Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (2013)

Lightning Returns totally caught me by surprise with its odd mechanics and lack of many typical JRPG elements. The premise is bleak and there's a divisive time limit mechanic at play, but I fell in love with the unique combination of stuff this game throws together. It does have some technical issues unfortunately, with the more crowded areas causing the game to stutter in the Steam version. Many NPC character models look pretty rough up close as well, but none of this was enough to take away significantly from the fun I was having.

The game puts the spotlight entirely on Lightning, recently awakened from crystal sleep by the god Bhunivelze, as she travels across the remnants of her dying world to gather the souls of the worthy so they can be reborn in the new one God is creating. Centuries ago, a cataclysmic event caused people to stop ageing entirely and no new life to be born. However, now this world has precious few days left, meaning she won't be able to save everyone. As she saves more people, the world can gain back precious time before it dies off completely.

This premise feels a lot like Majora's Mask, with the world ending in a fixed amount of time, but you can extend this limit by completing the main story quests and side quests, sort of like Pikmin 3 with its fruit juice resource mechanic. I can see how some might be put off by the idea of a potential game over because they didn't manage their time well enough, but the game is really very friendly in this regard. I was able to do my playthrough on Normal difficulty while mostly avoiding guides and I still had a ton of time left after finishing the main story quests that I then dedicated to cleaning up nearly all the side quests I could. The time limit did add an urgency to my playing early on which subsided as I got further along and realized just how much time I really had.

The combat also feels vastly different than its predecessor, though the ghost of the paradigm system lives on within it. Since Lightning is your only party member now (outside of a few select story moments), you create schemata for her rather than equipping items to different characters. She can have three of these equipped at once, each featuring a unique outfit design and customizable moveset. You swap between them mid combat but that's where the similarities to the paradigm system stop. Instead of using Auto Battle or choosing moves from a list like in the two previous games, Lightning Returns lets you assign a move to each of the four primary face buttons on your controller. What results from all this is combat that feels not unlike a Soulslike crossed with a Hack n Slash, where you chain together attacking, blocking, and casting spells while managing your ATB meter much like you would a stamina bar. So I felt right at home.

The time limit and active combat system are accompanied by an unorthodox method of character progression where you directly receive stats for completing quests. I think this is actually really great. It's just further motivation to seek out and assist NPCs with the things they need. You get more time before the world ends as well as buffed stats for the challenges to come, which gives each quest a pleasant feeling of satisfaction upon completion. That's not to mention that the stories within these quests feel much more fleshed out than I would have expected. Most revolve around people struggling to survive in a world where they are trapped in bodies that no longer age for centuries on end. It makes for some pretty cool small plotlines.

Before I dig into how the game handles its characters, I want to highlight one more really awesome game mechanic. Since no new life can be born, there are a fixed number of people in the world. This extends to monsters as well. As such, you can actually fully exterminate each species of monster in the game if you kill enough of them. Each extermination culminates in a final fight against the last of a monster's species with extra buffs applied to make it a bit tougher, but then it's gone for good. It's just another in the list of mechanics that feel tightly integrated with the game's world building. I love this. Things like this go a long way to make the game's world feel more authentic.

Since she's been out of the picture for centuries, you can imagine that time has worn away at the bonds Lightning once had with her friends from the first and second games. Some of them have undergone significant change since we last saw them and it's a lot of fun to meet up with each over the course of the story and catch up. Lightning Returns feels like it has a lot more respect for the original main cast than XIII-2 did, with every old party member getting their time in the spotlight. I feel a bit like Sazh got snubbed again in this one, but it's still an improvement over the last game where he got banished to a DLC story.

The story has also shifted away from the time travel mess of the last game to once again focus on the struggle between humanity and the gods that created them, a core theme of Final Fantasy XIII. It was really nice to get an extension of the story started in the first game-- one that manages to cap off Lightning's involvement in a satisfying way while wrapping up the main conflicts introduced over the trilogy. I'm trying to stay a bit vague here to avoid getting bogged down in plot details, but I think most fans of the first game's story would be pleased with this one.

