Gospel of Matthew 24:27: "For as the Lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man"
Being the last game of arguably the most polarizing trilogy in video games, the Final Fantasy XIII saga, Lighting Returns was a title that had already received mixed reviews by journalists while it was still in development. Considering how XIII-2 improved in nearly every aspect of the criticism that XIII received, fans were surprisingly hopeful, until news went out that it would be employing the most radical changes ever seen to the traditional FF formula. Despite having a gameplay style mostly resembling Majora’s Mask by being a single lonely character clashing against time and current society, the philosophical implications of Lightning Returns run much deeper than that, although not being as obvious, but impossible to ignore once you start to realize how it ties in with the trilogy’s themes. To properly explain how this game’s subjects became so misunderstood (which I hope you don’t mind spoilers about), we first have to talk about the privatization of stress.
Although the game wasn’t made as a 1 to 1 capitalist critique, it mimics themes of stress and solitude in a desperate narrative reminiscent of those in modern urban life scenarios. It is no coincidence that one of the trilogy’s most criticized aspects of not properly handling cities, side quests and NPC’s is directly answered by having most of the game be spent in 2 fully fledged cities that always feel awake 24/7. Not only that but all of the quests in these places feel very mundane and uneventful, usually regarding easy to solve social problems as someone from the outside or simply a miscommunication between people who find themselves stuck in their own struggles to maintain a meaningless routine.
You are tasked early on to face a former friend after not being able to recognize them through the years, while the only person you used to care about becomes more hostile towards you because of your life choices, all in all with an inner angsty teenager sense of persecution, proved to be factually right, that the entire world is against you. This is the closest I have ever seen in a power fantasy game, especially one that deep down recycles the same classic formula of “kill god” narrative, dealing with such a down to earth theme of self-indulging despair and hopelessness that isn’t solved miraculously by external magical sources. The foundation of the premise is something we can all relate to, as even if we haven’t experienced all those 3 together, something in our brain just seems to understand perfectly how messy it would be. Your inner struggles are irrelevant to your divine task however, and you’re left to conquer your own psychological problems by yourself, as the burden of carrying out your divine duty never cared for your well being, giving a complete uneasy feeling of possibly being a discardable chosen one.
“ Relentless monitoring is closely linked to precarity. And, as Tobias van Veen argues, precarious work places ‘an ironic yet devastating’ demand on the labourer. On the one hand work never ends: the worker is always expected to be available, with no claims to a private life. On the other hand the precariat are completely expendable, even when they have sacrificed all autonomy to keep their jobs. “ - Mark Fisher
Stress is the core gameplay element of this game, as it always runs in a hellish wicked timer, waiting for you to make a grave mistake and ponder whether to continue or not, which can be seen by some as even more cruel than simply ending it. Necessary events to the game’s story can be only accessed in a specific time window, as well as NPC’s sidequests and routines, meaning that you’ll have to do some serious planning if you don’t want to miss a crucial bit in your adventure.
From the very start you are told to finish the main quests in under a week with a high sense of urgency, however you’ll quickly notice that by rushing the first main story in the initial city, the gap between how strong you are and how intense the fights can get is pretty substantial. Not spoiling what happens after one week. but I sincerely hope you prepared yourself for it. The only way to increase your stats, and your time, is by finishing quests, not by trading punches, which pushes you to pursue the game’s side content for small gains in order to properly be able to handle the main ones for an even higher stat gain. Juggling with these two, you’ll find yourself in situations with near conflicting times that don’t seem to have an objectively best way out, effectively creating the perfect complete opposite experience of a sandbox game.
" Daily life becomes precarious. Planning ahead becomes difficult, routines are impossible to establish. Work, of whatever sort, might begin or end anywhere at a moment’s notice, and the burden is always on the worker to create the next opportunity and to surf between roles. The individual must exist in a state of constant readiness. Predictable income, savings, the fixed category of ‘occupation’: all belong to another historical world. " - Mark Fisher
Let’s suppose that you need to sneak your way through a certain castle until 11:00 pm, so you decide to be free until 10:00 pm to not lose such an occasion. You hope to finish an investigation sidequest, with no guarantees, until 9:30 pm, which is when you think the NPC leaves, as when you tried to interact with him the other way at 10:00 pm he wasn’t there but you remember passing him by at 8:00 pm. While thinking about that, you also make a mental note to fetch the rewards for another sidequest at 6:30 pm in another city that takes 30 min by train, meaning that either one hour traveling or a massive amount of spell points, spent in a teleportation magic, will be lost. You also ponder whether or not you should take that optional boss fight at 6:00 pm, as you want to save your limited spells for later, dreaming about its massive loot reward that could be useful later on. All of that is happening, at 11:00 am, having no set plans for 12 hours to come, while not precisely remembering what you forgot to do yesterday, without realizing that you didn’t check that your secret royal entrance closes at 9:00 pm.
The only way you can stop the clock is by fighting, either by being directly in combat, or using precious spell points gained after a battle. Your own blood becomes partially meaningless, as healing sources are abundant, and the punishment for running away or losing becomes the same: The loss of 1 ingame hour. Our own life becomes an end goal that is not as impactful as the cycle we find ourselves in, independent if we are the main character in this story, as it’s meaningless to the ordinary citizen stuck in this vicious cycle. The dehumanizing cogs of time can’t stop running, as someone or something requires it to, because even if it’s not a natural nor necessary way to handle a civilization, it was imposed onto us the moment we were born.
" The tendency today is for practically all forms of work to become precarious. As Franco Berardi puts it, ‘Capital no longer recruits people, but buys packets of time, separated from their interchangeable and occasional bearers’. Such ‘packets of time’ are not conceived of as having a connection to a person with rights or demands: they are simply either available or unavailable. " - Mark Fisher
The majority of the game’s sidequest in one of the cities can be directly traced to monetary problems, directly or indirectly. Some are quite obvious, such as buying medication for someone poor as others refuse to acknowledge their existence, or being knowingly scammed daily by a desperate child while she tells her story in life. Some points, however, such as needing to talk or ask someone in the slums about anything at all, always carried a subtle connotation regarding the inherent cultural divide that is present. You see, even before monsters and cultists started to appear, the city used a system of applying ‘martial lawish’ gates to block out its poor parts, enforcing their place on a section with very little resources overall. The lack of access to other cities, terrain to expand, or even a way to get direct food and water without having to buy overpriced second hand ones by the city's traders, means that not only it was built, but also purposefully maintained as a hub of enforced poverty.
The other city, exuberant with richness everywhere, faces an entirely different and post-modern problem of being ‘bored’ by the virtue of having everything they so desire. Ranging from useless side quests to get materials that you can’t buy (only way to give them any value at this point) like the embarrassing chocobo girl one, or the amazingly cute chocobo baby ones. Serving as small first world problems that could be easily solved on their own, they are absurdly blown out of proportion, for being the only mild annoyance this egoistical and socially clueless bourgeois will face in their near ending lives. One quest in particular caught my attention, because it all boils down to a bunch of kids trying to have some fun by attempting to predict the future in which you’ll arrive to talk to them, joking about the concept of free will and pretending like they have some sort of special powers, when in fact they already have the most noticeable one out there: privilege. Having to help such a carefree society that turned a blind eye into a possible perpetual state of wastefulness while the rest of the world is still facing inequalities, is heartbreaking, specially when considering Lightning’s own problems, that discredits what you’re repeatedly told about being the world’s only hope, by giving you a slight nod that no matter who you are, divinity is not a virtue under capitalism.
