Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025)

Yeah, I think what we should give the audience for our little cold open today is that I'm here with Sun Sanders. Yeah, good to be here with you. Yeah, what you've been what you've been up to because the show has been gone for a while and you know, sort of the last time it was in in a major way, the sort of finale. You were a big part of that in this like final re ranking. So it was like crack. It was an insane. Yeah, yeah, that was what was like a four or five hour recording. We were basically, I don't know, I mean, I had a lot of fun every time we did that. But also it was it was weird because we would do that and we would all be separate. We'd be doing it all remote, which just felt like just being on a discord call for five hours is kind of it's pretty dumb. It also felt diabolical because we all came up with our own ways to accomplish the episode. And I loved it because you came in after we would trash talk in the discord saying how we're going to like go at it in one way. Yeah, and you'd be like, oh, this is not the game. I like this is not how we should do it. But okay, let's just start it. And then we started playing your game. Yeah, yeah. I was like, what are you doing? And no, none of us that were in kuhuts behind the scene. Yeah, yeah, we just all naturally were like, no, we should listen and actually do the thing. Yeah. And then it still went off the rails. Absolutely. What was the, I forget the game that I put on there. Oh, Yoshi's cookie. I still stand by it. It's like, it's like right. It's like 103 now. That's where it belongs. I would still if I had that on my iPad, I'd play it every day. Yeah, I bet you would like that game. Are we going to talk about Yoshi's cookie today? No, we're not talking about Yoshi's cookie. I don't want to talk about Yoshi's cookie. No, but you did ask me what I've been up to. Yeah, yeah. Been a busy bee. Everybody misses you. They all miss you. They all tell me all the time that they miss you. That means a lot. I do love this community. Our community is one of the best communities. I'm so jealous of you. How you get to be in this community. Yeah, here's the thing. When you're and this is I've told people this before, but this is the thing about doing a podcast. No matter what, no matter what I do, I can never be the favorite. There's no way. I'm there. I'm here every week. They got me all the time. It's like, who cares, dude? We've had you. We've had we have you all the time. Yeah, somebody like you. You can come by and it's a treat. You're literally a treat. You know, I'm not a treat. I'm a cookie. And welcome back to the old gamers, Almanac. I'm your host, Hunter Donaldson. We are taking a flirty look at 30 years ago and today. And I'm joined by son Sanders. Hello. Hello. I'm back. I'm back. I'm here in your feet and in your ears. Wow. One of the Sanders brothers here again. We got to find in this season that we're doing before the end of the year. We got to find a game that that me and you and EJ can, can, can. I already have it. What do you got? NHL 14. It was the last good NHL game. That's not okay. Well, the theme, the theme is it must be from 2025 or 1995. Those are your two year options. Okay. There isn't an NHL game that that you could do, but we were you sort of already did. Yeah, we did 1994 1995. And the new game is probably absolute garbage. Actually, we could just play. We could just get it. Just play as the PWL. Yeah, that does. Yeah, because they have that. That sounds fun. Also, like I just missed the thing we used to do where everybody was locked into their position. It was the best. It was the best way to play electronic hockey. What a fun, like freshmen sophomore year of college. I mean, now then we would all find ourselves. We're like, yes, we want to just play hockey. Yeah, go into Hunter's room and just play as the conucks and I'll play Dean. It was solid. There's something to be said for really dumb multiplayer modes that kind of don't they don't have a whole lot. I don't think that there was a whole lot of thought put into that besides that they just gave you the option. You know what I mean? Like how often did they play test the fact that you could all play one position? I don't think they did a whole lot of that. I mean, I will say a lot of NHL players like play that game like after games. Like that's what they they like grow out together and just like play that. I think it's crazy that they choose that that they could play or anything. They could be playing anything. Yeah, she's cookie. They could play basketball. Yeah, ball, but you can't play ball, but with your friends. They want to play together. They're a big group. You know, we're talking about friends. I mean, I just felt this night. I felt this in my bones. Yeah, you know, they could be playing games with their friends or they could be playing a game about people that are friends. You're getting us into the game. I'm walking us right into the door. It's your choice to open it. Oh my God. Kingdom Hearts. Open that door with Mickey. Speak in French. Well, yeah, that's great because today we are talking about the beloved beloved indie hit of 2025. Claire obscure. Expedition. 33 33. I wanted to I I did this in the car, but I now my brain as soon as I start speaking in front of a mic, I forget the words. I even said it to myself several times before I walked to your door. I wanted to say the French word for 33. But now it's gone. And so that's all you guys know is that it was going to happen. I wanted to. Oh, but you sweet international listeners, but on the captions. Yes, however you're experiencing this, and maybe you'll hear me speak it in 30 different. Yeah, that's how captions work is that it overdubs. The AI, it just dubs us now. Oh yeah, wrong. My voice wrong. Is that what is name is rock? But because grog that's a different guy. Oh, wrong. They're kind of the same. They're both idiots. Oh, and they both claim to be patriots. Take that baby girl. Oh, you're talking about adult drunk, though. Yeah. And I'm talking about baby girl. Oh, you're talking about good drunk. Yeah. Yeah. That's good girl. I don't want to talk about baby girl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Claire obscure expedition 33 is a game made by sandfall entertainment, which is a little indie studio that they've turned out a whopper of a hit. And they are all obviously fans of specifically final fantasies seven, eight, which they name drop a lot. Yeah. And nine, okay. There's probably a little bit of 10 in there, too. There are fans of the, I would say classic. My favorite era of final fantasy because the good era. Yeah. The best era. Yeah. Jen Xers, you know, go eat my ass. Okay. You don't have our asses. Yeah. So even though we've said that we've played final fantasies four, five and six on this podcast. We love them, but that's not our shit. Our shit is seven, eight and nine. And this game has got that stuff, especially eight. There's so much eight in this. It's messy. It's so yes. It's messy like eight. It's very messy like eight. Where do we even start? I feel like. Oh, I actually had this. I had the same question. Where do we start? Do we start mechanics or do we just start story? Well, the mechanics could be a whole episode. Yeah. So could the story. I think we should very consciously try to get people to play this game because it's a big hit. Right. So lots of people are talking about it. I know there's going to be a lot of people that have not played it that are out there. I know this community, a lot of the people in this community have played it. But I want to try and talk you into playing it. So I want to give you a little story teaser, nothing too deep. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the mechanics and then we're going to tell you to go away and we'll do spoilers. How about that? That seems like the right way. That sounds good. So Claire obscure is set in a fictional universe that is remarkably similar to France. It has a very a very French vibe. And it's a sort of post apocalyptic situation that our characters find themselves in. They are experiencing something called the Gramage and they are experiencing this because there is this evil entity called the Patrice. Every year the Patrice counts down her number that she has carved into the side of this whatever. The monolith and every year it takes down if you are the age that the number is you Gramage and you disappear. You turn into rose petals. You turn into rose petals that you float French. You float off into nothing. I want to edit where they turn into baguettes. Yes. This game is very French and they are not shy about it either. They're very popular costume that you'll see it conventions that people are. Oh, you missed it at Jen con. There were all these groups dressed as the baguette costumes where they're wearing their little French. They have their little their little. What's the phrase and the they have the baguette and the little sash and I'm very jealous and they all have like nice pants. Yes. Good slacks. They're wearing like in them and they're dressed like mimes basically. It's so good. So the Gramage is happening every time there is a Gramage every time the countdown ticks down one year. They have a party. They will sort of they have a party and then they send out an expedition and with the understanding being that everyone that goes on this expedition is likely doomed to death. But the whole point is you're going to go out into this world, which is understood to the citizens of Lumiere, which is the city that you started that the world is ruined and dangerous. It's full of these evil creatures called necrons and other evil entities and also some not so evil entities. And that they're going to go out into this world. They're going to explore. They're going to find a way to stop the Pinterest and stop the Gramage. And you play as the expedition 33 because at the beginning of the game. The Pinterest has the number 34 in the monolith. She scratches it down to 33 and your characters who I guess are 32 years old. Is that how it would work? Yes. They're 32. They're 32. Most of them. They're not all 32. Yes. One one of them is actually younger, which you could choose to do. But most of the characters try to live. It seems like they're full lives. They're full lifespan and then go on an expedition when it's basically their time. Essentially. And the characters go on their expedition and they get into many adventures. I think that's about all I want to say as far as story framing goes. Mechanically, the game is a turn-based combat system with quick time QTEs and button prompts that are kind of baked into the turn-based combat. Very similar to Super Mario RPG, which we actually talked about on this podcast quite recently. Or if you're very cool, legend of Dragoon. Yes. One of my favorites of all time. Very, very good one. And the thing is, I think it's the best execution of this type of turn-based combat system. It's very, very good. This game made me believe that Square Enix is a bunch of idiots that could be making this. They missed this and they could be making me Legend of Dragoon again. Yeah, they could be. It really feels like they I love making connections to older games with Clarebs gear because it feels like this French team. They sort of scaled back down the JRPG mountain. And they were looking at the paths unchosen and they were like, you know, we should just do this. And it's brilliant in that way. Mechanically, it's like it's so funny because I feel like we talked about Final Fantasy VII so much. And we spoke highly of it. You know, mechanically, it's like, oh, this is a fresh take. Yeah, yeah. We like what they're doing. I never wanted to retract a statement ever as much as I did when I, as soon as I started playing this game, I was like, oh, this is how Final Fantasy remake should have been. Oh, for sure. For sure. Like it would have felt so good. You could still have the same epic vibes. And so mechanically, also while you're out in the world, you see the monsters. It's not like random. You know, it's not when you run around. They just pop up. You can go choose to encounter them. You can choose to avoid them. Sure. And so you can kind of see the creature you're getting into a tangle with. Um, but the mechanics, um, it's when you are choosing your attacks, the customization that you get, you get six skills, you can, you can customize and that's six slots that you can put skills in and you can have. I think I ended the game with like 30 plus maybe something skills where I could put them in there. And then there's just layers on top of it. There's these pictures is what the actual skills are called. And then you have lumens, lumens, lumens, lumens, lumens. Uh, so you, a pic toe is sort of like your material. It is a skill you find in the world that you can equip to your characters and learn and learn. Well, that's the final fantasy mind style. Yes. You equip the pic toe. You eventually learn the pic toe. And now you can, you don't need to have the pic toe equipped to your character in order to know the skill. Yes, you can use the lumina. However, the pic toes also have stats baked into them. So your, your loadouts for these characters get fairly complicated. Uh, and because you can choose your pic toes based off the stats and then you choose your lumina based off the abilities. And you're given a, I would say quite impressive amount of options. You can tackle this game in so many different