Lightning Returns- Final Fantasy XIII: Running In Place.

It took effort to get caught up with the Final Fantasy 13 series. Despite a pretty heartwarming ending, I had basically nothing but negative feelings to Final Fantasy 13. Square responded by making a number of changes to Final Fantasy 13-2 and yet for some reason, despite all the improvements, my feelings were still lukewarm. Hell, I kept falling asleep when I tried to play it. I actually had to give it a full week of my time long after its release to finally force my way through it. That's a massive red flag.

So Square was basically like "God screw you people! Lightning is awesome! WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?!?!?" Square really, really wants us to think Lightning is cool and you have to appreciate their gusto for trying. As videos for this final installment came out, it had some pretty polarizing opinions to it. But then I played the demo... and fuck me sideways, it was actually fun! I was completely shocked, so much that I was actually looking forward to this. You managed to get my attention again Lightning, don't fuck it up.

LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII

We pick up several hundred years after the end of Final Fantasy 13-2. Lightning wakes up from her time sleeping in crystal to be privy to the end of time. After the finale of 13-2 where chaos flooded into the world, much of the planet was destroyed in the process. With it came a stoppage of time, people no longer aged, and no new life could be created. But it wasn't immortality, as people could still be killed, could still grow sick and die, can still be killed from misfortune. So as they seemingly can live forever, all they can do is watch humanity slowly dwindle in numbers as the chaos that destroyed much of the world will finish the job.

One of the three gods of the realm Bhunivelze awakens Lightning from her crystal sleep, and tells her the world will end soon. He will create a new world, but he will need souls to fill it. He offers that if Lightning will become his "Savior" and save as many of the remaining souls as she can, she will be rewarded by having Serah returned to life. Lightning agrees, and is granted power by the God to fight against the Chaos and save who she can.

Back on the surface, she finds that centuries have changed people greatly. Snow oversees the revelry that takes place as humanity has decided to just party till extinction. He is a tired and depressed Snow, completely grief stricken that not only could he not protect Serah, and that he can do nothing to stop the impending Chaos. So with Lightnings first act as "Savior" she vows to save his soul first.

Wow. So Stoic. Much Angst. Many Unwanted Sequels.

OK, so as we all know the tale of Final Fantasy 13 has not exactly been a smooth one. After a great deal of excitement for the first big PS3 and XB360 the collective fanbase got hammered with a 60 hour straight line with a combat system that did all the work for you and probably the hands down worst cast in the entire franchise. (I could give a fuck less that Sazh had a chocobo chick in his hair. Aside from Fang, the cast of 13 eats shit.)

But then we had Final Fantasy 13-2, which tried to continue on with the mess of 13 but instead we were treated to Noel and Serah, the only two characters in this entire universe who had any character and more importantly were likable. They made a number of changes to the game by trying to make it kind of episodic, opened up the world more, and added a monster capture element to the game. Unfortunately it was still in the universe with the previous cast, and was cluttered by excessive menus for traversing world maps. It was better, but still kind of lack luster as a whole.

Oh yeah, and for some reason Hope is a child again. Even though
he was an adult throughout the entirety of Final Fantasy XIII-2

Lightning Returns is actually probably the closest to a traditional Final Fantasy as its been in years. Instead of a massive world map like so many people are accustomed to, the game keeps contained in 4 major areas: two parts of a city (a glitzy wealthy area, and grungier poorer section), A vast nature filled Wildlands (which has plains, craggy areas, and a forest), and the Dead Dunes (which is a desert and a large underground ruins). You can see this for a positive or a negative, it may seem like the game has taken out the ability to explore, but on the other hand its tightly contained.

The game actually has a big MMO feel to it because instead of one long overarching story, its now broken up into questing. Each major area of the game has a main story quest featuring one of the other characters, and each area has various sidequests you can partake of the various residents you meet along the way. In addition to this there is a message board with additional quests do for each area. Because of its layout you are welcome to try to complete the quests in any order that strikes your fancy.

