Camera Obscura

I've finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and really enjoyed it! I actually beat the game almost a week (edit: two weeks) ago, but have been finishing up a few side-quests and optional boss fights. I'll be talking about that more in spoiler-town below, but for now I'll note that it's been a fun and nicely-shaped game. According to the in-game timer I've spent nearly 70 hours in the game; I think I was probably around 60-65 or so when I beat the final boss. I probably could have wrapped up a lot earlier if I'd just beelined the main story, but I'm glad I took my time.

 

I don't think I have many technical notes to add to what I had in my earlier posts. The game has been extremely stable for me, I didn't encounter any crashes or freezes for the whole time. I don't think I've called out the music, but that has been especially great: I find myself constantly listening to the tunes in my head when I'm not playing the game. They're really catchy, and really diverse: there's a lot of vocal music, piano, modern-pop-sounding, jazzy themes. They seem very comfortable letting the music take center stage, adding drama and flair to the proceedings, not subtly supporting it in the background.

 

Overall I'd say this game has a nice combination of feeling familiar (Final Fantasy vibes, standard progression mechanics like XP, gear and currency) and feeling original (very French aesthetics, a unique story, innovative battle system). It probably won't convert many RPG-haters to the genre, but it is a breath of fresh air for people who already enjoy it and are interested in trying something new.

 

 

MINI SPOILERS

Some notes on my final loadout:

 

 

For the most part I tended to have the same Luminas on everyone instead of specializing. As noted in my previous post, since I rotated party members periodically I kind of needed them to be as interchangeable as possible, so I didn't have, say, a dedicated buffer like many other players do. By the end of the game the loadout looked something like:

• Painted Power to exceed 9,999 damage
• Cheater to go twice in a row
• Rush on Start and SOS Rush to proc this buff
• Then chain with Shell on Rush and Powerful on Shell to get all the buffs
• Energizing Turn for +1AP each round
• Energy Master for an extra AP each time you get an AP
• Base Shield to get a Shield if you don't already have one. This is pretty huge, you can shrug off one hit per turn entirely, which neutralizes some fights, makes others much more survivable, and gives a better chance at learning attack patterns against a new foe
• Dodger - I never really did Parries, and the extra AP comes in handy 

 

 

Those were the cores, I think. I gave Maelle Burning Shots so she could proc Burns to get back into Virtuose Stance. Sciel or Lune would sometimes get Energizing Starts to hit AP thresholds for their openers. Maelle and Sciel got Inverted for damage boosts. If people had spare Lumina points I would pick up things like Greater Powerful.

 

My team was mostly built around Maelle and Sciel as huge damage dealers. I really liked Lune for utility, but she tended to feel pretty weak. Monoco was usually in my party as my Pictos-learning mule. I would swap Verso in occasionally to make sure he wasn't too underleveled.

 

 

Maelle would try to stay in Virtuose stance as much as possible,  using Fleuret Fury. With the right Luminas and periodic Dodges she could usually stay in it for a while. Being able to Break is a huge bonus. If she got low on AP, she would Pyrolyse to inflict Burn and switch into Defensive, then Swift Stride to get back into Virtuose. In Act 3 most boss fights would end once we built up to Gradient Level 3 and she unleashed Gommage.

 

 

I built Sciel for damage. She wielded Tisseron, which extends Twilight and lets you play again on entering Twilight (very helpful before getting Cheater). She needs to start combat with 9AP, then opens with Final Path to apply 10 Foretell. Then Twilight Slash to consume all the Foretell, refill her AP to max, and enter Twilight. Re-apply Final Path and Twilight Slash again for double damage. When it works out, it's worth spending one Gradient Charge on Shadow Bringer, which adds 10 Foretell without costing any AP; then follow up with Twilight Dance, a 9AP finisher that does huge damage boosted by the (hopefully doubled) Foretell. This is another boss-killing move.

 

 

By the end of the game, I had Lune running with Colim, which helps you get more Light Stains and boosts damage while holding Light Stains. My end-game rotation was opening with two Lightning Dances to generate a lot of stains and soften up targets, then Terraquake to start doing ongoing passive damage for 5 turns. Depending on my stain RNG, I might then start a Typhoon to do still more per-turn damage and heal my party (except the inverted Sciel and Maelle). Lightning Dance is also a great one when I have the AP and the right Stains.

 

 

Monoco ran with Ballaro, which rotates the Bestial Wheel order. My primary rotation was Braseleur Smash for damage and burn, then Ramasseur Bonk for huge Break damage (especially clutch against bosses). From Almighty Mask I would use Chalier Combos if I had enough AP, otherwise Rocher Hammering. If I started off the track for Almighty I would also work in Stalact Punches to get back on track.