ways with so many different combinations of characters and weapons and all the weapons and stuff are the way they upgrade and how unique. I mean, you can, you can grab a weapon that you think is just like, oh, this is a throwaway thing. But if you level it all the way up, get the right lumens and the right pic toes, you can, you can run with it. Right. Right. And, and the way they compliment the other characters is so fun to discover like, oh, this pic does does something with marked targets. Yes. Oh, I know what I can do with that. And then you're all of a sudden, you're rebaking everybody. And you make a fresh, a fresh cup of coffee and you drink it. So I would characterize the, the combat and progression systems as being, and this is where I think a lot of the final fantasy eight connection comes from for me is, it's very number pervert. As in the system is not necessarily a class based system. It's sort of saying, here's all these abilities and all of the characters sort of have their own kind of mini game as in like, they have their own mechanics that you need to learn in order to play them effectively. And then the way that then interacts with the pic toes is all about creating shortcuts and possibly breaking the game and making the game, they want you to snap it right. They want you to be so into the big number and to be thinking about what how these abilities all stack on top of each other, the easiest way to explain this if we're going to start talking about characters, we should probably talk about my L. So my L's character, she is the youngest member of the expedition, which is kind of treated a little bit like, why are you coming here? It's kind of an interesting aspect of her character. She's also, I'll go ahead and say, you know, after a couple hours into the game, you're going to realize that she's quite mysterious. There's something going on with her. You won't quite know what it is. She's the only redhead. That's what it is. It's just that she is right here. Her mechanical identity is that she is your, she sort of wields a rapier and she has these various stances that she can go into and the stances deal damage multipliers. And she has one stance called virtuoso stance, which gives you a plus 200% to your attack. Now triggering her virtuoso stance is not automatic. You have to do a certain action before that, but the pictures will give you these little multipliers on top of that 200% that will allow you to. Let's say we've got plus 200%. Let's say I get like a first strike, a picto in there. First hit gives like maybe another plus 100%. So now that's 300%. If we can get her into virtuoso stance from the beginning, I guess what you find a sword that lets her start in virtuoso stance. Then bam, suddenly you said I get 200%. I'm getting 300% now. And very quickly, if you're this type of person, if you're this type of player, you're going to be hitting the thresholds of how much damage you can do in total, which is it's sick. So if I loved where I ended up with her, like I had an ability that I started off, I would do one little hit, one little hit, I'd put them in a defenseless position. And then my next hit was a hit that if I and that that would put me in an offensive stance, another one of her stances, and I would use that to do an attack that would put fire damage on them, and if I was an offensive stance, it would add more fire damage to it. And then I would do one more because I got three rounds of this person being in defenseless. So first round defenseless, you know, that's that my attack and I had three more. And then I would, if they were on fire, I go into virtuoso stance. And then once I'm in virtuoso stance, I have this, I mean, it was like when I finally got this picked us, I was like, this is the coolest thing in the world. You do void damage at one point. And at like deep at the saw. But once you once you hit, and if the person's on fire, it starts doubling the amount of fire damage, as it doubles, it increases your critical hit chance and the amount of damage you're doing. So you just watch that number get so fat, so fast, because you hit for like seven to eight times on that move. And it was just like boom, health bar gone, and you're like, feel so good. And I would just leave one monster. I would always try to pick a fight with monsters that had like three or more. So that way, or like, I think you had some before. But anyways, I would just leave one for her. And I would nobody else would attack that monster. It was like, this is hers. Should they care of it? You reminded me of an earlier in the game build that I had for her, which was she had a move that would let her change to virtuoso stance if they were on fire, which I think you just mentioned. But there's also a picto that every character has a ranged attack. Yeah. And every character starts every turn with a certain amount of energy points they can spend on actions, arrange attack only takes one energy. And if you played chronocross is actually a little bit of a chronocross thing, yeah, where you you're deciding how to spend the energy blooms in a way where you're thinking about how much energy you're going to have next time, which that's a whole nother. We'll talk about defensive stuff in a little bit, but because that's where a lot of that comes from. But my L had a ranged attack that could proc fire. Yeah. And therefore, first turn, we proc fire, if we can, we have like so many chances to do it a lot of times it would work, especially in the earlier game. And then she had a move where if they're on fire, you turn to virtuoso stance. And then from then on, I remember for once I kind of got this strategy down until like, I'm going to say maybe the middle late part of the game. It was basically like, all right, well, next turn for my L, you're dead. Yeah, it's over. You can try. And it felt like it was such a fun reversal. Like because I take it from like I play a lot of tabletop RPGs and I'm a forever GM. And there's always that thing. Hey, you guys need to beat this monster before the net before they go again. Right. Right. If you let this thing go in and I'm the monster and the game like like loved that you were the monster, which is funny because like, yeah, you're fighting all these neverons and stuff. And they're like hideous. They're very like incredibly interesting. Very cool. Like the monster design is great. Like very persona, very. Metaphor refund. I love this. Like these weird, like erroneous Bosch, like monsters that are coming out of this woodwork in Japan and other places for JRPGs, not out of Japan, but for out of JRPG, like games. I just love the freaky little monsters. I want many of all of them. Please. If there's somebody out there that like has 3D prints of all the monsters from metaphor fantasy or from Clare Obscura. I will pay you money. Yeah. I will pay you money for those little little monsters. I think they're great. But I just loved. I mean, you said numbers pervert. I mean, that's how you feel in this game. I mean, because there's a lot about there's a lot we still haven't talked about the RPG aspect. I haven't played an RPG that allowed me to do this. Right. In a long time. Yeah. So the five didn't really do that metaphor refund has you doesn't do that. I'm sure there's ways you can like optimize in those games, but you know, that's like sometimes that isn't fun. I like optimizing games because I like the chance of failure that that risk that risk and reward tug and pool is very satisfying. Well, in a lot of times a persona or like a dragon quest game, they have such a solid foundation that they build from so slowly that it never feels like they just loaded a bunch of keywords on me. I got to figure out what they're trying to tell me, you know, and this game does that. It gives you a lot of stuff and it can it can be overwhelming. I will say that minor criticism. Sometimes I have so many options and Claire obscure, especially, you know, I honestly at a certain point was like, I can't wait for the end game because I just want to get my setup and not be changing it. I can't wait to just have my ultimate setup and be like, okay, this is how they work because I went through many iterations for everybody. Everything keeps changing. I changed it up right there at the end. Yeah. Oh no. And you have to especially because the difficulty goes up quite a bit. I hope we haven't made it sound like an easy game because it has a good level of challenge to it. I would say I can't get extremely hard. It gets extremely hard and I would say that I mean, honestly, the hardest part, like truly, truly hardest part is the pairing. Yes. Good. And that's what we need to talk about. And that's the piece that makes it fun because yes, when you attack, it's very, you know, you have little squares. You press square to activate these abilities, right? Right. You have little combos. You do really just square. I don't think you ever press another button. I think it's always. Yeah. Yeah. But it's when the monsters attack you that you have what you have the jump counter attack. You jump. You parry your dodge. There's the gradient there. The gradient one was always got me because I maybe I may step away from the game for a month. I may have stepped away from the game for a week. I tell you what, when I come back, I can I cannot tell you right now how to dodge the gradient attacks. I know it's a shoulder button. I think I think it's R2 on the play because I played it on PlayStation. I think it's R2. Yeah. I always got hit by those. So F. Yeah. And you know what sucks is like. So it's it's a lot of feel. You kind of have to go off a feel. You're looking at the animation in a very like kind of dark soulsy Elden ringy typeway. Sound and visuals. Yeah. So you're looking for cues as to when. And then also then this is why the system is so great is we just mentioned like quite a few. There's going to be. And I know I have seen discourse around this where some people like I feel like don't appreciate this enough. So I'm calling you out a little bit calling you out. There's a best one to do like most of the time. Sometimes obviously would jump. You have to jump. It'll be like. Oh, if it's jump. You're going yellow. They tell you if it's jump time. But parry and dodge. There's times where the parry. There's times when it's time to dodge and actually really at the end of the day. If you're a super skilled player, it's probably always parry. Yeah, because then you can get like a bunch of rewards. But there's a difference between dodge and parry, which is that the timing frame wise is has dodges less precise. You don't have to be as precise. Parry, you got to be pretty much right on the money. Yeah. But the thing is with the parry. And this is a little bit later. Later, you get into counter attacks. Yeah. That's when things that's when you can really the thing about this game that I love is it is a final fantasy like game that if you learn the system, you can just trash it. But you got to earn it. It's like in a, you know, in like you're playing Elden Ring. And at first you suck. And the bosses are really pushing you around. But then later you kind of get the hang of it. And every once in a while, probably not always unless you're like some sort of, you know, you play way too many games in which case go outside touch grass. But every once in a while, you'll come to a boss or like silk song. This has happened with me. You'll come to a boss and you're like, I'm just in the zone. And you just beat it on the first try. And you're just like, yeah, this is not challenging enough to where it's like like frequently you beat bosses the first time in Clare. Some of some of the bosses are not very challenging. But you do hit those bosses that are challenging. But sometimes you're just, you're seeing the matrix. And it has such a satisfying execution of that feeling. And I don't know that I've played any JRPGs that have ever given me that feeling, you know. I will say this also it's like because again, I don't want this to make this seem like this game is hard. I like and nobody that you have to have be a particular type of person to approach it. I think everyone could play this game. Yeah, yeah. I will say that with the pairing, I found it easier if I drink a little bit of some alcohol. Yeah, you got to loosen yourself because like, like, talk about the zone. It's so funny that you mentioned that because yeah, like if I'm not in the zone, I'm missing every. I'm dodging. I'm supposed to be pairing. I'm not counter attacking. I'm not jumping and reading. And then the gradient. I'm always missing one. No, that only effects of your verso. I mean, everybody else who cares you get hit whatever. But like, I found it like once I got just a little comfy, right? Like, I'm in the couch, you know, I'm like, relax. I'm in the perfect body position where like the controller's like resting on like either a pillow on your belly or like perfectly in your lap or that like circle button is just you can just. Yeah, just tap it. You just tap it perfectly. You can do it in the rhythm. You can get in the time. I mean, I swear they're the last. Two hours of the game that I was playing. No, those monsters could touch me. Yeah, I was invincible. Absolutely invincible. I've been drinking pistachio cream. All day. They couldn't do pistachio cream. They couldn't do anything to me. I was in the pistachio zone. Yeah, the P zone. And I like that because like JRPGs don't they don't really have a way for you to do that in a way that is