Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ≼| OT |≽ La Belle Fantaisie

I wonder if I would play this if not for Game Pass, the opening hour is completely different than the game proper, it's actually kind of weak when you walk around in the city. I feel there is a good chance I would play 30 minutes and refund it. But Game Pass stops me from stressing about refunds and I played enough to see it's true nature.
 
Found a picto called Glass Cannon, give and take 25% more damage. There are some crazy synergies I've been experimenting with, have my entire party Inverted for one and then each individual kitted out for max DMG, good times.
 
Haven't been this hooked since Nier Automata!

Well done you crazy French devs, you knocked it out the park! This is glorious, and so is the soundtrack!

cqM1BFw.gif


Awsome stuff.
 
Due to have a 2 year old daughter my game time is fairly limited (more so on weekends). So I've been playing 1-2 hours a day after she goes to sleep. I keep hearing about the end of Act 1 but I haven't gotten there yet, still trying to reach the gestral village. Gestrals seems something all the characters from Lumiere knows about, is there anywhere that explains the lore behind them, or will that happen at the village?
 
PSA for people with 50-series cards
Overriding anisotropic filtering via NVCP will cause an odd red/purple tint in scenes with low lighting or in the character menu. To resolve, simply adjust the setting to be application controlled:

stcKVtT.png


Here's what the bug looks like:


As an aside, I'd recommend folks with Nvidia cards should give RTX HDR a try. Here is some guidance on calibrating according to your display:
 
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Lorien Testard | Composing the Music of Expedition 33

A Life-Changing Collaboration

For a long time, I composed video game music in my free time, writing a new track each week in different styles to refine my skills. At the time, I was a guitar teacher, but once a week, I would compose and upload my work to SoundCloud. After a year, I had about fifty tracks online.

One day, I shared one of my compositions on an indie video game forum. That's when Guillaume Broche, Game Director at Sandfall Interactive, discovered my work. He reached out and asked if I would compose the soundtrack for his game.

That moment marked the beginning of a beautiful collaboration—one that changed my life.
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I love all musical instruments, and for every scene and every character, I carefully select the ones that best reflect their personalities.

For example, in the themes that have already been released:

Gustave: The cello in his theme expresses what I feel for his character. I wanted to capture the love he carries for Lumière, despite the ever-present threat of the Paintress.

Monoco: I chose the saxophone as the lead melodic instrument to reflect the madness, energy, and liveliness of the Gestrals.
Click to expand...
 
This game kicks so much ass. Amazing how it came out of nowhere from a small studio and brand new IP and it's just an absolute home run.

Doing an anime/JRPG ass story premise, but then just getting right into it without insane amounts of filler, it makes it feel completely unique. In every way it's basically a perfect prologue to get you invested in the game and story. And then just throws you right into it. All while having likable, interesting characters, an amazing, fresh combat system, and a killer ost.

Can't believe it's real and actually this good.
 
I'm a little oldschool, back in my days we didn't have such complex graphics settings, so what does Film Grain, Chromatic Abberration, Vignette and Motion Blur do, if I can't even see any difference in the screenshots I made on PS5?

BnvOfBN.jpeg
mLwOBYE.jpeg


One is with Fiml Grain, Chromatic Aberration and Vignette activated, the other one isn't. I literally can't ser any difference when playing the game. The only thing that makes a difference is Motion Blur, but I turned that, at least in my logic, defeats the purpose of a high framerate.

Anyone care to elaborate what the best settings are for this game?
 
vodka-bull said:
I'm a little oldschool, back in my days we didn't have such complex graphics settings, so what does Film Grain, Chromatic Abberration, Vignette and Motion Blur do, if I can't even see any difference in the screenshots I made on PS5?

BnvOfBN.jpeg
mLwOBYE.jpeg


One is with Fiml Grain, Chromatic Aberration and Vignette activated, the other one isn't. I literally can't ser any difference when playing the game. The only thing that makes a difference is Motion Blur, but I turned that, at least in my logic, defeats the purpose of a high framerate.

Anyone care to elaborate what the best settings are for this game?
Click to expand...


Chromatic Aberration is very easy to notice on the edges of the screen, look at the grass blades on Gustav's left.