 

 

I didn't use Verso a ton, but I did run with Confuso, another Light-aligned weapon that can generate a lot of Burn. If any enemies had Weaknesses I'd try to use him to Free Aim shoot them. He would otherwise use Speed Burst to get up to rank B, then either Assault Zero (low AP, many hits) or Perfect Break (can break, and jump to rank S if you do). Passing through A tends to be quick, Light Holder makes it quick and cheap. Once in S he spends most of his AP on free-aim shots, then Ascending Assault. In long fights, this can be yet another boss killer.

 

MEGA SPOILERS

As I often do after beating an RPG, I want to jot down my personal impression of the plot as eventually revealed throughout the game. I am not certain about all of this and haven't correlated anything with online information. If I were to replay the game, I would be interested to see how well this stacks up with lore as described within the game.

 

 

The game is set in a different world from ours, but does share some recognizable similarities. There is a structure that looks darn similar to the Eiffel Tower, and some familiar ideas and vocabulary.

 

 

Within the "real" world lived a family called the Dessendres. They are Painters, who have the ability to sub-create realities within a Canvas. For the most part beings within a Canvas cannot affect beings outside it, and usually are not even aware that there is a reality outside the Canvas. Painters can work outside the Canvas, but to be most effective they must enter into it. Doing this is tricky, as they may lose awareness of their real existence and only remember their lifespan as a painted being inside the Canvas.

 

 

The family matriarch, Aline, is an incredibly strong and talented Paintress. She taught her husband Renoir; I have the impression he had latent Painting ability that Aline helped him develop, but maybe it's a skill that can be taught from scratch, I'm not sure. They married and had three children. Clea, the oldest daughter, was even stronger than Aline: she's the one being who is talented enough to paint over someone else's creation. The middle child, Verso, was sensitive and fun-loving, and enjoyed creating whimsical creatures like the anthropomorphic paintbrush Gestrals, the silly creatures Monoco and Esquie, and the enormous Grandis. The youngest daughter was Alicia.

 

 

There is another group in the real world called The Writers; I don't think we ever learn much about what their deal was, other than their enmity with The Painters. Alicia befriended The Writers in some way, which allowed them to access the Desendre Manor. They set a catastrophic fire. Verso was able to save Alicia from death, but her face was badly burned in the flames, and Verso himself perished.

This shattered the family. In her grief, Aline entered into Verso's canvas. She painted a new Verso inside there, in the image and personality of her son, and let him continue playing with his childhood creations. While the real Verso was dead, a part of his spirit lived on inside the canvas, taking the form of a faceless boy.

 

 

Renoir was upset by Aline's withdrawal. Verso was dead, and nothing she could do would bring him back; and by retreating to the Canvas, she was abandoning her living family. So Renoir took it on himself to erase Verso's canvas: if he could get rid of all the memories of Verso inside there, Aline would have no reason to stay and would return to the real world.

 

 

Clea was irritated: now both of her parents had abandoned her and Alicia, locked into a silly struggle inside the Canvas, while nobody was doing anything about the Writers. Clea decided to help Renoir: since he was the weaker Painter, he wouldn't be able to overcome Aline, and the sooner the canvas was erased the sooner the parents would come back. So Clea began to paint the Nevrons: monstrous creatures who ate up the Chroma within the canvas. (I think Chroma is a bit like soul-life-force, and also just pigment: there's a finite amount of material within the Canvas at a given time, a Painter can dissolve a painted being and turn it into Chroma, then use that Chroma to paint a new being, or to enhance another being.)

 

The creatures within the Canvas had no idea any of this was happening: they don't know they're in a Canvas at all. They experienced this as an event they call The Fracture, which separated the human inhabitants of Lumiere from the rest of the Continent. I'm a little fuzzy on the exact sequence here, but: I think Clea painted over the version of herself that Aline had made. In the first Expedition, she beguiled an expeditioner named Simon, tricking him into entering the Abyss, an underwater area far beneath the Monolith where Aline lived. This helps limit Aline's power. Clea also creates the Nevrons who populate the Continent. Renoir is trying to undo the painting, which the humans experience as an event they call "The Gommage," where people just dissolve into chroma petals. The Paintress opposes this, but her strength is steadily growing weaker against both the in-canvas Renoir and the painted Clea, so each year more humans are gommage'd. This starts with all people age 99 and over dying; the next year, everyone 98 and older, and so on.