satisfying. I the latest gamers. I hear you out there. You can make like just like a broken combo system. Like obviously like you can do this in Final Fantasy eight to a ridiculous extent, but it isn't really feel satisfying. It feels more like you're cheating. Yeah, it feels like you have playing the game with cheats on. And there's a certain satisfaction of that. Don't get me wrong. I love breaking the game. I love being really naughty in the number space. Five stars, baby. Yeah, but Claire obscure is doing something else. It's it's saying, okay, we are going to let you prevent all damage. Yeah, literally all of it. If you're good enough. Yeah, you just got to try. That's crazy. Yeah, it's got enough. Why? And that's the best. And another part you get 20% experience by not getting attacked, which is which is I into the game that like close to I think almost all my characters were close to level 60, which is not the max. Right. But for your first run through when you're not playing new game, plus, I mean, you're that's and a lot of the time was just like me dodging and getting that plus 20% plus 20%. It really really adds up. You know another thing when you were when you were just talking about this, I wanted to say about like games that are broken, especially some of those old games. Like, I mean, especially if I was the eight, yeah, you had a grind a lot. Yes, you had to do a lot of grinding. And a lot of times, you know, you could, I mean, now you can just put on a podcast and doing this. I couldn't do that when I was 10. You know, like there was a podcast. I just had to do it. Just had a live in reality. Maybe I think that you're a little bit of Stockholm syndrome. This is why I think that soundtracks the best. But you just stuck with those tracks. Over and over in the grass fields outside the bomb. Still there. Still there, dude. I'm going to be as hot dogs as mom. But, you know, like, I never felt like I was grinding in this game. And I still ended up just feeling so powerful in the end. Yeah. And because the exploration exploring the map, you know, and there's not a lot of secrets. You know, there's not a lot of tucked away things that are like unreasonable. Oh, yeah, yeah, you have to like, there's a lot of secrets, but they're not like, they're very chill. Yeah, they're chill. I will say there are some weapons that are missable that seem pretty important. There's one weapon in particular that I got that I don't know. It was the my L one that I was talking about before that where she starts in virtuosus. Yeah. And I it seemed missable to me. I don't know that it is like maybe there's a way to get it. They're very chill about like, if you missed a weapon that you're just going to find it later. And then it's just like, okay, well, I guess I got it on that same page. I will say this. I somehow missed a lot of journal entries. Oh, yeah. And well, not a lot. I mean, I probably I didn't make the final count. I mean, do do that. That's some homework I didn't do. But like I did into the game, you're like, hmm, I wonder where all those ding dong things are. Cause I mean, I spent a lot of time in the maps. I put I put. I think my final run count was north of 55 hours into it. Yeah. Right. Which is, you know, they say you can beat it in 25. Right. So I put some time in it. Actually, I will say there's probably a good five hours of that. That's absolute BS. Cause I was I was streaming it on my steam deck in bed. And at one point, the internet started getting wonky. And I was in the middle of a fight. And it was, you know, early in the morning, whatever, my wife's not listening to this. She doesn't. She doesn't know. And so I had to just like, I couldn't like turn it off. And I wasn't going to get out of bed and go turn off the PlayStation. Right. And so when I woke up the next day to play it and I ended that fight because I was right in the middle of it, it did say that fight took me five hours. Okay. So I have to maybe 50 hours. Yeah. We have some time we could count off. Yeah. Yeah. I think I forget how long because I remember I started it. So I started this game before the hype started. And I will say I actually didn't really at the time I remember being and I'll take it back. But I remember that night. Like it had like just come out or maybe like it was a night. Because we started playing at the same time. Right. Yeah. I just remember people started having conversations with it. And I played through the intro. And the intro is a bit of, it's a bit of a dump. You get a lot of information and character very quickly. And that's not my favorite. I, you have to it one thing. And this is one thing where it really differs from foul fancy seven eight and nine. And maybe, you know, just saying this may be a point of negative or like something that could have been improved upon. I like my RPGs to open with a with a bang. Yeah. I like like something like the, you know, the reactor bombing in foul fancy seven, the Dalette mission in foul fancy eight, although actually technically before that you go to ifrit's thing and the thumb. But I was pretty cool though. I mean, I mean, it's not as cool as the, the, the bombing mission. You know, it's not as cool. But I mean, you meet it for it. And that's the best difference. Well, yeah, we love it for it. But foul fancy nine has the the heist to princess garment opera. Yeah, foul fancy 10 was Xanarkin. And like the, they took a lot of foul fancy inspiration. But the intro to, and I mean, to be honest, the Claire, like in retro actively, the intro to Claire obscure is very good because now I know so much about these characters world. And like Sophie, who is only really in the introduction because she gets grandma's just spoiler that's interesting to revisit that character now that I know everything about the game. And what you know, I understand more about what the scope of the game is and what it's going for the revisiting the intro is is very, very cool after all of that. But it does feel for somebody that doesn't know what's going on here. It's a bit clunky because it feels like we're doing all the introductory stuff first now to be fair. Structure of the game is that the characters are going to go on a big adventure, which means they can't, we can't do all of this character work on the road because it's going to be on the road character work is going to be a different context. And they wanted, I think, to have them in that space and for the whole game to have a bit of a there and back again, like Lord of the Rings type structure to add a little final fancy 15 in that way where you're going on a trip with your boys. Yes, kind of vibes and they do a lot of like for Final Fantasy 15 gives you like a big cinematic to go here. Here we are. Here's the scene. Now you're on a trip. Yeah, I will say this. I do wish that I mean we're going to nitpick the beginning a little bit. I do think that they would have benefited from like showing us some of the history, you know, like if they're going to like set you in that world, like what do these characters know, but you find out, you know, the more as you discover it, you find out there's way more to it than that. Yeah, which is satisfying. But like, yeah, you're right at the very beginning. You're like, okay, I'm just like you're it's you're in media res, but you're in media res in a French film. Yeah, you know, yes, I like that. It's it's in media res, but the characters are very passive. Yeah, they're not doing something. Something's happening to them, which is the Gremage. Yeah. And you're being the painters is being explained to you in the Gremage and all of these details that are they're outlandish and they're fun and they're interesting and they're different, but it's all being giving to you at once in like one hour. They tell you everything we've been talking about. And it was I think also as fun is that you meet a ton of characters. Yes. Yes. Absolute ton. Yeah. And you're like, okay, and you don't need really I don't I don't I will say like until you get to the beach. I didn't know who was actually in my party. Yeah. I was like, who are they? Who are my friends? You're going to be hanging out. Who am I actually going to be see again? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And I will also say this. I think and this is something that I feel like I have seen people talk about is there's like a disconnect between some of the characters and like their classes, you know, in a way. Um, get over it. Yeah. Like it's a weird world. You're going to have a lady that's kind of like Gambit, but also has a siph, like, like a Zidane from Final Fantasy IX. Like she is Gambit and Zidane. Sure. Get over it. I think that also the you shouldn't be thinking about the characters in such a rigid like school class terminology. Anyways, because they are so much more than that. Their character class archetypes have more to do with the mini game that you need to master in order to make them effective. Uh, you have a mage character that we could say, like for sure, that's a mage. We have one character that would be characterized, I guess, as a red mage in Final Fantasy terms, or a blue mage. I actually forget which one, like the ones that learn enemy skills. Yeah, we have a character like that. Um, everybody else. I don't know what to call them in that way. I mean, like, yeah, because like versus versus like a rogue kind of, but like not really. It's more good. And that's the thing is you shouldn't really care so much about what class archetype they're playing. Exactly. You care about the mini game that they baked into that character mechanically that you need to master. Yeah. And a lot of it has to do with sequencing. What abilities are you using and what order to maximize damage potential? Luna, man. Yeah. If you put her in the right order, oh my gosh, when those numbers got so big, I got so happy. And it's fun because they do such a good job of structuring that so that as you play, it gets easier. Yeah. You'll be like with, I mean, with, with loon, uh, there was this moment where I realized they were going to start giving me like, um, not colorless, but wild energy that every color. So her whole thing is she's your mage. She has, she deals with elemental magic stuff. And she has this little thing that's every time you use an element, she gets a charge that goes in this little four slots. Of that element or of a corresponding element. Yeah. And then so then the game becomes about like what order do I use these spells? Because as you use them, the charges that you have can be spent on the next ability. And it will make it either more effective or in some cases is kind of the whole point of the ability, like some of them, it's like, oh, you can't even do this ability unless you have these charges basically, uh, and very fun to figure out so fun. And I love how it like it because each and we should talk about this. The pictures have like we were talking about earlier about the energy charge, like you have things that were like cost one energy, two energy, three energy and you have things that cost nine, which is like max, right. Um, but like as you get farther into the character, the better moves are things that cost five and three. Yes, because you're comboing them together and building this little weave. And then it's like you, and that's like you already saw the matrix, but then you're like, whoa, the matrix is inside another matrix. Matrix is all the way down. Yeah. So it's interesting in comparing it to this is one thing that I think it does unequivocally better than the classic final fantasies, which is this energy system. It's like what you're saying. You end up building your kit for each character, not based off just what's the craziest move that I can use. It's based off of like, well, I'm going to need good moves at every level of energy cost. And they also need to flow together. I mean, it is real. I hope we're stressing to you how fun it is to make a build for your character. Yeah, it sounds nerdy, but it's really fun because a lot of it was like, I mean, I spent a lot of time just being like, okay, I got this new weapon. I want to test out a whole new build. Well, you build out that character. And then you're like, well, I see the synergy I could make with this other person. And then you rebuild that person. And you you have three people. Oh, that's another thing. We should mention you have three people in your party. Right. And it's a three person squad. If they pass away, you get three, you get three more. You know, they do more. We got five in total. Oh, that's true. Yeah. You're two more comes out as like a backup crew. Yes. The reserve crew, which it's so much fun to beat a boss with the reserve crew, where you're first, you're like fighting a boss. You lose the first three, you're like, I hope these last two reserve, which is, I mean, I, I, I don't know about you. Also, I'm starting to feel like maybe we should kick the newbies out. Like, maybe we should say it's boiler time. Oh, you know, we haven't like mentioned. I mean, I guess it's borderlines, but we should we talk about the characters a little bit like, I'm just saying if we talk about the characters, we'll get to get it to spoil. Well, I was saying this, uh, CLs and, uh, Gustav's character, the American voice actors are so wonderful. Charlie Cox, Charlie Cox, great guy. God, he was so good. Uh, I said, well, was that's Jennifer English from baller's game three. Yeah. Um, amazing voice actors give. I did this. And this is one