My complaints mostly have to do with the technical performance of the game. First of all, it's immediately obvious that Lightning Returns doesn't look as impressive as the previous two entries. NPCs often look like someone hit "Random" on some kind of NPC generator and the city environments feel very gray and boring. To top this off, as I explored the two cities I was constantly dealing with the game stuttering and stumbling to handle all the citizens wandering around. They helped the game feel more alive but at the significant cost of performance, I'm not sure it's worth it. Thankfully, combat ran smooth as butter, so there was no interference with my ability to battle enemies.

With its wild assortment of divisive mechanics that tie its gameplay to its setting, Lightning Returns blew my admittedly low expectations away. I had so much fun exploring the world in its final days and helping the many faces, both familiar and not, who make their home there. It's held back a bit by some technical issues, but I think this is an underappreciated gem of a game that manages to deliver on much of its ambition and tie off the Lightning Saga with a beautiful bow, in my eyes.

Basically, one of those hate it or love it, no in-between for me.

It basically trashes most of the character development of the past two games (and not that it was very good to begin with). Each of the characters are exactly in the same emotional place they were in the first game: Vanille is still stupid, Fang is still a rebellious angry lesbian (that is a compliment), Hope is once again useless, Snow is… ugh, and Sazh is back to being a depressed dad.

The only one who has changed (for explained lore reasons during the game) is Lightning, who has basically become an ice queen of emotional unavailability. Not a fan of that. The gameplay is fun, but looks more Valkyrie Profile than Final Fantasy to me. Most of the garbs are useless – and even though the game does try to force you to use some of those in certain situations, after that you can basically store them and never see them again.

The divisive part of the game is how leveling up works. You need to complete boring quests spread all over the map (and locations), and that is the only way to increase your stats. Most of these locations never existed in the first and second game, worth noting.

And the doomsday clock… I hated it. Yes, you have enough time to do everything, that is not an issue – but why would you want a stupid clock ticking. The worst part is that you need to use a special ability to make time go slower, but to do so you need to kill monsters – so basically you can’t win experience, but you do need to fight monsters to use this power.

You also can miss a lot of stuff just because you were not in the right place at the right moment (even for a minute).

Not my cup of tea.

Much like Final Fantasy XIII-2 before it, Lightning Returns is a product of Square Enix’s early 2010s financial struggles. An effort to bring in as much money as possible by reusing many assets from Final Fantasy XIII whilst fellow Fabula Nova Crystallis (referred to as FNC for the rest of this review) game Final Fantasy Versus XIII continued languishing in development hell & Final Fantasy XIV (completely unrelated to FNC outside of also being a Final Fantasy game that (in the pre-A Realm Reborn days) also ran on Crystal Tools & reusing some assets from XIII & Type-0 (even as recently as the Endwalker expansion’s first Level 90 dungeon)) was gearing up for its big relaunch as A Realm Reborn.

But by the time Lightning Returns launched, its whole reason for existing had started to fade away. A Realm Reborn would launch globally on both PC & PS3 3 months before Lightning Returns’ Japanese release in November 2013 (& 5 1/2 months before its Western release in February 2014) & would quickly become a huge hit, with XIV cementing itself as World of Warcraft’s main long-term competitor in due course, possibly even surpassing it in 2021 in the wake of a mass exodus from WoW. Versus XIII would be retitled Final Fantasy XV, move to the then next-generation consoles (the PS4 & Xbox One) and have its ties to FNC cut down to thematic & design overlap (the FNC mythology was replaced with a new mythology created specifically for XV). Even the consoles the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy was made for (the PS3 & Xbox 360) were on their way out and would be replaced mere weeks before Lightning Returns’ initial launch (although, to be fair, neither the PS4 nor Xbox One would launch in Japan until after Lightning Returns’ Western release). Combine that with XIII-2 selling significantly less than XIII and increasing fan disdain for the XIII trilogy (officially dubbed the “Lightning Saga”) & Lightning as a character and it’s easy to see how Lightning Returns was always going to be the end of the XIII era of Final Fantasy, whether Lightning & co. were ready for it or not (even before Lightning Returns came in below half of XIII-2’s already underwhelming sales figures).