Get used to seeing where certain people are. Because sidequests will have
 you talking to almost everyone who has any dialog in this game

So why the need for questing? Well, this is one of the big determining factor for the realtime mechanic. This is a countdown to the end of the world, and the souls you collect push the clock back and boost Lightning's stats so you want to do as many of them as quickly as you can. Completing the main quests will buy you an extra day of time, and you have little abilities you can do halt the flow of time for a brief period. Time also doesn't move when you are in battle or in menus, so while you are still pressed to keep moving, not every decision is a 100% dire rush.

Although, it does lead to the issue of possibly completing the story quests too quickly. I pretty much managed to get through them all with relative ease, maxing out my time to the 13 possible days. Unfortunately with the main story quests out of the way, I have this dead zone where I am just wandering around trying to complete all the sidequests I can find. If you manipulate the fights right, you can use your chronostasis ability really pad out the length of time, which can really bring the pace to halt. I am trying to force myself not to stop time just so I can continue on with the story.

Your stage performance will never be as good as Celes' was, Lightning.
Stick to being a soldier. Oh wait, Celes was better at that too.

The other problem I have with it being told this way is it really seemed like there wasn't any grand story I was following along with, no longer narrative to drive my motivations or characters. Just a handful of "more important" side quests intermixed with the rest of them. The strength of the story suffers because of it. I think on top of the character quests, there should have been some kind of mandatory story mission for that day as well, that would at least give the story a better sense of weight.

Personally, I like how this maps were laid out. Yeah the map is smaller and more condensed and you lose a lot of realm to explore, but you know what? I have a lot more freedom to actually explore. I am not being forced to travel down a straight line of maps like the previous installments. With some of the quests requiring you to go from one end of the map to the other, it gives the world a sense of expanse that forces your to ration your time properly. I does fall victim to making have to go back and forth unnecessarily, but once you get a familiarity to the maps it probably won't bother you and it does make the game world have a sense of "bigness" to it.

Maps may seem smaller, but the over world manages to feel big.
A massive improvement over the first game. 

And something I liked that I can't recall most other games doing, is that you can accidentally complete quests without realizing you have done so. So if missions have quest specific items its entirely possible to find them along the way before you actually accepted the quest. Or if you get a quest of the old MMO standby of "kill x amount of monsters till they drop X amount of items." It doesn't pull the bullshit move of making the drop only happen after you accept the quest, so sometimes I'll enter a new area and go to the board to find out I've already got like 4 quests done. Rock on, free levels.

What I DON'T like about the quest board is I have to manually go through and accept every one. For the main quest that's fine, for the random citizens quests that's fine. But there is no incentive to declining quests. You aren't penalized for not doing them, so can we just assume that I want to try to do all the of quests? Maybe this is means to force me to read them, I don't know. But its a pointless hassle that keeps me in menus longer than I should need to be.

Now then, lets get to the meat of the game. They said they changed the combat system, which had been my long standing complaint with this series. The changed it in 13-2 but it pretty much felt like old system, just with monsters instead of party members. You still were basically smashing auto-battle until everything died and switching roles at the optimal moment. So whatever changes they planned I expected to be negligible. Oh how wrong I was. They changed it all right, and even using parts of the systems before it, the subtle changes made make it feel completely different, but more than anything I actually feel like I am the controlling the fight.

Some of the goofier outfits can take the seriousness out of a scene.

Here's how it works: Instead of 3 party members, you instead get 3 slots to choose various job classes (read outfits) each of them with their own unique abilities and statistics. Each class gets it own ATB bar for you complete combat actions, and each job has different parameters that effect it such as as a larger ATB bar for more actions, or a shorter bar for less but with a much faster recharge time. Each job will have one or two locked abilities to that job, and you are free to customize the rest how you feel you want to. Once you are outfitted with weapons and relics you are ready for battle.

During battle its one vs all. Typically the fights will be one on one but sometimes Light will have a hoard to deal with. Each of the 4 abilities you selected will be mapped to one of the for controller buttons. Holding them down will rapid fire that attack and each uses different amounts of ATB, as you use up your gauge you can use the L1/R1 buttons to flip between your other jobs, each with their own ATB gauge to use. While you are in a job the other two will be recharging.

The combat system is the best part of the game.... For once. 

