Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII the good and the bad

Reviews

March 1, 2014

The world is dying – and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

What can be done, though, God can send down a Saviour to help guide all the world’s souls from this life to the next – and she can do it in the most fabulous outfits found this side of the apocalypse.

Ah yes, this is Final Fantasy, and Lighting has returned to tie up some loose ends.

However, this isn’t the Final Fantasy we know – even less so than the outlandish trips XIII and XIII-2 took us on – but is it the Final Fantasy that we need?

The good

Open world

A lot of complaints about XIII centred around the fact it took about 20 hours for the game to open up. XIII-2 sought to rectify this by introducing some whack-ass time-travel plotline (more on that later) to open up its world and locations.

Lightning Returns offers 4 large explorable areas presented in a truly open world way – Luxerion, Yasaan, the Wild Lands and the Dead Dunes – each with a central mission.

This means you’re allowed you to tackle the game and its quests in any order you want.

Battle system

The Final Fantasy trilogy has had a chop and change in battle system for every trip – from paradigm shifting in XIII to the Pokémon-esque spin in XIII-2. Lightning Returns is no different, and introduces a fast-paced ATB dress-up “schemata” system, which basically reinforces the saying “you are what you wear”.

The system is by far the best out of the three games, and you finally feel you have control of Lightning – responding to attacks, looking for the perfect timing to hit back or shoot off some magic – as opposed to just hanging around pushing X the whole time.

The middle

The final countdown

Lightning Returns functions on a “doom clock” system – an ever-present countdown timer set in place to remind you how long you have until it’s game over the world.

You initially have 6 days to save the world, which can increase to as much as 14 days based on how much you care about the last remaining people on earth.

While this doom clock gives you an indication of how close you are to the end of the game, it also hampers exploration and almost restricts a lot of the game’s content (see “banal side quests” below).

It’s as if the developers said “here’s a big world to explore! But make sure to run past and ignore everything as quickly as you can – the clock it ticking!”

The clock is fundamental to the game – it’s what the game hinges off of – so it makes sense in terms of the overall theme, and it isn’t terribly implemented.

It just seems like such a pity that, when Square Enix finally got the world and battle system right, we’ve got to be on edge and watch the clock while traipsing through it.

The bad

Stupid story

If anyone read my review for Final Fantasy XIII-2, you’d know I am no fan of the direction the game’s story took and believe it shouldn’t even exist.

The game is convoluted, complicated, unexplained and sometimes just downright ridiculous.

Lightning Returns, rolling off of that base, had no choice but to continue down that path.

Lightning’s latest journey revisits a lot of characters from the series, and introduces a few new ones – but, fittingly, there’s no real soul in them anymore.

Their stories were told two games ago, and the best we get now is to watch them shuffle along their roles as the curtain draws to a close.

While I concede that Lightning Returns does an adequate job tying XIII and XIII-2’s plots together (and even making some sense of it all), the fact remains that the story has gotten mind-numbingly ludicrous – even by Final Fantasy standards.

Banal Side quests

Side quests in Lightning Returns are almost pointless, barring the fact they boost your stats and reward you with some cool items.

To call them “side quests” is probably a bit of a stretch, though. Almost every side mission in the game – particularly the ones found on the Chocobolina boards – involves collecting items dropped from enemies; running from one side of the map to another; and that’s basically it.

Running, fighting, collecting, running. Rince. Repeat. You could effectively skip most side quests and not be robbed of anything of value.

Progress/upgrading

In Lightning Returns, you don’t build skills and progress through gaining experience and levelling.

You get stat boosts from completing the game’s main quests and aforementioned banal side quests, and your abilities are dropped from enemies as you maul them.

Now, I’m no fan of the RPG trope of level grinding, but its as if, hampered by that ever-present countdown clock, the game suddenly doesn’t have the time to reward you for hard work in battle, or to send you on magical missions to solve puzzles and seek out big rewards.

It’s content simply just feeding you along to the game’s conclusion. Yay.

Conclusion

On the whole, Lighting Returns isn’t a terrible game; the revamped battle system is fun; the new open world is basically what fans had been crying for the whole time; and its “doom clock” mechanic adds an interesting spin on gameplay, if a bit restrictive.

But a convoluted story, (literally) hollow characters, and repetitive filler do little to inspire much from this tired world.

Much like the game world’s residents, Lightning’s Final Fantasy is tired. It’s lived a long time and is seeking release.

Thankfully, Lightning has delivered, and hopefully we can all now pass from this series into a wonderful new world of Final Fantasy.