 

 

After some years, the citizens of Lumiere kind of figure out what's happening, at least what to expect each year. The Continent is dangerous, but is also the source of the Gommage. Unfortunately they misunderstand the Paintress's role: they think she is the one killing them, when actually she's the one holding back total death. One or two Expeditions figure out the truth, but aren't able to return word to Lumiere.

 

 

An Expedition is a group of Lumierans who go to the Continent to try and stop the Gommage. It primarily consists of those who are due to die in the next year, but anyone can join. Each Expedition chooses its own leaders and spends a great deal of time preparing, and each one usually tries to focus on a particular strategy. One Expedition tried focusing on stealth, disguising its members as Nevrons. (This did not go well.) One focuses on traversal, leaving behind handholds to aid future groups in scaling difficult walls. One consists entirely of naked people. (This one actually was relatively successful!) And so on. Each Expedition knows that it is extremely unlikely to triumph, hence their enduring mottos: "So we continue." and "For those who come after." Each Expedition records their successes and failures and learnings, leaving behind a record so future Expeditions can learn from their mistakes and, hopefully, eventually triumph.

 

 

The painted Verso is part of the initial Expedition. At some point he learns the truth: that he is not real, just a copy of a dead boy. But, to be fair, he is as real as everyone else inside the Canvas. He has sort-of company, too: Aline has painted versions of Renoir and the deformed Alicia, who are also aware that they are not real. Verso generally tries to help the Expeditions when he can, while Renoir and Aline generally oppose them. But keep in mind that the Expeditions are trying to destroy the Paintress, so in aiding the Expeditioners Verso is trying to kill off the Canvas, while (painted) Renoir and Alicia are trying to preserve it.

 

 

Back in the real world, Alicia and Clea have a chat. Alicia has been wracked with guilt for what has happened to Verso and their family. Clea is very matter-of-fact about everything. Alicia has managed to hide Verso's canvas, which Clea approves of: if Aline does leave the Canvas, she will want to jump right back in, so it's best to delay that as long as possible. Alicia volunteers to enter the Canvas to appeal to her parents to leave. While they struggle in there, Clea is single-handedly trying to hold back the Writers. Clea is a bit skeptical that Alicia will succeed, but also doesn't really care, and thinks that at a minimum she can't do any damage. Alicia enters the Canvas, but as she is less strong and experienced than the rest of her family, she quickly loses her identity. She is born into the Canvas as an infant girl named Maelle.

 

 

Many years pass. The game starts here.

 

Expedition 33 comes around - it's now been about 67 years since the Fracture. Maelle is only 15, but determined to join the Expedition: her parents have died so she is orphaned, and she has never really felt deeply connected to other people her age. One of the leaders of the expedition is Gustave. The big innovation of Expedition 33 is the "Lumina Converter". Previous Expeditions have discovered "Pictos", special powers that can be obtained by defeating particular Nevrons. With Gustave's converter, a Pictos can be studied and analyzed, and eventually learned by anyone else. They hope that this will give this new expedition a new edge.

 

 

There are several other Expeditioners; other than Maelle, most are in their early 30s and nearing their own Gommage. These include Lune, a brilliant scientist whose parents were also famous researchers; and Sciel, a widowed schoolteacher.

 

 

When the Expedition reaches the Continent, they are swiftly ambushed on the beach by the painted Renoir; he knows who Maelle really is, and is concerned that she will upset the balance of the Canvas. (And I think that if Maelle dies in the canvas, Alicia will wake up in the real world, slightly weakened and dazed but otherwise unharmed.) Maelle is saved by the real Renoir, who manifests as a faceless man known as the Curator. He takes her into a painted version of the Manor, the mirror image of their real-world home. Most of the rest of the expedition dies. Overcome with grief, Gustave nearly commits suicide, but presses on and discovers Lune, then Maelle and Sciel. Together they agree to press on.

 

 

They start going on adventures, including finding the whimsical Esquie and the various Gestrals. But the painted Renoir is still out there. Maelle starts having visions where she sees Renoir and Alicia; I'm not sure exactly how this works, it makes sense that the faceless Renoir could interrupt the flow of time in the Canvas but I'm not clear on how the painted versions can. Renoir murders Gustave, but the rest of the party is rescued by the painted Verso.

 

 

Verso takes the place of Gustave, leading the party on their quest to destroy the Paintress. There are a lot of trust issues here! The others eventually learn that he is Renoir's son, which is devastating for them to discover; he says "Family is complicated" multiple ways multiple times, they can see that he doesn't get along with (painted) Renoir so they figure that he's really on their side. Which he is, but they don't know that their side is misguided.

