Every gamer who completed Final Fantasy XIII-2 knew there was going to be a sequel due to the explicit 'To be continued...' which was slapped onto the screen in the final moments of the ending. So there being a XIII-3 is no surprise. Whether this game was / is welcomed is another thing entirely, as XIII managed to cause a divide within the Final Fantasy fandom in a way that no other game in the series had managed to since VIII.
Square are hell bent on making XIII 'work', and Lightning returns is Square Enix's last chance to prove to us that XIII is as rich a tapestry of a tale as we are led to believe. Final Fantasy wiki entries allude to there being an amazing story and a vividly crafted lore around all of the XIII mythology, but for one reason or another Square Enix haven't done a wonderful job of telling this story in any of the games.
Lightning returns genuinely features Lightning as the main character, something which irked me about XIII-2 as you only took control of Lightning at the very start of the game for all of 10 minutes and then that was it. You could also argue that Lightning was never truly the lead character in XIII - as the story was told from Vanille's perspective and was centred around the retrieval of Serah, which soon revealed itself to be part of a bigger mission which involved more than just Lightning and Snow. This is a criticism which Square Enix seemed to have taken on board here, because you only ever control Lightning and she is very much THE main character. Wonderful. It only took Square Enix two games and a whole generation.
The demo starts off with a party, one of which is soon crashed by some giant monster and then crashed by Lightning who swoops in, spouts some shit in her deadpan voice and then kills a few people before snatching their souls. Something of which Lightning explains is her duty...I think. It turns out this party is Snow's party, who looks pissed that Lightning has decided to show up and start killing guests. He shouts at her, she stares him in the face lik 'Bring it bitch!' and then they start fighting. There's a shit load of teleporting all over the place, a swirl of black clouds, a shower of rose petals and a pillar of ice thrown around on the dance floor, before Lightning overpowers Snow (with ease) and puts her sword to his throat. They have a conversation which alludes to something having happened that we don't yet know about. But what we can gather is that Lightning is some form of God and that Snow's soul is unable to find peace and has manifested into darkness - which Lightning sees as her duty to relieve him of. But because they have a history and Lightning feels a little responsible and all that shit, she can't just snatch his soul how she did those poor soldiers who did nothing but run in front of her. Bitches don't be running in front of Lightning's eye line when she on the danceflo'. NEVER. Oh, and this whole entire sequence is FMV, which obviously looks gorgeous because Square Enix's feature motion videos are nothing but.
In standard Final Fantasy fashion you are left with a great deal of ambiguity into what is actually going on. But it all looks so beautifully presented that you just accept it for what it is. However, I was unable to honestly tell myself that the game will explain all of this sufficiently, given that the previous two XIII games raised more questions than they answered. XIII-2 to a lesser extent. But it still didn't truly explain the ending to XIII and how it managed to create this whole other world in XIII-2 in which Lightning seemingly didn't exist and the parallels and / or connections between all of these new worlds which keep popping up, potentially ret-conning everything which happened in XIII. The one saving grace with Lightning returns' in this demo is that amidst all of this new shit which makes no sense, you have familiar faces in the form of Lightning and Snow, with Hope acting as your in-game navigator and mission briefer.
If you feel anything like I did, then you will just want to get stuck into a battle to see what the fuss is all about with Lightning now being able to play dress-up and put Yuna and Rikku's classy wardrobes to shame.
The battle system was the one redeeming factors of XIII and seemed to be one of the few aspects of the game which most could agree was decent, alongside the graphics and the soundtrack. Whilst XIII-2 featured pretty much the same battle system as XIII, Lightning returns revises a lot of it: retaining enough elements of the original battle system that it feels familiar, whilst changing enough that it feels new.
Lightning returns battle system fuses the free movement of Final Fantasy XII, the dress changing of X-2 and the stagger system of XIII. Being able to move around the battle field is a nice addition as it causes you to be cautious of spacial awareness and distance from your enemy. If you are out of range of an enemy attack, it will miss you completely. Therefore the more distance you keep between you and your enemy the better. But if you want to go in and deal physical damage, you need to close the distance. This presents a risk reward system scenario in each battle, because Lightning's free movements on the battlefield are not quick. The girl moves like she has shit her knickers with counterweights. She moves very slowly, so it's not as easy to go in close for physical attacks and then run away; therefore going in for close quarter attacks will always leave you at the risk of getting slapped hard with an attack, forcing you to guard before you can slowly move away. Paradigm shifting has been replaced with schema changing which works in the same way as the dresspshere system in Final Fantasy X-2. Lightning has a selection of schema's / outfits she can instantly switch between, each of which grants her with new abilities and fighting styles. Selecting the right combination to use in battle is the difference between life and being left on the floor with HP 0. In conjunction with this, you will have to constantly switch between schema's to effectively stagger your enemies and keep a continuous chain of attacks, as your ATB gauge depletes in one scheme forcing you to switch into another which has it fully charged. The four face buttons on the controller determine which attack you can do, doing away with scrolling through menus to attack. This combined with the ability to move around the battlefield adds a real time element to battles which drastically changes the flow of things. With no auto-battle option to fall back on, you are continually kept on your toes. The battle system feels fresh and is a nice mix of the more forward thought battle elements which have been offered up from Final Fantasy over the years.