" If the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism had its psychic casualties, then post-Fordism has innovated whole new modes of stress. Instead of the elimination of bureaucratic red tape promised by neoliberal ideologues, the combination of new technology and managerialism has massively increased the administrative stress placed on workers, who are now required to be their own auditors (which by no means frees them of the attentions of external auditors of many kinds). Work, no matter how casual, now routinely entails the performance of meta-work: the completion of log books, the detailing of aims and objectives, the engagement in so-called `continuing professional development’. " - Mark Fisher
Lightning Returns is truly a special title in the list of video games that criticize capitalism indirectly, as its ending (no spoilers, don’t worry) doesn't follow the usual liberal notion that “if we get rid of the evil king, we can live forever happy with the good king”. Existing within a system that allows such people to even exist, and even worse, take over, turns into a fundamentally broken political structure that can adapt to the needs of those in power. No amount of boring and expository dialogue that aims to say “I had good intentions tho” could fix the inconsequential flaws of those who misused power in the past for their own benefit.
Soul harvesting is the ultimate consequence of a system based heavily upon materialism, where the need for one’s time, feelings and dedication can no longer fulfill such impossible to meet demands. In a society that finds itself at peace, forever cursed to not age, was it really so hard for people to come together in union? The only thought keeping this shambling community in such a chaotic state is the self-imposed fear that it could somehow get worse, even with the apocalypse blasting its ugly true colors upon the sky. Most saddening however, is when you realize this is what’s happening in our real world at this very moment. Churchill’s asinine phrase that capitalism is a boat sinking less than others, became ingrained in modern capitalists brains that refuse to acknowledge it’s main problems while trying to get rid of smaller ones, as supposedly it’s better to let a bomb explode slowly by not cutting a wire, than giving a shot to a method that could save us all.
Self imposed faith in the system is the downfall of a society that doesn’t ponder about its future, as being on the edge of insanity for centuries for never questioning the line of thinking that led to such a problem, is both saddening and fascinating. Greed kills, murders and slaughters those that try to oppose it, or just refuse to hail it as the ultimate goal in life. We treat God as a currency that blesses those already privileged ones with even more privilege, in a modern miracle supposedly called ‘meritocracy’. It’s only by rejecting the ideas of self imposed righteous workplace figures that we can debunk their cult, as the only foundation they have is blind faith accompanied by financial fear mongering.
" But this should not be a cause for lament; far from it. What we need to revive is not social formations that failed (and failed for reasons that progressives should be pleased about), but a political project that never really happened: the achievement of a democratic public sphere. Even in Blond’s work, the lineaments of a hegemonic shift can be discerned – in his startling repudiation of the core concepts of neoliberalism and his attack on managerialism; and in the concession that, contra Thatcher, it turns out that there is such a thing as society after all. Such moves give some indication of the extent to which – after the bank bail-outs – neoliberalism has radically lost credibility. " - Mark Fisher
The conclusion of Lighting Returns is an impossible one for us to meet, as it’s not only absurdly magical, but also displays a lot of light in a totally fantastical future that retroactively also fixes her own personal problems, the ultimate power fantasy move. Her external and internal troubles are fixed by punching them into the embodiment of everything that was wrong until that point, which is something I’d like to personally experience one day. You can’t make a revolution alone, much less disregard those who are in the wrong, for that a strong conviction can shed some well deserving light even in the worst of cases. The good thing about being an emotional wall during the entire story, is that you know how she must have felt in this journey’s end, in one of the most beautiful sequences I have ever seen in my entire life. We’ll have to learn from Lightning, and try our best to recreate such a sequence in our own real world, for it’s the only recipe of an ultimate utopia.
Godspeed Mark, thank you for changing my life.
Being the last game of arguably the most polarizing trilogy in video games, the Final Fantasy XIII saga, Lighting Returns was a title that had already received mixed reviews by journalists while it was still in development. Considering how XIII-2 improved in nearly every aspect of the criticism that XIII received, fans were surprisingly hopeful, until news went out that it would be employing the most radical changes ever seen to the traditional FF formula. Despite having a gameplay style mostly resembling Majora’s Mask by being a single lonely character clashing against time and current society, the philosophical implications of Lightning Returns run much deeper than that, although not being as obvious, but impossible to ignore once you start to realize how it ties in with the trilogy’s themes. To properly explain how this game’s subjects became so misunderstood (which I hope you don’t mind spoilers about), we first have to talk about the privatization of stress.
Although the game wasn’t made as a 1 to 1 capitalist critique, it mimics themes of stress and solitude in a desperate narrative reminiscent of those in modern urban life scenarios. It is no coincidence that one of the trilogy’s most criticized aspects of not properly handling cities, side quests and NPC’s is directly answered by having most of the game be spent in 2 fully fledged cities that always feel awake 24/7. Not only that but all of the quests in these places feel very mundane and uneventful, usually regarding easy to solve social problems as someone from the outside or simply a miscommunication between people who find themselves stuck in their own struggles to maintain a meaningless routine.
You are tasked early on to face a former friend after not being able to recognize them through the years, while the only person you used to care about becomes more hostile towards you because of your life choices, all in all with an inner angsty teenager sense of persecution, proved to be factually right, that the entire world is against you. This is the closest I have ever seen in a power fantasy game, especially one that deep down recycles the same classic formula of “kill god” narrative, dealing with such a down to earth theme of self-indulging despair and hopelessness that isn’t solved miraculously by external magical sources. The foundation of the premise is something we can all relate to, as even if we haven’t experienced all those 3 together, something in our brain just seems to understand perfectly how messy it would be. Your inner struggles are irrelevant to your divine task however, and you’re left to conquer your own psychological problems by yourself, as the burden of carrying out your divine duty never cared for your well being, giving a complete uneasy feeling of possibly being a discardable chosen one.
“ Relentless monitoring is closely linked to precarity. And, as Tobias van Veen argues, precarious work places ‘an ironic yet devastating’ demand on the labourer. On the one hand work never ends: the worker is always expected to be available, with no claims to a private life. On the other hand the precariat are completely expendable, even when they have sacrificed all autonomy to keep their jobs. “ - Mark Fisher
Stress is the core gameplay element of this game, as it always runs in a hellish wicked timer, waiting for you to make a grave mistake and ponder whether to continue or not, which can be seen by some as even more cruel than simply ending it. Necessary events to the game’s story can be only accessed in a specific time window, as well as NPC’s sidequests and routines, meaning that you’ll have to do some serious planning if you don’t want to miss a crucial bit in your adventure.
From the very start you are told to finish the main quests in under a week with a high sense of urgency, however you’ll quickly notice that by rushing the first main story in the initial city, the gap between how strong you are and how intense the fights can get is pretty substantial. Not spoiling what happens after one week. but I sincerely hope you prepared yourself for it. The only way to increase your stats, and your time, is by finishing quests, not by trading punches, which pushes you to pursue the game’s side content for small gains in order to properly be able to handle the main ones for an even higher stat gain. Juggling with these two, you’ll find yourself in situations with near conflicting times that don’t seem to have an objectively best way out, effectively creating the perfect complete opposite experience of a sandbox game.
