Tag: Clair Obscur Expedition 33

Talking about the end of days, er, games

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I want to talk about the endings of four games I’ve recently played–more specifically, the last act of each game. Those games are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive); Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla Games); The Roottrees Are Dead (Evil Trout Inc.); and Paradise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works).

I have finished all of these games (along with several short detective games), and I have noticed a trend in the games I’ve played and finished. Most of them have endings that are way more melodramatic or ill-suited for the rest of the game.

The one exception was The Roottrees Are Dead (Evil Trout Inc.), and that’s because it didn’t really have a story, per se. I mean, there was a ton of information to unearth, but there was no mystery as to what happened. I just researched all the different members of the Roottree family in order to piece together their family tree (heh).

Funnily enough, as much as I thoroughly enjoyed that game, I dropped the bonus game like a hot potato about half an hour into it. Why? Because I was burned out on it. This is MY issue in that I get obsessed with a game and gorge myself on it until I feel ill. That’s what I did with The Roottrees Are Dead, and while I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game, I did not want to play more of it. I may pick it upa again later–or not. Either way, it was a great experience, and I’m glad I had it.

I put it in this post because I wanted to provide an example of a game that ended strong. Granted, it was easier for them to do it because they just had to keep on doing what they’ve been doing the whole game. I will say that I was blown away with how intricate and elaborate the family tree was. It went DEEP, and I was inordinately proud that I figured out the top secret bit all on my own.

I was so disappointed by the last act of Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla Games), and I had a hard time finishing it. I won’t spoil anything about it, but it went from being a thoughtful and engaging point-and-click to a clumsy, heavy-handed, dreadful stealth/’combat’ that made me almost quit early. There was no reason for it, and I had a strong hunch that the devs just really wanted an extended combat section in their game for whatever reason. Maybe they wanted to show they had the chops, but it was a huge misstep in my opinion. I was hating the game by the time I finished it, which was not what I was expecting or hoping for from the game.

Comparing two disparate games, part three

Posted on July 12, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’m back to muse more about Paradise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). In the last post, I was focused on the stories of each game and how I felt about them.

Oh, by the way, I bought a Pinky plushie. I was so enamored by her, I wanted to see if there was a plushie of her. I didn’t expect to find one, but much to my surprise, I saw this. I also bought the fun-in-the-sun accessory pack, so I can dress her up for the summer.

The story in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is almost universally critically acclaimed. I have heard people call it a masterpiece and gush about how evocative it is. I can understand why people thinkt it’s terrific, but it left me cold. By the end of the second act, I was privately calling it hot trash. The third act did nothing to change my mind. In fact, it made me just dislike the story even more.

It’s not something I talk about much because I don’t want to yuck other people’s yum, nor do I want to get into it. I’m comfortable with my opinion, but it’s not somethnig I feel the need to defend. If other people were moved by it, more power to them. It just felt very pompous and overblown to me, not to mention needlessly convoluted and not as smart as it thought it was.

I have been thinking why I am more forgiving of the story in Promise Mascot Agency, and it comes down to why I don’t like movies because they’re not realistic, and yet, I love musicals–which are anything but.

When Moulin Rouge came out, I loved the soundtrack. LOVED it. I saw the movie, and recommended it to my bestie, K. She just could not get over how I, someone who griped about the slightest non-realistic thing in a movie could be so enthusiastic about musicals. I told her it was because they weren’t trying to be realistic so I didn’t have to pretend they were or try to make them realistic in my brain. Plus, the showtunes were always bangers.

The story in Promise Mascot Agency is charming and quirky. The characters are seriously flawed in a way they aren’t in Clair Obscur: Expediiton 33. In the latter, the characters in the party are all noble to a certain extent. Some have questionable motives, yes, but overall, they are definitely the Heroes of the story. And the villains are similarly drawn. The fact that all the voice actors are stellar really papered over the problems with the characters.

Comparing two very different games–and the end of things, part two

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I finished Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) today–and 100%ed it. By the end of the game, I only had three achievements to get (not that big of an accomplishment as most achievements had nearly half the players or more accomplishing them), so I decided to get them–naturally. One of them inluded the plane, and, ugh. Just ugh. Oh, I got the item I mentioned in yesterday’s post–the one that I had to fly waaaaaaay up to the top of a building to get. After fucking it up for an hour yesterday (probably more like a half hour, but it felt much longer than that), I had another go at it today. It took me maybe five minutes and seven to ten tries to get it. Which is nothing for me!

I was mistaken in thinking I was at the very end of the game yesterday. I was not, and the game went from being open world exploration to being very much not that. I don’t want to talk to much about that because I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say that I liked the ending in general. I do think it was a bit too sappy for my taste, but at least it was coherent, unlike Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive).

I’ve tried to bite my tongue when it comes to the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 because I do not want to yuck other people’s yum. It has meant so much to so many people on an emotional level, and I never want to take that away.

But.

But…

But……

The story is hot trash.

That is my honest-to-god opinion of the story. I thought it started out strong with the prologue, albeit very melodramatic, and then it just steadily went downhill from there. At the end of the first act, I was shocked and gutted by the twist just as everyone else was. But the more I thought about it, the emptier I felt. It was a shocking twist, yes, but it felt very manipulative at the end of the day.

By the way, I included the voice cast reveal trailer yesterday because I was goin to talk about a few notable names, and then I never got past the fact that the voice of Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza series, Takaya Kuroda) was the voice of Michi, the playable character in this game. I’m going to include the Japanese version of the trailer today, and I’ll finally mention two other names that were specifically released.

One was Swery65, a well-known video game director who has a distinctive bonkers style. The other is Shuhei Yoshida, the fromer president of Sony. Both of them play NPCs whom I really liked, but I don’t want to spoil it here.

