Lightning Returns is better than it has any right to be.
Let's get the obvious issues out of the way first: every NPC without a significant questline looks like they weren't meant to be seen up close, the story takes a long time before it starts letting the player in on its secrets, and many of the side quests are nonsensical and hardly worth paying attention to.
That said, the latter two things in that list seem extremely intentional in a surprising way.
This game does this really interesting thing where, when the story starts, it hardly feels like it relates to the prior two entries in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, and it takes several hours before the connective strings start showing themselves in any meaningful way.
You get about 5 or so hours of "Why are these characters acting so fucking weird?" until the game lets on that you're supposed to be asking that question because it starts asking too, and that's where things kick off.
The main story quests are genuinely thrilling, especially if you've played every game in this trilogy, and there's a certain intentionality that, between these massive dungeons and the (extremely sick) one-on-one duels that show up periodically, Lightning's job is to help normal people with normal things.
This juxtaposition is so off-putting at first, and just like my previous point, it's hard to tell if the game is in on how weird the tonal shifts are until it comes out and tells you, which does a lot of work to justify the game's very base concepts.
I won't get into those specific concepts because I think this game thrives on the player being pulled along at its desired pace, but trust me when I say there's a surprising amount of pay-off for all of it.
But the most fun part? The amount of creativity put in the player's hands in how they approach combat in this game is a delight. Changing costumes is cool, adding personal touches to those are cool, building out three classes with different movesets for Lightning to switch between on the fly is damn cool.
I've come out of this trilogy so pleasantly surprised that it somehow managed to stay standing on its own merits across all three games, especially in the midst of how much Square was struggling while these games were being developed.
Let's get the obvious issues out of the way first: every NPC without a significant questline looks like they weren't meant to be seen up close, the story takes a long time before it starts letting the player in on its secrets, and many of the side quests are nonsensical and hardly worth paying attention to.
That said, the latter two things in that list seem extremely intentional in a surprising way.
This game does this really interesting thing where, when the story starts, it hardly feels like it relates to the prior two entries in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, and it takes several hours before the connective strings start showing themselves in any meaningful way.
You get about 5 or so hours of "Why are these characters acting so fucking weird?" until the game lets on that you're supposed to be asking that question because it starts asking too, and that's where things kick off.
The main story quests are genuinely thrilling, especially if you've played every game in this trilogy, and there's a certain intentionality that, between these massive dungeons and the (extremely sick) one-on-one duels that show up periodically, Lightning's job is to help normal people with normal things.
This juxtaposition is so off-putting at first, and just like my previous point, it's hard to tell if the game is in on how weird the tonal shifts are until it comes out and tells you, which does a lot of work to justify the game's very base concepts.
I won't get into those specific concepts because I think this game thrives on the player being pulled along at its desired pace, but trust me when I say there's a surprising amount of pay-off for all of it.
But the most fun part? The amount of creativity put in the player's hands in how they approach combat in this game is a delight. Changing costumes is cool, adding personal touches to those are cool, building out three classes with different movesets for Lightning to switch between on the fly is damn cool.
I've come out of this trilogy so pleasantly surprised that it somehow managed to stay standing on its own merits across all three games, especially in the midst of how much Square was struggling while these games were being developed.