The interesting thing about Lightning Returns is that, whereas XIII-2 felt like a game built around its accelerated development cycle, Lightning Returns is a game that feels too ambitious for its own good. Whilst XIII-2 reused as much from XIII as possible & used the time-travel premise as an excuse to reskin both old environments from XIII & most of the few new ones multiple times & made minimal changes to the gameplay; Lightning Returns completely overhauls the combat to more closely resemble an Action-RPG, mostly sets itself in new locations & has an ambitious & risky new mechanic that required a lot of balancing work to get right (more on that later).

Perhaps this is a byproduct of Motomu Toriyama, the director of the Lightning Saga, & his… passion… for Lightning (seriously, watch the video above of him during the reveal of this game, this guy’s passion for Lightning borders on waifu territory) and a desire to give her story a happy ending & unforgettable sendoff. Maybe the XIII team as a whole wanted to stretch their legs & try some new things after XIII-2 mostly played things safe on the gameplay front so they could apply the lessons learned to future projects. Funnily enough, much of the team at Business Division 1 that made Lightning Returns would go on to develop Final Fantasy VII Remake & having played both games I can definitely say that FFVII Remake is much more of an evolution of this game’s combat than it is of FFXV’s combat. So you could call Lightning Returns’ combat a dry run for VII Remake (if it weren’t for VII Remake initially being planned to mostly be developed by CyberConnect 2 rather than by Business Division 1 themselves).

Regardless of the reasoning, the aforementioned overambition has a noticeable impact on the game’s graphics. The visuals noticeably take a step back from XIII & XIII-2, with the best-looking assets in the game being either reused from the previous two games or costumes for Lightning (probably due to the Schemata system (more on that in a bit)). The environments, in particular, look pretty bad for a game that was released for the PS3 & 360 in 2013 (for comparison, The Last of Us & Grand Theft Auto V were released for the PS3 (and 360 in GTA’s case) earlier that SAME YEAR and look a lot better than Lightning Returns on the same hardware). The more wide-open Wildlands & Dead Dunes fair the worst, but even the more closed-off, city-like areas of Luxerion & Yusnaan fail to meet the visual highs of XIII & XIII-2. If I had to guess, these hits to graphical fidelity were likely a combination of having to create so many new assets in less than a year and a half that fit in the memory pools of the aging hardware the game was made for & Crystal Tools being pushed to its limits to make this open-ended design happen. To think this trilogy started by raising the bar on this front… It’s also worth mentioning that, much like XIII-2, there are only three pre-rendered cinematics in the entire game (one at the beginning, one at the very end & an unlockable post-credits scene; no extensions of cinematics from previous games this time either, although there are a lot of flashbacks to previous games, which are presumably handled via FMV files).

Going back to the combat, it’s probably the best thing about this entire game to be honest! As mentioned before, Lightning Returns utilizes an action-combat system with some turn-based elements like an ATB bar that’s very similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake in it’s approach to mixing action-combat & ATB/turn-based combat (albeit LR is definitely leaning more toward action-combat than VII Remake). And for this team’s first attempt, there’s a surprisingly high skill ceiling involving timing, learning enemy attack patterns & maximizing the amount of stagger you dish out to an enemy. It’s a real joy to engage with & I’m glad that the dev team has evolved it into the system many people love in VII Remake.

But perhaps the most… unconventional element of combat is how you increase Lightning’s stats. Rather than doing so by gaining XP in combat and/or getting points to use in an upgrade menu, in Lightning Returns the only ways to get more powerful are through quests & the Canvas of Prayers (essentially a “Get X from loot drops in exchange for some power” system). While this is definitely a unique approach & I didn’t hate this (it’s especially great from a ludo-narrative synchronicity standpoint), I’m also glad that this concept hasn’t caught on in other RPGs (and that BD1 didn’t carry this over to VII Remake along with the elements they did import like the Stagger meter & the general approach to mixing ATB/Turn/Menu-based combat with action-combat)...

