The final chapter of Final Fantasy XIII is upon us and by now you have probably figured out whether or not you like the series, but even if you don't like the previous two games you might want to check out this one. Meanwhile the old fans might be disappointed.
Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning Returns is an open world Japanese role playing game which takes place 500 years after the events of XIII-2 and stars as you might already figured out Lightning. If you didn't experience the first two titles you might find yourself confused, but don't worry even the hardcore fans are. Lightning return makes a little effort to explain things to the player, to the point where you don't even question things anymore and it becomes uninteresting. Hope and Lightning have been brought back by god (who wasn't even mentioned before) Bunivelze and have to do his deed. Lightning has to save as many souls of living people a possible to guide them to the new world, because the world will end in 13 days. The problem is, that the chaos is spreading so fast that the world might end before 13 days so Lightning has to collect Eradia to grow some tree which grants her more days and you collect Eradia by saving souls. If Lightning succeeds in her quest she will get her sister Serah back. In your journey Hope is assisting you in the Ark. The Ark is the place where you return every day at 6:00am to offer your Eradia to the tree. So the time flows and you have to save as many people before the end of the world...sounds simple...but as you might already figure out the game unnecessarily complicate things with some fantasy bullshit. There was so much potential and it ended up as a plot which you just don’t care about.
As I previously mentioned the world will end in 13 days or less, so you have to be wise how you spend your time, as time in this world flows naturally. 10 minutes in real life is about 1 hour in game.
The game makes you sometimes very stressful, because you have to be at certain places at certain time and you have to manage your day. Hope tells you in the beginning, that you can't save all the people and that you have to choose who is more important to you and how long does it take to save them. Saving one person might take as much time as saving 10 other people, but that’s person soul might be heavier because it carries heavy burden. This time mechanic might be too stressful for some people who want to relax in the game, but some people might enjoy it because of the decisions you get to make, so it depends on what you're looking in the game.
To save peoples souls you have to free them of the burden they are caring, so you have to complete their quests. And there are a lot of quests in this game. Quests go from »hey, I lost a doll«, to »hey I need an item that I don't know what it is or where it is, because I need it«. The game turns into almost typical MMORPG like giant fetch quest, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because those people at least give you some personal story so you feel obligated to help them. The game is open world structured with 4 varied large areas. Luxerion, an European like city, The Dead Dunes – the dessert, Wild lands – big grassy wild area, and Yusnann – carnival city. This is where you meet your quest givers but each area contains a big main quest. In every main quest you meet a familiar character. They all have some unfinished business or trouble with something, so you have to help them and save their soul. What I really liked about main quest is how they developed. You start on nothing and then you slowly unravel the mystery. But there is one issue with main quests. Sometimes you get to the boss fight and you simply cannot beat him because you aren't strong enough. And how do you get strong enough you might ask. Well, by fighting monsters right? Nope...not in this game. In this game you have to complete quests and by completing quests you increase your max. HP, strength and magic. Even though you get items and money from fighting monsters they become somewhat unnecessary to fight, which for me was a welcome change from some other grindy JRPGs. I liked that I didn't need t fight every monster, because some of them are hard as balls. And there are a lot of them. Another way to overcome the obstacles it to find and buy better equipment. Equipment contains of a weapon, shield and costumes...yes costumes. At first I thought costumes is just a fan service and that you get to dress lightning in revealing clothes and it is that, but it is also much more. In Lightning returns you get to control only one character, so they replaced the paradigms of previous games with schemata. You can switch between 3 different schematas in battles. Every schemata has 4 different moves which old fans will find familiar (guard, attacks, magic...) and a unique costumes and every costume has different abilities. Some have unique moves, adjust magic or strength, add HP, or more ATB.