So the goal of the battle is to keep up the offensive, if you play your cards right you can continuously push with a nonstop assault. With the right selection of attacks, the ferocity of your assault can knock an enemy into stagger, where you can unload big damage.  When this happens its wise to use your Overdrive feature which slows down time, increases your speed, and gives you a fresh bar to really pile on the damage. Plus when it ends the job bar is full again, giving you the possibility of three full rushes of attack when you stagger a foe.

The block feature is also a bit more interactive as timing becomes key in your defense. Should you add one of the guards into your lineup, you need to learn their intricacies (such as one that grows in defense the more you use it, or one that heals if you hold the guard longer) in addition to getting their timing right. When an enemy winds up their attack, if you can time it right your guard will negate any damage you can take from it. If its not properly timed, it will knock off a percentage of damage but keep you from getting knocked over. Otherwise you will get knocked off your feet or into the air which gives the enemy more time to wind up their next attack and brings yours to a halt.

Monsters aren't indefinite in this one. If you kill them in droves the last one will go into a more
 difficult final form. If you kill that one you get a powerful item, but that monster is extinct.

This combat is fun as hell. I can't explain it well because it sounds like they just condensed a party of 3 to a party of 1, but I think in giving me up to 4 to 12 different auto attacks that I have to decide on, I feel like I am playing a much bigger portion of the fight and pushing the pace, and timing my blocks properly definitely adds a strategic ripple to the combat. If I had one complaint about the combat of the game, I'd say it isn't even really an issue with the combat. It's the DLC bonuses.

This is the first game I've ever played where not only was the free DLC good, but its practically some of the best equipment in the game. Oh sure, you'll find better weapons but I've yet to find better outfits in the game that superior to the ones I got. The game comes with a Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 outfit that has a locked in Heavy Attack. But if you stagger an enemy, it becomes Slayer which is practically a one hit kill for the amount of damage it does.

Occasionally you will have help in battle. But don't get used to it because it doesn't last.

The other I got from an amazon preorder is the Summoner Yuna from Final Fantasy X, her shield gives 200+ magic, and she gets the attack Elementa which hits like 20 times, for all 4 elements, and does Magic x 9.60 (to give perspective most starting attacks offer .60 or .70 damage). It doesn't do much in the way of stunning enemies though, and that can be a real problem later on (especially with that final boss). Its a good crutch early but you will have to pick other spells to keep offensive balance.

You quite literally can tear through a very large portion of the game on these two outfits alone. Hell, In the 70+ hours of play and counting, I haven't had a reason to take off the Cloud and Yuna outfits. I have been bouncing around with Dark Samurai, Sphere hunter Yuna, and Velvet Bouncer (which doesn't look like a character from The Bouncer which seems like a missed opportunity,) for my 3rd but they have been fluff pretty much, just something else to keep the attack pace up with the other two. The DLC is practically game breaking. I suppose that's a complaint for some, but certainly not for me. At least in the summoner outfit I can pretend I'm using a more likeable protagonist.

Spira's Summoner: Super kawaii and deadly to boot. Also, when you win in
an older Final Fantasy costume, it plays the Fanfare from that game. Very cool.

Which really brings me to my biggest problem in the game: Lightning fucking blows. I'm sorry Square, but I just don't understand the collective boner you have for this character. She is easily the most angst ridden character in the entire franchise (a series that contains Squall, Cloud, and Edward no less), she goes through absolutely no development over the course of 3 games, she is constantly flat in emotion and delivery, and despite seeing you put her in every fantastical situation you guys can come up with, I remain completely unmotivated to root for her. Top this off with nearly every NPC and major character being equally dry and boring you again fail to hit on one of the most important aspects to Final Fantasy as whole, and that's a compelling narrative.

Actually, that's not wholly fair. In retrospect nearly every single character has gone through a good deal of change. Snow is actually a little bit relateable this time around, Vanille has gone through some drastic change and has become a deeply conflicted character, and one of the games primary antagonists in Lumina (a dead ringer for Serah) is probably the most interesting and charismatic character in the game. Yet right from the start they pretty much tell you Lightning has had her emotions removed by god, so practically every line of dialog is flat and uninspired. It sucks because it completely kills would could be a heartwarming or tense moment as you play.