Anyways, I’ve talked around it enough. Let’s talk about this game’s time limit, by far the single biggest & most divisive change made to Lightning Returns compared to the previous two games & the mechanic everything else about this game revolves around. Lightning only has 13 days to save as many souls as she can before the world ends, and the game imposes this deadline upon players as well. Each in-game day corresponds to around an hour of real-time (2-3 hours on Easy mode), meaning you have 13 hours (+ however much time you spend in cutscenes, conversations & combat, all of which pause the timer) to finish the game (26-39 hours on Easy mode). Oh, and at the start of the game, you only have 7 days and have to unlock the remaining 6 days by completing the main story quest chains. Unless you are playing on Easy mode, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to finish the game on your first attempt. This means you have two options:

• If you really want to complete the game in one playthrough, you’ll likely have to play the game on Easy difficulty. Easy, on top of extending the in-game days by 2-3 times the amount of real-world time, also removes the punishment for losing fights (which on Normal is losing an hour of in-game time), enables health regeneration outside of combat, reduces the amount of damage Lightning takes in combat & the amount of health enemies have, increases the amount of EP you gain from combat (EP, short for Eradia Points, is a resource that can be used to, among other things, freeze time temporarily & activate an Overdrive mode in combat that allows Lightning to ignore her ATB meters for a short time) & decreases the EP cost of most abilities, among other benefits. It does also decrease the amount of Gil (currency) you can gain from each battle, though.

• If you’re OK with taking multiple playthroughs to finish the game, then you can use New Game+. New Game+ carries over Lightning’s stats, non-quest items, most garbs, all adornments & accessories, All EP abilities obtained, all map information & markers (with the exception of icons), Datalog & Beastiary entries and game time from previous playthroughs. It also unlocks additional features like weapon & shield upgrades, an item which activates Lightning’s Limit Break, the ability to increase the amount of EP & item slots at any given time by replaying main quest chains, an hourglass that allows you to restart New Game+ at any time & even access to Hard difficulty (which makes enemies even stronger & reduces the amount of EP you gain from combat, but improves the potential quality of items you can gain from battle & triple the amount of Gil as well as unlocking access to Hard exclusive garbs & equipment from various merchants).

As for my personal opinion on it, at first, I found the whole idea very daunting. Not surprising given that I’ve scarcely touched games like Majora’s Mask that infamously have one. But eventually, as I played through the game (on Easy), I started to come around on the idea. Plus it turns out that said time limit is actually pretty generous (even on Normal), so it’s likely that an average player will be able to complete the game in one go once they have their head wrapped around the combat.

Fortunately, the PC version of Lightning Returns is the best of the Lightning Saga’s PC ports. There is a healthier amount of graphical options than XIII & XIII-2 & the game is much more stable, less crash-prone and generally works just fine right out of the box. No mod manager is needed. There are some performance issues in certain areas, but never quite as bad as XIII-2 is out of the box (or how bad this game’s performance is on PS3 & 360) & it’s clear that Crystal Tools was not designed for the kind of game Lightning Returns aspires to be.

Finally, let’s talk about the story. Going into this game, my expectations were tempered by the mostly negative reception to the story. But this is where Lightning Returns surprised me most. While the story isn’t perfect and the high degree of non-linearity can lead to things feeling disjointed, the overall story is pretty good, even if the identity of the main villain is pretty obvious after a few hours (said main villain is decent, but is no Caius, let alone up to the gold standard of FF villains that is Emet-Selch from FFXIV; the villain is better than Barthadelus from XIII at least). I’d say the story is at its best when it’s exploring Lightning’s flaws & worst tendencies as a character and at its worst when it devolves into a bunch of fetch quests (looking at you Sazh). I did play with the English voice acting & subtitles though & this game in particular was so heavily altered, butchered and made much more confusing in the localization process that there’s a fan-translation mod in the works (practically unheard of for a game released after the 90s that received an English release close to the original launch and not years down the line (cough cough Trails cough cough). Even the terminology didn’t make it unscathed by localization-induced confusion! So maybe I'd feel differently (for better or worse) if I played in Japanese. As a finale… It’s a good ending to the Lightning Saga, but it’s no Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker for sure. Just maybe wait until the fan retranslation mod is out or learn Japanese first before playing this one if you want a faithful experience to the creators’ intent…