" Daily life becomes precarious. Planning ahead becomes difficult, routines are impossible to establish. Work, of whatever sort, might begin or end anywhere at a moment’s notice, and the burden is always on the worker to create the next opportunity and to surf between roles. The individual must exist in a state of constant readiness. Predictable income, savings, the fixed category of ‘occupation’: all belong to another historical world. " - Mark Fisher
Let’s suppose that you need to sneak your way through a certain castle until 11:00 pm, so you decide to be free until 10:00 pm to not lose such an occasion. You hope to finish an investigation sidequest, with no guarantees, until 9:30 pm, which is when you think the NPC leaves, as when you tried to interact with him the other way at 10:00 pm he wasn’t there but you remember passing him by at 8:00 pm. While thinking about that, you also make a mental note to fetch the rewards for another sidequest at 6:30 pm in another city that takes 30 min by train, meaning that either one hour traveling or a massive amount of spell points, spent in a teleportation magic, will be lost. You also ponder whether or not you should take that optional boss fight at 6:00 pm, as you want to save your limited spells for later, dreaming about its massive loot reward that could be useful later on. All of that is happening, at 11:00 am, having no set plans for 12 hours to come, while not precisely remembering what you forgot to do yesterday, without realizing that you didn’t check that your secret royal entrance closes at 9:00 pm.
The only way you can stop the clock is by fighting, either by being directly in combat, or using precious spell points gained after a battle. Your own blood becomes partially meaningless, as healing sources are abundant, and the punishment for running away or losing becomes the same: The loss of 1 ingame hour. Our own life becomes an end goal that is not as impactful as the cycle we find ourselves in, independent if we are the main character in this story, as it’s meaningless to the ordinary citizen stuck in this vicious cycle. The dehumanizing cogs of time can’t stop running, as someone or something requires it to, because even if it’s not a natural nor necessary way to handle a civilization, it was imposed onto us the moment we were born.
" The tendency today is for practically all forms of work to become precarious. As Franco Berardi puts it, ‘Capital no longer recruits people, but buys packets of time, separated from their interchangeable and occasional bearers’. Such ‘packets of time’ are not conceived of as having a connection to a person with rights or demands: they are simply either available or unavailable. " - Mark Fisher
The majority of the game’s sidequest in one of the cities can be directly traced to monetary problems, directly or indirectly. Some are quite obvious, such as buying medication for someone poor as others refuse to acknowledge their existence, or being knowingly scammed daily by a desperate child while she tells her story in life. Some points, however, such as needing to talk or ask someone in the slums about anything at all, always carried a subtle connotation regarding the inherent cultural divide that is present. You see, even before monsters and cultists started to appear, the city used a system of applying ‘martial lawish’ gates to block out its poor parts, enforcing their place on a section with very little resources overall. The lack of access to other cities, terrain to expand, or even a way to get direct food and water without having to buy overpriced second hand ones by the city's traders, means that not only it was built, but also purposefully maintained as a hub of enforced poverty.
The other city, exuberant with richness everywhere, faces an entirely different and post-modern problem of being ‘bored’ by the virtue of having everything they so desire. Ranging from useless side quests to get materials that you can’t buy (only way to give them any value at this point) like the embarrassing chocobo girl one, or the amazingly cute chocobo baby ones. Serving as small first world problems that could be easily solved on their own, they are absurdly blown out of proportion, for being the only mild annoyance this egoistical and socially clueless bourgeois will face in their near ending lives. One quest in particular caught my attention, because it all boils down to a bunch of kids trying to have some fun by attempting to predict the future in which you’ll arrive to talk to them, joking about the concept of free will and pretending like they have some sort of special powers, when in fact they already have the most noticeable one out there: privilege. Having to help such a carefree society that turned a blind eye into a possible perpetual state of wastefulness while the rest of the world is still facing inequalities, is heartbreaking, specially when considering Lightning’s own problems, that discredits what you’re repeatedly told about being the world’s only hope, by giving you a slight nod that no matter who you are, divinity is not a virtue under capitalism.
" If the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism had its psychic casualties, then post-Fordism has innovated whole new modes of stress. Instead of the elimination of bureaucratic red tape promised by neoliberal ideologues, the combination of new technology and managerialism has massively increased the administrative stress placed on workers, who are now required to be their own auditors (which by no means frees them of the attentions of external auditors of many kinds). Work, no matter how casual, now routinely entails the performance of meta-work: the completion of log books, the detailing of aims and objectives, the engagement in so-called `continuing professional development’. " - Mark Fisher
Lightning Returns is truly a special title in the list of video games that criticize capitalism indirectly, as its ending (no spoilers, don’t worry) doesn't follow the usual liberal notion that “if we get rid of the evil king, we can live forever happy with the good king”. Existing within a system that allows such people to even exist, and even worse, take over, turns into a fundamentally broken political structure that can adapt to the needs of those in power. No amount of boring and expository dialogue that aims to say “I had good intentions tho” could fix the inconsequential flaws of those who misused power in the past for their own benefit.
Soul harvesting is the ultimate consequence of a system based heavily upon materialism, where the need for one’s time, feelings and dedication can no longer fulfill such impossible to meet demands. In a society that finds itself at peace, forever cursed to not age, was it really so hard for people to come together in union? The only thought keeping this shambling community in such a chaotic state is the self-imposed fear that it could somehow get worse, even with the apocalypse blasting its ugly true colors upon the sky. Most saddening however, is when you realize this is what’s happening in our real world at this very moment. Churchill’s asinine phrase that capitalism is a boat sinking less than others, became ingrained in modern capitalists brains that refuse to acknowledge it’s main problems while trying to get rid of smaller ones, as supposedly it’s better to let a bomb explode slowly by not cutting a wire, than giving a shot to a method that could save us all.
Self imposed faith in the system is the downfall of a society that doesn’t ponder about its future, as being on the edge of insanity for centuries for never questioning the line of thinking that led to such a problem, is both saddening and fascinating. Greed kills, murders and slaughters those that try to oppose it, or just refuse to hail it as the ultimate goal in life. We treat God as a currency that blesses those already privileged ones with even more privilege, in a modern miracle supposedly called ‘meritocracy’. It’s only by rejecting the ideas of self imposed righteous workplace figures that we can debunk their cult, as the only foundation they have is blind faith accompanied by financial fear mongering.
" But this should not be a cause for lament; far from it. What we need to revive is not social formations that failed (and failed for reasons that progressives should be pleased about), but a political project that never really happened: the achievement of a democratic public sphere. Even in Blond’s work, the lineaments of a hegemonic shift can be discerned – in his startling repudiation of the core concepts of neoliberalism and his attack on managerialism; and in the concession that, contra Thatcher, it turns out that there is such a thing as society after all. Such moves give some indication of the extent to which – after the bank bail-outs – neoliberalism has radically lost credibility. " - Mark Fisher
The conclusion of Lighting Returns is an impossible one for us to meet, as it’s not only absurdly magical, but also displays a lot of light in a totally fantastical future that retroactively also fixes her own personal problems, the ultimate power fantasy move. Her external and internal troubles are fixed by punching them into the embodiment of everything that was wrong until that point, which is something I’d like to personally experience one day. You can’t make a revolution alone, much less disregard those who are in the wrong, for that a strong conviction can shed some well deserving light even in the worst of cases. The good thing about being an emotional wall during the entire story, is that you know how she must have felt in this journey’s end, in one of the most beautiful sequences I have ever seen in my entire life. We’ll have to learn from Lightning, and try our best to recreate such a sequence in our own real world, for it’s the only recipe of an ultimate utopia.