Back to the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 compared to the story of Promise Mascot Agency–and eveyrthing else in comparison.

I want indie games to continue flying towards the sun

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

In the last few months, I have played several indie games that have left a mark on me. For good and bad reasons in not-so-equal measures. I want to talk about two of them because they have thrilled and frustrated me while playing them, but I appreciate both of them for reaching for the sun. I will probably compare them as I did a bit in the last post because they both have pretty big things that annoy the fuck out of me.

They are, of course, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) and Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works). The reason I compare them is because they are both made by indie devs and the games weren’t expected to be hits. One was and one wasn’t. While I’m not going to delve into that very much, I do find it very interesting.

I wrote obsessively about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as I played it because I could not stop playing it. I was not enjoying it as I played, but I could not stop. I hated the combat, and I found the story to be, to put it kindly, hot trash. It looked gorgeous, yes, but the levels were terrible as I constantly got lost, and I was often worn-out at the end of a session. In the beginning, I could only play an hour at a time before tapping out. That lengthened later on, but it took some time to get to that point.

I was the odd person out. Everyone else was gushing about how great the game was whereas I was definitely underwhelmed. I don’t know why I kept playing it, but I could not stop. I ended up finishing the game, and I gave it a solid 7, and I stand by that. You can go back and read the dozen posts I wrote about it if you really want to know how I feel about the game.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t going to be my game of the year. Still isn’t.

The other game, I’m still playing. It’s the Promise Mascot Agency, and today is the first day since I started playing it that I probably won’t play it. When I think of playing it, I have a small internal sigh.

I’m also playing Dark Souls Remastered in order to get Big Hat Logan’s big hat. I rarely get it because his quest is so involved and takes 180,000 souls (yes, I looked it up). You have to save him in Sen’s Fortress, then find him at Firelink Shrine. I think you may have to buy all his spells here in order to get him to move, or maybe it’s event-dependent. At any rate, at some point, he moves to The Duke’s Archives, and he’s locked up. You have to get captured by Seath, get thrown in jail, go down to get the key to get out, and then make it to the second The Duke Archive’s bonfire.

Then, you have to get the key to free BHL, and then go back to where he’s locked up. I hate The Duke’s Archives, and it’s been a while since I’ve done it. I also don’t have much health because I’m running an intelligence build, which means I’m very squishy. Then, you have to talk to BHL in The Duke’s Archives and buy all his spells. I am up to this point of his quest and thought I could just trigger the next step by buying all his spells, but, no. I have to beat Seath first.

Back to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Promise Mascot Agency. With both of them, the more I play, the more my interest wanes. It’s slow and barely noticeable with PMA, but it’s still there. It hit me in the face when the game introduced a new mechanic and instead of me being delighted by it, I felt weighted down and burdened.

This is my point. Finally. With both of these games, they throw so many things at you. Everything but the kitchen sink. Some of them work, and some of them don’t. In PMA in particular, I think they could have cut half the mini-games/side quests, and the game would not have suffered for it. In fact, I think it might have been better because then each mini-game/side quest would actually mean something. Now, as I mentioned in the last post, many of them feel very fetch-quest-y.

If it were up to me., I would cut out the crane game, much of the driving or at least make it decent from the beginning, and the goddamn fucking artificial timer. I must say, including the artificial time pressure slashes at least one whole point from the game, if not more. This is the one I can’t get over and the one that makkes me sigh when I think about booting up the game.

Honestly, it feels so shitty and ill-conceived. The game devs created a world I really wanted to explore, but just when I got into the groove of it–I had to go find an ATM and send money to keep my yakuza mother from being killed. If I don’t, she dies and I get kicked back to my previous save. The consequence of this is that I’m constantly saving, and I do micro-saves after picking up anything important or doing a bunch of chores.

In addition, if the screen is fairly dark red (the indication that mother is about to be killed), I abandoned the meticulous exploring I’m doing in order to find an ATM or a phone booth so I can fast-travel back to the hotel where there’s an ATM. I try to note the important things I’ve missed, but because of my horrendous lack of direction and the fact that the map doesn’t note the side quests I need to do, I can’t find them again.

I just thought of something I could do. I could mark the map where there’s a cluster of activity. I can place one waypoint on the map at a time, which feels very limited. I hate having to pass by a bunch of stuff, especially the ones that give me truck upgrades.

I honestly don’t understand why it’s there. As I said, I can imagine the devs wanted to give the game a sense of urgency, but that’s at odds with how much there is to explore. I think the game would be much better without it, and it’s the one big reason I’m not enjoying the game. It’s hard to get into the flow of things knowing that every five or ten minutes, I’ll have to stop and find an ATM. I absolutely hate it and wish there was a way to disable it. Hm. Nope. There’s no mod to disable having to send money. I didn’t think there would be, but I looked it up just in case.

I don’t normally like mods, but I hate this mechanic so much, I would seriously consider a mod if there was one. I cannot emphasize enough how much it hampers my enjoyment to have to stop every ten minutes to send money. The game is not immersive in the first place because it’s so wacky, but when I’m in the groove, I can feel like I’m flowing.

Until I have to send the damn money.

Here’s the thing, though. With both the games, if I had the choice between taking them as is and not having them at all, I would instantly choose the former. Both of them are quite frustrating to me for different reasons, but they are also both games I’m very glad I’ve played. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is more streamline and mainstream-friendly, whereas Promise Mascot Agency is much more niche and downright weird. It’s not for everyone, and that’s ok!

I have played a half-dozen indie games in the last few months, and while I did not get on with all of them, I appreciated each one for the fresh new take it had. They have all stood out in my mind for different reasons, and I am pleased by the state of indie games right now.

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