Conclusion

Lightning Returns is a very experimental game, an interesting choice for the finale of a trilogy (even if the devs marketed this as a “new experience”, the story is very much written like a trilogy capper), but I suppose a highly experimental & ambitious game that tries out a bunch of new ideas is a very Final Fantasy way to cap off a trilogy. Not all of Lightning Returns’ experiments are successes & even some of the ones that do work are things I wouldn’t want to see in every Final Fantasy game going forward, but I applaud the ambition of this team, especially when, given the context of this game’s creation & their company’s financial troubles, they could have easily phoned it in with a safe & iterative finale. But they didn’t and that’s worthy of praise (even if their ambition did ultimately outstrip the time they had to ship this game).

It’s not a perfect game, at times it’s actually a pretty messy one. But it’s definitely my favourite of the Lightning Saga & I’ll likely do a New Game + run in the not-too-distant future…

Ratings

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 6/10 (not bad for the time, but the PC port has some issues out of the box (but is nevertheless better than the first two XIII games) & the visuals are a bit lacking for a PS3 & 360 game released in 2013/2014)

Business Practices score: 6/10 (fine, but there was a shit-ton of costume DLC, all of which have stat boosts due to the Schemata System & consumer outcry over XIII-2’s costumes lacking any (that feels weird to say given the push back against any form of Pay to Win these days), although these costumes are included in the PC port with some exceptions that can be re-added via mods)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10

I wasn't going to write a review for this. Yet, I can't stop thinking about it. Besides some real weird jank, I think it's a pretty interesting game.

After the events of XIII-2, life has stopped aging. Rather than provide peace, an ageless world has only further deepened the divide among people. God is evidently pretty done with this world and has decided to prep up a new one. Lighting, chosen specifically by God, needs to save people's souls to be ready for the process which will take place in 13 days.

Which is why in order to save people's souls, Light needs to solve people's everyday problems. Herding sheep, taste testing food, finding lost dolls, the usual end of the world deal. The juxtaposition in tone between the game's premise and what you'll actually be doing for people is really jarring. Especially since every quest has to conclude with the recipient feeling some life changing revelation when all you really did was something like feed a chocobo some gysahl greens.

Thankfully, however, this focus on sidequesting gives way to some of Lightning Returns most interesting gameplay mechanics. Stat growths are purely tied to side quest completion. This means that you are free to explore the four distinct regions of the game in whichever order you want. Actually, you're encouraged to do so because the enemies in the 'first' region will suddenly spike in stats later in its main questline. In general, LR has a very hands-off approach to its gameplay. You have 13 in-game days to rack up enough stats so you can sufficiently take on the final set of challenges at the end. Or if you're like me, you can gather barely enough stats, sleep at inns to skip to the final day, and take on the final boss as quickly as possible a la Breath of the Wild.

Instead of getting experience at the end of a battle, you get EP - which you can use to either stop the flow of time for a little while or for other special out of battle spells, such as curaga. Time is a resource which you have to manage efficiently as you're solving errands and exploring the world. For the most part, you'll only be fighting enemies for their ability drops or EP to stop time. Fighting enemies is a choice rather than a necessity. Losing a battle jumps time ahead 1 hour, so you also have to be careful to choose your battles wisely. It feels nice to have every battle matter in some way.