Godspeed Mark, thank you for changing my life.
lightning wearing suits in lr:ffxiii is what gave me a lesbian awakening at nine years old so thank you lightning farron for contributing to my lesbianism
Kind of like Disney releasing a second Frozen sequel that's just an animated version of /r9k/Elsa is Suffering. Getting to put Lightning in a little suit and accessorizing and recoloring it to fit the atmosphere of wherever she's exploring was a deep pleasure, and the battle system, probably the last in the series with a real relationship to the classic ATB/job mechanics, has a certain amount of depth. A game about emptying out and deadening the world is such an obvious textualization of the way the open-world genre works that it's shocking it hasn't really been done elsewhere. High postmodernism: my favorite character was Gordon Gourmet.
the cosmology and timeline of this series is so outrageous and inane that it's truly unfathomable to even conceive of the human experience/emotional interiority of any of these characters because what they go through is impossible to empathize with or relate to even in a realm of metaphor
and yet they decided to make the final boss literally your jilted and repressed inner child
its fucked up that lightning doesnt have more butch outfits, it would be more fitting AND hotter for her to have less lingerie and more lumberjack influence in her dresspheres. a missed opportunity. SAD!
and yet they decided to make the final boss literally your jilted and repressed inner child
its fucked up that lightning doesnt have more butch outfits, it would be more fitting AND hotter for her to have less lingerie and more lumberjack influence in her dresspheres. a missed opportunity. SAD!
Y'know what? Good for her.
Hayatım boyunca bir sürü oyun gördüm geçirdim. Gerek oynayarak gerek izleyerek gerek başka şekilde bir sürü oyunu bir şekilde deneyim ettim. Hiçbiri bu oyun kadar kötü değildi.
Oynadığım en kötü oyun olarak bende yerin her zaman ayrı kalacak Lightning Returns. Teşekkürler.
Oynadığım en kötü oyun olarak bende yerin her zaman ayrı kalacak Lightning Returns. Teşekkürler.
What an epic. Man, I love Lightning. In general I loved this whole trilogy from beginning to end. Really grew attached to these characters. This game stressed me out at times because of the timer, but overall, it was a pleasure.
Fodase esse jogo
This review contains spoilers
On one hand, Lightning dress up game with interesting combat. On the other hand, Hope is God.
I don't think words can describe how surprised I was by how amazing this game is especially coming off the game that shall not be named. Might have the best combat in the series. I love paris
I love you, Lightning
Bu mission dizaynını kim yaptı amina koymuşsunuz güzel gameplay yapmışsınız eyvallah da savaşmaya gerek yok bu nasıl jrpg amk
This review contains spoilers
Full disclosure: I played this following a platinum guide. Which involved playing on Easy for the simplest route to the Platinum Trophy.
But I will also own up to being a FFXIII Enjoyer in general. I loved the different cities/locales. The time/scheduling element to the side quests did a lot to make the towns feel alive. The ending, with everything leading up to it, the premise of the world ending, reconnecting with all our friends, learning the truth about The Ark and Bhunivelze, the final moments with Caius, Yuel, and Noel...Serah....Look. I was crying.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. Maybe not as much as I enjoyed XIII-2 or XIII, I like their combat systems more, but it was a good time.
But I will also own up to being a FFXIII Enjoyer in general. I loved the different cities/locales. The time/scheduling element to the side quests did a lot to make the towns feel alive. The ending, with everything leading up to it, the premise of the world ending, reconnecting with all our friends, learning the truth about The Ark and Bhunivelze, the final moments with Caius, Yuel, and Noel...Serah....Look. I was crying.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. Maybe not as much as I enjoyed XIII-2 or XIII, I like their combat systems more, but it was a good time.
this game is a guilty pleasure for me. the character writing and development in this game is improved in this title since you can tell lightning, snow and other cast members have gone through a lot since the last xiii title. i love this lightning so much (also one of her best outfits too)
Let him cook (longer)
Do the graphics suck? Yes.
Does it run like shit? Yes.
Do the load times suck? Yes.
Are all the assets reused? Yes.
Is this one of the most unique, creative and fun games in the franchise? Absolutely.
Lightning Returns's unique structure, combat and customization make it a total joy to experience. The key is how well all aspects of the game work with each other.
You want to do sidequests because aside from getting their cool little subplots you earn stats, equipment and extra in-game days with more quests, rewards and things to do. You're on a timer, so you want to get good at the combat because defeating hard enemies means being able to stop time for longer periods.
How do you get good at the combat? By playing the game! Experiment with the garbs, accessories and commands to find the most efficient way at defeating every enemy type. You'll not only get a lot of drops to complete sidequests and improve your commands but you'll also eventually make the monster extinct and earn a new (and usually very good) accessory or weapon along with materials to upgrade your commands to the next tier.
In sum: we have a really fun combat system that's extremely rewarding in every way which complements the extremely rewarding sidequest system which again furthers your combat options and capabilities.
The flow of the game feels very organic, I wanted to do things because they were fun and by doing fun things I unlocked even more fun things while also being handsomely rewarded in the process and understanding how I should play the game more efficiently bit by bit. Earning 100% feels more like a side effect rather than a goal, which to me is great design. I really loved this game and everyone should give it a fair shot, you might love it too.
Does it run like shit? Yes.
Do the load times suck? Yes.
Are all the assets reused? Yes.
Is this one of the most unique, creative and fun games in the franchise? Absolutely.
Lightning Returns's unique structure, combat and customization make it a total joy to experience. The key is how well all aspects of the game work with each other.
You want to do sidequests because aside from getting their cool little subplots you earn stats, equipment and extra in-game days with more quests, rewards and things to do. You're on a timer, so you want to get good at the combat because defeating hard enemies means being able to stop time for longer periods.
How do you get good at the combat? By playing the game! Experiment with the garbs, accessories and commands to find the most efficient way at defeating every enemy type. You'll not only get a lot of drops to complete sidequests and improve your commands but you'll also eventually make the monster extinct and earn a new (and usually very good) accessory or weapon along with materials to upgrade your commands to the next tier.
In sum: we have a really fun combat system that's extremely rewarding in every way which complements the extremely rewarding sidequest system which again furthers your combat options and capabilities.
The flow of the game feels very organic, I wanted to do things because they were fun and by doing fun things I unlocked even more fun things while also being handsomely rewarded in the process and understanding how I should play the game more efficiently bit by bit. Earning 100% feels more like a side effect rather than a goal, which to me is great design. I really loved this game and everyone should give it a fair shot, you might love it too.
This review contains spoilers
"Sometimes shadows will darken our path, we shall tremble in fear before the night. But we won't be alone. We will reach out our hands and in the warmth of another hand holding our own, we will know hope."