So this is how the combat works. You have 3 schematas which you switch with shoulder buttons and you attack with 4 face buttons. The old ATB gauge was remade in a sense that now it works more like stamina. You do actions and the bar decreases. In previous games you had to choose up to 5 actions and execute them together, but it this game you have to execute every action individually so it works more like an action game. For instance you attack with B and when the enemy attacks you have time your guards with X but you have to be careful, because your actions are limited so you have to switch your schemata where you might have more ATB. If you attack your enemy frequently you fill their stagger matter and when it reaches a certain point they get staggered and this is where you hit them hard just like in FF XIII AND XIII-2. If you get hurt you will have to use your healing items but you won't have much of those. In the beginning you are only limited to 5 items and at the end of the game I had about 10 so there will be no 99 potions in your pocket. You can also use EP points which replenish slowly after battles. With Ep points you can heal yourself or slow time of an enemy or escape, although be worry escaping the battle comes with consequences. You lose 1 hour of in game time. You can also use EP points outside battle to stop the time but you better spend them vilely because you are very limited (I started with 5, finished with 8) The combat system is overall the best part of the game. Tweaking your characters and customizing different shematas is addicting and battles are designed thoughtfully.
You might remember XIII and XII- 2 and think »damn those games were beautiful in terms of graphics« well Lightning Returns is beautiful 2 but in different ways. Those games were more grounded and had details everywhere; unfortunately they had to compromise that in favor of open world. The game is beautiful in its design, but is lacking details. The art style is one of the best I've seen in recent games, but some textures and some people’s faces look like PS2 level of dated. The Locations and the environment look jaw droppingly gorgeous and mixed with a great some great music it makes the experience very immersive. It's an easy world to get lost to. And the game has a day and night cycle (which is obvious considering it's an open world where time flows naturally), so you get to see these places on different occasions.
Although graphically the game has its faults in the world, in combat it's a different story. Animations of spells are very flashy and sometimes your screen flashes so much that you don’t even know what's happening especially because the frame rate drops sometimes in battles.
Another thing that was always great in XIII series is the music and I'm happy to say that in Lightning Returns is even better. That's all I can say right now but the composers really out done themselves with this one.
Before I get to the fun part I just want to mention a few other things that annoyed me.
One was the games difficulty. I played on normal and the game is sometimes unnecessarily brutally hard, so even if you're skilled some battles you just can't complete because they just hit too hard and have too much HP, so I would recommend you play on easy first.
Another thing is the in-battle _. With too much happening on the screen it was difficult to focus on how much ATB I had left.
One of my big issues is how boring Lightning was. She was pretty bland before but now it's even worse, because god takes her feelings away. It makes me sad, because other characters like Snow became very interesting and it's sad to see the game focus on her.
Now lets get to the fun part...which is not fun at all. The ending.
I will not spoil it, but I will tell you what you can expect, so if you don't want to know skip this ahead to the conclusion, but you might want to consider hearing me out.
So for 2 years now fans were waiting for this final chapter to conclude things after XIII-2 disaster. This ending might ruin it for you. I would say the ending is way worse than Mass Effect 3 ending.
It is very predictable, yet confusing as hell. I found myself lost many times in this trilogy, but at the end of the final chapter, after 42 hours of gameplay, I didn't know what the f**k was happening. It gives you closure, but it delivers the explanation in the weirdest way possible. It reminds me of the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion in a sense that you have no idea what are they talking about.
In conclusion Final Fantasy plays very good, looks nice and sounds nice but lacks details and story that were very strong in XIII and Xiii-2. It compromises on some things and makes other better. If you were invested in XIII series you might be disappointed in this one because the direction that it take, but if you like the changes and want to see the final chapter this game is for you. However if you didn't follow the series you can easily enjoy this game, but you will feel left out when it comes to story. For me there was enough in this game to enjoy it, but many issues kept me for really liking it.
I had a fun time battling and doing quests and extending days, but it the end I felt a little disappointed and I only wished tis game was a little more, but I'm happy it's finally over and I'm totally ready for Final Fantasy XV, just because I want to see Square Enix take the franchise in different direction again and switch things up a little bit.