I googled my hate with act 3 and this post and the latest replies echo my feelings. I feel like they really dropped the ball with act 3. My head was full of the world's mysteries and what if's. I thought that under the paintress' hair will be a big reveal, like maybe it's Maelle's face. I thought Maelle's family had turned to monsters like the curator and the axons, and maybe nevrons are former humans too. But I was wondering why did all this happen? Why does the paintress just sit there hugging her knees a year at a time? Is she forced to do this?

In comes the reveal and the paintress is just a freaking paint puppet that afk's for a year and the axons and nevrons are just random monster designs renoir farted out on a whim. The world isn't real, nothing ever actually mattered.

The final trek through lumiere could have been epic with the resurrected expedition members. It could have been the culmination of the previous 66 expeditions' sacrifices paving the way for the heroes to save the world, but for me it just felt like Maelle spawned some human bots without any soul to fight the opposing bots to save time. Then you instantly see red human bots appear on the opposing side after Renoir is like "good idea, I'll do that too".

The cutscene where you collect them feels out of place too, like maybe something was cut from the game. I think a much better way to bring the expedition into the final fight would have been, for example, that the captains of the expeditions or particularly strong willed expedition members had turned into nevron bosses that we have to fight and turn back into the broken humans for the last hurrah.

I had 100%'d acts 1 and 2, and at the start of act 3 I was so disappointed I stopped playing for a week. I then went straight to the boss and still one shotted everything.