It basically adds color distortion like recordings on an old VHS tape. I do not know why so many developers add it, it only works in a very specific type of game, i-e horror themed stuff, in most other cases it distorts image quality.
 
Jesus that twist at the end of act 1, I was not ready for that. It's incredible how polished and high quality this game feels and how the devs weren't afraid of making bold moves.
 
Gotta say, Games like THIS are the reason I bought current gen consoles. Every time I play I'm overjoyed by the aesthetics and music. When the first showing of this came out, the only thing I wasn't sold on where the characters, but now that I'm playing it, I really like them all so far.

Playing now on GP, but I absolutely will buy this again on PS5, and if it ever comes out on Switch 2 I'll also get that version. It's. just. that. awesome.
 
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I have given this game a bit of time. It's weird.

Not bad, very different...a bit janky, I don't like the singing music...I know, everyone else loves it. Whatever.

It is interesting, actually interesting (for now). I would pay the $35 price range for it. It reminds me of Greedfall, which I also liked, was weird, interesting and janky....but really fell off as the story progressed.
 
RavageX said:
I have given this game a bit of time. It's weird.

Not bad, very different...a bit janky, I don't like the singing music...I know, everyone else loves it. Whatever.

It is interesting, actually interesting (for now). I would pay the $35 price range for it. It reminds me of Greedfall, which I also liked, was weird, interesting and janky....but really fell off as the story progressed.
Click to expand...

Crazy I never mentioned it really but I also thought this game reminded me of Greedfall. I enjoyed Greedfall the whole time but yes towards the end I was more just bored cause I was doing everything.
 
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Buggy Loop said:
That's my question

I just started the game to see performance right off the bat but didn't see shader compilation nor widespread complaints for stutter fest.

Thus the WTF reaction.

Unreal engine 5 without widespread stutters? WTF is going on?
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I had crazy stutter from shader compilation during the first few minutes of (real-time) cutscenes. It eventually worked itself out and I haven't had much stutter since.
 
I am enjoying the game a bit more after getting some party members. Still, I'm not quite on board the hype train.

I am thinking of switching to French audio because the random French interjections in English are super cringe.

I'm really surprised people are enjoying the story in this game. The drama is thick, nonstop, and unearned. I didn't realize you could actually be more melodramatic than a real JRPG. It makes FFXVI's cutscenes feel grounded and realistic by comparison.
 
vodka-bull said:
I'm a little oldschool, back in my days we didn't have such complex graphics settings, so what does Film Grain, Chromatic Abberration, Vignette and Motion Blur do, if I can't even see any difference in the screenshots I made on PS5?

One is with Fiml Grain, Chromatic Aberration and Vignette activated, the other one isn't. I literally can't ser any difference when playing the game. The only thing that makes a difference is Motion Blur, but I turned that, at least in my logic, defeats the purpose of a high framerate.

Anyone care to elaborate what the best settings are for this game?
Click to expand...

The only purpose of chromatic aberration in any game is to be disabled in the options menus lol

Seriously though, here's an exaggerated look at what Chromatic Aberration does
images

It's usually not this extreme, but you get the point. IMO it always looks bad and I don't get why devs love it.

Film Grain is
film-grain-1.png

This sort of noise added to the image to simulate the look of stuff shot on film.

Vignette ususally darkens the edges of the image to a certain extent
360_F_529915870_CzmwoubobxJq5wnHXpZpO9wosjhM14sX.jpg

It's pretty light in this game though.

Motion blur basically adds blur to the image when the camera moves. It can help reduce judder and make the motion look smoother, specially in low framerate content (like 30fps quality modes). Though I mostly disable in games running at or above 60fps.
 
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decisions said:
Is there anyone who didn't like the combat at first but think it got better as the game progressed?
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I liked it to begin with, but liked it even more as it went on. Does that count? I wasn't engaging with parry much at all to start. By now, I used Dodge to learn enemy attack rhythms and can parry pretty reliably.

Plus, the text menus in battle are so snappy that I have my go-to moves and order of execution by muscle memory, and I'm hardly reading the menus. It's darn close to being real-time, in a way.
 
RavageX said:
I have given this game a bit of time. It's weird.

