It is very strange to start from the beginning of the story

It makes you really appreciate your time with Gustave and Maelle bonding like real siblings

Especially after coming fresh off of Verso and Maelle's dynamic and they are just .... at such odds with each other. Maelle seems to want Verso to bond with her like Gustave or real Verso might have. But Verso just wants to be done with things. He has no will to live like she does

Verso is Gustave's exact opposite

Verso just wants to rest and stop putting this toxic family in an unending cycle that's so self-destructive

And Gustave, at least in my opinion, just wants to live and for people to be safe from all of the chaos of their "world"

In Maelle's ending, I feel as though Gustave would not have been told the whole truth

Maelle would not tell him she could die, or she would assure him otherwise to such an extent he wouldn't fear for her at all.

It's such a dark ending

You want to be happy for Gustave and you just can't be happy to see him

Would Gustave, if he knew what it would take from Maelle to sustain Lumiere agree to the Gommage?

I tried out Verso's ending first because it seemed right. But I had to check Maelle's too

And I'm glad I went to Verso's first.

I've read only that there's some divide between which ending is best

With people who've experienced grief preferring Verso's and people who have been blissfully without tragedies prefer Maelle's

How, I don't know

How can Maelle's ending, where she's falling apart in a fake happiness, forcing Verso to play and surrounded by her own creations, however real they may have felt. How is that good.....

Poor Verso

Maelle is playing the Sims at Verso's expense and she's oblivious to it

Surely, he would want this

Girl is delulu

I love her character very much. I love that she gets a villain sort of ending

And it really makes you appreciate Verso's ending more

CRUEL CHOICES

Hot take

Renoir is actually the story Hero and Protag

And Aline and Maelle are the villains

Fight me on it, I dare you

I say to the void

If I do rp with Maelle, I would take her from the very end.

In all her delulu

But also god, what a selfish family

All of them are so damned selfish

Aline is selfish for creating an entire world of living, breathing people just so she can live beside her dead son again. Bitch remade Maelle with her scars and without her voice

Raise the dead, but punish your other child as though the fire only took her

And then Renoir, the most reasonable family member of them all, is selfish in an ironic way. Destroying the painting gets him his family back by force. However, his selfishness only exists because of Aline's choices

If Aline was healthy about her addictions to the canvas and had left from time to time, Renoir wouldn't be forced to make these decisions

God and Clea is an MVP

Fuck this shit, I have real problems and fires to put out that my baby sister fucking started. This girl doesn't even have time for grief. Her father is trying to drag back his youngest and his wife and Clea's managing the whole world in the meantime

I hope Clea gets time for her grief. She's so relatable though. Throw yourself into a task to avoid grief catching up to you. It's go go go so you don't give your thoughts a single moment to catch you

I think Clea is the least selfish

And then there's Maelle who just goes complete delulu and doesn't want to face the consequences of her actions

Granted, the consequences are horrible and deeply traumatic

But puppeteering a world and its people for your own happiness is just as cruel as Aline's creation of them in the first place

Aline could've created the world and come back every so often to visit it and the Gommage wouldn't even be a thing

We know time passes MUCH faster inside the canvas

16 years doesn't seem to have been any time at all in the real world

It could be 1 year to 1 minute, we don't know. But Maelle is still very much a teen in Verso's ending so it's fair to assume that part of the reluctance to leave is because of the time disparity. I might be giving them too much credit on that one, admittedly

I have been thinking on this so long and hard dear god

Sophie is just a walking foreshadow

Her conversation with everyone ends in See You

Except Maelle

Who responds with In the next life

Not See You which seems to be customary

.-. reeeee

LOL I DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS

So I "swapped" characters to walk around with

You are not in the party missy

This has to be a bug...

I am in the prologue

Why are you in Lumiere Monoco

Sir

EXPLAIN YOURSELF

So the wardrobe does NOT reset

Maelle is running around in her Act 3 getup and spooked the fuck out of me

Ya, the whole party is still available even though story wise I shouldn't have anyone

This is where I'm at in the Prologue

I haven't left Lumiere yet, it's the Expedition festival

I don't think New Game+ is well scaled...

