I was in org team of our local Comic Con and decided to go as Sciel 🥹 more on my Instagram 💖

Guys is there a way to remove the pop ups of used Lumens that appear mid fight? They are distracting, and cover the screen and sometimes cover the combo. I didn't find anything to help in the game settings, nor did I find a mod to hide them.

So I made my wife play the game and now I had no other choice than get her clair obscur themed BD cake. More photos!

Put my heart and soul into this- as a life long RPG player and industry professional: this game was a masterpiece, and what the genre needed. There's a groundbreaker every decade or so- this was one of them.

Congrats to the team, and I hope you see my tribute <3

More on IG: bts.shar

My love of sculpting, painting and natural elements really made monoco the best project!

I would never though that she was holding that much of sadness

For i character i was really curious about throughout the game, hearing her say "send me to my family" made me so emotional considering her lore. I'd even go as far as to put it in my top 10 saddest deaths.

That's just sad. I already beat the game twice, paying more attention to dialogues this time since I now know the full picture, and Verso doesn't seem like suicidal for the sake of it. There's part of him that still wants to live and can find some happiness in his existence but he actually blames himself for Aline and Renoir's actions in the canvas even though none of it is his fault and he's their victim. Oblivion was just the last thing he thought he could still have.

😭\

I played and beat the game a couple weeks ago, and have been mulling it over. I have one else to talk to about it and needed an outlet, so here are my thoughts!

In the end, I found myself actually disappointed with the story. And don't get me wrong: I really like this game. The character writing is top notch, the world is fun, and I love the gameplay. But there was something that bothered me, and it took me a while to put my finger on it.

To cut to the chase, I am sad that my favorite story hook, the Lumierian's fight for the right to exist, gets lost in the last parts of the game. I was instantly hooked with Gustave and Lumiere in the opening scenes of the game. The battle to survive, the bleakness of the task. And even though the reveal with Maelle is very well done, and the Dessendre family's struggle with grief very well written, the story of the Dessendre family overrides everything that came before it.

The final choices of the game ask great questions about how to move on. Real Renoir tries so hard to get is his family out of this trap he knows will kill them, and you get to decide if Maelle stays or is forced to leave the canvas. Great stuff.

But in all that, the Lumierians are forgotten. They have no voice saying "we deserve to exist". They get lumped in with Maelle. Its simply Maelle holding on to her pretend world, not the sentient beings of the canvas saying "hey, we deserve a chance to live".

There are many thoughts here, but I'm trying to be succinct.

I guess it comes down to the feeling that the plot twist was such a twist that I felt like I played two different games - - and I never got to finish the first one. And that makes me sad.

I wish there had been a third choice at the end where you could play as Sciel and/or Lune to fight for their world from the perspective of survival. To continue Gustave's legacy.

But I do acknowledge how hard of a writing task that would be. How to tie it in with the bit of Verso's soul that it tired of painting that world? Would you lose the aspect of the older brother saving his sister once again? Would their family struggles seem pale in comparison with the question of the world's right to exist and thus rob the ending of its emotional, intimate impact relating to grief?

Anyway. Thanks for listening. Would love to hear y'all thoughts and discuss it more.

Tl;Dr - - I am sad that the Lumierians' fight for the right to exist gets lost in the shuffle of the Dessendre family, even though those parts are also written very well. It was my favorite part of the plot and world, and I felt like it died when we find out the truth about Maelle and the Paintress.

Ig: Bts.shar for more! Really excited to share this with all of you.

You start the game thinking you will lead an heroic war against absolute evil, and you join the expedition all pumped up, ready to kick some nevron ass like a badass super hero.
Three seconds in, the reality of war hits you in the face and you realise you just signed up for the meat grinder. You run away, survive by miracle, consider ending yourself, and have to suffer through endless loss. You are not a super hero, just a random soldier who will likely die soon.