Not bad, very different...a bit janky, I don't like the singing music...I know, everyone else loves it. Whatever.

It is interesting, actually interesting (for now). I would pay the $35 price range for it. It reminds me of Greedfall, which I also liked, was weird, interesting and janky....but really fell off as the story progressed.
Click to expand...
Some of the music is absolutely incredible. I love the dance tracks and the jazzy interludes.

The wailing stuff is a bit naff, but it's very JRPG so I get why people like it,
 
adamsapple said:
Console folks, are most of you playing in Quality or Performance mode?

Qualit mode, with all the vignetting and stuff disabled, looks pretty soft as is.
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Performance.
I switched around between the two modes a bunch of times during the first couple of hours, and while performance mode does look notoriously softer (and the hair looks bad), the downgrade just isn't big enough for me to give up the smoothness of it, specially in a game where timing is super important. And at least the performance seems pretty solid for me so far (on base Ps5).
 
Fbh said:
Performance.
I switched around between the two modes a bunch of times during the first couple of hours, and while performance mode does look notoriously softer (and the hair looks bad), the downgrade just isn't big enough for me to give up the smoothness of it, specially in a game where timing is super important. And at least the performance seems pretty solid for me so far (on base Ps5).
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Yeah that's my main concern. Performance looks extra soft and things like shadow and hair flickering are a lot more obvious.

But it's a game that needs precise timing, where the double frame rate will be much more relevant.
 
kindaGoth said:
I also just realized there's a performance mode. Wow, that felt good to switch to.
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Yeah if you like major ghosting and pixel break up.
The game seriously needs every pixel it can get.
And I get it, you need the response time to evade and parry.
But I haven't missed one yet, so it's not a problem.
Not sure what the PS5 Pro enhancements but I dread to think what this looks like on a standard PS5.
 
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I play it on quality on the PS5 pro. My PC can run this one better but I really dont wanna be glued to my desk for 50 hours or however long this will take me lol.

Just got past
old lumiere
and it seems things are picking up now.
 
Act 1 start. what the fuck..
aww the fuck?! I was expecting a slow boat ride, and probably my crew dying one by one as the game progresses, not just throw me in killing off everyone else
 
Bought for my Series X. Playing on performance mode, and the game is pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself. My first turn based game.
 
TGO said:
Yeah if you like major ghosting and pixel break up.
The game seriously needs every pixel it can get.
And I get it, you need the response time to evade and parry.
But I haven't missed one yet, so it not a problem.
Not sure what the PS5 Pro enhancements but I dread to think what this looks like on a standard PS5.
Click to expand...
Been playing performance mode on PS5 the whole time, game looks great.
 
Fbh said:
The only purpose of chromatic aberration in any game is to be disabled in the options menus lol

Seriously though, here's an exaggerated look at what Chromatic Aberration does
images

It's usually not this extreme, but you get the point. IMO it always looks bad and I don't get why devs love it.

Film Grain is
film-grain-1.png

This sort of noise added to the image to simulate the look of stuff shot on film.

Vignette ususally darkens the edges of the image to a certain extent
360_F_529915870_CzmwoubobxJq5wnHXpZpO9wosjhM14sX.jpg

It's pretty light in this game though.

Motion blur basically adds blur to the image when the camera moves. It can help reduce judder and make the motion look smoother, specially in low framerate content (like 30fps quality modes). Though I mostly disable in games running at or above 60fps.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation, I knew what it theoretically is, I just can't see it having any effects on the gameplay. I know what it does in still images though, it's just so subtle and all these settings add for my eyes is a completely unnecessary layer of blur. I own 77" OLED 4k, I don't know why people like to add all these blurry settings to their image, but for me personally I'd rather have a clean picture in performance mode.
 