Combat is really what kept me coming back to LR. It's deep. You have to discover all of its intricacies out on your own. I love it. This time you only have to control one character - Lighting. You have complete agency of the pace of battles, determined by your equipment sets. Lightning switches on the fly between three sets of equipment, each having their own ATB gauge. The game nudges you towards having one for physical attacks, one for magic, and one for guarding, but you're free to explore other possibilities as well. There's also a God-Hand sort of system where you assign moves to each equipment set. Learning enemy attack patterns, weaknesses, and prepping with the right gear is important to doing well. By far the best addition is a block, which if timed right reduces damage or may even stagger some enemies. This is a massive improvement over 13-1's combat, where I would often die because of a lack of responsiveness and control. Each piece of equipment gives Lightning a different look. You can adorn Lightning with all sorts of serious looking or goofy accessories. It does get pretty fanservicey, but overall it reinforces LR biggest consistent strength - freedom of choice.

Considering how the first 13 is my least favorite Final Fantasy, I really didn't expect myself to enjoy this as much as I did. Especially considering how low this game is often rated. Go in with low expectations and you'll get a game with some interesting ideas and fun, creative combat.

Yay, I've finally finished the wild ride of FF13! It's taken me just under 2 months of playing almost nothing else. I feel comfortable in saying that it's my second favorite experience with the Final Fantasy franchise, with only FF Tactics narrowly beating it out.

I don't really feel up to writing a proper review or a larger list of thoughts, so I'll just jot down a couple of things so I can look back and remember why I liked this rather divisive game.

The world built in this game is my favorite of all Final Fantasy games. I absolutely loved the exploration of what would happen if people stopped aging for 500 years and no new life could be born. Consequently, Lightning Returns was one of the rare JRPGs where I actually cared about doing the side quests. Which was good, since that's the way you level up lol. Also the voice acting was rather hit or miss.

The combat system is also excellent. Learning enemy patterns and jumping between costumes to pull out the right attacks or blocks/dodges/counters at the perfect time is very rewarding. Again, it's good that I felt this way, since you'll have to fight quite a lot if you want to continually freeze the timer.

Oh yeah, the timer. It was cool in that it gave you the sense of urgency you'd want with this type of story, but also a little annoying at times. In the end, I had more extra days that I just threw away than days I actually needed, though, so the negative aspects were largely mitigated.

You get to play dress up a lot and that's been a favorite thing of mine in video games since I played City of Heroes back in the day. RIP.

The main story was a little thin, but I liked it. None of the twists were particularly surprising, but it was what I was hoping for. It was also very cool to see how all of the main characters were affected by the horrible fever-dream of a world. The ending was completely over the top, but in the best and most thematically appropriate way possible. I loved it. I loved this game.

Edit: Oh yeah. Excellent music again. Not quite as striking and varied as XIII-2, but definitely something I'll turn throw on from time to time while I'm at my computer.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, (shortened to LR) is the last game in the beleaguered Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. The first game was an utter mess of hallways and handholdy tutorials. The sequel was a massive upgrade from the first game that took fan feedback to heart but had a nonsensical time travelling plot that goes nowhere. LR in the meanwhile is a completely different beast, sporting a new battle system, a time mechanic and only one playable character. Fans hoping for a great final act to the trilogy will be severely disappointed. LR delivers a story so out of left field that the ending left me scratching my head on what exactly happened. Fortunately if you can completely ignore the story and dull characters, you can enjoy some of the finest gameplay yet in the entire Final Fantasy franchise.

The best part of LR is the gameplay. The auto-battle system in the previous games is completely scrapped in favor of an action game. In LR, you only play and control the protagonist Lightning. Each face button represents a command which drains the stamina or active time bar (ATB). Once out of stamina, Lightning can change wardrobes or garbs which have their own separate commands and ATBs. While Lightning is wearing the active garb, the other two inactive garbs recover ATB. The key to combat is to use commands while cycling from garb to garb to setup some insane hit combos. The combat is snappy, precise and has a high skill ceiling. Part of the combat is knowing which garb commands to use to stagger the enemy and which garbs to use when defending. Players who perfectly time guard and attack commands can block all damage or deal bonus damage respectfully. Defeating the strongest bosses in the game requires an intense focus and mastery of combat almost equivalent to playing a Souls game.

