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My favorite part of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a French JRPG filled with incredible music and characters and twists and sights, is the way you get to customize your party. I am, in my bone marrow, a buildcrafter. And Pictos and Luminas, the equipped and background versions of the passive abilities you've collected, essentially let you rewrite the rules of Clair Obscur in a way I find irresistible.
If you put a Lumina on everyone in your party, that's just how the game works now. Why yes, I would like to heal the entire team every time I parry an attack. And equipping the right combination of Pictos can give you the stats you need to support each character's play style, whether they're a damage dealer or a supportive healer and buffer – or, as I learned in an unintended bit of sequence breaking, a god who functionally cannot be killed.
I guess we're doing deification now
Pictos have their own levels, with higher-level Pictos offering considerably bigger stat bonuses. The thing is, characters of any level are able to equip Pictos of any level. You just have to find them. But most high-level Pictos are gated behind story events, tucked away in areas that are unreachable until you unlock certain abilities or clear specific missions. Most.
It turns out a few high-level Pictos are just lying around, begging you to scoop them up way too early in the story and completely destroy any sense of difficulty or game balance. I managed to find some of these by accident simply by stubbornly venturing into areas that I clearly should not be in yet, avoiding enemies while gliding around as Lune. This led me to Pictos so strong, so blatantly above my pay grade, that I had to force myself to put them down to preserve any sense of strategy.
I only found three juiced-up Pictos before I swore off the stuff. I'm sure there are more available if you specifically want to sequence break Clair Obscur into mush – I later learned that there's another one right next to one I found – but that was more than enough for me. To give you some important context, my character stats at the time were hovering around 200 - 400 defense, 1,000 - 1,500 HP, and 800 - 1,000 speed. The Pictos that I found – one on the Dark Shores in the southern tip of the map, and two in the Frozen Hearts mountain range – gave me around 1,300 defense, 1,500 HP, and 800 speed respectively, not to mention gigantic crit rate boosts.
The Pictos I found were In Medias Res (three shields on combat start, but halved max HP), Burning Break (apply burn when breaking enemies), and Burn Affinity (25% more damage to burning enemies). I want to say they were around level 21 - 23 when I found them – it's been a while since I finished Clair Obscur, but I decided I needed to share my tale of stumbling into godhood, so I checked my notes and looked a few things up online to double-check.
It felt like starting a new game of Civilization and discovering nuclear power on turn two. My stats doubled in an instant. My defense went straight to the moon. Did I resist this obviously unfair stat boost, putting these Pictos on the shelf to ripen until the time was right? Obviously the fuck not. What do you take me for? I equipped those things immediately. Cheesing overpowered gear early on in an RPG is one of life's great pleasures, so I was at least going to take a nibble of the forbidden fruit. And it was sweet. With these three Pictos, embedded like Infinity Stones, anyone in my party could be rendered immortal. Bosses could deal, at most, 10% of my health with their strongest attacks, and I played the whole game on Expert difficulty. It was glorious. Until it wasn't.
The thing is, turn-based combat is only fun when it presents some kind of challenge. Easy action games can be enjoyable in a kinetic way because you still get to watch and feel your character open a can of whoopass. And yeah, Clair Obscur has parries and quick-time attacks, but playing a patronizingly easy turn-based game feels like beating toddlers at football. So I quickly chose to abandon my newfound godhood.
Without the stimulus of danger, there were no meaningful consequences or decisions. I'd flown too close to the sun. All the buildcrafting had dried up, and that's a world I don't want to live in. Maybe immortality really isn't what it's cracked up to be. Of course, it goes without saying that I still used these broken Pictos long enough to unlock the Lumina versions, because that did enhance the buildcrafting, and it's too late to arrest me for crimes against game balance.
One of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's funniest moments was actually "random improv."