TGO said:
Yeah if you like major ghosting and pixel break up.
The game seriously needs every pixel it can get.
And I get it, you need the response time to evade and parry.
But I haven't missed one yet, so it not a problem.
Not sure what the PS5 Pro enhancements but I dread to think what this looks like on a standard PS5.
Click to expand...
Tbf i m playing on PS5 since i bought there to suport dev ( should have bought on steam but i had some spare cash on my PSN ), there inst much ghosting on performance mode on PS5 OG, for sure IQ take a hit, but framerate is rock solid at 60fps and you are right since framepacing is great in this game you can parry and dodge without a problem on quality mode.
 
kpopSuperstar said:
I wonder if I would play this if not for Game Pass, the opening hour is completely different than the game proper, it's actually kind of weak when you walk around in the city. I feel there is a good chance I would play 30 minutes and refund it. But Game Pass stops me from stressing about refunds and I played enough to see it's true nature.
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I don't have Gamepass (and never will) and I picked this up without playing turn based games before. It's quickly become one of my fav games of all time. I don't need a rental service to help me decide whether a game is worth it or not. Demo's used to suffice in that area and they were for FREE!
 
vodka-bull said:
Thanks for the explanation, I knew what it theoretically is, I just can't see it having any effects on the gameplay. I know what it does in still images though, it's just so subtle and all these settings add for my eyes is a completely unnecessary layer of blur. I own 77" OLED 4k, I don't know why people like to add all these blurry settings to their image, but for me personally I'd rather have a clean picture in performance mode.
Click to expand...

Yeah same here.
The first thing I do in most games is go into the setting menu and disable most of this stuff.
There are some games that can look quite nice with the heavy post processing, like The Order 1886 or Hellblade 2. But generally things like Chromatic Aberration and film grain look bad IMO.

Depth of field is another one that can actually eat up resources and doesn't look very good either IMO.
In fact in this game on Ps5 the overworld map has DoF on in graphics mode and disabled in performance mode, and I actually think it's the one part of the game that looks significantly better in performance mode because of this.
 
This game has optional dungeons just by exploring the map. Alongside some endgame ones that are red in color that you aren't ready for unless your dodge/parry game is perfect. Game keeps on giving.
 
Played a little bit more.
  • Dodge/parry system sucks. No good indication of when to do it.
  • QTEs during attacks suck.
  • Getting big "generic JRPG from 2009" vibes so far.
  • Camera is weird. The FOV feels wrong for some reason.
EDIT: Uninstalled after about two hours. Combat is just garbage.
 
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MagiusNecros said:
This game has optional dungeons just by exploring the map. Alongside some endgame ones that are red in color that you aren't ready for unless your dodge/parry game is perfect. Game keeps on giving.
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Yea I can see why the playtime nearly doubles if you do all content because I've find quite a bit of post game dungeons.
 
Pasta la Vista said:
Been playing performance mode on PS5 the whole time, game looks great.
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Tbh it isn't that bad, it just slightly worse then the Quality Mode
Although people tend to say performance mode is "better in motion" which is probably my biggest gripe because that's not always the case.
It looks a blurry vaseline mess in motion if the resolution is lower or upscaled.
If the resolution was the same or higher it would be a different story.
But this isn't the case here, but it's not bad.
Lokaum D+ said:
Tbf i m playing on PS5 since i bought there to suport dev ( should have bought on steam but i had some spare cash on my PSN ), there inst much ghosting on performance mode on PS5 OG, for sure IQ take a hit, but framerate is rock solid at 60fps and you are right since framepacing is great in this game you can parry and dodge without a problem on quality mode.
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I honestly don't think there's much improvement on Pro, so if it looks similar then it's better then most.
Although this game can go from Sharp(main gameplay) to blurry (world map) and that's on Pro Quality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still a nice looking game though.
 
Not only does this have the best writing I´ve seen in a game in...forever, no this one`s soundtrack will definitely get a place on my playlist right besides the one from Nier Automata.
Thank god these people left Ubisoft and made this.
Happy Hair GIF by Afound


Easily my GOTY so far. The technological trainwreck that MH turned out to be got nothing on this.
 
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I love how unique all the characters play differently. I've just got the 4th character. I'm already invested in the first 3 mechanically though so not sure if I want to use. Although Gustav seems the most basic so maybe get rid of him.

Can anyone give me a figure for how long this game is? I hope it's 50 hours, the longer the better .
 
I love how this game succeed to mix heavy moment and funny/lighthearted moment so well.

Just met Esquie and François and I was gueninely laughing with their interactions.
It never falls into the oversillyness old school JRPG were doing sometimes.
 
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