There is a lot more to Lumina that meets the eye. And she's the only one with a shred of character 

Another big story problem I have is what I call "Hideo Kojiomaism" to the writing. Much like a Metal Gear game, someone like Hope or an NPC will say a line of dialog, and then Lightning will literally repeat the exact same sentence with a question mark at the end. This happens a number of times from beginning to end. To the point where I actually said at the screen: "OK I fucking get it already, get to the fucking game." Although, in its defense I will say this game has done a better job of actually weaving exposition into the narrative. It still has obnoxiously busy datalogs like the previous 2 games, but the game does a pretty good job of keeping you up to speed this time.

Although probably the biggest overall issue with the story is you pretty much can figure out who the final boss of the game is within maybe an hour or two, if that. "Oh, the main character is tasked by a deity to save the world and offering up her sister as a reward for doing what she's told? OH, and there is a religious sect that borders on fanatical and every line of dialog is followed by a sinister laugh and wringing of the hands?! I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN???"

It's a shame Vanille's character growth is marred by the most predictable
plot twist in the entire game. Seriously Square, you should know better.

Look, I'm a not a super religious guy and I'm certainly not defending religious double standards or illicit practices. But can I have at least one game where people who have faith AREN'T vilified for once? It's a tired plot line, its predictable, and its been done to death. I know some people who have faith, and most of them aren't that bad. Just the ones that blatantly ignore proven science, or use their faith to persecute. But that's a post for a different blog entirely.

My problem with this trilogy is Square seems to really think everyone loves this character, and they want to keep pushing her. We don't. Nobody does. Kotaku put up a poll if fans want more Lightning in FF games and its getting voted NO in a landslide. Stop thrusting this character in front of us. She sucks and we don't want her.

I suppose one other nitpick I could make is that outside of Lightnings outfits, the game uses a lot of the same character and monster assets over again and it seems like aside from locations this game doesn't really bring a whole lot of new to the table. Even still, the visuals really are incredible and the CG cinematic are even more impressive. (Even more so now on my new bitch'n LED TV.)

The Earth Eater is easily the biggest pain in the ass in this game

To hop off the negativity train, let me go back to a positive here. I used to think that the Final Fantasy 13 series had a pretty generic soundtrack. But as I play through Lightning Returns I realize they sprinkled in musics from all three of the games in this saga. So when one would start I'd have this nostalgic start of "oh I remember this one, oh I liked this one too". So maybe I've been a little hard on this series' score. That major violin piece for the main theme is actually really good, it just took me a longer time to realize it.... And I mean come on, Crazy Chocobo.

So after this massive diatribe I guess the question is, did I like it? It's really strange for me to say. Despite the few complaints that I had, and the fact that this game continues to address nearly every complaint I have about it, it still somehow failed to wow me at the start. I just don't understand how a game manages to fix almost every complaint I have and still leave me with an incredibly lukewarm overall feeling.

Nearly every major character gets their story finally wrapped up. We get some Closure.

But on the same token, I was never at a point where I was bored playing it and that is a massive improvement. The combat has become fun and involving, and I feel like I get to explore like a classic Final Fantasy should let me. The characters have become more relateable and interesting, so why am I not loving this?

Does a handful of awful characters really tarnish what could be a good game that badly? Or does the series as a whole just leave me with that much of a sour taste? Its hard to say. But if I were to go from the merits of this installment alone, I would say that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 is easily the best installment of the three. Despite using some old assets, the game is still visually stunning, its got a good soundtrack to it, the combat is fun to play finally, the timed mechanic keeps the games pace up, and it manages to capture some of the old magic of traditional Final Fantasy world map.

It has taken 3 tries to get Final Fantasy 13 right, and of them this was certainly the best attempt. The game might have been better if it continued to keep Serah as the protagonist instead of Lightning, but all in all I have to say that I am enjoying this one. It may not be yanking at my heartstrings like other FF games have in the past, but it certainly has done an excellent job of keeping entertained, focused, and looking to finish. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII isn't going to blow you away, but I'd play another Final Fantasy with this system. I would say it was worth the purchase.

If you swapped out this cast for the cast of 10, it becomes infinitely better.