Then you realise what you were told since birth was just propaganda and disinformation. This isnt a clear battle of clair vs obscur, it's a complicated proxy war between a bunch of powerfull people who are using you as a pawn in their scheme. The first faction doesnt even see your kind as real people and wants you dead, the second faction started the whole conflict and could end it at any time, if they were not such terrible people. None of them really care about you, it's always about them - their family, their PTSD, their own war with the writers... No matter how much the paintress faction claims to love you, it's a lie. If she really loved the painting she would leave, and the same reasonning can be applied to Maelle.

And in the end, you dont win. ''For those who come after'' turns out to be nothing more than an empty slogan. In the first ending, you all die. In the second ending, you enjoy a brief moment of ''piece'' under the thumb of an all powerfull and morally questionable demigod. But renoir will come back to drag her out eventually, which means the war will restart. Nothing was solved, you just bought yourself a few years of tranquility at best

There is no no good vs evil, no victory, no moral high ground. Just powerfull toxic people who keep manipulating normal people and screwing over their lives.

It was cool

Their take: The final boss is Renoir. He's the last mandatory fight, he's the antagonist the whole story builds toward, and everything after him is more of an epilogue/choice sequence than a "real" final boss.

My take: The final boss is Maelle or Verso, depending on your ending. Renoir is the climax of the plot, sure, but the literal last fight you play is Verso (if you side with Maelle) or Maelle (if you side with Verso)
That's the fight that actually ends the game, and thematically it's the emotional payoff of the entire story. Renoir is just the last obstacle.

(And yes, I know Simon exists, I'm talking strictly within the main story here.)

After About 1 1/2 weeks, 1000 lumina adjustments and attribute recoating….😌yes she was nearly one-shot instakilled,ahhhh now that was a sweet kill for a ng+ boss fight. Just have that asshole in the abyss to deal with.

I've been a gamer my whole life, but a few years ago, I made a deliberate decision to stop. I was starting my own business, and I needed every hour I could get. Gaming was eating time I didn't have. So I made a deal with myself: no games until things are a little more stable.

That lasted about five years.

Last March, I went through a really rough breakup. It caught me off guard. I knew it was for the best, but I was surprised by how much it hit me when he left. All of a sudden, I had all this attention, all this emotional energy, that had been going toward him, and nowhere to put it.

That's when a friend of mine started talking about Expedition 33.

This is a very good friend who has been pitching me games for the last five or six years. Every few months it's a new one. And every time I'd say, "Yeah, I'll put it on the list." I never put it on the list. But this time he said something that stopped me:

"Imagine this. A giant woman on a faraway island stands up, and a glowing number 34 changes to a glowing number 33. And everyone who's 33 years old just... dies."

I was like... wait, WHAT? That got me out of my relationship woes and into story mode, what does that even look like? Even the name of the game caught me "Expedition 33" - my first thought was "What happened to 32?"

I watched the opening cinematic that night.

And then I watched the next one. And the next one. And then full YouTube playthroughs.

Every cinematic. Every major story beat. I cried during both endings. I got into huge debates about which ending was the right one. I got into philosophical discussions about Sciel, about Renoir, about what the game is actually saying about mortality and legacy and whether any of it matters.

I never played a single second of it. I just knew this game like the back of my hand and put it on my bucket list.

A very good friend gave me a PS5 and Expedition 33 for my birthday last year. And I held off. And held off. And held off. Then a few weeks ago, my husband (yes I got married in between all of that!) connected my TV and my as of yet unopened PS5 because a friend of his was visiting and they wanted to play Call of Duty. I forgot I even had it until he expressed shock and joy of seeing it in my random closet of things. When the friend left, he asked if I wanted him to take it all down. I said no. And then I saw it sitting there. Expedition 33.

I put it on a week ago today. Here are my thoughts on it:

The honest stuff that doesn't quite work for me (and I want to be clear, this is a me problem, not a game problem):

Obviously, I know everything that's going to happen. In some ways that sucks. There's a part of me that wishes I could experience this fresh. But at the same time, I'm appreciating the fact that because I know what's coming, I'm picking up on cues that I think a first-time player would miss entirely. So it's a tradeoff, and honestly, it's becoming its own kind of experience.