The garb system is interesting but ultimately not worthwhile. Each garb the Lightning collects can have special commands and attributes thus enticing the player to collect every garb possible. While it sounds great on paper, Lightning can only equip 3 garbs at a time and some of the best garbs are automatically earned by playing through the main storyline or purchased in stores. Most of the garbs in the optional quests and DLC are worse than the garbs you get normally so there is never a chance to wear them unless you want to see Lightning fight in those outfits.

Some of the garbs that Lightning wears are skimpy and revealing. They make zero sense as combat attire and are purely fan service. One specific garb makes Lightning do a sexy pose in the victory screen: Lightning bends down revealing her cleavage and smiles at the player. Also players can choose to add adornments for Lightning such as having her wear a hat, don a mustache or brand a tattoo. This isn’t the first time Square Enix let players “doll up” a female protagonist, they did the same thing for Yuna with the dress spheres in FFX-2. I’m not against these sexy garbs, but I feel like it’s a sleazy way of getting people to play the game.

The time system in LR is controversial because the game ends in 7 in-game days. Each gameday lasts exactly 1 real-time hour. After the 7 days have passed, Lightning must face the final boss or can choose to rewind back to the beginning and keeping most of the garbs and stats gained in her journey similar to a rogue-like. However I don’t think LR is meant to be a rogue-like. Completing main story quests extends the game by a day, up to a maximum of 13 days. Time freezes while in menus or in battles. There is also an ability that Lightning can use to freeze time temporarily. With proper time management, I believe most players can complete every single main and side quest and have days to spare. But this is coming from someone who loves optimization and speed running, so your mileage may vary.

The production value of LR is arguably worse than the other two games. With the exception of Lightning, her garments and some main characters, LR recycles assets from the other two games. Character designs are the same. There is no new memorable music tracks. FMVs recycle scenes from the prior games. There are no new monster designs. Lip syncing is poorly done (which was a similar issue in FFXIII-2). Two of the main areas the Wild Lands and the Dead Dunes are boring open sandboxes. The only bright spot is that the PC port is great, with zero bugs/crashes and offers multiple graphical/display options.

I’ve been avoiding it for most of this review, but it is finally time to talk about the story.

Remember the L’Cie and Fal’Cie from FFXIII? How about all the time paradoxes in FFXIII-2? Well forget about all that because now the FFXIII world is about to end in 7 days because of the Chaos. God has tasked Lightning to save the souls of the remaining humans and bring them into a new world that God will create. Square Enix has gone straight biblical and created their most ridiculous story yet. The story seems wave away everything nonsensical with either the Chaos or God. Why is Hope back and in his younger self? Why is this character back when they were killed/sacrificed in the previous games? Why does Lightning have to take the train to travel from area to area when Hope can warp her out from anywhere?

It also doesn’t help that Lightning and Hope are the least likeable characters in the trilogy. Lightning never really displayed any emotion in either of the past two games, but now it becomes exaggerated because she is the only character you play. Hope in the meantime serves as the oracle to Lightning and constantly comments on things that you should pay attention to. This isn’t Bastion-level of narration however, Hope’s comments will drive you crazy and you will eventually be relieved when he finally shuts up. Lumina the antagonist, is the only likeable character in LR. Her appearances add energy to the scenes and actually makes the plot somewhat palatable. She is basically the Joker to Lightning’s Batman. But even Lumina could not buoy this sinking ship of a story.

The gameplay is the only reason to play LR. Square Enix made the right step with FFXIII-2 only to bungle most of its’ gains with LR. Instead of refining on what made FFXIII-2 great, Square Enix decided to make an action game and completely abandon most of the plot in the previous games. While the action of this game is probably the best in the Final Fantasy series as a whole, everything else about LR feels hastily put together. The story is nonsensical. The characters are not likeable. The dialog is half-baked. Ultimately if you are onboard with the gameplay, I recommend seeing LR to the end, otherwise avoid this game at all costs and just look up the ending if you’re curious about the conclusion to this trilogy.