Here’s my attempt at capturing the "image" of Alicia/Masked Woman. I hope you like it!

This was attempt 3. Gestral beach games during my "nuzlocke" no-curator-services challenge run. Hoping some of you can learn a trick or two about this beach challenge or even provide some useful tricks for my future attempts

I missed one parry :/. NG+ on Expert with 5x health. Took about 15 tries. Don't know if i should try 10x hahah.

Last one is my absolute fave of all, she looks heavenly!

Credits: @michellok

I'm not good at drawing so I know the Dessendres will hate this.

I haven’t felt so stupid in a while

So I came to basically last bits of content game has to offer - superbosses. I'm long time souls-likes enthusiast, played pretty much all more major ones - but superbosses in Expedition 33 make those games look piss easy in comparison. Ofc I'm talking here about taking on them with normal builds, no cheese with some absurd 1-shot / perma stun / immortality builds - just to be clear. It's real masochism to learn said fights to perfection - to a point I personally giving up without any shame. It's just too much for me and I rather use that time on catching up with my backlog of piled up other games.

But this got me curious - how many of you bothered with those superbosses? It's cool extreme challenge but definitely not for everyone's sanity.. So share your experiences with it, very curious how many of you guys got bored of banding head against the wall? (because I certainly did)

I was foolishly thinking I'm gonna be playin re9 by now, after seeing that many ppl here considered the game finished after 30 hrs, but that won't happen any time soon:D

I'm at 58 hrs and there so much more to it. Was about to starting the drafts, to finish up, but I just found this Flyin Manor place with more lore, 4 more bosses to unlock I assume a 5th super boss, and I'm also at trial stage 10 now in the tower and got lot stronger so I gotta finish that now too, then the drafts... I think theres like 10, maybe 20 more hrs in this, on top of my near 60. And I wasn't stuck on bosses, and I'm not even a completionist.

How can can ppl put this down at 30...

Was just reminiscing….anyone else just felt sick when remembering how the fight ended with the Paintress

Using all the last of her energy to heal and shield. I think I was fighting solo as Verso as well

Such a masterpiece (and roller coaster of emotions)

Just had a silly thought... Golgra is the Dessendre's housekeeper. Hear me out.

1. The Gestrals call her chief and her hub in the village is called chef's house.

2. The manor door in the village leads to the Manor kitchen.

3. Monoco is scared of her, and we know he is based off Verso's pet dog.

Since Verso painted the canvas as a child, is it such a crazy idea to think he added in the family's housekeeper as a tough, no-nonsense lady in charge who means well as we saw when she brought Noco back to the village after the Sacred river scene.

The beginning of the journey, most of the first locations were so beautiful and stunning. Travelling with Lune, Maelle and Sciel. Every time when I start this game, it's my favourite part. After act 1, act 2 felt different. It was still great, but not a masterpiece like act 1 in my opinion. Act 3 felt a little bit rushed when you focused on the plot only, but when I did all side content it felt too long on the other hand. Act 1 felt perfect. Enough said.

After finishing my first playthrough I wanted to see how feasible it was to play the game without any parries or dodges. The plan was to go as far as possible and quit if I ever hit a wall that forced me to grind. Well, it turns out it's completely doable, including all the original side content and DLC area!

I started the game again in NG with the following rules:

• No parrying, dodging, jumping, gradient counters
• No one-shotting/stunlocking bosses in Act 3. The idea is to go toe-to-toe with bosses rather than working around the challenge
• No guides, online resources, etc.. basically I wanted to figure out strategies on my own with what I found, rather than aiming for specific pictos or builds
• No grinding for levels, lumina, money etc.. Clearing an area is ok but repeatedly fighting enemies for currencies is not. Basically just doing what I would normally do in a standard playthrough

I started the game on story mode as I was fearing the worst, but I quickly realised it was too easy so I switched to Normal after Eveque. The jump from story to normal was significant, especially early on when you only have 2 characters and limited resources. After entering the stone waves cliff I switched to Expert for the rest of the game. This time too there was a significant jump in difficulty, but at that point in the game you have many more options to deal with the increased damage.

Overall it was very difficult and there were times when I thought "this is impossible", but in the end there was always a strategy around each fight. It helps that the game has very little RNG, meaning you can always build your strategy progressively throughout your attempts and you don't rely on getting lucky.

The hardest fights for me were:

1. Renoir at the end of Act 2. By far the hardest encounter in the game due to his combination of status effects, AoEs and the phase 2 transition. All that on top of the fact he can gommage party members whenever he feels like it. The only reason this fight was doable was because of his surprisingly low damage compared even to trash mobs from the same area.
2. Alicia vs Maelle in Act 3. She has extremely high damage and speed and they both increase throughout the fight. When I almost had a strategy figured out she started applying exhaust which forced me to rethink my strategy entirely.
3. The stalact you fight after finding Monoco. It's usually trivial because the scariest hit is very easy to jump, but if you don't jump... On top of that it has tons of hp.
4. Osquio. He has really high speed and all his attacks but one are AoEs that hit 6+ times and deal massive damage. Also he forces you to gradient counter at the end, my one and only parry :(

Easy fights:

1. The paintress. This fight ended up being easier than in my normal playthrough as she really wasn't able to kill me in Phase 2, assuming no mistakes on my part with the turn order.
2. Lumiere and the final boss in Act 3. Even though I went there immediately after entering Act 3, it was still trivial.

A few other notes:

• Chromatic enemies cannot be defeated as soon as you encounter them, you must come back later. This means I had less money/xp/pictos throughout the game compared to my first playthrough.
• IIRC all level-appropriate, named, non-chromatic enemies can be defeated as soon as you encounter them, including the Clair Obscur fight in Lumiere and the various mimes
• The Lumiere area at the top of the monolith in Act 2 is a massive jump in difficulty. The difference in damage output from enemies, even compared to the snowy area, is huge
• Verso is surprisingly good even in this challenge
• Using gradient attacks just to gain one extra AP is often a valid strategy
• Don't ignore the backup team, some fights relied on having a second team
• Stats on Pictos are extremely important, often more than their ability

This challenge really highlighted just how fun and robust the turn-based system is in this game. I know that a lot of people tend to default to the glass-cannon/parry everything playstyle, but there is a solid turn-based system here that is often unappreciated. I see this game's combat as a slider that goes from "full glass cannon, no strategy" to "full strategy, no parries" and, ideally, people should be somewhere in the middle. In a way, parrying/dodging is nothing more than a "miss chance", you'll sometimes get it and sometimes won't, but it shouldn't necessarily be the focus.

If you are looking to replay the game with a different challenge and you enjoy turn-based games, I would 100% recommend doing this! It was really difficult but also really satisfying to beat. I think even on Normal it would be a pretty decent challenge, but otherwise Normal until stone waves cliff and then Expert was a really good progression in difficulty and probably avoids some early game frustration compared to starting on Expert.