Game Review | February 27, 2014 10:06 pm

By Moo Lissa

Final Fantasy has been a cornerstone of the JRPG industry for decades, and with good reason. The series has changed and evolved over the years, and historically has been the bar at which other RPGs have been set, especially in the US. After a number of misses, however, the media has been clamoring about the death of the RPG and predicting that Final Fantasy XIII was Square's last chance to save the franchise. If it was, it was a three part chance, as Square released 3 games under the Final Fantasy XIII moniker- only the second time in Final Fantasy history that a game has scored a direct sequel, and the first to spawn two.


If you told me that the game developers sat in a room and brainstormed some character stereotypes ("Ok, let's see... so we have the hero here. Now how about a silent, moody protagonist? Damsel in distress? Token black guy...") named them, created a world with a very vague backstory, and then told 3 different teams to develop their own game based on those things, the Final Fantasy XIII series would make sense. Three different games, three different battle and leveling systems (although XIII and XIII-2 are fairly similar), three different feels to the games. In fact, that's exactly what I decided they must have done about halfway through XIII-3, and once I convinced myself of that, it helped me enjoy the game a bit more.

Lightning Returns is a totally different game from the first two- beyond having the same motley crew of characters, I mean. Is it better or worse? Well, it depends on what you're looking for in a game.

Story wise, Lightning Returns takes place 500 years after the events in XIII-2. Lightning has- wait for it- returned to the world once more, and once more she has been charged with a task from a deity. Which is called "the" god, even though there are multiple gods in the game universe (one per sequel, at least, haha). God is also known as Bhunivelze. Remember Bhunivelze? It's the name of the new Cocoon from Final Fantasy XIII-2. Confused? It's totally normal. Just go with it.


So in 500 years, no one has aged and no one can have babies. It's pretty boring for people and they're not enjoying near immortality anywhere near as much as you'd think they would. Bhunivelze plans to end the world and tells Lightning "Yo chick, this place sucks. I'm gonna start a new world over there, but I need some people to come hang out there and say how great I am." Then he sends her down to Nova Crystallis as "the savior" to collect souls to populate "Club Bhunivelze." All the characters from the previous games make an appearance in Lightning Returns, from an aged Snow (how has he aged?) to a younger Hope (which is just weird because his voice didn't de-age) and everyone in between. The story is ridiculously confusing at first, as very little direction has been added to the game, and if you didn't play the first and second, even less will make sense.

The main place the writing is just spot on is in the side quests. In the course of Lightning Returns, you have to do a lot of side quests to save people's souls, and she learns a lot of stories. This could have been accomplished with a ton of fetch quests, and in all honesty there are a lot of fetch quests, but instead a lot of the quests have a "thousand years of dreams" vibe to them that really make you think about the cons that would exist if time didn't matter (what if you didn't have a family and lived an eternity alone? What if you were stuck as a kid forever?). It's interesting that, in a game series where the characters were mostly phoned in, the NPCs you come across are fairly deep and interesting. It really highlights what a cardboard cutout of a hero you're playing as for 30 hours. And while the main story does start out as confusing, toward the middle of the game, you start catching on to what's going on and it actually becomes interesting. Either these were different writers altogether from the other 2 games, or it took them 2 1/2 games to find their stride, but there is definitely some solid writing in here.

The gameplay, as I said before, is very different from the previous games in the series. In battle, you have 3 outfits you can wear. The outfits are like the paradigms in the past games, but with side boob. You can assign attacks and weapons to each outfit, and then switch between them in battle, depending on what you need (the finished sets are called schemata). This is a positive and a negative. Weapons, attacks and accessories can only be assigned to one outfit at a time, even though Lightning can only use one weapon at a time and theoretically should be able to switch clothes and not hats, but whatever. This adds to the bulky feel of combat, and that's not a good thing in a battle system that's supposed to be streamlined and responsive.


The worst part of the game, hands down, is the fact that it's timed. You start with 6 days left (every real life hour is an in game day) and you can earn more time by completing side quests and collecting souls. This was awful for me, as I found myself exploring the areas and thinking "man, I wish I could just hang out here and farm materials," or "wow, I want to spend more time exploring this part." Lightning has an ability called chronostasis that stops time, but it takes something called EP, which at first seems like a precious commodity. Of course, you replenish your EP by fighting enemies (the tougher the fight, the more EP you earn), and later in the game, you earn more EP slots by progressing with the main story. This means that when you're more leveled up you can basically keep the world frozen forever, if you want- unless you're like me and don't really notice when it wears off for a long time... But at first, it really feels like time is getting away with you and it gives the game a bad feeling that is hard to overcome, even when you have all the time you want.

One thing this game has left me wondering is, is there not a word for moderation in Japanese? Going from the linear handholding of Final Fantasy XIII to the open world free-for-all that is Lightning Returns seems extreme. When you throw in the issues with having a timer, and the fact that there are gates that will impede your progress until a certain time of the day, running around with no direction is extremely frustrating. Also frustrating is the massive difficulty swing between easy and normal. Easy is as easy as the name implies, but normal is a hard difficulty, especially for a first playthrough. Especially with the aforementioned lack of direction. And even on easy mode, battle requires strategy.