There is a fairly rare event in my media consumption history when I have to sit and reflect and have a moment with myself after the credits roll or the book closes. Those moments come about because seeing the end of those particular things is like saying goodbye to a loved one; the realization that everything you've gone through together will soon only exist in memory is a powerful one. Lightning Returns gave me one of those moments.
The wonderful thing is that the idea of memory--that our loved one's memories of us is more powerful than our soul--is a central tenant of Lightning Returns. I'm reminded of a side-quest that made me and my wife ugly-cry, and it's the story of our little robot Bhakti.
Bhakti was conserving oil and we needed to get him some, and once we did, he was excited to be able to give oil to his friends who had been waiting for centuries behind a big door in a tomb. Of course, those friends were human, and poor Bhakti didn't know they weren't like him. His memories of them kept him going for centuries, and Lightning assuages Bhakti's woe by letting him know that the knowledge of his deep care for them surely lessened their own anguish.
Lightning herself is a character who has become very close to my own heart--she reminds me quite a lot of myself. Guarded, shy, afraid of the pain that can come with closeness. It's in this game that she experiences a real transformation; she lets others in for the first time. Lightning allows for the fact that she cannot go it alone; she needs others, and others need her too.
"We hope in the face of despair--that makes us strong!"
I could go on about the story and ideals of the game forever, and the way in which the series of FF XIII games has made its home in my heart forever, but Lightning Returns is also a video game! And it's a dang good one! I absolutely adored the combat system--it was engaging and visceral and just really fun. There's a real meatiness to when you stagger an enemy that I just found so satisfying! I also loved the dress-up dolls! I put a pair of glasses on Lightning almost right away and never took them off, but other than that I was in and out of various outfits all game.
There are moments in this game that will stick with me forever, both in gameplay and in story. I think this is probably the best Final Fantasy game ever made.
Thanks for the journey, Lightning. It meant a lot to me. I hope you're happy in the new world you helped to create with your friends.
There is a fairly rare event in my media consumption history when I have to sit and reflect and have a moment with myself after the credits roll or the book closes. Those moments come about because seeing the end of those particular things is like saying goodbye to a loved one; the realization that everything you've gone through together will soon only exist in memory is a powerful one. Lightning Returns gave me one of those moments.
The wonderful thing is that the idea of memory--that our loved one's memories of us is more powerful than our soul--is a central tenant of Lightning Returns. I'm reminded of a side-quest that made me and my wife ugly-cry, and it's the story of our little robot Bhakti.
Bhakti was conserving oil and we needed to get him some, and once we did, he was excited to be able to give oil to his friends who had been waiting for centuries behind a big door in a tomb. Of course, those friends were human, and poor Bhakti didn't know they weren't like him. His memories of them kept him going for centuries, and Lightning assuages Bhakti's woe by letting him know that the knowledge of his deep care for them surely lessened their own anguish.
Lightning herself is a character who has become very close to my own heart--she reminds me quite a lot of myself. Guarded, shy, afraid of the pain that can come with closeness. It's in this game that she experiences a real transformation; she lets others in for the first time. Lightning allows for the fact that she cannot go it alone; she needs others, and others need her too.
"We hope in the face of despair--that makes us strong!"
I could go on about the story and ideals of the game forever, and the way in which the series of FF XIII games has made its home in my heart forever, but Lightning Returns is also a video game! And it's a dang good one! I absolutely adored the combat system--it was engaging and visceral and just really fun. There's a real meatiness to when you stagger an enemy that I just found so satisfying! I also loved the dress-up dolls! I put a pair of glasses on Lightning almost right away and never took them off, but other than that I was in and out of various outfits all game.
There are moments in this game that will stick with me forever, both in gameplay and in story. I think this is probably the best Final Fantasy game ever made.
Thanks for the journey, Lightning. It meant a lot to me. I hope you're happy in the new world you helped to create with your friends.
Bu oyunu yapanların da sevenlerin de allahını :d
O combate e o melhor da trilogia, mas o design de quests desse jogo e ainda por cima com cronometro de fim do mundo reset the game, fcou completamente uma bosta, gosto de jogar um jogo totalmente tranquilo e não ficar de sair correndo pra resolver um monte de coisa pra chegar no final, se for pra ser assim a vida real (que e um lixo) já faz isso pra mim
If your biggest problem with XIII-2 was the lack of Lightning in it, fear not. Tabata got you covered.
I can't help but respect the guy's dedication to his waifu, he basically rewrote the entire universe built by XIII and XIII-2, removed other party members, brought back X-2's dress-up system and much more just for her.
On a completely different note, this game has an arranged version of FFIII's Eternal Wind with vocals. It's superb. Best thing Lightning Returns contributed to the series.
I can't help but respect the guy's dedication to his waifu, he basically rewrote the entire universe built by XIII and XIII-2, removed other party members, brought back X-2's dress-up system and much more just for her.
On a completely different note, this game has an arranged version of FFIII's Eternal Wind with vocals. It's superb. Best thing Lightning Returns contributed to the series.
KILLER battle system but everything else is whatever
The last gasp of the XIII series, Lightning Returns presents great "new" ideas and confounding resolutions.
Look man, I'm just as surprised as you are.
One, because of my near year-long gamer sabbatical which...long story. And for once, I'll save you from it.
Two, because Lightning Returns is actually a good game. A genuinely fun game.
And I can't believe I'm saying that.
It seems the gang finally settled upon the obvious--that XIII's formula was trite and not worth expanding upon in what would have been an incredibly tired third game. I mean, the mechanics of XIII were already tired three hours into their own runtime. So, instead...
Now for something completely different.
XIII? Fuck that shit. We're now Majora's Mask meets Shenmue.
I shit you not. I couldn't believe it either. We've fucking given up. And thank god they finally decided to be the bigger man. The world is a better place for that.
Given new space to breathe, the team managed to create a lot of fun and interesting ideas in a short time span on a far lower budget. Lightning has now been embraced as the One-True-God (somehow both in gameplay AND narrative). All focus is given towards developing her gameplay systems and it usually works out for the best. Players are able to switch between three customizable classes--with fully customizable loadouts--to create their own creative playstyles that feel fast, reactive, and engaging. The simple addition of something like blocking, dodging, and moving around the battlefield in real-time is astounding in itself considering the team it came from. Everything in combat feels streamlined and intimate--there's very little on the table, so there's really no bloat to speak of...for once.
More than that, the Majora's Mask-esque "X DAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD" system actually interweaves with gameplay in very good ways. Dying doesn't make you return to a save point--it just causes you to lose time, etc. A lot of the systems--from the quest design, to the narrative presentation, to the general gameplay systems--actually feel in fucking harmony here. I can't believe it. I can't believe every time I saw an design choice and said "hey that's actually a good idea what the fuck." We even get to explore actual dungeons again!! Like fucking designed dungeons with puzzles and mechanics!! What the hell????
They managed to create a pretty fun game loop of finding small stupid side quests to do (in a small, but well-designed world) and then actually going out and doing them. I'd be lying if the game was making you perform any traditional EPIC JRPG tasks but...fuck it man its fun and goofy. What more could you want? All I know is that on my first few days of play (during some sick leave) I was genuinely hooked on the game. I used hardcore time management skills and planned my quest navigations to optimize everything. It was actually fun and made me use my damn head for once!