 

 

The Monolith is protected by an enormous invisible forcefield called the Barrier. The real Renoir tells them that to get past it, they will need a special weapon, the Barrier Breaker, which will require an enormous amount of Chroma to create. They can't collect that much Chroma from mere Nevrons: they will need to defeat Axons, who are Titan-esque beings. (I'm not totally sure how Axons fit into the Canvas cosmology; I sort of head-canon that they were preexisting beings painted by the real Verso, but I could be wrong.) The party dutifully does so.

 

 

They proceed to the Paintress. She recognizes Maelle as Alicia, but immediately starts to doubt herself. After all, there are other painted versions of her family running around, and she knows Renoir is trying to trick her. They succeed in defeating the Paintress. For a little while everyone is happy: they fly back to Lumiere where there's a big celebration. But with the Paintress gone, the real Renoir can proceed with erasing the Canvas, and so everyone gets gommage'd.

 

Except Maelle - she came from outside the Canvas, so she still has an existence independent of it. And Verso still survives as well. I forget now why that is - Maelle may have sheltered him, or it may be because of his connection with the real Dessendres. Maelle has regained her memories now. She knows that she is Alicia, but she also remembers being Maelle, and crucially, she wants to be Maelle. She feels more connected to the experiences she's had over the last fifteen years in this world than her life in another universe.

 

 

Maelle now regains her Painting abilities. Like the real Renoir or Aline, she can directly affect the Canvas while she's inside it. Among other things, that means she can bring back the "dead" / unpainted beings. By collecting Chroma, she is able to restore Lune, Sciel, and Verso's old friend Monoco back to life. As a side note, I think this is one of the purposes of the Nevrons: when loose Chroma becomes available, Clea can capture it and lock it up in a monster, keeping Aline or anyone else from using it to their own ends.

 

 

Maelle wants to meet the painted Alicia, and they do. This is a really interesting scene, as the painted Alicia looks like the real Alicia, while Maelle is the real Alicia but doesn't look like her. Alicia is mostly unable to speak due to the damage from the fire: her painted form was unkindly created. Alicia asks to be unmade. Maelle accepts, and this leads to a big argument between her and Verso: Verso is torn up at losing her, enraged that he didn't get to say goodbye. This Alicia isn't "real", but she is as real as this Verso is, and they've been through a lot together. Maelle is adamant that Alicia should get to make her own decisions, and it would be cruel to deny or delay her.

 

 

The party collects a lot of Chroma with the goal of resurrecting the Expeditioners so they can take on Renoir. They eventually return to Lumiere and do this. (I was overlevelled for this fight and one-shot him.) Now both Aline and Renoir have been kicked out of the canvas, and only Maelle/Alicia is left.

 

 

At this point, Verso has an urgent request: he wants Maelle to unpaint him. I'm not totally sure why! In my game he was having a nice time with Sciel, he seems to genuinely enjoy goofing around with Esquie and going on adventures with Monoco. It might be that he's just tired: he's lived for many years and won't age and die like others. It might be that he can't stand the ongoing awareness of being the shadow of a dead person. Maelle is aghast at the suggestion: she has been doing all of this to preserve her friends' lives and bring them back, not to kill them.

 

 

There aren't many choices in this game, I think the only big ones are who to romance and whether you side with Verso or Maelle at the end. I automatically picked Maelle: not because I'd deeply thought through the ethical issues raised by their disagreement, but because she's my strongest fighter and I always pick her when I have the chance. She instantly annihilated Verso.

 

 

This led to an ending where everything seems happy again. At the opera house you see Gustave and his girlfriend smiling, Sciel reunited with her dead husband, Gustave's apprentices running around. Verso comes on stage to begin performing. He looks much aged; unlike everyone else, he isn't smiling. As he begins to play, the "camera" shifts back to Maelle's face. She has paint over her, which we've seen just a couple of times before, notably with Clea. Once again, I'm not sure what to make of this. It might mean that Clea herself is steering events: she somehow painted over the incarnate Alicia/Maelle. Or it might mean that Maelle is following in Clea's footsteps, enforcing her will on others. It's an interesting juxtaposition, the happiness of everyone in the scene set against Verso's tightly-wound despair and a possibly sinister twinge from Maelle.