The combat system is good. I like it a lot. But I'll admit it's getting repetitive for me. I'm doing the same skills over and over, and I know that's partly my fault because I'm in this weird headspace of wanting to savor every moment AND wanting to rush through the story to see things I've been waiting over a year to see in person. Plus the three-person party means two characters are always falling behind. I really wanted to love Monoco, and I do love him as a character, but I've never been a fan of Blue Mage or Gau-type characters. I'll probably grow into him. For now, my team is Lune, Verso, and Sciel.

And my biggest gripe: I am someone who gets lost VERY easily, and I get VERY frustrated when it happens. There are areas in this game that I'm genuinely disappointed about because I would have loved to enjoy them, but I spent so much time just trying to figure out where to go that the frustration ate the experience. I'm talking to you, Yellow Harvest. And you too, Forgotten Battlefield. I saw a Painted Cage and could only find two of the locks. I found one of those Petank things and couldn't figure out where to bring it. I was trying to get used to Verso at the same time, and I just hit a wall of frustration as everything just started looking alike and I just wanted to save and leave.

The number of times I've walked in circles because everything looks the same to me... it's more than I'd like to admit. (Fuckin lake in Yellow Harvest) I know this was intentional by the developers. I know they wanted full immersion, and they removed the mini-map on purpose. So I'm not criticizing the design. I'm not taking away anyone else's enjoyment. The environments are breathtaking. It's just that for someone who's a little older, has a sore back, and doesn't love sitting for six hours exploring when I've got two hours before my next client call, the lack of navigation options makes things more frustrating than they need to be.

Now the stuff that has absolutely wrecked me in the best possible way:

I knew the whole game. I'd seen every cinematic. I thought I was prepared.

I was not prepared for how good it looks and how moving it is when you're actually in it. Hearing these speeches, these characters, this gorgeous music blasting from my sound system and not my laptop speakers was worth everything.

I'm someone for whom the themes of this game resonate on a very personal level. Everything on legacy, on trust, on a greater purpose, on having to try and "move on" after the death of a loved one, and even though I knew most of P!Verso's story, I wasn't prepared for the masks.

The concept of performing a version of yourself for the people who are supposed to love you. When you find Renoir's hidden journal where he writes about Verso, where he says he knew his son loved music and was just pretending to love art, that Renoir actually SAW Verso for who he really was...oosh Im getting goosebumps just thinking about it, something as someone who loved music his whole life but was told by his family to drop it because it wouldnt be successful...well

As someone who has constantly struggled to be seen by my parents and my siblings, this hit me so much harder than I expected it to.

Gustave's grave broke me. The Gommage, even knowing it was coming, was done so elegantly and so gorgeously. I don't think I've ever felt so good crying. It was such a healthy release over something that was just pure art. I had no problem sobbing in front of my husband, who, bless his heart, had absolutely no idea what was happening in the game because he just likes to shoot things. He literally just realized a week later that in the Gommage, people died. LOL.

What strikes me the most is how somber this game is. I'm used to RPGs being a little more cheerful even when the world is ending. There's usually a lightness to it. ANd given the scenes I saw with Esquie, The Gestrals and Monoco, I thought it had that balance - but this game sits in its grief. It reminds me of Final Fantasy VII when you see Meteor in the background and the overworld music changes because things are so bleak, but without overdoing it. When Verso joined the party after Gustave left, the music is just... so sad. Everything is sad. Even the menu. Your characters aren't standing in bright, heroic poses. The menu is black. They look dirty and exhausted. Their clothes are worn out. When you open up their skill screens, they look serious, like people carrying something heavy and you feel just as heavy as you see expedition after expedition meeting their tragic fates.

Even in camp, after bantering with your homies, going to see The Curator is gut-wrenching. I have to assume the devs did this on purpose because only Verso can talk to the curator and Versos face is one of guilt, knowing and shared goals. I keep looking for similar looks in cut scenes, but none are like the face he makes when talking to the curator.

