Act 3, not sure how to proceed

[Bono my tyres are gone]

So I just started act 3 and Idk how much game is left.

I'd like to clear the whole map but not after credits roll because I get bored without any unknown plot to look forward to.

On the other hand, if I start clearing now and it turns out there's some unlock or upgrade in the story and I play the rest of the game without it I'm gonna feel like a bum.

Question is: should I play story first and ignore the map until the obvious fight against Renoir? Or clear whole map and then finish the game?

[Ratsplat]

Main story is just the one level.

Recommendation is to get everyone's relationship to 7, nothing else, then do story. Once you finish the story, you can keep playing, and eventually do NG+.

This is because you will effectively nuke the story boss in 1 hit, skipping all dialogue and such, if you do it after everything else in Act 3.

[Ogami]

Everything except the final dungeon/boss fight is optional in act 3.
I recommend doing the personal quests of the characters, talk to them multiple times in the camp and you should get Maelles, Lunes and Monocos quests.
Do those since they add something to the story.
You could also try and tackle the "Flying Manor" location since it adds lore background to Clea.
After that i would go for the end of the story. After the final fight you can clean up the rest of the map. Reason ist if you do everything else first you are literally so obscenely overpowered that you kill the final boss in like 1 hit which makes it a bit anticlimatic.

[Platapoop]

After some experimentation, you will be OP no matter what you do unless you don't use painted power. Actually you'll still be OP but at least the boss survives more than one turn. On expert too. I do suggest not one shotting the boss because they do have some voice lines and stuff during the fights

[EnzoVic]

Act 3 is open world exploration. The story doesn't need to end.

[Aru]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Everything except the final dungeon/boss fight is optional in act 3.
I recommend doing the personal quests of the characters, talk to them multiple times in the camp and you should get Maelles, Lunes and Monocos quests.
Do those since they add something to the story.
You could also try and tackle the "Flying Manor" location since it adds lore background to Clea.
After that i would go for the end of the story. After the final fight you can clean up the rest of the map. Reason ist if you do everything else first you are literally so obscenely overpowered that you kill the final boss in like 1 hit which makes it a bit anticlimatic.

I'm in the middle of Act 2 so that kind of advice is actually something really useful to me. I still will have something to explore before main story but also will not accidentaly nuke final boss.

[Shovel]

I just finished the final fight after doing a bunch of side content, char levels around 70. I didn't oneshot the boss, but I reckon I could have with the right setup. I probably waited a little too long, so maybe around level 50-60 is the sweet spot?

What compounds this problem is zones are only marked as DANGER or not, the game only signals if you're underleveled, but not by how much, and says nothing about being stronger than required for an area.

[Torque]

Going for to boss right away sounds good. i did everything else first and then nuked everyone and everything in my way.

I kinda feel a bit cheated how easy i made everything. temporally. Simon helped me with that.

[Aru]

Originally posted by Shovel:

I just finished the final fight after doing a bunch of side content, char levels around 70. I didn't oneshot the boss, but I reckon I could have with the right setup. I probably waited a little too long, so maybe around level 50-60 is the sweet spot?

What compounds this problem is zones are only marked as DANGER or not, the game only signals if you're underleveled, but not by how much, and says nothing about being stronger than required for an area.

I dunno. I'm in the middle of Act 2, did the Mask boss and currently doing Sirene and at her place I nuke everything so fast it's not even fun and my core team is lvl 49. 50-60 lvl may be too much. I kinda wished that they just pumped up the hp of some bossess instead of making them hit like a truck with each attack. Otherwise it's best to not even give them any chance to act. Altough perhaps Act III main bossess are far tougher, especially since you can use the over 9,999 attacks since then.

[Shovel]

Originally posted by Aru:

50-60 lvl may be too much.

You might be right, I've seen a few posts from people beating the game at 50 too. Maybe the intent for Act 3 is to do the companion quests at Reacher and Sirene and then head straight to Lumiere?