thing I want to walk away before we kick the newbies out. I think start the game in English. If you're an English speaking person, I think it's just to get those voices and whatnot. I did good. They're amazing. This, this game has amazing voice. I would, I could listen to this game without even watching it. I think the voice acting is that well done. Um, uh, and I did English big part in the middle all in French. Um, and then I finished the game in English just to see how it all, and you also, um, you have, uh, uh, gollum, uh, Andy circus, some game people, um, and he does an amazing job to, uh, I want to know how they got him because he's like, I mean, he's everywhere. He's not like a a-lister. He's like, I think he's an a-lister voice actor. He's like, I think he's a nerdy person, like, famous person, like, like, if you're a nerd, you probably know who Andy circuses and you love him. But I don't think, I don't know how much of a household name he is. Like, I think you'd have to say, like, he played gollum and they'd be like, Oh, okay. Uh, but that's literally what I did for our audience. Yeah. Yeah. But like, I don't know. It's, it's wild that he's here. It's wild that the cast is as good as it is. Um, yeah, they do a great job. Yeah. And there's a couple of moments where I, I mean, there's definitely a scene with CL, um, and a scene with Andy circus, uh, that got me two separate scenes, but that got me, got me, like, teared. Yeah. Yeah. It really, really like touched me in a way. I will say this. And why is we should warn you the game is can be quite bleak. It's, it's very fun. It's a very fun game. It's got a lot of personality, but it is, you know, and this is why it's totally cool to come into it as a final fantasy head because you are ready for the melodrama. You have been prepared by the, by these good, good games. Yeah. And you are ready. But if you are a normie coming in off the street, like some rub, you might not be ready for this is like, we're talking soap operatics. So we're talking like you, there will be times where a normal person that is not engineered the way you are because you're so special. A normal person would cringe and you will not because you have listened to Sephiroth the over and over. Yeah, you know, I mean, like, you watch Sephiroth do one too many monologues, goofy, goofy tone. But if you're not ready for it, you might not, you might not dig it that I played this entire game with my girlfriend, Benji watching and she made me so aware of through her experience of the script and the tone that it was like, yeah, this is some really final fantasy. Oh, yeah, this is like, this is a game that I shut both and she love, by the way, she loved it, but there were times where I was like, I'm a little embarrassed of these games. Yeah, this is a game where I shut both doors going into our room with the television. And I just was like, Megan don't come in here. Just, you know, you don't need to. And last thing I will say before we kick the norm is out. Yeah, yeah, the game is beautiful. Yes, they do a really good job with a lot of the graphics, the music, the graphic design, the way the menu systems and everything work. Do not walk away from this game because you see a character with wide crazy eyes or their like their body moves in a weird way or their hair is like, it's very flowy, but it's very stiff just embrace that because it's also an indie game. You mean like glitches. Yeah, there's a weird. It's not. Yeah, there's going to be some stuff. There's going to be some stuff. Love it for that. Extremely pretty for like the fact that it was made by such a small team, such a small team, but yeah, no, there's just be aware of it because there's a scene that I will, we will, I don't know how we'll make it. I will tell I'm going to be showing you later. Okay, that I laughed. I fell out of my couch dying because the response from a character was. And a moment that he probably is with that. Yeah, but yes, bye by no means. All right, it's a spoiler time. So spoiled. So if you're still here, that means that you're that you are either you're okay with being spoiled or you've already kind of ventured into the depths of Claire obscure and we should talk for story details. So first big spoiler, first big spoiler swimsuits everyone. Spoiler is that they get swimsuits. There are swimsuits. You'll never believe it. And Verso gets a full body one. Okay, so Verso is that's a great place to start. Yeah, Verso. Let's talk about this. This is a three act game. And at the end of each act, they fucking hit you with a jar and the first act ends and Gustav and my L and CL and loon are our party at this point. It's a four, four person party. We've got Gustav is our main character. He's a sweetheart boy friends with my L has a great mustache. He's just I will be honest. So it's kind of hard to describe. Is that well at this point? He does have a gun. And he's I don't know. He's nice. He is. I mean, he is he's kind of sciencey like loon. Yeah, he's a bit of a he's a bit of a door. He's like actually that's his thing. He's a door door. Yeah, he's an engineered door. If you ever watched, I'm pretty sure it's it's not Lizzie McGuire. It's not that universe. But there's a movie with her, the very beginning of it, the guy who played Superman and smallville is her older brother. And they're driving. And this is for 15 minutes of this movie. And it's all that I remember of this movie. But they're driving and he's like confessing to her that like, you know, just like they're showing this really beautiful sibling relationship. And then they get hit by a car and he dies. That's the same vibe. Yeah, you get the same vibe of Gustav as that because you're like, wow, I really like this character. He's also voice by Charlie Cox. Yeah, the French voice actors absolutely crushing it gives him so much emotion. His character art looks really cool. He has a gun. Yeah, he's also, yeah, he's a big door. Right. You're like, oh, we could play D&D together. His thing is that and now then think about it. It's very useful for the story. This is kind of smart. That I didn't give it as much credit now that I have played it all. I understand. But he, he's a big dork about the expedition. That's the thing that he knows a lot about. He knows about all of the expeditions. He has a good historical knowledge of all of them, which is important because. His journal. When you leave for your expedition, the first thing that happens is there's a storm. And the expedition kind of gets lost onto a beach. And they are attacked by an old man. They've never even seen an old man. They don't even know. It's actually such. That's the first great, I think, twist to the story. Yeah, you see it immediately to show you an old person and all the first two hours of the game was just telling you, like, there are no old people. It's impossible for them to exist. Quick sidebar, quick asterisk. I do think it's really funny that they made everybody 32 because of course everyone is beautiful in this game. Yes, yes. Everyone is beautiful in this game. Yeah. But you can imagine this game being expedition 75. Dude, and that's the thing is I will say that this is a trend that is annoying me. What happened to old people in RPGs or why every RPG now is just like they all have to be young and hot. And that's who they are. I don't know. I just I grew up with with weirder role playing game parties, you know, where there was at least one monster, you know, and there is a monster actually in this one. Where there's, you know, I want an old man, you know, I want or like a weird kid, you know, what happened to those? You know who I blame it on are on in Final Fantasy X. Yeah, he was kind of old, but he was probably in his. He was old, but he was like a daddy dream. He was a dreamboat daddy with little tiny matrix glasses. And they never got. They've only went younger from there. Right? Find me another old man in a JRPG after that. Right. They they sexified the old man. Yeah. And then afterwards, I think they were just like why even have old people just have them all be young, I guess. And now it's just been like that forever. Yeah. And I just I don't know. I'm getting I am getting a little sick of that. But these are great characters. Whatever. So we got Gustav our dork. We've got loon who is she's a scientist. And she's very dedicated to the expedition. She feels like more dedicated than anybody else. She really wants her. Yes. Her parents were expeditioners before her. And they presumably died on their expedition. Expedition 66. Oh wow. Nice. 66 or 61. Yeah. You played this more recently than me. So you're going to have those little details. But loon is she's very serious to, you know, she's kind of the she's sort of the no nonsense person. We've got CL who's fun. She's kind of our cowboy. She's a bit of a. She's a bit of a wild girl. It's not really clear on the expedition. I think she's kind of just doing. So she's not like chaotic. But it kind of just seems like she's on the expedition because she's like, well, my friends are doing it. And that's, you know, the thing. Yeah. And then I'm going to have fun. Yeah. And this is, let's say, let's also start. This is when we're first meeting them. Right. Our impressions when we're first meeting them. Because yeah, when you first meet us, she's like, she's just your, you know, a coyote ugly kind of gal like having a good time. She stands up on the bar. She makes everybody laugh. Yeah. She's the person that keeps the mood good because everybody else is the loon mood sad. Yeah. She's off mood just dorky pretty, pretty, but also kind of sad and my L also sad and young. Yeah. So my else thing, though, we should talk about that. My else thing, you get to the, the painted world. And you are experiencing this world for the first time. And my L immediately is in this, you find her in this weird house. It's sort of an extra dimensional house where you also meet this curator character who has no face. And he's just ominous sort of a kind of a Christmas Carol ghost style guy. I was never a fan of his character art. Yeah, I was just like, I mean, if I'm going to have to enter and at first, it was like, who is this guy? But then after you're going to interact with him a lot, you're like, I mean, I have to hang out with this guy. Yeah. Yeah. And so basically they're loading up very early on that there's something going on with my L. We meet Renoir. He's very old. He kills everyone. By the way, the expedition fails almost like right away. I mean, because again, we, you go out, you go in the beginning and you don't know who is going to be in your party. And you talk to a ton of people. Right. You have cut scenes with them. There's voice actors. Yeah. You don't, and they all look like they could be, they all look like they could be the main characters. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and which is a great thing that they do to you because they strand you basically. You're all on your own. You play as Gustav. And you don't know where anyone is. And you sort of slowly meet these other three characters. And you're, you've been exploring the continent. You also meet Eski who we should talk about is maybe the greatest side character of all these games of all time. Yeah. Full of wine and so hard to even describe what Eski is. So Eski is you're on the Eski or S.K. Maybe it's Eski is Eski. I thought it was Eski. I was calling it. Eski is cuter though. Well, let's, whatever. Everybody has like a slight French accent. It's hard to know how to pronounce this with these characters. But Eski is like some sort of, he's almost like a God monster. He is told he is said to be the most powerful being in the entire world. But he also sort of has the mind of a child. You know, he's he has a baby brain. And he's sweet. But he loves rocks sort of just wants his best friend is a big rock. Yeah. His best friend is a big rock. Incredibly goofy character. Very well executed. Very amazing character design. Every time we would go back to camp, Benji would be like, please talk to Eski. Yeah. He was the best. Yeah. He was the absolute best. Yeah, him and Monoco or like are just Monoco kind of gave me what is his name from Final Fantasy now and forgetting the red hair. Amorant. Amorant gave me Amorant vibes because as a child, I loved Amorant. You know, give me a guy with like Wolverine clause. Wolverine in her soul with like red hair and like. Well, so Monoco, we don't meet until act to act on. We sort of get to this point where oh, and we also meet one of those creatures called with the hair. The gestials. The gestials who are these very, very funny characters who are they're obsessed with combat. Sort of like the goreons from Zelda. Yeah. But I don't know. They're just really like mannequins. They're mannequin doll puppets. Animated mannequins. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There also there is a really good. There's there's a this is fine meme that they put into the game where the one of the gestials is on fire and is just saying this is fine. Oh, yeah, lots of good humor. Yeah, yeah, he has a really good attitude. He really does have like a like because I mean it presents like like it means very melodrama. Yes, when it's very time everything's very serious and very depressing. Yes, very depressing. But then the humor they put in it's like, hey, we know we're going to make you come closer crying. Yeah. So here's a gestural to make you happy. Yeah. So here's no co specifically. Right. So we found Eski. Eski is going to help us get around in this world. And we've sort of progressed to the end of the first area. And we meet Renoir again and he kills Gustav. That is the end of act one. It just and it was so cool. So great. What a great choice. Then the and the characters are going to be sad. I will say this may be happened a little too quickly. A character exactly like Gustav mechanically joins the party immediately. I hated that the second that he died like I'm I understand that we need to replace him because we were progressing with Gustav and you were seeing all these abilities that you would eventually unlock. So for that, I'll be wasted would feel like you're cheating the player a little bit and they were placed a character with a slightly different gimmicks. Not the exact same gimmick, but basically the same thing. Straight gun for a knife and a sword. Yeah. And that progression kind of carries through. I feel like diverse. Who is a new character who's mysterious, who is also old. He's older than he should be as gray hair. And well, a stripe of gray hair. Stripe of gray hair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he has some sort of relationship to Renoir or bad guy. They both have mysterious scars on their eyes on opposite sides makes you immediately suspicious of Versa as soon as you see him. Right. Also, there is a great voice actor. Another character that we should bench Ben star of Final Fantasy 16. Definitely a better job. I'm glad that he took this. Better game. Better game. So there's another character we should talk about who is I don't even remember they call her, but she is mysterious and she wears a mask and she looks. I mean, I'm just going to say she from the second you see her. You're like that kind of just looks like. Yeah. Yeah, at least. Yeah. Who is I think presumably, I don't remember how quickly you work this out, but you realize that Versa has some sort of relationship to Renoir and some sort of relationship to Alicia. You don't know what it is. You want to know what happened that so you could a thing that you can do is give them different hairstyles. Yes, you can change their costumes. Change their costumes and change their hairstyle. Well, I mentioned the bathing suit, but I didn't mention the hair. Yeah. So with male, I actually gave her like I got this one where she could have like two braids. She had like two braids in her head. I had that like as soon as I got it was one of the first things I got in act one, changed her hair to that never look back. Right. Then Alicia shows up and I was like, well, sorry, I just I like cock my head at Hunter. I hope you heard it. Um, and I loved it. I was like, hmm, because they gave this Alicia has bangs. Right. Um, and so I go in and I change her hair back to the original and I'm like, I'm like, interesting, slightly different because she parts her hair down the middle and it goes over just a slight. And I was like, hmm, yeah, immediately suspicious, but hey, I'm a sucker for anyone in a white mask in a fantastical universe. I was like, I don't know who this is, but I'm all for it. Yeah. So that's your act one twist. And then we explore more of the world. We learn more about the expeditions, especially in the sky gets more rocks. She can do more things. Um, SK gets more abilities, uh, SK can swim eventually and then eventually even after that fly, that's so fun. Um, you go on a lot more adventures in the middle of act two, presumably at this point, you kind of have a goal, which is, uh, verso is going to help us get to the contrast. We also then meet Monoco, who is a gestural who verso knows that we sort of recruit into the party, hilarious character, the dynamic between verso in Monoco is one of my favorite. They've been on many adventures in the past that they allude to all the time. The Monoco, like all gestials, is obsessed with combat, but he's just sensible enough to be a normal character, but his combative, uh, comedic nature always comes through in these light little perfect little jokes, uh, that I think is some of my favorite comedy writing in any game that I've ever played, uh, is the stuff around Monoco, especially, uh, there's this really great scene. I don't really want to spoil it, but basically the joke is Monoco is saying that he won't come with the part that he doesn't want to join. Yeah. And verso says, uh, there will be fighting and he goes, yes, yeah, yeah, and it's so good. And so up to this point, when you're Gustaf and act one, you and you, you and Mayelle can fight one-on-one. You have these little combative moments together and, like, practice fighting. Oh, yes, right, right. Um, that ends, obviously Gustaf did. Gustaf did. But with verso, you kind of pick it up with Monoco. And so every now and then you can have these fights with him in camp, and it's really fun. Um, uh, another important thing to mention is I think in act two, and I think you maybe, maybe you unlock something in an act one, but I know for sure in act two, you start to unlock levels of relationships with each character. Right. Um, and that involves, and that becomes honestly one of my favorite things about this game is that simple mechanic. Yeah. So you, every time you go back to your camp, you can talk to the characters and each character. Like because you're playing as verso now, they sort of, it's odd. They sort of wait for verso to come in versus sort of becomes your main character, you know, you just met him. He want to be my first choice. And he's mysterious. So it's kind of funny that you're like, well, this is the character I'm playing as, and I don't actually know his backstory. And they're deliberately keeping it from me. Yeah, yeah. But it's good because the whole party is who you're playing as, but verso is your perspective so that now you can meet these characters and get to know them. Yes, ostensibly, Gustav knew them before. Exactly. Why would you need to do it? I loved that. It's very smart. Right. Gustav isn't really asking anybody about their past. Right. He knows them. He grew up with them. He knows he's known as all lives. There's not that many people in lumen air. Right. In lumen air. Um, and, and so like, you know that. But you can have conversations with them, but they are talking about current events. Sure. But then as soon as act two starts and you're with verso, you start learning about their characters. And I was like, I loved that. I just, I obviously, you know, you can't rinse and repeat that thing. But as a, as a, as someone is people who played a lot of JRPGs, you don't get that. Right. And that was a fun change. Right. Because typically you, you start off, oh, we all just met. It's a very classic TTRBG. Everybody's meeting in a bar. Right. I mean, you get you start to talk. What's your background? How edgy are you? Right. But this time it was, it was folded out differently. And I really appreciated that. Yeah. Act two is really the meat of the game. Yeah. You do a lot of questy stuff. It's so long you end up fight. Yeah, it's very long. You end up learning that verso is related to Renoir and that Alicia is his sister. Renoir is daddy and Renoir is daddy. And that explains their relationship and why they have such weird stuff and why their hair is basically the same. Why they have basically that they, they do look identical. Yeah, it's kind of a, they do visually hold your hand a lot with a lot of these characters. Like Alicia, when you first meet her like, hmm, very suspicious. They're the same height. Yeah. Yeah. I think you look almost exactly the same. So you know, there's something going on between my L and Alicia and all the side glances that verso gives her constantly. Yeah. So then you continue on your quest. There's a lot of really great stuff. You end up fighting more and more interesting. Like necrons until you get to this point where you're fighting these sort of godlike. Yeah. Necrons called axions. Yeah. That are extremely tough testing interesting fights that are kind of where the difficulty starts ramping up and mechanically things really start. You know, like it's the type of game where I don't know if you experienced this way, but I basically they showed me all the mechanics in an act one and I was like cool and I was collecting all the pictures. But the thing is I won't, I won't go number pervert on a game unless I feel like it's asking me to. So I sort of had a very basic build through act one and I wanted to act to and I liked to do the optional. There's lots of optional bosses. Many, many, many. And I would kind of try to do those as I was going and I started realizing that the difficulty was ramping up and ramping up. And it was an act to that I started sort of going back over my kit, realizing like, you know, a lot of these builds there's they're not they could be better and I would I would really start tinkering and that's really where I fell in love with the game mechanically. I was just realizing like, Oh, you know, I could really shift this with everybody and then kind of get like a better a better goal here. Yeah, an act one like you can experiment for sure, but it's like not necessary. There's so much more discovery going on. It's not challenging enough, but yeah, I I followed the same exact thing as you, I really just had like a whatever build I knew I was going to customize these characters is somewhat if I got a new picture, I'd slap it on and test it, give it a test drive. Right. You know, but it act to is definitely the like, yeah, because the difficulty spikes a lot. And act one, there are difficult moments with your with your characters. Oh, and there are optional bosses that you can fight and act one. The game will literally tell you not to. Yeah, which I think is a funny choice that you'll just say danger. Don't go here. Yeah, you're going to get wrecked. Yeah. And that's funny. I like being shown something like that so that I know that I have a goal together. You know, you're right back to it as soon as as soon as you can as soon as you're like, hmm, what do I need? Yeah, you think you find the puzzle. So you go back. Yeah. And also, so just to describe on a level design perspective real quick, what this game is doing that I think is why everyone calls it out for like, oh, square. Didn't you realize you could just do this? Yeah, is that it does a traditional overworld like a freaking super Nintendo RPG. So good. You're running around on an overworld with a giant, but it's not giant, but like the perspective is odd. Yeah, you're big. You're a big little character. And then way taller than the trees around you. You go to a thing, a location you press X and then you load into that location. And it's totally fine. And we never had to give up that stuff square. You know, like it made it honestly was like a hit in the face with like, yeah, what were they thinking? What were they thinking? Why did they feel the need to overcomplicate this? It's the push towards more realism that really ruins the imagination. Yeah, yeah, because having that overworld structure allows I feel like the level design to be really varied as far as as far as the locations. Yeah, because you don't have to slow transition into it, you know, you can just and like from an asset perspective as a game designer, it must be easier. For sure. It must be easier. Yeah, I mean, I think it would allow those level designers to work very separately and not really worry about how all of this clinks together, you know, so specifically. Do you have a favorite level off the top of your head in act two? That's one of your experience a lot of different stuff. I'm going to say, you know, to be honest, the levels that I really liked were more act one stuff. I liked the gestural village a lot. That was like kind of where the game won me over. Even early on, there's sort of an underwater zone that I generally don't like, like levels that look like that. Later on, there's this ridiculous puzzle with these gates that I remember and I don't know if you did the visage stuff where you sort of explore a level that that kind of replays with the same layout in different tones. So there's like a visage for happy and angry and sad. I mean, the visage is an axiom that I don't think you have to do to progress the story. Yeah, and I mean, the level, the desert level with one of the axions that you have to do where she's like at the center of this like sandstorm in the middle of everything. I really liked the design of that. I will say though, the level design overall does feel a little bit wandery sometimes it does a little like, I don't know, it's it's. You don't have like a map. No, just like wandering around. It's like held in ring without like a map to show you like corner. And that's a pretty minor nitpick, but like sometimes I just felt a little like, where am I? Like what have I explored this already? Like there were a lot of times are there's that battlefield level in the middle and that was my favorite. Dude, that part. I kept going back and over that thinking like, wait, did I go here and explore this yet or no? I just liked it from like a like if I stumbled on that on an adventure, I'd be like, what the hell was this? It was cool. Yeah, but yeah, there's a lot of I you know, it's funny because I feel like there's a lot of moments where I thought I was doubling back, but I actually ended up where I needed to be. Yeah. Like and either like there's a couple levels where they do a lot of fun stuff with lighting, where they kind of guide you to certain spots and then like there's