But beyond gameplay...even the narrative has taken...some improvements. This mainly stems from the fact that Lightning Returns story is so damn insane that its hard not to revel in how stupid it is. Lighting is fucking Jesus Christ. We're going around towns where everyone is talking about how much they love praying to God! People are like a thousand years old for no fucking reason. Etc. etc. The game lives for its own dumb narrative--and the fast, upbeat, and what-the-fuck tone of it all makes it really work.
There really is something special about seeing Lighting and Hope (who have more or less been accepted by this game as the only good characters in XIII worth using meaningfully) work as an odd 'odd guy / straight man' routine. Its genuinely funny to see Lightning take on the most 'what the fuck' quests from strangers and talk things over with Hope in his new "we played Arkham Asylum and thought Oracle was cool" form. Every other quest I was getting a good giggle at how fucking stupid everything was. But, for once, it almost felt like the dev team was in on the joke. It works on a similar level to Yakuza-esque gags, albeit not nearly as punchy. Still, I can make Lightning wear a cowboy hat the entire time so...that's a massive win in my book.
Of course, the great things couldn't stay forever. The game really starts to drag in its final few hours. And the combat systems do sort of shallow up by then too. I think they could have used some additional systems or levels to really make the final portion of the game have any developments of note. Instead, you can't help but feel its spinning its own wheels. And, of course, the story has to actually conclude more-or-less all of XIII as a narrative...so we have to spend a lot of time on droll cutscenes that might as well amount to melodramatic nonsense making you ask "who the fuck caaaaaaaaaaaaaaares?" every few minutes.
That might sound unfair but...hell, the writers of XIII couldn't keep their own story straight. Every fucking game has been in a wildly different environment/context where nothing has really maintained consistency beyond the fact that our marketable characters appear. And even then, their personalities can be wildly different from their original XIII forms. The plots barely make sense but that clearly never mattered to anyone involved. Remember when XIII actually had a FF-like plotline about a band of characters forming an actual party and going on an adventure? Fuck that feels like forever ago.
Now we're left with Lightning-Jesus and her detective pal Angel-Hope solving mysteries for GOD in a world entirely unrelated to everything else where everyone can't die and the party members of XIII has all been reduced to barely-present side characters. All while a lady that looks like a tiktok star torments you from the distance.
Seriously, the re-use of characters but putting them in such wildly different continuities and re-adapting their character traits so hard they give you whiplash is...well it feels like kids role-playing on the playground at school. Sure, it's the same kids every day, but they'll go from trying to be Star Wars characters to WWII commandos to Lord of the Rings guys every fucking lunch break. It undercuts any chance the narrative has to actually be effective and reduces everything to "Kingdom Hearts bullshit."
Still, remember, I enjoyed most of my runtime. So you might as well. Just be sure to skip a few of those cutscenes in the final hours.
In general, Lightning Returns is a fun, wacky, and memorable adventure that I would recommend to anyone looking for a goofy good time. I could have used some more gameplay developments and less narrative nonsense to clean up its final third but...overall its still a very fun experience worth your time. I'm going to remember a lot of fun areas, characters, quests, puzzles, and designs that genuinely had me with a smile on my face for a good majority of the game's runtime. They just needed to either put a few more interesting things in...or cut the game down a bit. Oh, and make that final boss less fucking bullshit.
Lightning Returns also serves as a nice reminder that teams working on a small budget with little time can put out far more interesting ideas than massive triple-A games that take ages and trillions to produce. Its crazy for me to imagine...but Lightning Returns might be the last bright spot in Final Fantasy's history (no I'm not counting the MMO you can't make me). Especially now that any game with a roman numeral slapped on it needs to have a 20 year development time, be made with quintuple-A graphics in Unreal, not be an actual RPG...and have gameplay systems that would have bored Super Famicom players.
So, you know what, Lightning Returns? Cheers to you. You're perhaps the final interesting gasp of breath for this series. And a very characteristic way to close the book on years and years of Watanabe/Toriyama madness. In 2014 I might have disliked you...but in 2024 I just wish we could have more of you in this world.
Look man, I'm just as surprised as you are.
One, because of my near year-long gamer sabbatical which...long story. And for once, I'll save you from it.
Two, because Lightning Returns is actually a good game. A genuinely fun game.
And I can't believe I'm saying that.
It seems the gang finally settled upon the obvious--that XIII's formula was trite and not worth expanding upon in what would have been an incredibly tired third game. I mean, the mechanics of XIII were already tired three hours into their own runtime. So, instead...
Now for something completely different.
XIII? Fuck that shit. We're now Majora's Mask meets Shenmue.
I shit you not. I couldn't believe it either. We've fucking given up. And thank god they finally decided to be the bigger man. The world is a better place for that.
Given new space to breathe, the team managed to create a lot of fun and interesting ideas in a short time span on a far lower budget. Lightning has now been embraced as the One-True-God (somehow both in gameplay AND narrative). All focus is given towards developing her gameplay systems and it usually works out for the best. Players are able to switch between three customizable classes--with fully customizable loadouts--to create their own creative playstyles that feel fast, reactive, and engaging. The simple addition of something like blocking, dodging, and moving around the battlefield in real-time is astounding in itself considering the team it came from. Everything in combat feels streamlined and intimate--there's very little on the table, so there's really no bloat to speak of...for once.
More than that, the Majora's Mask-esque "X DAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD" system actually interweaves with gameplay in very good ways. Dying doesn't make you return to a save point--it just causes you to lose time, etc. A lot of the systems--from the quest design, to the narrative presentation, to the general gameplay systems--actually feel in fucking harmony here. I can't believe it. I can't believe every time I saw an design choice and said "hey that's actually a good idea what the fuck." We even get to explore actual dungeons again!! Like fucking designed dungeons with puzzles and mechanics!! What the hell????
They managed to create a pretty fun game loop of finding small stupid side quests to do (in a small, but well-designed world) and then actually going out and doing them. I'd be lying if the game was making you perform any traditional EPIC JRPG tasks but...fuck it man its fun and goofy. What more could you want? All I know is that on my first few days of play (during some sick leave) I was genuinely hooked on the game. I used hardcore time management skills and planned my quest navigations to optimize everything. It was actually fun and made me use my damn head for once!
But beyond gameplay...even the narrative has taken...some improvements. This mainly stems from the fact that Lightning Returns story is so damn insane that its hard not to revel in how stupid it is. Lighting is fucking Jesus Christ. We're going around towns where everyone is talking about how much they love praying to God! People are like a thousand years old for no fucking reason. Etc. etc. The game lives for its own dumb narrative--and the fast, upbeat, and what-the-fuck tone of it all makes it really work.
There really is something special about seeing Lighting and Hope (who have more or less been accepted by this game as the only good characters in XIII worth using meaningfully) work as an odd 'odd guy / straight man' routine. Its genuinely funny to see Lightning take on the most 'what the fuck' quests from strangers and talk things over with Hope in his new "we played Arkham Asylum and thought Oracle was cool" form. Every other quest I was getting a good giggle at how fucking stupid everything was. But, for once, it almost felt like the dev team was in on the joke. It works on a similar level to Yakuza-esque gags, albeit not nearly as punchy. Still, I can make Lightning wear a cowboy hat the entire time so...that's a massive win in my book.
