, is it monogamous, aka will I have to choose between them at some point?||

[errant wedge]

||The relationship levels are non romantic.||

||They just denote how much of that character's specific story you have seen so far.||

[nova temple]

Mm

That said, ||there is a little bit of romance with some of the cast, and I think it is gated behind relationship levels (you can just choose not to pursue it). It is monogamous. It doesn't affect much, just the way a couple of future camp scenes play out, and in minor ways||

[sick yew]

Hmm okay. Thanks.

Also ||I'm totally shipping Sciel and Lune||

[nova temple]

super valid

[silver pawn]

||Sciel and literally anyone 👌||

[sick yew]

For me, ||Lune is bae||

[pulsar citrus]

|| any Elemental Genesis build is a good build unless you are fighting some gimmick boss but then they are gimmick boss so you can just defeat them by the gimmick ||

[pulsar citrus]

Neither do I. I just know. "Holy Chroma that is cool"

[sick yew]

Yeah, Act 2 buildcrafting ||It's such a satisfing glass cannon build. I've one-shot every normal mob I've come across, and deleted Dualliste's first phase with just two attacks (so 4 turns total).||

[candid kindle]

Build stuff + Skill damage numbers || guaranteed crits + elemental trick + elemental genesis is amazing but guaranteed crits + element trick + lightning dance is even more damage (at the cost of being single target) ||

[sick yew]

I'll make sure I unlock that one next!

[exotic ember]

Respect to my polar opposite

I do think it’d be neat and interesting to try to do a playthrough one day like that

Gahh I need to get back to the remaining superbosses soon

Game is too good

[rancid dagger]

verdict is not out on that playstyle for me yet... I suspect I'll find it more fun, but all my playtime last night was dedicated to the respeccing

it was 1am and I hadn't actually played the game yet...I did take the build for a test drive against the first enemy I saw and... it seemed solid? I will update this group as I play more

-# if I dont decide to play some aoe

[sick yew]

Luckily I'm the kind of person who enjoys the brewing process of buildcrafting. Makes it so those sessions don't feel like a complete waste of time.

[rancid dagger]

Act 2 || Ok, this is an absolutely completely infuriating bs entry to find right after I resspec into a defensive/healing build to play the game like a turn based jrpg instead of the stupid parry gameplay ||

-# forgot to attach the image

[pulsar citrus]

Lol you are being called out

Act 1 gen gameplay + lore || this does not becomes something really necessary of a thing. I have seen defense build work very well. ||

[rancid dagger]

Act 2 Falling Leaves || Yeah, I was afraid the boss right after that would have some kind of bs enrage mechanic or something, but it was pretty chill. I just took longer to kill it (not helped by the fact I took Sciel with only Dark high damage skills so she basically dealt no damage and Maelle had to carry the dps). Again, idk if I took longer to kill than I'd have with the glass cannon build cause ... I probably would have needed to restart the fight several times to beat it, and like this I just cruised through the fight and came out full hp anyway. ||

as I expected, I think I'll like the game much better now

[sick yew]

E33 Act 2 ||What the goddamn hell is this Monoco fight music???????||

[nova temple]

A bop

[brisk orbit]

bambababam

[dawn spindle]

Sometimes i put this on at the gym

[brisk orbit]

L'Amour d'un Père is such a good song!

[sick yew]

Also I was listening to the ||Dualliste|| soundtrack as I did some other work tonight. Such a banger.

[dawn spindle]

I have a selected E33 list (and some other games) for gym stuff and there's that one you mentioned and one specific other one that just hits the perfect spot

[sick yew]

Okay had to put the game down after the Monoco bit.

Finally getting to the aftermath.

And uh. ||Verso recognizes Maelle???? She's clearly involved in all this with the Paintress in a huge way, but idk how. How could she be the one painting things? She's just a kid, who had a very real childhood in Lumiere.||

||Also I did catch the implication that Gestrals existed before the Shattering. Which would mean that it was not our world before.||

Monoco ||So....his mechanic is collecting feet. I'm sure the fandom has been reasonable and measured with this fact.||

[nova temple]

💯

[sick yew]

Also, (Forgotten Battlefield) ||I'm just a little disappointed we only looted one of Dualliste's swords. Is there some other way to obtain the first one somewhere?||

