"Let's make a sequel that throws away everything from the previous two entries rather than refining existing systems, attempt to make a semi-open world in an engine that could barely run Pulse, add a time limit, and throw out the idea of a cast in favour of a solo adventure!"

Sounds like an idea of the unhinged, one that would be laughed out of the room at pre-production stage, right? Nope—these ideas made their way into the final product, because somehow everyone involved in the decision making process thought this was a good idea.

And they... were wrong. Nope, unlike FFXIII-2—an absolutely absurd game that against all rational thought I found surprisingly great—Lightning Returns was an unfortunate stinker for me. Most of it really comes down to the team attempting to make quite possibly the most ambitious game in the trilogy with the least budget, and it just... does not come together, LR really needed more time in the oven.

I guess I'll start with the most positive aspect, the battle system. While I was very sad to lose the paradigm system from the previous entries, which was one of my favourite battle systems in the entire Final Fantasy series, LR's gameplay is admittedly very good. It still keeps the general idea of having three different sets of skills (with customisable garbs this time), while also introducing an element of action/timed blocks using an ATB gauge—a clear prototype for what FF7 Remake ended up being. It's also surprisingly difficult... I played on easy at the recommendation of others, and it was still a pretty challenging experience, especially with limited items.

The garbs themselves are kinda blegh sadly, unlike X-2 which had many stylish dress spheres without going too overboard on the horny, LR is mostly focused on fanservice and has a lot of really trashy options. It doesn't help that there's no glamour system, meaning I ended up deciding garbs not by stats, but based on what Lightning looked cool in (limited options there...). It's a kind of shitty way to treat Lightning honestly, you know they'd be too icked out to ever come close to doing this for Cloud, Clive etc, nor would they pump them up with lip filler or boast about buffing their boob size.

As for the gameplay outside of the battles... that's where things get very shaky. LR is very very sidequest focused, to the point where your stats only improve from finishing story or sidequest objectives, so obviously you'll want to do as many of them as possible. Yet... there's no sidequest markers on the map. Not a single bloody one. 13-2 sorta had this problem where only the initial sidequest locations were marked, but LR doesn't even bother to show those, despite being even more sidequest centric than that game was. On top of that you have a ton of BS like sidequests only being available at different times of the day, quest directives designed to waste your time as much as possible—I honestly can't imagine playing the game without a guide. It's a shame too, because the quests in this game are probably the best of the trilogy, containing really strong world building that makes LR's world feel more lived in than previous entries, and gives you a great sense of the suffering caused via the nature of its world.

Exploring the world itself is also not what I would call enjoyable. I played with a cheat for free chronostasis and teleport, for the sake of my sanity, and even then it was a big slog going from location to location to handle sidequests, even with my guide offering the most optimal route possible with minimal travel (massive shoutout to Bkstunt and Krystal109's guide on gamefaqs, singlehandedly saved my enjoyment of this game ngl). The areas are clearly not designed for crystal tools, the cracks showing as the game shudders when you move between locations, complete with numerous generous crashes in parts of the wildlands forest. Design wise the areas are a bit of a mixed bag too, ranging from the Wildland's decent variety of landscapes and Yusnaan's colourful and bustling night life, to the dreary Dead Dunes and Luxerion, with their repetitive landscapes and filler areas to make the game feel 'big'.

I can't say much on the time limit itself, as I basically modded it out with the free chronostasis I mentioned, but let's just say I'm very happy I didn't have to deal with that or the score of this game would be even lower—I like to keep the anxiety of deadlines out of games I play in my free time.

Music direction itself is very odd, where many of the new themes are sparsely spread out through areas at specific times that can make it easy to never hear them in your entire playthrough, while reused 13 and 13-2 music are played the majority of the time, often in unfitting contexts—using Saber's Edge and Worlds Collide as basic bitch battle themes is criminal. This isn't helped by the soundtrack itself being weaker than previous entries; there's a lot of great stuff, don't get me wrong, but unlike its predecessors' veritable buffet of bangers, not too much stood out. Even the title screen is just the first battle theme, rather than a beautiful melody to set the mood like The Promise and Wishes.

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STORY SPOILERS START HERE
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Funnily enough, there isn't that much to talk about story-wise, as this game just... doesn't feel finished. They do a good job at making it feel bigger with all the travelling about, sidequests, and freedom, but this hides that the plot is pretty threadbare, making even the admittedly padded XIII-2 feel like a long epic.