one level where it's like if you kind of get lost, they like literally shine on like a red light. I really like that battle level. I thought that was fun. I really like the monsters in there. That's one where I just like hung out for a while and just like killed every monster. That was possibly good. I really like that was having a lot of fun, but I was also I was also in the height of of my like mid game character build where it's like just absolutely destroying everything that came upon me. Yeah, the battlefield level is like I feel like a big moment in the game too, because the characters arrived there and they realized that they're like seeing some sort of like where all of these expeditions had like gathered for something. Seed or something like that. And I do that is one aspect of the game that they do really really well is because everywhere you're going as a place and expedition came before you. Yeah, there's all of this little that like world building that they can explain like there's a lot of times that you'll come to like an area that has been explored and they have these little handholds that you can use to do like silly uncharted stuff. But that makes sense in universe because they were planted there by the people that came before. And you find that you find that expedition at some point. And it's so fun because you're like because yeah, you are wondering do you like, where did all these handholds come from? And then you find the expedition they're like, gosh, we really put these handholds everywhere. I didn't realize it to just one expedition that like went out and like kind of ditch did that. Yeah, or at least started doing it. Right. I mean, who knows that's such a good character angle. It feels like it's time for us to get into to end game talk, which I'm almost going to give another spoiler. Yeah, this is deep. If we won you back over like if you were like maybe I didn't care about the act one, the pre boiler talk, but then somewhere in here, let's just go ahead and say like we're going to get to like the biggest twist of this game. And it's wild. And it's really wild. And I would encourage you to explore it or experience it yourself because we don't have a lot of really good twists and games, you know, like this is this is surely one of the best. This is a really good one. It's a wild swing, buddy. It's a really wild swing. Truly, truly, truly and then from the depths of my heart, like do not continue listening to us. Yeah, after this moment, do you know unless you know unless you know, yeah, that's true. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, if you know, listen, because I want to know what you know, too, but like truly don't don't let us ruin it because I mean, I just stayed away. I just like everything. I mean, unless if you know for sure, you're like never in a hundred years, while I play a tournament, I want to just experience this with you guys as my buddies. All right. Yes. Yes. But if you have an inkling, I would at least encourage you to give a shot. Just give it a try. Yeah, everybody should. And because this, this is I mean, it was shocking. It's, it's so shocked. It was shocking. So the characters, they get to the painterist finally, it's time to fight her, which we've been building all of all up to this. And we talk about that fight. Yeah, beginning of it where you do note you're doing so much damage to her. Yeah, yeah. And the health bars not moving. Yeah. And I was like, literally like it freaks you out. I'm soft. I did something wrong. Yeah. You know, but then, but then, you know, of course, like three rounds go by. I'm like, this is there's something else here. Yeah. There's something else here to figure something here. That wasn't that sort of don't come after us. Yeah. But yeah. So you get to the, to the, the, the painterist. You fight her. You win even. And at that point, you sort of find out what is the big mystery that has been with help from you this entire game experience, which is the entire world of the game exists within a painting. Within a painting. It isn't real. The characters aren't well. They're not real, not in a way that it's very odd. Let's talk about it. I want to talk to you about my perspective because, you know, when it comes to the comprehension, I do think you're better at some things. I do a head cannon. Like I start my imagination starts to explode. And I start to put things in there that may not actually truly exist. Sure. When this was revealed to me, you, you, you, you get revealed to it by via a flashback. I'm pretty sure like of a room full of paintings. Yes. And in this room, your sister is like chastising you or doing something, but they're talking about your mother, who is currently trapped inside of a painting. Right. Well, you find out your mother is the painter, find out your mother is the painter is, and your mother is trapped in the painting and your father has gone after her. Yes. Right. And you are clearly male. Uh-huh. Male is her face is all fucked up. So my L is Alicia Alicia. She's missing an eye. She can't she can barely speak. You know, it's like really tragic. And you're like, what happened? And that starts to starts to unravel itself to finding out like why she's like horribly horribly burned. Um, why your sister is an absolute meany. Um, but you're walking in this room and the way they set it up, it was like you're in like a loft area of like a beautiful mansion or something. The windows are shining full of light. There's a room full of paintings. And my first thought when they revealed that everybody is inside this painting, I was like, the, we're male and her family are the gods. Or the pantheon of all these worlds. And they're, and they're creating these multiverses of these paintings. And each one is a universe and world full of souls and people. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And doing all these things. They're not just painting. It's, it's not just a painting. It's the story of the whole world. Yeah. Has been created by the painter's who is a myel's mother. Yeah. But also sort of by myel and also sort of by a verso like everybody paints everybody in her family paints. They're all, they all have be a phase degrees. So these characters have all been crafted by this family, including, and this is a part that I think is the hardest to kind of wrap your head around, including the characters themselves within the painting. They're, they're painted versions of themselves. Yeah. Verso does not, he's not a real guy. Yeah. His real life counterpart died magically. And so my else counterpart, Alicia, has sort of created this fantasy version of her brother, right? And the painter's in Renoir have also gone through a similar thing of like the painter's became stuck in this world. And Renoir has also inserted a painted version of himself into the world. And that's where it gets even more cryptic because my understanding is that they were exploring these worlds. They do this quite often. They'll paint themselves into these paintings and live in the worlds, right? And interact with them, right? And so verso had done that. My understanding is that you can only paint yourself. And so myel, Alicia, painted herself as myel into this after these, after the tragedy because the painting that she was went and painted herself and that we find ourselves in Expedition 33 was a painting that verso made. And it was a world that verso designed and verso was in there, but he had created himself and he would, he could leave and verso would remain. But when he left one time tragically died. Yes. And so the family in their grief went to this painting. Yes. And started corrupting it. Yes. And started like being like, no, this is real life. They have a dependent relationship now with this and verso knows it. Yeah. And the, the painted verso knows that he is not real the whole time. Right. You have this beautiful moment. This was another moment that made me so sad is that verso was talking to Monaco. And he's like, do you ever think about him about verso? The real one. Yeah. Oh, no, he's talking about Esca. He's talking to Esca. Okay. And Esca goes, your cousins, just like Renoir's cousins with him, you know, with like his other one. Like he expresses it like he doesn't, he is sad that verso is dead that he no longer gets to see him. But he's so happy that he has his cousin here. Right. And like it just when you, when it reveals this, the layers of just like soul crushing sadness that you're like, oh, this game that you think is about rebellion and defeating this over. Like you, you think you're inviting God, and which in some ways you maybe, and I have to ask you about that later, I want to come back to this whole them being God's thing is that you think you, you start this whole game thinking you're going to fight God. Fight the person that's controlling everyone's destiny and make destiny your own. Like you're going to carve your own destiny only to find out, you know, that the whole time it is a tragic story of grief. Yeah. And you and all the characters you're playing are are just reasons why those grief, why those reasons for those characters, the painters to grief in their own way, right. Like CL's character, like this is some spoiler stuff. This is the one that made me absolutely cry when they go to CL, CL has a her partner's name is Pierre. Um, and he passes away. He was in a, he got grommage. He was older than her. Right. Um, so she decided, I mean, in her grief and her sadness of losing her best friend, her lover, soulmate, swims into the ocean, swims in the ocean, and trying to drown herself. Right. And then she wakes up on the beach. Then to find out that she was pregnant the whole time. And the whole game, she has a scar in her belly that she doesn't really talk about. Right. Yeah. And then you find out why that scar is there. And then you find out that, uh, SK saved her in the ocean, because you have a, there's a moment where they talk and he, and there's like, uh, like mentions like, so it's the second time we've met. And she's like, what do you mean? And then she's just like, and she just destroys you. She's just like, I remember some tears. Yeah. Yeah. This is so sad. Yeah. And then you're the whole time you're like, she's not real. Right. She's just a story that the original verso made. Yeah. So that it does a, there's a perspective problem happening here, because I like, if you're listening to this, I feel like you can even click into it. Even if you haven't played the game is just the idea of like, well, who, I mean, it's a game that none of them are real. Right. But it's also like the game sort of forces you. And it's does this quite smartly forces you in the perspective of the family at the end. And the reason they're doing that is because they want you to make a choice. Oh my God. And it's it. Fucking walker of a choice. I was, I didn't even know it existed. I didn't even know it was going to have to make this choice. Dude, it hits you with it. So it's such an excellent move of slapping you into this situation, where you have to choose to either, you, there's two perspectives presented to you at the end. And so I think that's what I think is the most important thing to do is to make a choice. And so I think that's what I think is the most important thing to do. And so they need to move on. Yeah. And my L's perspective is I can stay here forever. We can think it's going just a little bit longer. Yes. And I can also sort of, I mean, essentially, do make the same mistake that her mother, which is to stay here and basically become this sort of Godlike entity over this world. And I think you can tell even by how I explain it, because I fail to explain my L's perspective in a way that makes it sound redeeming. I don't think it's redeeming. I slammed that verso button. Okay. And so this is what I rejected verso. Like I was like, I was a goose, Gustav homie. And yeah, verso comes in. I don't like his mystery. Which also is good. That's good story telling right there, because of course you're not supposed to trust verso. He just shows up. And he's mysterious. Yeah. Yeah. It's just this mysterious man. And honestly, like I never could get a grasp on his particular fighting style. Like I got it. The perfection. Yeah. The perfection is the only one we didn't talk about, but it's fine. It's fine. And like I do get a point where I was scoring 20, 30,000. Yeah, you can do it. Yeah, you can get nuts. I was doing it. Yeah. You can unhinge him. Yeah. I don't think I snapped him into the reality that's like I could have. But you know, it's and it's funny right at the end. I was like, fuck, I'm going to have to side with Versa. And because I was I was I mean, I thought we were I thought I mean, I thought it was going so differently. And then that decision comes in. And I'm like, damn male. Like I was playing her. She was I I mean, she never left my party. Right. She was always in my party. And I was kind of like always on her side. I wanted to solve her mystery. I felt sad about the whole Gustav thing. Another thing is that her parents apparently died in a gommage. And she was a baby and Gustav raised her. So it's like her father, but also her brother. Which you know is like added this whole thing. And then she has a beautiful relationship with loon and CL and with SK. She doesn't really have a relationship with Monoco that I that I can really recall. Right. But you know, and like and then her relationship with Versa through the whole thing is very contentious because you can see very early on in the meeting each other. There's two ideologies in conflict. And, but you're not you're not revealed to what those ideologies are. I mean, Versa, they do kind of start saying it like he's like, we because he wants this to end. He wants to kill the painters. He wants to he wants to stop Renoir. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't know why really, right until like right there at the end where he's like, no, like my family needs to move. Yeah, yeah. They got to go to have closure. They got to keep and like it made me so sad. But I was like, that's the perfect ending. And it's funny afterwards. I looked up, you know, online like they're like, oh, there's no perfect ending because there's negatives on both sides. And that's the thing is, and that's really cool. I don't want to sound too verso pill because in the you choose the verso path. That means that your friends, Luna, and they're they're gone. They're and in fact, some of them accept it. Monoco's pretty chill about it. And Versa have a big boy hug at the end. It's so good. I wanted to honestly, I thought about you. Yeah. All of us. I just wanted to have I just want to have a big hug with all my buds. That's a big time, buddy. I was like, I want to hug all my friends. I would that's I would do the same thing. Yeah. I would do the same exact thing. Yeah. But then you have like the moment with loon where she looks at you and she just she sits on the ground and she hates you. And Seattle also, I mean, Seattle like she like you, he reach out to her and she kind of rejects your hand and and CL and Versa have they they can have a you can have a romance with loon or Seattle. Yeah. And so like I don't know how that plays out, but I'm pretty sure it plays out the same no matter who you romance, right. But thankfully with the relationship, I think if your romance loon that that moment hits very differently, very differently, right. Because you break her heart. Yeah. And in some ways, you do break her and destroy her. Yeah. And and she so there's like at the end, there's this like wall very like annihilation kind of vibes or like you can cross through this path, right? To like get to this like temporal space in between the painting and the real world or whatever the real world is. And she's outside of it. And she just sits down on the ground and sidebar. The animation was pretty funny. I laughed at that one because she's just kind of flopped down. And I was like this is a pretty serious moment for you. Yeah. Yeah. For cross-legged on the ground right now. I kind of what else is she could have just walked away. Yeah. I think she could have just walked away and turned her back. I think that would have hurt just as much. I liked the moment that I definitely like the moment. I definitely like the moment. But yeah, it's it's tough because I and I guess to me, the moral decision is clear, but it it involves me basically saying that everyone that lives in the painted world is not real. Now, I will say I'm backed up a little bit because basically everyone in the painted world, although I guess no, my L is going to bring them all back. That's the thing is if you choose my L, she's she's bringing everyone back. She brings everyone back. She'll bring back Pierre and say a daughter. Sophie and Sophie and Gustaf. And they're all going to come out. Loons, parents and all this stuff and they were going to basically live like happy forever in this thing knowing that they're all not real, but they're all living in this in this like little life. Now, this is part of where like I want to ask, do you because the cut at the very end where you're you're at like versus funeral in real life. That's the real estate this family must have because they are front lawn looks right at the eye. They're living in like Louis 14's freaking house. And I'm like, what? So that that part kind of broke me a little bit because I knew they were somewhat in the real world just from their clothes and whatnot. But I was really hoping they were like deities like gods and stuff. And we were now they're just rich people. And like, yeah, I'm so I'm so interested in what you think because like that part didn't that was a one thing that didn't land for me is because I was like, where are they? You know, like because if they're real. Oh, they're in our world. I thought they're in actual France real France. Well, yeah, they're in real France, but like they can paint and like so I want to know like. Oh, well, okay, real France is in like fans. So there's a that you actually get some world building there for the outside world, the real world. Which is that there's also like, it's a world where like painting can be magical. And so can like writing. They mentioned like the writers or what do they call them? They have to go talk to the writers. Yeah, yeah. So you get a little bit of the mother goes talk to the writers, but like what they messed up. But that's what that's what still made me feel like they were like some kind of gods, right? Like they were going to go talk to the writers as if like they were the strands of fate. And I thought the way I interpreted how the mom was going to go talk to them was like, why'd you do this? You know, why'd you write it this way? I didn't quite get that level. Yeah. So I don't know. Like I again, like I kind of wish they just would not have shown. I get why they showed the Eiffel Tower. It's a Frenchman game. You got to show your that mean also the Eiffel Tower was in the painted world. And it makes sense that it would be important to them in the real world. Exactly. Yeah. So that part with like didn't also it explains why the Eiffel Tower is in this fantastical world though. Yeah. Which I guess where it's kind of undone a little bit though. Because you think there's a real world that's not normal, you know. Yeah. Because you think in the game. You know, we start off. You think it's a post apocalyptic world. Like some strange magical force. Like just absolutely upended our world. Yeah. And at one point the way they do describe it is that Lumiere is like ripped out of the world. All right. You're in another dimension, right? Which is funny because you are. You are, you know, because you're a painted world. There are borders to a painting, right? You can only see so far into the distance. Which is interesting also when you finally get to fly around and look into the distance. You can clearly see that you're in a, you're in a painting. Yeah. But. But yeah, it's funny how obvious it is yet how much the twist hits you. They basically told you in every way that they can that you're inside of painting. Yeah. But it's still hit me once they were saying, no, you're actually in a painting. You are paintings. Yeah. But yeah, that that part, like I still love it. I still love the ending. It still hits. But I was left being like, so I was left with two things. And I kind of like my second thing better. Yeah. Because again, they don't feed us a lot about the real world. Like they go talk about the writers and all this and it's so ambiguous that you don't know. You don't have anything to land on. You have nothing to find purchase on to understand what this world is about. Why they're painters. You gotta get the other. And that's fine. So you walk away from the game like that. My interpretation is because at the very end, you're standing over versus grave. Mal Alicia has a little stuffed toy of SK. Yes. And so in my mind, I like my, you know, my interpretation is that this family was grieving. You know, as a dad was not, you know, he blames the daughter for the death of his son. You know, the older sister blames Alicia for events too with her mom suffering and all this stuff. The mom is quiet and a little bit cold, but still reserved, you know, like still reserves a lot of like her interactions with Renoir. But you're holding this little toy. And at the very end, you see everybody and they all turned dust. And I'm like, this is one of those things where I'm like. This was all an interpretation of their grief. They weren't actually painters, right? This world wasn't actually like a magical thing that you stumbled into and like you fall into different universes and stuff like that. It was all those discussions going up to where like you have to find an end to your grief and move on. Yeah. Especially if it was ever lost like a significant family member. Yeah. There's a moment years down the road where as a family, you do have to get together and decide, hey, we have to move on. Of course. We have to find a way forward, right? We can't dwell in so much grief, so much trauma. And that's when I walked away from the game kind of interpreting that, right? Obviously, if it's not that I'm just making this all up my mind, whatever. No, I think thematically you're right on the money. I don't care if you're getting like the details of kind of a complicated twist. Yeah. But like, I feel like emotionally we're in where we're supposed to be. Yeah. And it's like, I was like, I think this is one of the most beautiful stories about death and grief that I've ever seen in a video game, right? Yeah. And like, I was like, this is big boy game. This big, big, big adult brain video game. You don't get a game like this very often. No, no. Where they, you, like, for instance, last of us, right? It was kind of like in a similar way, moving on trauma, right? Finding a way to forgive someone you hate. Right. This one is, this is a life lesson that a lot of humans could. Yeah, yeah. Humans. Like, as well. No, I mean, this is, this is a humanity. Hey, weebs. Yeah. Learn to grieve after something horrible happens. If you lose somebody, they'll close to you. I would love to talk to developers and wonder if like, did any of this come out of the person? Something purse. Oh, and something personal with them, right? And having to grieve after something like that, right? Yeah, because I mean, the most recent kind of like a grommage situation. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So I thank you for even just getting there because I've been putting that up because I mean, think about like when COVID people just disappeared, you never saw them again. And it did have to do an age was a factor. Age was a huge factor. Started with the elderly down to the young. And it was so I was like, damn, I wonder how much. And of course, I probably could go find videos of them talking and stuff. I just haven't. Yeah. But like, man, I mean, one bone, this game is beautiful. It is beautiful. Really beautiful. Really, really beautiful. It I will. I want to make a connection to my beloved. Farm Fancy eight. Yeah. Because all of these late game twists and turns reminded me so much of that game. And it did. I ain't. Farm Fancy eight. Well, probably always be my favorite game. Best twist. Maybe it's not my favorite always, but it's the most important one to me. And the way that that game wraps up with. There's this moment that people criticize a lot. It's very dumb where the characters realize that they were all raised and orphanage together. Yeah. And it's really dumb. But it's not dumb. It's dumb. It's not dumb. No, it's dumb. Because you start using this, the GFs causing people to forget the past. Yes. And it's important is such a good way is such looking at the history now that the world we live in where people just forget the things that happened a hundred years ago. Yeah. And we're doomed to try to repeat them again. What I mean is that I feel like. And the ending of Farm Fancy eight has a lot to do with the world kind of splintering into this time compression situation where the past has become the future and everything's kind of all mixed up. And it has a lot of sort of interesting interpretation baked in there. And I feel like in a lot of ways, especially considering how many times they talk about Farm Fancy eight, the people that have made this game, I feel like they're really doing justice to a game that that heavy of a late twist. And they did it right and they did it really good. And they did it better than Final Fantasy eight, but I also played Final Fantasy eight when I was like a child. It burned. It's memory and twisted us from our souls forever. Eight years old. And I was playing Clarebscure Expedition 33. It could be my favorite game for the rest of my life. Yeah. A hundred percent. Exactly. And I will say this, like I always say, what is the most powerful force in the universe? Hugs. Chronomancy. All right. We have to break this game on a list of all the games that we've talked about on the show. What a beautiful discussion we have that's going to end with us deciding. I have two spots. I've already done some homework. Okay. I'm going to tell you the homework. And I'm going to make you do a lot of the work. Okay. And the work, this game can be a, this game can be in underneath in my opinion, it can be above Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy X. Yeah. Yeah. At the number 20 spot. Or it can be down here above Final Fantasy seven remake at 60. Okay. Well, it's a lot better than Final Fantasy seven remake. A hundred percent. And I personally am comfortable saying it's better than Final Fantasy X. I'm comfortable with it. So that would lock everybody listening. Everybody listening. My activities are bearing fruit. So let's start walking up this list. Let's walk up the list. So 19. We've got the frog for whom the bell tolls. That's an important game to the show. It is. But come on. Let's let we can give Claire obscure some more