Of course, the great things couldn't stay forever. The game really starts to drag in its final few hours. And the combat systems do sort of shallow up by then too. I think they could have used some additional systems or levels to really make the final portion of the game have any developments of note. Instead, you can't help but feel its spinning its own wheels. And, of course, the story has to actually conclude more-or-less all of XIII as a narrative...so we have to spend a lot of time on droll cutscenes that might as well amount to melodramatic nonsense making you ask "who the fuck caaaaaaaaaaaaaaares?" every few minutes.
That might sound unfair but...hell, the writers of XIII couldn't keep their own story straight. Every fucking game has been in a wildly different environment/context where nothing has really maintained consistency beyond the fact that our marketable characters appear. And even then, their personalities can be wildly different from their original XIII forms. The plots barely make sense but that clearly never mattered to anyone involved. Remember when XIII actually had a FF-like plotline about a band of characters forming an actual party and going on an adventure? Fuck that feels like forever ago.
Now we're left with Lightning-Jesus and her detective pal Angel-Hope solving mysteries for GOD in a world entirely unrelated to everything else where everyone can't die and the party members of XIII has all been reduced to barely-present side characters. All while a lady that looks like a tiktok star torments you from the distance.
Seriously, the re-use of characters but putting them in such wildly different continuities and re-adapting their character traits so hard they give you whiplash is...well it feels like kids role-playing on the playground at school. Sure, it's the same kids every day, but they'll go from trying to be Star Wars characters to WWII commandos to Lord of the Rings guys every fucking lunch break. It undercuts any chance the narrative has to actually be effective and reduces everything to "Kingdom Hearts bullshit."
Still, remember, I enjoyed most of my runtime. So you might as well. Just be sure to skip a few of those cutscenes in the final hours.
In general, Lightning Returns is a fun, wacky, and memorable adventure that I would recommend to anyone looking for a goofy good time. I could have used some more gameplay developments and less narrative nonsense to clean up its final third but...overall its still a very fun experience worth your time. I'm going to remember a lot of fun areas, characters, quests, puzzles, and designs that genuinely had me with a smile on my face for a good majority of the game's runtime. They just needed to either put a few more interesting things in...or cut the game down a bit. Oh, and make that final boss less fucking bullshit.
Lightning Returns also serves as a nice reminder that teams working on a small budget with little time can put out far more interesting ideas than massive triple-A games that take ages and trillions to produce. Its crazy for me to imagine...but Lightning Returns might be the last bright spot in Final Fantasy's history (no I'm not counting the MMO you can't make me). Especially now that any game with a roman numeral slapped on it needs to have a 20 year development time, be made with quintuple-A graphics in Unreal, not be an actual RPG...and have gameplay systems that would have bored Super Famicom players.
So, you know what, Lightning Returns? Cheers to you. You're perhaps the final interesting gasp of breath for this series. And a very characteristic way to close the book on years and years of Watanabe/Toriyama madness. In 2014 I might have disliked you...but in 2024 I just wish we could have more of you in this world.
Always cracks me up how the writers by this point just gave up on trying to have any personality for Lightning, let alone bring back the small amount she had in the original XIII. She straight up goes "Yeah, I have no personality or emotions because God took this stuff from me." lmao
Lightning: Destiny is destiny
Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP you stupid ass bitch
Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP you stupid ass bitch
How do you conclude an ever extending series of convoluted stories that crisscross all of time and space and ever increasing intensity of consequences?
It's simple, you see. You take the winning formula of several different games, sprinkle in some fan service, and try your hardest to come up with an even more unique premise for a video game, and hope for the best.
Set 500 years after the conclusion of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns is, quite literally, the story of Lightning's return from crystal stasis. This time however, she's armed with a mission from god: save as many souls as possible before the world ends in 13 days time. Why is the world ending? Who knows! It just is and Lightning's gotta roll with it if she stands any chance at finally reuniting with all of her friends AND her sister Serah in a new world all their own.
Armed with a big sword and a sick shield, Lightning returns to the world she once left behind only to find that most of the world has been consumed by destructive chaos, and that what's left of humanity stopped aging at the conclusion of XIII-2. Using her wits and strengths, she must save the last of humanity's souls from their endless, meaningless lives, and bring peace to the restless lives of Lightning's former friends from the cast of Final Fantasy XIII. As you march onwards through the last 13 days of life on this planet, you must complete 5 main quests, and dozens of side quests and bounty board missions in order to build Lightning's strength and prepare the survivors of this horrible existence for the coming of God's salvation. It sounds like a LOT, but really its more like Shenmue in that the world operates on rigid timers and set routines, and each days is much longer than it seems on paper; there is a timer, but in my normal mode playthrough I felt it wasn't much of an issue.
Beyond quests, you spend much of your time killing the monsters left in this realm, as well as fighting boss fights to allow for progression; combat retains the stagger mechanics of previous XIII titles, but ditches the ATB combat in favor of something more akin to a beautiful mixture of active time battle and Valkyire Profile style interface. You can bring 3 sets of 4 abilities each into battle and use them to attack enemies, cast spells, buff/debuff enemies, and guard against enemy attacks. This new twist on the XIII formula of using magic to stagger is perhaps the best iteration of combat in the trilogy. You can mix things up with a variety of outfits, swords, shield, and accessories as per usual JRPG fare, but this time simple stats cannot save you from defeat. Gone is the auto battle of previous XIII titles; this time around you are firmly in the driver's seat and must have a firm grasp on the game's intricate mechanics to find success. Time your guard's just right, build out your sets of abilities and use them wisely to find success. There is no brute forcing your way through this entry, which makes it the most rewarding by far.
It feels like a distillation of everything that worked in XIII and XIII-2 with a fresh coat of paint over everything that didn't. There were story beats that filled me with truly genuine emotion, and tense combat that had me feeling like a genuine master as I progressed to the end of the story. If I had to offer any real criticism, I'd say that the main quests, of which there are five, end really quicky; I found that the last 5-6 days of my 13 were mostly just doing side quests, bounty board tasks, and hunting down enemies for materials and items. It was dry, but not dry enough to dissuade me from loving the entire experience.
Overall, I found it to be a wonderful conclusion to a series of sprawling JRPGs; I was nervous that it would sprawl outwards into the chaos. I'm glad that it wasn't.
It's simple, you see. You take the winning formula of several different games, sprinkle in some fan service, and try your hardest to come up with an even more unique premise for a video game, and hope for the best.
Set 500 years after the conclusion of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns is, quite literally, the story of Lightning's return from crystal stasis. This time however, she's armed with a mission from god: save as many souls as possible before the world ends in 13 days time. Why is the world ending? Who knows! It just is and Lightning's gotta roll with it if she stands any chance at finally reuniting with all of her friends AND her sister Serah in a new world all their own.
Armed with a big sword and a sick shield, Lightning returns to the world she once left behind only to find that most of the world has been consumed by destructive chaos, and that what's left of humanity stopped aging at the conclusion of XIII-2. Using her wits and strengths, she must save the last of humanity's souls from their endless, meaningless lives, and bring peace to the restless lives of Lightning's former friends from the cast of Final Fantasy XIII. As you march onwards through the last 13 days of life on this planet, you must complete 5 main quests, and dozens of side quests and bounty board missions in order to build Lightning's strength and prepare the survivors of this horrible existence for the coming of God's salvation. It sounds like a LOT, but really its more like Shenmue in that the world operates on rigid timers and set routines, and each days is much longer than it seems on paper; there is a timer, but in my normal mode playthrough I felt it wasn't much of an issue.