Gustave seems to have stolen Verso's pictos set up and stats

Which is weird. They have similar abilities to an extent but Verso's build and Gustave's are completely different

Gustave's goal is charges, Verso's goal is losing as much HP for higher damage as possible

Verso and his self-sacrificing bullshit tbh

Gustave did NOT keep his skills

Or I have to re-allocate them

When you are on tutorial island with your full fledged party and all their op abilities and stats

THIS IS THE FIRST NEVRON you fight

I'm on Expert, I just double checked

Hopefully the difficulty catches up soon?

It is not catching up

Yes, the mime can one shot me when I just stand there but.... no new mechanics it seems

lol pls don't come for me but Gustave is so weak compared to Verso

But their levels and stats are intertwined so do I keep him so he doesn't fall behind in stats or replace him with Sciel

I think he's getting replaced with Sciel. He just takes too long to build up for one decent attack amongst many very bad attacks

I feel like Maelle is babysitting Gustave, she's just such a better fighter than him even with the nerf to her Gradient attack

HUHHH SHE'S STILL DEALING 2MIL DAMAGE FOR ME

IN DEFENSIVE STANCE

What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I thought she was getting fixed???

Maelle the hell

Did they not patch yet?

WAIT NO THEY DID

SHE'S STILL BROKEN

HELLO????

The Curator is in camp

But I still don't have Maelle

This is so creepy

Back to this nonsense.

I have finished Act I again.

Verso is back in my party and he HAS COMPLETELY RESET lmao

Gustave adopted Verso's stats but Verso has 0 stats and 0 skills

I have to reinvest everything

SO WEIRD

He did just fine adopting Gustave's pictos

I mean, I won't complain. I had to reset Gustave's stats because he plays so different from Verso

So it's like a freebie recoat

Okay so this feels like an oversight

I am getting smacked with Gradient attacks but because the team hasn't learned about Gradient attacks, I can't defend against them

HAVE I SKIPPED TO A REGION HARDER THAN I SHOULD? Yes.

Am I compensating the 1 shot gradient attacks with stacks and stacks of Shields? Absolutely

Meanwhile fucking Verso

I appreciate Angel Eyes, even if it's extremely weak compared to Maelle's Gommage

The halo is cute

Also, I forgot to mention but I finally beat Golgra with Monoco before I went to find Esquie

So now Monoco has some bullshit op weapon with 6k attack power and it's just like ???

He's the support, hello?

I don't mind. The bell is now very competitive with Angel Eyes at least for damage

But I wish I had a better grasp of parries on Golgra. I would've sent Maelle in but I just kept messing up and she'll get one shot with just 1 mistake

Because I didn't want to spend more time on her, I sent in Monoco and did the shield stack tactic. It worked. Took me 45 min to beat her, but she did go down

Compared to Maelle who chonked 25% of Golgra's max hp in one round but as soon as I hiccup'd it was back to square one

lol NEXT TIME I'll get her with Maelle

So I'm at Forgotten Battlefield again, the only thing I skipped from that section of the map was Sprong

Sorry but Sprong took me 55 min last time and I know I have Gommage to delete things now but oooo there is a time and place for that kinda fight lol

ANYWAY

I got to where Verso's like ha HA let me show you something (gradient dodge)

And the thing attacks Maelle, I parry just fine

Then it does the gradient against Verso

And I miss so Verso and his 10k hp get 1 shot

And then Maelle just pokes it and it dies

And it's so funny cause you still get the same dialogue after of Lune being like Anything else we should know?
And Verso says One thing at a time

LOL SIR U DIED plssssss

Honestly, if I didn't get one shot by every/anything I would just put the childe in solo but it's very risky with the build I have for her

AND FOR THE RECORD 99def/99vit/99agi does not help. I've tried

I'm sure if I re-arranged her pictos we could get her in full tank mode but I can't be bothered to scour the stats of them all

Oh I am so slow

I just realized Maelle has Phantom Strike and Verso has Phantom Stars and Maelle deals Void to all and Verso deals Light to all

meep meep meep moop

lol bumping into Clea in the Battlefield

And she's like You good? Nah? Great. Well go play with your friends while I clean up your mess

lmaooooo poor Clea

She's an absolute dick to Verso with that nightmare nonsense but at least she's got her shit together unlike everyone else in the fam

EYYYYYYYYYYY I finished Monoco's skills

Very satisfying

Monoco is fighting Monoco

New Game+ is weird

So I'm trying to only parry (unless it's unparryable) and not use any revives for my new game +

I forgot this guy does blight so

88x blight no problem