props. It's way better than that. Sonic the Hedgehog two is number 18. And also number 17 is to Mario Brothers three. I would say those games are in about the same slot to me. They're very important platformers of the old. I like them a lot. Let's. I think that technically I would want to put Claire obscure underneath these. But there is some business that's happened above. And that's the Metal Gear Solid two. Yeah. We've got 15 Hades 14 ICO. I would actually put Claire obscure above both of those comfortably right now. Well, maybe not comfortably. But like we're straining a little. Hades is great. Hades is a new classic. ICO is a forever game. Also is okay. I'm having a moment. I have that. I think it's S.K.A. That's what the S.K.A. We've been saying S.K.E. We just drove someone crazy for I think it's S.K.A. S.K.A. Hey, babe. Do you remember? Oh, you don't she doesn't remember. OK. I think I think it's S.K.A. It's probably S.K.A. I'm going to hate. I'm going to leave this in. I mean, you got to leave it. You're going to leave shouting at Benji from the other room. Yeah. Also, hey, babe. Did you like Claire obscure expedition 33? She loved it. All right. That's good. So number 13. We got Panzer Dragoon to Zwei. That's a very cool game. Number 12. We've got Final Fantasy 6. What do we think about Final Fantasy 6 versus this? That's tough. It is. Are we going to get this into the top 10? I guess it's really the question. It's kind of my whole goal. Oh, you want it. You want to. OK. I think it could be up there. So can we put it over here? Yes. Yes. Sorry. So I think we've got a situation where it's like where we've got number 17 and 18. So where are brothers three and Sonic and I talk to you. If this was my list, it wouldn't go above those. But it's not my list. And we've got some stuff above that. That honestly, I could comfortably put Claire obscure. I can't put it into the top 10. That top 10 is pretty solid actually. I can't really touch that. Here's my question. Let's talk about it. Can we zoom to one discussion? Yeah. So the top five is, you know, my version of the top 10 is that I basically got to pick 10 through six. And that's why they're so good. But the top five, y'all really kind of got in there. And it's all recency by a stuff of you ask me. Claire obscure, Expedition 33 versus Baldur's Gate 3. I play Baldur's Gate 3 every time. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Now I will say, I will say because it's just to me to drastically different things. And now this is where I'm going to get into some controversy. Do it. CRPGs. Uh-huh. There are, is Disco Elysium. Yeah. And Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can bundle up in those two things. Like you have your Disco Elysium type CRPGs and you have your Baldur's Gate 3 CRPGs. Sure, sure. I think those two are the best of the best when it comes to those. Yeah. They are both CRPGs. So that is fair. Yeah. And I will always give Disco Elysium. Elysium. Elysium. A step above Baldur's Gate 3 because we've seen it's the third one, right? Yeah. It's not Disco Elysium 3, right? Because we're not bored of it. Um, I, I mean, I just personally, I mean, I still play Baldur's Gate 3 to this day. I mean, I play, I play with people, I play without people, I play with myself, I play with people on the couch. You know, like I'm, I'm obsessed with that game. I, I think it, to me, it's like, it's creative in its own fun ways. But that is, that is a me top five game. Yeah. And because I did not immediately delete Baldur's Gate 3 off my PlayStation. Like I am, I am immediately deleted, Claire obscure off my PlayStation. As soon as I, I needed that hard drive space. Yeah. Um, and I was like, I'm not going to go back to this game. Yeah. Not immediately. No, that's not to say five years from now, I might just pick it up and play that game again. I want to beat it in 20 hours, right? I don't waste a bunch of time. Right. Um, so that is just my opinion. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let's come down a little bit because I will say another criticism I have of the game is that too much of the content at the end of the game is just optional super bosses. And there's so many that I understand some people went ham on those. But I, I was like, I thought I was going to be that guy, but I was just kind of like there were so many. And they're very like, just go to the place fight the super boss. Yeah. And that's kind of all the content. Are you talking about the ones that to do with people's relationships or not? No. Okay. That to me is like a must. You need to do that. Okay. That's part of the goal. I mean, I guess you don't have to do them. You don't have to. But it would be so crazy if you didn't. Yeah. You would miss out on so many good stories. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm coming back to earth. I'm thinking. So I want to have the final fantasy six talk. Okay. So. Final fantasy six is an all-timer. All-time or big time. It's now we love Final Fantasy five a ton. But we both admitted that, you know, six kind of sums up all those things. It's just it does so many things that it does them so well. It transcends all pixels, all pixel J RPGs. RPGs all. It's the best of the best. Yeah. I would say it's the best overall. I don't think it's. I wouldn't give it best in any one category. No, there you go. That's fair. I agree. But it's got. It's your. It's your averaged out. It's true north. Everyone basically should say that Final Fantasy six is great. It's super into new RPG. But it shouldn't be anyone's favorite. There you go. It's your favorite. That's boring. But it is the best. There's some more games. Yeah. Um, play me on Final Fantasy five. Play me on Final Fantasy five. Yeah, that will be your favorite of the three. Yes. Um, so I think, and this is where I have to ask you about legacy, the legacy. Legacy always comes in, right? Like Final Fantasy six just will, you know, it's, we'll be talking about it forever. Yep. It is an all-timer. Will we be talking about Clara Obscura in 10 years, or will somebody else go out there and be like, I was inspired by Clara Obscura and I made a better game. Yeah. Um, well, that's impossible to say. Is what I can say definitively. At the end of this decade, we will be talking about this game again. Um, it might not even be Game of the Year this year. This is a crazy year. I don't know if you've looked around. It's nuts. I think it right now, even with the release of Silk Song, I think it is the front runner. It has to. It's such a small studio. But I don't know that it wins. I will say I'm 100% certain that when it comes time to decide the games of this decade, this game is for sure a lot. Top five conversation. Yeah. It's going to have representation up there. Yeah. Um, and this year in general is going to just be a heavy, big year, which is why I'm so glad to have the show back. I have changed my mind. Okay. We want to just talk about this game as being better. I think I want to low ball the game a little bit from where we were at. And I want to just go for something we can both agree on, which is that it could be the new number 19 above the frog for whom the bell tolls and Final Fantasy 10. But below Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Super Mario Brothers 3, because that line there is like basically 18 up are all games that either the show has decided arbitrarily is landmark status or the general gaming public have decided or landmark status. And I want to say that Claire obscure has the potential, but it's not I'm it's not a log and I think that's that's the best statement. I want to meet in the middle. Okay. I think it should be the next 20. And let me let me say this because I want to go back to an old faith of how I make how I help. So this is the only difference is you just want to push frog up one. I want to keep frog at 19. Yes. I want to push Final Fantasy 10 down. Yes. Okay, you're going to go you're going to have to go through Titus and his dad. And then you're going to have to go through another weird hellscape of Lumiere. Yeah. And then get into the top true top 20 because I also I do I have a I mean, I know that it is an OGA thing, but from where the from who the bell frog frog for whom the bell frog from frog. It was so fun. It was a it honestly it was a genuine genuine. Genuine. Discbarrow. Barrow. Discovery. That I was like, wow. Like I missed a true treasure. Like I love the art. I love everything about that game. I love that it's so short. I love the combat. It's so silly. And I want to I want to keep it where it belongs. I do think if you know, we died tomorrow and someone stumbles on the list. They're like, I heard a glare obscure. What is this game? They ranked one more above. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm into it. I'm into it. So it will be a little trilogy of RPGs right there. Yeah. Yeah. So it will be the new number 20 above Final Fantasy 10. Oh, we did make a mistake. But we could have just made it number 33. Oh, you're right. And that was a dumb mistake. We didn't even talk about that. We didn't even discuss that. What is the 33? 33 is grim fan dango. And it would be below. Oh, man. Doom is at 32. This list sucks. Yeah. This is so stupid. Lama soft is 31. Yeah. You have on the show. You made that happen. Lama soft could be that. That was like your primary goal. And he pushed that so far. I did a good job. Okay. Lama soft. Everybody plays real good. I'll say this though. It's, and I mean, actually, I'm seeing now in the 20s, there's like actually a bunch of really good games that I think are actually better than like Elden Ring. I think is better than Clareps. Just sorry to say. Yeah. I mean, Outrun. Outrun really to me. It's the better soundtrack. Oh, we didn't even talk about the soundtrack of Clareps. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. You know, I've been, I've been, I've been, every, every chance I get, I watch the distant worlds. Fantasy shows that come into town. I think we have one, another one coming into Minneapolis here soon. We got to go. Do me and you should go. We should go. I would totally go do the same dream for Clareps. I would totally go watch it in person. It would be so beautiful. You know what though? All right. Yeah. I'm coming down. You're coming down. Because here's what I'm remembering too. Do the mini games. I did not like the mini games. Oh, you're right. I don't know what any games were. Wow. Can we put this game in the mirror? A Super Mario game. The platform in this game was a troche. Dude. It was disgusting. And I did them all. I did every single one of them. I couldn't stop myself from doing them. It was so, I just wanted to hate myself for two hours. All right. Let's do it. We got a chill. Let's chill. I like our 33. I do like the 33. Let's do it. How can we push Grim Fandango up? Oh, you want to push Grim up? Yeah. I'm okay pushing Grim down. Yeah. It's not my favorite LucasArts game. That's fair. It's a cool one. I just love that game. It's so cute. I will say I do like Clarebskier more than I like Astrobot, which is at number 34. I think I like it more than last was part two, which is at 35. I don't, but I understand what you said. I think I like it better than Citizen Sleeper, which I haven't really played that much of. I don't like it better than Quake, which is at number 37, but that's okay. Ooh, who has the weeder eyes? Mass Effect two or Clarebskier? Definitely Clarebskier as me. Yeah, that one's eyes sometimes. It's just like the wish has no eyelids. Okay. We can do the 33. Let's do the 33. I think it only makes sense. All right. The gimmick is for a great game. Yes. Clarebskier Expedition 33 will be the number 33 game of all time. Underneath Doom and above Grim Fandango. That's fair. The way too low though, it should be higher, whatever. That's that's something that's a fight for another day. Doom should be top 15 at minimum. Doom should be probably top five to BH, but whatever. That was our Clarebskier episode. We talked about, I hope, everything. I think we did all of it. Go play this game and cry. Yeah. And if you've already played it, I don't know, criticize us for things we got wrong or something. Did I cry? What did you well up? I mean, I mean, I definitely well done. Yeah. I mean, I feel like, babe, did we cry? Benji cry. Benji cry. Benji never cries. Benji, Benji is not a cry. She's a strong woman. Yeah. I cry. I cry. Dude, I cry at everything. You tell me it's soft wind. Dude, what was I? Dude, there was something today that I was watching that I didn't even like that I started crying. It was so stupid. Oh, dude. Well, I watched the long walk, which is a movie I didn't even like. I didn't even like, I didn't like the whole time. And I know some people did like it. And I'm sorry to just slap you with this opinion at the end. That's okay that you liked it. We don't have to see it all the same. The tone is not my kind of tone really in general, but it still, it still was making me cry. Just the idea of them, I didn't even believe in the movie. Like by the end of the movie, I was like, I really don't like this style of dialogue. I thought the acting was, they were dealing with it quite well. But like, didn't like the tone. I didn't like the dialogue. And I still was like trying to hide the tears. As you're rounding second base, you're just like, this is a long walk. And the thing is, if you made me cry, that doesn't mean you did something good. Like it doesn't mean that you nailed it. Yeah. [Music]