The graphics in Lightning returns feel a little dated. Magic effects still look lovely and the new characters sport highly detailed models (Lumina in particular looks great) but everything looks a whole lot less fresh and amazing than it did 3 years ago, undoubtedly because Square are using the same assets and the exact same engine they were using for XIII back then and it's not aged wonderfully or been updated in any way. The PS3 and 360 are in the final phases of their life cycles, but we have seen games come along which have wowed graphically and shocked me personally at how developers are still able to push the level of graphical fidelity they have been able to as of late. Mass effect 3, Tomb Raider, The last of us, Resident evil 6 (more or less) all looked fantastic.
Final Fantasy XIII, XII-2 and Lightning returns feel very disjointed - with the only consistent thread running throughout them being the characters and the menu systems. It feels like one lore was told in XIII, another was being re-told in XII-2 and now another is being accounted for in Lightning returns. There is no sense of these games taking place within the same world, as new worlds and new universes are being introduced in each game. It's like Kingdom Hearts, except Square Enix took out all of the doors, gummi ship scenes and said 'Fuck it. We're not going to explain anything'. It's also difficult to keep taking each 'new threat' seriously, when the eradication of it constantly leads to some new unforeseen threat. Whilst I admire the freshness of the locales and the characters, I feel as though Square Enix are side-lining the plot in a bid to try and reinvent and re-introduce the Final Fantasy XIII brand and it isn't working too well. XIII and XII-2 between them turned the XIII story into a more-than-slight mess and now Square Enix have tasked themselves with the responsibility of attempting to tie up loose ends and answer them all within this game, but I'm not feeling hopeful that they will and I wonder if it was ever Square Enix's intention when they seem so content with opening cans of worms, Kanye's shrugging at what plays out and then dropping the mic.
Square are hell bent on making XIII 'work', and Lightning returns is Square Enix's last chance to prove to us that XIII is as rich a tapestry of a tale as we are led to believe. Final Fantasy wiki entries allude to there being an amazing story and a vividly crafted lore around all of the XIII mythology, but for one reason or another Square Enix haven't done a wonderful job of telling this story in any of the games.
Lightning returns genuinely features Lightning as the main character, something which irked me about XIII-2 as you only took control of Lightning at the very start of the game for all of 10 minutes and then that was it. You could also argue that Lightning was never truly the lead character in XIII - as the story was told from Vanille's perspective and was centred around the retrieval of Serah, which soon revealed itself to be part of a bigger mission which involved more than just Lightning and Snow. This is a criticism which Square Enix seemed to have taken on board here, because you only ever control Lightning and she is very much THE main character. Wonderful. It only took Square Enix two games and a whole generation.
The demo starts off with a party, one of which is soon crashed by some giant monster and then crashed by Lightning who swoops in, spouts some shit in her deadpan voice and then kills a few people before snatching their souls. Something of which Lightning explains is her duty...I think. It turns out this party is Snow's party, who looks pissed that Lightning has decided to show up and start killing guests. He shouts at her, she stares him in the face lik 'Bring it bitch!' and then they start fighting. There's a shit load of teleporting all over the place, a swirl of black clouds, a shower of rose petals and a pillar of ice thrown around on the dance floor, before Lightning overpowers Snow (with ease) and puts her sword to his throat. They have a conversation which alludes to something having happened that we don't yet know about. But what we can gather is that Lightning is some form of God and that Snow's soul is unable to find peace and has manifested into darkness - which Lightning sees as her duty to relieve him of. But because they have a history and Lightning feels a little responsible and all that shit, she can't just snatch his soul how she did those poor soldiers who did nothing but run in front of her. Bitches don't be running in front of Lightning's eye line when she on the danceflo'. NEVER. Oh, and this whole entire sequence is FMV, which obviously looks gorgeous because Square Enix's feature motion videos are nothing but.