 

 

I do think that the meta-question posed by the ending dilemma is really interesting, though. After beating Renoir and seeing the ending I reloaded and did the remaining content; I had already beaten Clea in the Flying Manor, and after seeing the ending I did the Painted Love fight against (seemingly) the real Aline and Renoir, talked with the real/shadow Clea there, then fought Simon in the Abyss and listened to his journal. These scenes add a lot of context that may have flown over my head if I hadn't already seen the ending, and I suspect there's other earlier content that likewise would scan differently once you understand the overall cosmology. Anyways, the root ethical question has to do with the proper mode of grief (whether to dwell in the past or "move on"), with Maelle joining Aline in arguing for the value in indulging in fantasies that comfort us, while Verso joins Renoir in ending those fantasies. Now that I write this, it feels almost like a reversal of their reactions to the painted Alicia, where Verso wanted her to continue while Maelle allowed her to end.

 

 

Anyways, I thought the story was really intriguing; like many JRPGs, I love that it embraces ambiguity and impressionism, leaving you to chew over the implications of sparse lore instead of fully exposing everything.

 

 

Let's do a random roundup:

• Favorite party member (combat): Maelle
• Favorite party member (non-combat): Sciel
• Favorite mechanic: Foretell
• Favorite weapon: Medalum
• Favorite NPC: Golgra
• Favorite battle arena: Paintress, with a close runner-up for the Abyss
• Favorite biome: Cliffs
• Favorite boss: Paintress
• Hardest boss: Simon. (I had to look up online how to cheese him.)
• Most skipped: Gestral Beaches
• Favorite historical Expedition: The naked guys, both for the VO and their successes. Runner-up is the climbing team.
• Favorite Lumina: Energy Master
• Favorite Nevron: Stalact
• Least Favorite Nevron: That speedy guy with blade hands
• Favorite gimmicky fight: Mimes
• Favorite Petank: Green-smoke guy
• Least Favorite Petank: Parry guy

END SPOILERS

Like I said up top, this was a blast. I haven't done any online reading yet, I'm already curious whether this new studio is planning some sort of follow-up to this game and world or if it will remain a one-off. It definitely stands on its own, but also feels rich enough to support more games within it. It's nicely scratched that Final Fantasy itch but in a way that feels like a loving homage and remix and not like a rip-off. I'm not sure if I'll ever replay this, but if I do I'll be very interested to see how the early story can be more deeply examined through the prism of later revelations. In any case, I'll likely be thinking of this game for some time to come.

 

 

Proof of Life

It occurred to me a month or so ago that I might want to officially note here that I'm no longer on the major social media platforms. I've personally had the experience in the past where I can't find someone and my mind quickly jumps to "Oh no, did they block me?! What did I do?!" I never announced I was leaving or anything, so I wanted to reassure anyone else whose mind might work in the same way that, no, I definitely didn't block you!

I've had a hate/hate relationship with most social media for quite a few years now. It wasn't always that way. Just now I was looking through my archives for social media references, and stumbled across some posts from many years ago. There was a moment when I was a big fan of Facebook: a way to keep in touch with my friends from college after we all moved to different cities! But I soured on Facebook in particular fairly early on, mostly because I couldn't trust them. They aggressively rolled out new changes and features that didn't give you any options or required you to explicitly opt-out, and always in the direction of less privacy and less personalization. There was a period back in... 2007 or so, I think, where I was doing some early mobile software development with the Facebook API, and I was shocked at how much data I could see from other people on it. This was in advance of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and in retrospect I wish I'd complained loudly about how cavalier Facebook was with user data. For a long time I kept Facebook as a site I'd log into once every couple of months and scroll for a couple of minutes: the saving grace was that their algorithm did a decent job at putting important information at the top of my feed (new births, new careers, new moves), and I would just log off again for a few months once I got past that stuff. But after the last election and the announcement about revising their content moderation policy, I was out and felt compelled to vote with my feet. Zuckerberg's fawning obeisance at the White House reassured me that I made the right choice. I opted to straight-up delete my account, not just suspend. Facebook (and the other networks) do have an option to download your data before deletion, which I did; it's hanging out on my hard drive, I kind of doubt I'll do anything with it but if I ever did want to see my old posts or photos they'd be there. I went ahead and deleted my Instagram too to make a complete break with Meta; I don't think I ever posted on Instagram, and hadn't been viewing it much recently, so that wasn't a big move.