Most of the game, Lightning is playing on her own, so it's up to her to stagger enemies. Luckily the old formula of magicking them until they're staggered and then using physical attacks on them will usually work. Unluckily, staggering lasts for less time than it takes to switch costumes a lot of times. Also, since many enemies have elemental weaknesses, if you're packing the wrong magic, you may be in serious trouble. There is a max of 12 commands you can bring with you, and different clothes have different commands already set, cutting you down to 9, at most. While I think the intention of the costumes having stat boosting perks and elemental affinities was to be able to set schemata for each job you wanted done (ie: red mage, white mage, tank, defender, buff, debuff, etc...), with the limited amount of choices to bring into battle, you're probably going to choose the costume that gives you the most ATB and attack power, and make your commands a hodge podge of magic stuck around your big attacks. I could go way more into depth here, but basically the limitation on the quantity of schemata really limit your ability to be strategic in Lightning Returns. It's like how I organize my pantry with the best of intentions, but then when I run out of shelves for more stuff, I end up having to throw bags of chips and boxes of stuffing wherever they will fit and it ends up looking like a mess anyway.

The actual act of switching schemata is very quick and effortless. It was implemented well- unless you have a controller like mine, which a 4 year old has used in his dirty little picky hands so much that there's... something? making the bumpers stick. Then it might be a little more difficult. But it's still pretty seamless and if you know what you're doing, you can chain attacks across all 3 equipped configurations without a break between them. And when you get it just right, and you can get into fights and just blow through enemies, it's a great feeling.

Graphically, Lightning Returns is on par with some of the best that the 360 has to offer... which is actually a list that includes XIII and XIII-2. It's pretty much the same. The characters look the same, the landscape is similarly beautiful, the character design is consistent, and there aren't any problems with pop in or frame rate. Another thing that should be noted is that Lightning has boobs. They may be a bit larger than I remember them from other games, or maybe it's more prominently displayed, but she's got a decent rack on her. But Square chose to not follow in the fleshy jiggly footsteps left by the Dead or Alive games, or Ryse. Like the rest of her, her chest is very controlled. I can appreciate that. A lot, actually. Respect.


I always enjoy the soundtrack to a Final Fantasy game, and this game is no exception, I found the voice acting in Lightning Returns to be very flat. Lightning, especially. Ali Hillis has done a ton of voice acting work, and a good job at it in the past, so I can only assume that the instructions for the role of Lightning included eating a TON of cheese for a few days and then recording her lines on the toilet as she strained to poop. Seriously. Some of the other characters were ok, except for the odd NPC here and there who thought they were in a 1980s dubbed anime, and shouted their lines. But the voice acting, again, is the same as the other 2 games, so people already know what to expect going into it. You like it or you don't, and if you don't, they offer the Japanese language track for free right now.

As far as length, it's a good length for the genre, which is surprising with the pressure of a clock looming overhead the whole game. Not timing the game would have been a better way to go, with certain quests advancing time, as doing things out of order can cause you to miss or fail a quest if you aren't using a guide (full disclosure- I played without a guide) but that does give incentive for replay. There is a new game + option, and certain enemies that don't appear the first playthrough, so if you liked the game, you'll have the chance to play it some more when you finish.

There are other negatives that didn't really fit in a category. The characters in the FFXIII are all pretty weak, which sucks considering their potential (the notable exception here is Snow. This is truly Snow's game. All the pieces really come together to make him a complete character like they didn't in either of the past games. Unfortunately, no one else had this happen to them).

Lightning has the chance to be the strongest female lead in a video game, but by making her a female Squall/Cloud hybrid, they took out any personality traits she could call her own. Oh, a moogle tries to hug her and she punches him. How original. And once again the Fang/Vanille lesbian relationship isn't touched upon. That seems like a cop out when it's so obvious. There's a musical dance number that really doesn't make a ton of sense and is cheesier than Ali Hillis' diet for the game. Noel is back, and I have to say... why? Why is he back? Why isn't he named Noel Plothole? Also, I'm just not the biggest fan of what they are doing to Final Fantasy here. I read that they were attempting to veer away from the RPG genre with the first game, and it seems that every installation is less and less a Final Fantasy game. Besides the inclusion of Cid, Wedge, Biggs, Moogles and Chocobo, this could be an action fantasy game with no ties at all to the past franchise installations.

All in all, while this isn't the best entry in the Final Fantasy XIII series (that was XIII itself), it's not the worst (that's going to fall to XIII-2, imo) and it's much better than I was expecting it to be during the first few hours I played it. It's worth playing through for fans of the series, and given the lack of RPGs there are currently for 360 or the XB1, it's pretty much worth playing for anyone at all. Just don't expect Lightning to be "the savior" of the Final Fantasy franchise. It will be worth seeing what Final Fantasy XV brings to the Fabula Nova Crystallis series.



TLDR version:

A crazy mix of shallow characters and complex NPCs, FFXIII-3 manages to make a fun, streamlined combat system feel slightly bulky and confining. Lacking a lot of character growth, the confusing main story recovers toward the middle and really hits its stride with the side quests. Lightning Returns is gorgeous to look at with a lot of familiar faces, both friends and enemies, and the music is basically up to Final Fantasy standards, but the voice acting really disappoints. Still worth a play for RPG fans, although it's barely an RPG.

Story- 7.5/10
Gameplay- 7/10
Graphics- 8.5/10
Audio- 6.5/10
Length/ Replay Value- 8/10

Overall Score- 7.5

Reviewed: LIGHTNING RETURNS:FF13

Keywords: None