[pulsar citrus]

|| it is a very weird in the way that since Verso is a dual sword wielder (one long - one short) he does get two sword but the second sword is NOT coloured yellow either. Which is a missed opportunity||

[sick yew]

||Ah I didn't catch that his dagger is the other sword. That is a bit sad, it would look soo cool.||

[errant wedge]

||Verso used the orange sword in the cool cinematic finishing move to impale the Dualliste, and kept the purple one as Dualiso.||

[sick yew]

||he should have kept both.||

Question: ||Now that I have 5 players in my party, is there a way to limit my reserve team to only one character? I want to practice playing with other characters (and collect feet for Monoco), but also want to have Lune as a backup glass cannon. And she only works that way when solo.||

[nova temple]

^ ||Eventually you might find a pictos that auto-kills a character at the start of combat, but I think you are a little ways off that||

[sick yew]

Hmm. Okay then.

Also, Act 2 ||I can continue to Old Lumiere........or, I can go check out this Gestral beach. ||

[pulsar citrus]

Act 1 || Auto Death is in the first continent in Act 1. || Location name ||Yellow Harvest. || (Seperate spoiler bar in the chance that Glam likes to discover Picto themselves)

[nova temple]

I must be thinking of a different one

[sick yew]

Act 1 ||I checked out Yellow Harvest but didn't loot that one.||

[sick yew]

||This one's just a platforming puzzle. While it's expectably jank, I found the first platforming to be much less infuriating than the volleyball||

So we'll see how long this takes me.

||At least it's a chance to finally use some of the swimsuits I have.||

[rancid dagger]

the game has been so much better these last 2 days, holy

I haven't restarted a single fight, and I actually tuned things a bit since sunday and am doing a big more damage so it's not a slog either

[sick yew]

And made it

||That was a lot longer than I expected. A few tricky bits but overall not bad. I think my Destiny pedigree helped me a lot, I'm very used to the kinds of tricks they threw at me in the jumping puzzle.||

||They didn't even have a troll lip!||

||Oh my god Monoco's speedo||

[halcyon elbow]

https://klipy.com/gifs/ultrakill-brick-parry

[halcyon elbow]

HIs VA has cosplayed him in it several times now

He's an odd bird. Almost as odd as his character

[rancid dagger]

Buildcraft (act 2-ish pictos) || Omg, I have an idea, maybe? I've been sporting Energizing Pain cause I miss my parries/dodges more often than not, so I get more AP on average from taking punishment. I've got Dodger for when I hit those perfect dodges, and I just accept the missed AP for normal dodges or dodges after the first perfect one (I will some times not even try to dodge if I already got a perfect just to farm AP, if its a weaker attack or I have shell). Of course, the opportunity cost is since I don't parry anymore I don't get counterattack damage, but if I incorporate parry back and actually manage to hit those parries, I don't get AP ... I wonder if this works: I've got Energizing Heal and Healing Parry (idk if those are the names)...but basically the Lumina that gives 2 AP to the target of heals and the one that heals 3% per parry ... do those work together? I'll try it out tonight, cause if they do, I can go back to trying to parry and: if I get it, +2 ap and counterattack damage, if I don't I still get 1 AP anyway 🤔 ||

[sick yew]

Did a bit of open world stuff today. ||Went back and discovered the Crushing Cave, that was a fun puzzle. Also grabbed the auto-death pictos so I can keep Lune as my sole backup.||

[rancid dagger]

I havent found that one 🤔

I read earlier which area it's at but had also not seen it when I visited there

I'll go try to find it to do a solo backup as well...though if my main sustain build dies I don't think there's much hope for a solo dude to carry me through

I do have an idea for a solo verso build I started cooking up while walking just now

That probably fits my playstyle

[sick yew]

It's sneaky, the level icon is kinda hidden on the map.

[rancid dagger]

time to try this out (and look for that thing)

[rancid dagger]

it doesn't work 😭

[rancid dagger]

this game is so troll

Im really enjoying my new playstyle and it throw an enemy at me || that can only be killed with counterattack -.- ||

[sullen quartz]

Uh oh, it seems I "accidentally" became obsessed with listening to the Expedition 33 soundtrack again. Clumsy me. 😏

I had "Une Vie A T'aimer" stuck in my head all of yesterday evening, and I was trying to sing what I knew of it. If only I was any good at French. 😔

[rancid dagger]

I had the world map music on repeat in my head while making lunch earlier

Probably because it's the track I hear the most as I play

[dawn spindle]

What a power gamer if its not "ooohh claaaair..."