I'd deleted my Twitter even earlier. I was never very active on Twitter; I mostly saw it as a replacement for my beloved Google Reader, as many people and organizations I was interested in deprioritized or removed RSS content. I think I made a handful of posts around 2010 or so, including a couple of Game of Thrones memes, but for the most part just followed people I found funny and/or insightful. I should have removed Twitter shortly after the Musk takeover, instead I stuck around until the actual site performance started tanking. As with Facebook I did a full account delete, but I'm sure nobody ever noticed. I'm really glad that I got out when I did, it sounds like things have gotten even more miserable since, with the addition of paying for viral tweets, Grok, and the increasingly violent and unhinged agitation of the owner.

I guess that's it! I still use a couple of social-y apps but don't really post anywhere. I've been enjoying Bluesky as a straight-up Twitter replacement; it feels a lot like Twitter did back in 2010, which is nice. I'm sure at some point it will stop being fun and I'll get rid of that too. I've had a Reddit account for ages, but Reddit doesn't really feel like social media: nobody follows anyone, it's all about community discussions. I rarely post there, when I do it's in very niche subreddits about obscure video games and podcasts. And I still have LinkedIn, which feels a lot like Facebook used to, in that I'll log in once every couple of months to see what people have been up to.

This blog is kind of a social presence for me, I suppose, though I very rarely post personal things on here. If you'd ever like to catch up, please shoot me an email or text! I feel like our species' experiment with social media has largely ended in disaster, I'm curious if we will find an improved path going forward (possibly via the fediverse or some other innovation we haven't heard of yet), or if we'll RETURN to more old-fashioned analog ways of relating.

Expedition 33.2

I just reached Act 3 of Expedition 33, so I suspect I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through the game. I'm still loving it. The storyline continues to intrigue: it's answering a few questions but raising even more. I now feel comfortable with the overall combat system and am mostly enjoying it. Overall it's scratching that Final Fantasy itch that I hadn't realized I'd had.

 

I'm mostly enjoying the game, but I wanted to open up this post by rattling off the things that annoy me about the game, mostly to get them out of the way.

 

 

I wish you could mark up the map. From the start of the game you find high-level areas that you aren't yet ready to visit, but 30 hours later it's hard to remember whether you already did The Cliffside Caves or not. I loved the Elden Ring map, where you could drop a few types of icons yourself at any point; I would use one to indicate "There's a boss here that I'm not powerful enough yet to beat", another for "There's a new area here that I haven't explored yet", etc. As another example, when I went through Esquie's Nest the first time I wasn't able to beat two optional mini-bosses, a Mime and a Petank. I knew I wanted to come back, as these often have particularly valuable rewards, but I had to just keep that outstanding task in memory, there's no way in-game to remind myself.

 

I wish there was a journal or quest log. You get a few random quests, which often are very vague. I know that I've started multiple side-missions, and I know that I've finished very few, and I can't remember where the remaining ones are, who gave me the quest or what they (vaguely) asked for. I think one or two are in the Gestral Village, but there are like a hundred NPCs there spread over a huge and sprawling area. I do kind of like not having the Big Flashing Arrow Telling You Where To Go, but it's annoying to just have a vague idea that someone somewhere needs something. In retrospect I should probably be keeping notes with a pen and paper, but I can't think of the last time I had to do that in an RPG. Elden Ring also didn't have an in-game journal, but it also had a lot fewer quests and only a handful of NPCs in the entire game, so there wasn't the needle-in-a-haystack feeling I'm getting here.

 

 

I like the overworld, but map traversal gets a little annoying. Even with the faster movement from your "mount", it takes a long time to move from one side of the map to the other; combined with not being sure about whether I've already visited a place or need anything from there, I feel like I'm burning time in transit. Sometimes I do stumble across a lost Gestral or find a beach I haven't explored yet, but I do wish there was a true fast travel / waypoint system. (Maybe one will come later!)

 

 

Zone traversal can also be a bit annoying. Once again, I'm comparing it to Elden Ring, which is unfair since Elden Ring has the best movement of any RPG (or probably any game) I've played. But, for example, sometimes you'll be able to scooch along a narrow ledge around a pillar and find something interesting on the other side, and other times you won't be able to move onto the ledge. You won't know until you try. Sometimes you can climb over chunks of rubble to find a path forward, other times an invisible wall will block you. Again, you won't know until you try. This isn't the end of the world, but it's mildly annoying. I also really wish there was a map for zones like there is in the overworld. Some are fine to navigate, but others get really confusing. Even if you do the whole zone in one play session it can be a bit disorienting and hard to remember whether you've already explored a particular path or not. As the game goes on I'm getting a better sense of the map design philosophy so I have more of a spidey-sense for the best way to traverse, so it's less painful than it was, but still not great.