Beyond quests, you spend much of your time killing the monsters left in this realm, as well as fighting boss fights to allow for progression; combat retains the stagger mechanics of previous XIII titles, but ditches the ATB combat in favor of something more akin to a beautiful mixture of active time battle and Valkyire Profile style interface. You can bring 3 sets of 4 abilities each into battle and use them to attack enemies, cast spells, buff/debuff enemies, and guard against enemy attacks. This new twist on the XIII formula of using magic to stagger is perhaps the best iteration of combat in the trilogy. You can mix things up with a variety of outfits, swords, shield, and accessories as per usual JRPG fare, but this time simple stats cannot save you from defeat. Gone is the auto battle of previous XIII titles; this time around you are firmly in the driver's seat and must have a firm grasp on the game's intricate mechanics to find success. Time your guard's just right, build out your sets of abilities and use them wisely to find success. There is no brute forcing your way through this entry, which makes it the most rewarding by far.
It feels like a distillation of everything that worked in XIII and XIII-2 with a fresh coat of paint over everything that didn't. There were story beats that filled me with truly genuine emotion, and tense combat that had me feeling like a genuine master as I progressed to the end of the story. If I had to offer any real criticism, I'd say that the main quests, of which there are five, end really quicky; I found that the last 5-6 days of my 13 were mostly just doing side quests, bounty board tasks, and hunting down enemies for materials and items. It was dry, but not dry enough to dissuade me from loving the entire experience.
Overall, I found it to be a wonderful conclusion to a series of sprawling JRPGs; I was nervous that it would sprawl outwards into the chaos. I'm glad that it wasn't.
The limited time clock system really did not help my anxiety at all, but I'm a lil gay boy so I just enjoyed dressing up the personality-free Lightning in such bizarre outfits.
Strange frankenstein of a game, 20,000 leagues apart from the premise of Final Fantasy 13-2 (to say nothing of the original FF13 aswell). In the running for the worst iteration of Majoras Masks limited time mechanics.
DO NOT ORDER MAJORA'S MASK FROM SHEIN!!!
For real though, what a fascinating game. The core concept is very strong and while the execution is faulty at times, it still works. it very clearly had a budget of $2 and 5 weeks of development time though, and you feel it in every single facet of this game. Still, the melancholy of the game kinda sucks you in. This is probably the saddest Final Fantasy game they've made. If not, then it's up there for sure. And of course, as with the rest of the trilogy, the combat system is absolutely incredible.
I've always loved Final Fantasy XIII, but I don't think I realized just how much it meant to me until I replayed the trilogy. The ending got me really badly.
For real though, what a fascinating game. The core concept is very strong and while the execution is faulty at times, it still works. it very clearly had a budget of $2 and 5 weeks of development time though, and you feel it in every single facet of this game. Still, the melancholy of the game kinda sucks you in. This is probably the saddest Final Fantasy game they've made. If not, then it's up there for sure. And of course, as with the rest of the trilogy, the combat system is absolutely incredible.
I've always loved Final Fantasy XIII, but I don't think I realized just how much it meant to me until I replayed the trilogy. The ending got me really badly.
This one’s a doozy. Always heard Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII was the worst. Not just the worst of this specific trilogy but one of the worst final fantasy games in general.
Is it though? I really dug this game. It’s genuinely fascinating to me. It may even be my favorite of the trilogy and I liked XIII a decent amount. There’s so much I love about Lightning Returns. It has problems but from a gameplay experience I enjoyed it almost the entire time. I feel like I liked it as much as Crisis Core for example.
Lightning Returns is clearly lower budget. The hilarious Spirit Halloween-esque adornments used for NPC character designs. The awkward dialogue. Hope talking so much that he interrupts himself or doesn’t get to finish a sentence because you’re doing a quest. The horrible performance. It comes down to a lack of polish with its presentation. The core ideas, mechanics, themes, and especially the music are really great and unique for the franchise. Especially the combat system.
Customizing clothes and trying to make schemas look as stylish as possible was delightful. Schematics are a lot of fun. It feels like a pure split of action and turn based. I was never bored of fighting because even when it was easy I was still engaged by the action-like inputs and having to pull off perfect guards. It has a similar flow as the paradigm shifts but the execution in battle feels completely unique. It’s very clever. It feels like a would-be prototype for 15’s combat.
The music is amazing too. So many tracks depending on the area, time of day, multiple battle themes. It’s so varied. There’s some weird vibey ambient tracks that I adore now as well. Dark moody jazz pieces, a lot of textured percussion, brief moments of vocal melody, it’s great.
The game also exudes a weird uncanny mood in a way that I dig. Perhaps not always intentional, but a world where everyone knows they’re about to die has a somber tone to it, even if a lot of people just go about life like nothing is going to happen. I like the Snake / Otacon relationship Lightning and Hope have here, even if they’re a bit robotic. Lightning is hilarious in this game though. Despite the narrative device of her not having human emotions I loved her personality at times. She’s so stern and cold. Telling children they have meaningless existence, throwing moogels into the sky, she has a fun presence here. The writing often sucks though. She over explains everything for the player a lot and Hope will repeat things you just learned. It’s a bit much sometimes but it never made the game annoying to me. I think people are far too cynical about how boring and uninteresting lightning is.
I want to go out on a limb here and observe a potential meta element as well. There’s high chance this wasn’t the idea behind the story, but I feel like I enjoyed it decently enough because of this connection whereas most people take this story far too straight.
Final Fantasy XIII and its original big picture ideas for the future of the Final Fantasy series series obviously died out upon backlash. Seeing these characters mourn that their world is coming to an end and people will forget about them is incredibly dour. It feels like they’re reflecting on the failure of their world and lamenting that it has to come to an end. Their lives didn’t go how they expected and it’s time for a new world to be born. Then VersusXIII became XV. A new world. It’s oddly reminiscent of XIV’s reset as well. I have never seen this observation made so I’m not sure if this is me looking into it too much or if so little people cared enough about XIII to afford it this kind of emotion. On paper this story is really stupid and silly, but the context of what XIII’s world was to a lot of fans and the developers makes me feel a strange sense of mourning and investment when it all comes to an end. Their world had to end but they all get to live a calm and happy life in the end which I find a charming resolve for a band of characters that were often hated by fans and lived in constant stress and misery in the games.
Lightning Returns is a weird game. There’s such a stigma around it and I never expected the game to be as cool as it was. It deserved a second look from the fans. It’s my favorite of the trilogy and overall a cool final fantasy game. There’s a lack of polish and you can see through the cracks a lot. I just really loved the core experience, the tone of the world, the music, the depressing mood around the story, and finally my own personal observations between its story and the real world development of XIII. A remaster that cleans up the visuals would be genuinely exciting to me. I don’t adore this trilogy but I’m glad I finally played them and gave them a fair shake that I didn’t afford it in the past. I’m gonna miss the world of XIII in a weird way but I’m happy to move on.
LR > XIII > XIII-2
tries a lot of neat ideas but sadly doesn't pull any off very well