In standard Final Fantasy fashion you are left with a great deal of ambiguity into what is actually going on. But it all looks so beautifully presented that you just accept it for what it is. However, I was unable to honestly tell myself that the game will explain all of this sufficiently, given that the previous two XIII games raised more questions than they answered. XIII-2 to a lesser extent. But it still didn't truly explain the ending to XIII and how it managed to create this whole other world in XIII-2 in which Lightning seemingly didn't exist and the parallels and / or connections between all of these new worlds which keep popping up, potentially ret-conning everything which happened in XIII. The one saving grace with Lightning returns' in this demo is that amidst all of this new shit which makes no sense, you have familiar faces in the form of Lightning and Snow, with Hope acting as your in-game navigator and mission briefer.
If you feel anything like I did, then you will just want to get stuck into a battle to see what the fuss is all about with Lightning now being able to play dress-up and put Yuna and Rikku's classy wardrobes to shame.
The battle system was the one redeeming factors of XIII and seemed to be one of the few aspects of the game which most could agree was decent, alongside the graphics and the soundtrack. Whilst XIII-2 featured pretty much the same battle system as XIII, Lightning returns revises a lot of it: retaining enough elements of the original battle system that it feels familiar, whilst changing enough that it feels new.
Lightning returns battle system fuses the free movement of Final Fantasy XII, the dress changing of X-2 and the stagger system of XIII. Being able to move around the battle field is a nice addition as it causes you to be cautious of spacial awareness and distance from your enemy. If you are out of range of an enemy attack, it will miss you completely. Therefore the more distance you keep between you and your enemy the better. But if you want to go in and deal physical damage, you need to close the distance. This presents a risk reward system scenario in each battle, because Lightning's free movements on the battlefield are not quick. The girl moves like she has shit her knickers with counterweights. She moves very slowly, so it's not as easy to go in close for physical attacks and then run away; therefore going in for close quarter attacks will always leave you at the risk of getting slapped hard with an attack, forcing you to guard before you can slowly move away. Paradigm shifting has been replaced with schema changing which works in the same way as the dresspshere system in Final Fantasy X-2. Lightning has a selection of schema's / outfits she can instantly switch between, each of which grants her with new abilities and fighting styles. Selecting the right combination to use in battle is the difference between life and being left on the floor with HP 0. In conjunction with this, you will have to constantly switch between schema's to effectively stagger your enemies and keep a continuous chain of attacks, as your ATB gauge depletes in one scheme forcing you to switch into another which has it fully charged. The four face buttons on the controller determine which attack you can do, doing away with scrolling through menus to attack. This combined with the ability to move around the battlefield adds a real time element to battles which drastically changes the flow of things. With no auto-battle option to fall back on, you are continually kept on your toes. The battle system feels fresh and is a nice mix of the more forward thought battle elements which have been offered up from Final Fantasy over the years.
The graphics in Lightning returns feel a little dated. Magic effects still look lovely and the new characters sport highly detailed models (Lumina in particular looks great) but everything looks a whole lot less fresh and amazing than it did 3 years ago, undoubtedly because Square are using the same assets and the exact same engine they were using for XIII back then and it's not aged wonderfully or been updated in any way. The PS3 and 360 are in the final phases of their life cycles, but we have seen games come along which have wowed graphically and shocked me personally at how developers are still able to push the level of graphical fidelity they have been able to as of late. Mass effect 3, Tomb Raider, The last of us, Resident evil 6 (more or less) all looked fantastic.
Final Fantasy XIII, XII-2 and Lightning returns feel very disjointed - with the only consistent thread running throughout them being the characters and the menu systems. It feels like one lore was told in XIII, another was being re-told in XII-2 and now another is being accounted for in Lightning returns. There is no sense of these games taking place within the same world, as new worlds and new universes are being introduced in each game. It's like Kingdom Hearts, except Square Enix took out all of the doors, gummi ship scenes and said 'Fuck it. We're not going to explain anything'. It's also difficult to keep taking each 'new threat' seriously, when the eradication of it constantly leads to some new unforeseen threat. Whilst I admire the freshness of the locales and the characters, I feel as though Square Enix are side-lining the plot in a bid to try and reinvent and re-introduce the Final Fantasy XIII brand and it isn't working too well. XIII and XII-2 between them turned the XIII story into a more-than-slight mess and now Square Enix have tasked themselves with the responsibility of attempting to tie up loose ends and answer them all within this game, but I'm not feeling hopeful that they will and I wonder if it was ever Square Enix's intention when they seem so content with opening cans of worms, Kanye's shrugging at what plays out and then dropping the mic.
I want to be hopeful that Lightning returns will be a masterpiece. But this trilogy started off badly and fell off in such a fashion that I think we're past the point of redemption now. All hopes are pinned on Final Fantasy XV, which I wonder about now given that it was developed as part of XIII.
I told myself I wouldn't buy this game. But I know come Valentine's day I will be home alone with this damn thing.
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