The initial premise is interesting—world is fucked, everyone is disillusioned after being kept alive for 500 years as the world slowly erodes away and the populations steadily decreases, and Lightning is here to safe as many as she can on a mission from the god of the Fal'cie (nothing to worry about here!). Snow is clearly going through stuff, there's weird shenanigans at work, the Order of Salvation are suspicious as hell, overall just a lot of intrigue to get things going. The first warning sign for me was the introduction of Hope... who is completely butchered, all personality vacuumed away. I guess he has some moments throughout the game, but overall as the 'navi' who gets the most dialogue in the game (that is interrupted by going between areas or entering battle... so you need to stand still and listen? in a game with a time limit???) he's really nothing unfortunately.

Lightning herself is kinda similar, which sucks, though not quite as bad. We'll talk more about that later. Most of the story arcs can be summed up as Noel becomes Yeul bot, Fang doing cool things in preparation for the finale (with some neat lore), Sazh must save Dahj again for Reasons™, with the one stand out one being Yeul and Caius, who are given a lot of nice development and expansion—a rare case of this game opting to expand on XIII-2. Snow's is nice enough, giving us a rare showing of Lightning's emotional side (for this game anyway), but ends in a bit of an asspull. Like I get that Lightning is being made into the new Etro and all, but even Etro had to pay a price for all the divine acts she committed.

Finally we start to go somewhere in the finale, where Vanille gets a nice enough conclusion to her new arc, and her and Fang get another moment to profess their undying love to each other. Bhunivelze finally shows himself and reveals that he is, in fact, a character, and we get quite possibly the most hilariously mistranslated scene in the trilogy, completely butchering his motivations and neutering his connection to Hope. I do like the JP version more, it's morbidly fascinating how Bhunivelze tortured Hope until he was a vessel in his perfect image, yet upon possessing him Hope's emotions flowed back into Bhunivelze, forcing him to experience some humanity for himself. But unfortunately this just pops up way too late in the game to have much impact—even FFXIII did a decent job building up Barty for the second half of the game, even if he was a bit mid. There's also a lot of important lore and build up that was cut in the game and put in a novel, such as why Hope disappeared, the creation of the Order of Salvation, and Pandemonium's whole deal, which would have portrayed Bhunivelze as a more conniving mastermind.

Ending itself is ridiculously over the top with no build up, we're just creating a new world and wow it's our world, FFXIII is a prequel to Planet Earth can you believe it? I burst out laughing when Lightning said "this is the age of crystals before you were born" or some shit, it's beyond absurd. Also Caius strangles Noel because that's his kink I guess, at least have a safe word!

But yeah, it just... all feels so rushed, so incomplete, I can't help but feel empty. These characters deserved so much better than the hurried conclusion they got, and don't get me started on how Serah was a damsel yet again, after her fantastic showing in XIII-2 too!

To end on a positive note... Lumina. She is easily the best part of this game, and I was shocked at how well everything clicked into place when it was revealed she was a younger Lightning, representing all the childish aspects of herself she sealed away in order to become an adult for Serah. While I definitely don't think making Lightning mostly emotionless for the whole game was worth it, the payoff is admittedly fantastic and made me shed a tear. It's so good that I'd honestly encourage people to watch LR for the Lumina scenes alone, they really complete Lightning's arc for the trilogy and provide an element of humanisation that felt missing post-XIII. If LR played into this aspect more and spent more time developing its story, I think my opinion of it would improve significantly.

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STORY SPOILERS END HERE
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So uh yeah, Lightning Returns really could have been better to say the least. It's not like everything is terrible, there's some strong aspects like the gameplay and certain plotlines, but almost everything feels unfinished, undercooked and too ambitious for its own good. It's a shame the game doesn't have a stronger sense of identity and is so focused on mechanically distancing itself from the previous games as much as possible rather than refining on them, because there's... something here, a glimpse of what could have been an incredible conclusion to this trilogy, combining the disparate elements of XIII and XIII-2 together. Crystal tools, my beloathed, truly screwed over a generation of Final Fantasy. It's a good thing Square opted to use an industry standard engine for their next game, instead of making yet another proprietary engine from scratch... wait Square, Luminous you say? What's that? No, surely you wouldn't... nobody in their right mind would make the same mistake again. No, no, you can't do this, you wouldn't dare screw over another generation of this series... right?

(To be continued in Final Fantasy Versus XIII XV)