 

 

Pictos are really overwhelming. I do like the "use to unlock" mechanic, that's a neat idea that gets you used to their mechanics, but the sheer number of them are a lot. It also doesn't help that I'm regularly swapping around party members to keep XP gain evenly distributed. I think that if I had a consistent loadout (like Maelle, Lune and Sciel) I could be a bit more tactical, like having one focus on buffing, one on breaking, etc. But over time I've shifted towards having almost the exact same Luminas on everyone: ones that gain AP like Energizing Start, Dodger, Energizing Pain, etc., as well as a few like SOS Shell for survivability. I'm curious if the pace of new Pictos will ever let up, so far it's been relentless.

 

There are also many skills and too few slots. The limitations make sense mechanically with the gamepad, but kind of kills the joy of leveling up since you're unlocking things that don't fit into your loadout. Some things could be useful with micro-management, like Maelle's shield-breaking attack, which is really useful in a few fights and completely useless in all others. Maybe replaying the game at a higher difficulty level would justify the time to micro-manage skill assignments. But with my playstyle, I've just stopped buying new skills once I have a solid rotation and just let my skill points accumulate. (The only minor change so far has been adjusting from low-AP rotations in Act 1 to higher-AP rotations in Act 2.)

MINI SPOILERS 

I have mixed feelings on Monocos' feet mechanic. From a game design perspective, it's pretty brilliant. There's a well-documented tendency towards "stickyness", particularly in RPGs: people tend to stick with their initial party members and rarely incorporate later additions. So requiring Monoco to be in your party in order to unlock new abilities for him is a great way to urge you to get to know him and his unique fighting style. But that ends up meaning you only have two people to pick from to travel with him. For a while he was a bit under-leveled compared to everyone else so it didn't really matter, but now he's at parity with everyone else and will probably soon suprass them. I'll occasionally take him out if I see that we're mostly fighting the same Nevrons over and over again, like in Sirene's hideout.

 

 

That seems like a lot of annoyances, but they are VERY minor and not really diminishing my enjoyment of the game, only occasionally making me wish I was playing Elden Ring instead. Let's move on to the things I like! 

 

The camp is great. It's almost identical to what we had in Dragon Age: Origins and Baldur's Gate 3, and it works as well here. Narratively it doesn't make a ton of sense to have the same geography no matter where you set up camp, but the mechanics and convenience are huge. It's great to have a safe area to chat with companions and other NPCs, deepen relations, do some crafting-type activities, and advance the storyline.

 

 

I'm so glad that there are romances! For whatever reason I wasn't expecting that, and I'm so glad to see them. I was starting to get that vibe a bit in Verso's conversations with Sciel and Lune but wasn't sure if it was real or not. More romances in all of our games please.

 

 

I'm loving the plot and storytelling technique. It's very much "show don't tell"; every once in a while you get exposition from a witness like Verso, but even that may be unreliable. The characters are trying to figure things out, and you as the player are trying to figure out even more things since at the start of the game you don't even know what, like, the Gommage is.

 

 

Your characters can get really strong. Maelle in particular is a beast. It's very satisfying to start consistently churning out 9,999 damage per hit in a multi-hit combo.

 

 

Combat is fun. I didn't like the idea of quick-time events over pure tactical execution, but it's been really enjoyable. Like in Elden Ring, it feels rewarding to learn attack patterns and git gud. Fights can have some fun puzzle aspects too; there's one Petank fight where you need to free-aim shoot a teleporting orb, which sounds annoying but ended up being a blast.

 

 

The gradual unfolding of the Manor is fun. I was kind of thinking you could use it as a crossroads to fast-travel between distant areas; it doesn't work like that, but is still fun to open up more areas of it, always get a couple of nice little upgrades and also get to explore some of it, get some environmental storytelling and build out your mental map.

 

 

The humor feels great. This is another thing that makes me think of Final Fantasy, where you'll have some intense melodramatic scenes, and then immediately follow it up with some goofy moogles and chocobos. Here, Gestrals look and sound and act and speak so silly, which is great comic relief to the darkness.

 

 

Let's talk about plot!

MEGA SPOILERS

In yet another Final Fantasy-esque move, the story so far has felt pretty impressionistic and ambiguous. At the very end of Act 2 we get a bunch of lore dumps. I'm still rearranging my understanding inside my head; here is what I currently think the story is, but I'm almost certainly wrong about at least some (and possibly most) of this:

 

 

The game up until now has taken place in a world-within-a-world, where people think that their reality is real but it's actually contingent on outside forces. (In our own world, this idea has recently gained traction in the "We are living in a simulation" meme, but it's been around for a while, including Berkeley's Idealism, and my favorite example of Neal Stephenson's Anathem.) I'll call the "main" universe "prime". In Prime, there are at least two groups/families, the "painters" and the "writers". We don't know much about the writers yet, but they seem adversarial to the painters. The painters we know are all members of one particular family, including Aline, Renoire, Clea, Verso, and Alicia.