[rancid dagger]

Well, I'm:

1. not playing on the hardest difficulty
2. running a sustain build so I'm not required to hit parries 💅

made the game 100x more enjoyable coming back to it. I was hearing the defeat jingle a lot prior to Sunday

I'd restart fights in the first turn so many times over and over to learn the nonsensical parry timings

[rancid dagger]

uh ... except yesterday I heard it a lot cause... this

[sick yew]

Not in a good headspace for playing tonight. And probably will be too busy tomorrow. So no progress until Saturday probs 😔

[rancid dagger]

I'll play in your stead

[inner valve]

Managed to fight two mob encounters earlier. And that's all my gaming time for the night ...

[rancid dagger]

not a lot of progress today either, did some backtracking

Act 2 late-ish? (certainly nsfGlam) || Tomorrow I'll probably finally take out Visage? I defeated Joy, Sadness and Anger already (1 per night! Anger was tonight) and I'm parked in the flag right now. ||
Backtrack stuff (sfGlam) || I did go back to get the suicide pictos in Yellow Harvest and I remembered I never did the one punch gestral so I went there. For some reason I thought they were gonna open the little door, instead I just got a blouse? . I've set up Solo Verso as my backup, but I really don't expect to need it (and if I do, it means I'm completely cooked and he won't be able to salvage it). I haven't taken him for a spin yet, but it's an auto attack-ish build... problem is his weapon needs a lot more levels he has <1k Attack right now, poor guy||

[pulsar citrus]

|| did you apply all his attributes? Because if it still is only <1k then yikes. ||

[rancid dagger]

I did

But weapon is only lvl 10

[pulsar citrus]

Yeesh yeah that'll do it

[errant wedge]

The animation team from Korea is finally visiting the main Sandfall studio in-person. 🎉

[brisk orbit]

yes korea is my country

[rancid dagger]

Act 2 late (?) || Visage time ||

that was...exceptionally easy 🤔

[merry lance]

Act 2 ||Visages all (Safe for Soia)|| ||IIRC if you don't beat the other masks first, they join in||

[rancid dagger]

|| That's what it felt like, twice it used something like "summon emotion" or whatever and "nothing happens" ||

Act 2 || Post Visage camp || || 2 observations here:

1. Verso can just summon a piano, the heck???
2. The act of banging Verso inspires Sciel to unlock the attack Doom. That's too funny ||

[pulsar citrus]

|| yeah each mask does the effect it did on their individual fight but altogether after Mask Keeper finishes his turn.

So it gets heal, Exhaust (you can't gain AP), and Enrage (so it gets to go twice)

It makes the overall fight a lot harder.

In my playthrough, I had obviously decided to go finish the alternate paths first and did defeat the mask in Joy Vale but then I forgot which one was the secret the next day picking back up.

So I just went to the main path and decided that might as well give it a try. Visages itself I could do in first try so that was also good but then when I fought the MK and he kept beating me up. I was still surviving enough to not think that I should leave and go to alternate paths so I did finish him with those other 2 masks alive. It was a struggle.

Imagine my face, when I watched literally every streamer I saw fight all the masks and then steamroll this guy. ||

[sick yew]

Okay. Finally have some time tonight to sit down and expedition again.

First some buildcraft tweaks, and then it will be on to (act 2) ||Old Lumiere.||

I will say, it is funny how (general) ||how they can find identical valleys to make camp in basically everywhere on the continent.||

wh

whwhwwwwww

||legs||

||legsssssssssss||

||the what did I just watch||

[nova temple]

https://tenor.com/view/umm-confused-wtf-blinking-okay-gif-7513882

[sick yew]

This game

[dawn spindle]

uh... what?

[sick yew]

This storming game

[dawn spindle]

OH, I think i know

[sick yew]

The cutscene at camp where (Act 2) ||Verso cut himself in half and walked around to entertain the expedition.||

[dawn spindle]

aaaaah, not what I thought

[nova temple]

To be fair, I also react like this when I see Lune's legs

[dawn spindle]

okay

weird timing to my okay but I agree

[rancid dagger]

Uh, I haven't seen that one

[sick yew]

Maybe it only plays at certain points?

||It played after I had the option to "check on the others." But like the second time I did it. And I'm currently checking on the others a third time.||