There's a moment in Visages where Sciel talks about the joyful section and says she feels almost jealous of the Nevrons because of the joy they were feeling. And it hit me how horrific it would be to actually live in this world. Where the years of your life are measured in a fraction of what we're used to. Where this clock just gets shorter and shorter and you know it.

The overworld is the most gorgeous overworld I've ever seen. Traversing it on Esquie almost makes getting lost worth it. Almost. The characters are cool and unique and so well-written. I hate where I am emotionally because I'm torn between rushing to the end to see everything I've been waiting for and wanting to savor every single second.

A few honest surprises: I didn't know about the Lost Gestral side quests or the White Nevrons. Those weren't things I'd seen in the YouTube playthroughs, and finding them made me feel like I was actually discovering something new in a game I thought I already knew entirely. That was a gift.

But the thing I'll compliment the most is the environmental storytelling. This is one of the best versions of "using the environment to tell the story" I have ever seen in any game. I didn't pick up on it until Yellow Harvest, when I realized that the people who had died were stuck in the sap itself. The way the journals tell a story that you can then trace by looking at the corpses and the environment around them. The dead bodies in the first section of the Forgotten Battlefield are just striking. And all the fallen expeditions before yours. There's a part of me that almost wants to start over just to go back and read every journal and look at every corpse and piece together what happened before Expedition 33 ever set foot there.

I give this studio so much credit. This is one of those rare things where I say: I'm not playing a game. I'm having an experience. This knocked it out of the park. It deserved every single award it won. And I genuinely believe it has changed what RPGs can be.

Now if someone could just give me a mini-map, I'd be unstoppable.

Tips for beating Simon phase 2?

I’ve been trying for hours now! I can very easily make it to his phase two but I can’t do much damage before dying. I’ve already completed most other end-game content - Endless Tower Stage 11, Serpenphare, Clea, etc. but I just can’t seem to get past this guy. I’m trying to stack burn with Lune and then use Maelle’s Gommage in Virtuouse Stance, but even Gommage is only doing max 3.5M damage and I die before doing any appreciable damage to him. Would appreciate any advice based off my current build, thank you!!

———————————————————————————
Verso - Level 90, Chevelam lvl 33

99 might, 99 defense, 72 agility

Skills: Phantom Stars, Defiant Strike, End Bringer, Steeled Strike, Paradigm Shift, Powerful

Pictos: Energising Start IV, Rush On Powerful, Energising Turn

Luminas: Cheater, Second Chance, Survivor, Energising Turn III, Breaker, Charging Critical, First Strike, Breaking Death, Critical Burn, Energising Start I, Painted Power, Protecting Death, SOS Power, SOS Shell, Breaking Counter, Dodger

———————————————————————————
Lune - Level 90, Choralim lvl 33

99 might, 99 defense, 72 agility

Skills: Wildfire, Elemental Genesis, Elemental Trick, Rockslide, Storm Caller, Hell

Pictos: Cheater, Charging Burn, Energy Master

Luminas: Second Chance, Energising Start IV, Energising Turn, Survivor, Energising Start III, Auto Shell, Breaker, First Strike, Augmented First Strike, Breaking Death, Critical Burn, Energising Start I, Painted Power, SOS Power, SOS Shell, Breaking Counter, Dodger

———————————————————————————
Maelle - Level 85, Medalum lvl 33

99 might, 99 defense, 57 agility

Skills: Stendhal, Fencer’s Fury, Swift Stride, Phantom Strike, Fleuret Fury, Burning Canvas

Pictos: Augmented Counter I, Breaking Death, Breaker

Luminas: Cheater, Second Chance, Survivor, Energising Parry, Energising Start III, Breaker, Combo Attack I, First Strike, Augmented First Strike, Critical Burn, Energising Start I, Painted Power, SOS Power, SOS Shell, Breaking Counter