 

 

The Painters each have a Canvas, which they can paint on to create their own world. The things they paint within there have their own reality: they don't know they live inside a painting. They are born, grow, love, live, have families, and die. A Painter can choose to enter their Canvas or that of another, but doing so has risk, as they become bound to the rules of that world.

 

 

There was an incident some years ago where the youngest daughter, Alicia, foolishly made some sort of contact with the Writers. This resulted in a serious fire; Verso was able to save Alicia's life, but she was permanently disfigured in the flames, and Verso himself died.

 

 

This produced a lot of strife within the family, with various people blaming or defending others. This either led to or intensified a major rift between the mother Aline and the father Renoire. In their grief, they took two different responses. Both immersed themselves into Verso's Canvas. Aline wanted to undo her loss and so she painted a replica of Verso into existence. The canvas was already filled with things Verso had created and loved, like the silly Gestrals and the buoyant Esquie and the imaginary friend Monoco.

 

 

Renoire was aghast at Aline's seeming to slip into delusions and fantasy, favoring a harsh, cold reality. Where Aline (The Paintress) sought to create, Renoire sought to erase. The two of them have been locked in a struggle for decades. The main sufferers have been the (imaginary) people of Lumiere: humans who were exiled from The Continent. Renoire has been trying to erase them; Aline has been holding him back, but her power grows steadily weaker, so every year more of the people perish.

 

 

The people of Lumiere haven't understood this situation, though: they believe that the Paintress is responsible for them dying (their "Gommage"), and so they have been undertaking Expeditions to the Continent to try and defeat her, not realizing that doing so would doom themselves.

 

 

After several years of this, Alicia talks with her sister Clea and decides to enter Verso's canvas. I'm not clear yet on exactly why this is; I think she might be trying to get her parents to leave the canvas so they can focus on the threat posed by The Writers, but I'm not sure. Alicia loses control while entering, though: she loses her Painting ability and enters the world as a painted being, a baby named Maelle. She thus begins a life incarnate in this fantasy world.

 

 

In the game til now, Maelle joins the rest of the doomed Expedition 33 as they set out to the Continent. They are met there by Renoire who annihilates most of the expedition. I think this is because Maelle as a latent Painter poses a threat that no other Expedition has before. I'm not clear on this yet, but I believe that the version of Renoire we've seen in the game is a fiction that was painted by Aline, and not the real Renoire, so she's channeling her own warped impressions of him.

 

 

Maelle, Gustave, Luna and Sciel all survive the initial onslaught. Maelle was rescued by the Curator - I think this might actually be Renoire, but I'm not sure. Together they progress through the Continent, finding the evidence of previous expeditions - fictional from the perspective of the Painters, but real to the members of this party. Gustave is killed by Renoire while saving Maelle, and then Verso rescues Maelle. Verso recognized Maelle as Alicia, but shelters her from the knowledge of who she is; the rest of the party gets very suspicious once they learn that Verso is Renoire's son. But Verso isn't really Verso, remember, this is the illusion of her son that Aline painted.

 

 

So, where I'm at now is that Verso and Maelle and the rest of the party succeed in killing the Paintress, but this has broken her protection, so everyone in Lumiere dies, seemingly including Maelle. But even though Maelle is gone, Alicia still exists, coming from a higher plane of reality. And Verso continues to exist as well, I think because he was painted by Aline (whereas I believe the Lumierians were originally painted by the original Verso). I'm expecting and hoping that we'll get to reconnect with Sciel, Lune and Monoco; it definitely looked like the first two at least died in the mass Gommage, I'm curious if there will be some time-travel shenanigans or if Maelle will be able to Paint them back into existence or what.

END SPOILERS

So, that's what I think is going on! It's been a cool story so far, with some head-expanding moments, along with a hefty dose of ambiguity and uncertainty. I'm looking forward to seeing where the game ends up. Since this is the first entry from a new studio, I have no idea at this point if they're hoping to usher in a new franchise or making a one-and-done stand-alone universe, I could see this going either direction.

 

 

I'll probably be pounding away at this for a while longer. I'm feeling very compelled to play, mostly because it is fun, but also because Hades 2 just came out and I really want to try it!