Since I never played Final Fantasy XIII-2 to see the ending, it was very surprising to me when Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy 13 was announced as I thought for sure they were done with Final Fantasy XIII especially since they were also working on Final Fantasy Versus XIII and neither of the first 2 games seemed to be the critical mega hit Square Enix was looking for. Even after announcement I mostly just wrote it off. All I knew is that it was more action oriented which was not really what I was looking for.
Having now played it, this is an interesting one. It still takes from the DNA of the other 2 games but goes in a different direction. The high level goal is to solve problems for people so that you can get “eradia,” a type of soul energy to be used extend the life of the world which is coming to an end and will be reborn when God returns. It’s very difficult not to draw a lot of direct comparisons to Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Each day is played out in scaled real time where you start at 6:00am and go to 6:00am the next day and a minute is approximately 3 seconds. Global time prioritization is a key component. Each of the 4 areas you can go to has a bunch of side quests plus a main quest which is fairly long, usually taking over a day to complete and you have 12 total days assuming you are also finishing enough sidequests to extend the day counter by the maximum.
I was fairly excited to see another game using this mechanic as I feel it’s woefully underused. The way Lightning Returns approaches it isn’t ideal though. Firstly, despite being 2 generations older it is not as detailed as Majora’s Mask. NPCs randomly wander around their home area and do not have routines, instead time is broken into a few segments of 6 hours: morning, afternoon, evening, early morning and various changes happen in those segments, like an NPC standing around or the type of enemies encountered. There’s also a lot of artificial barriers. For example certain gates might be locked until midnight and then open. This is not explained in any practical or world building terms, it just exists as a gameplay element to make you reprioritize goals. It’s very inelegant. It’s also not clear how long anything will take or what pace you should be working at. At the start you don’t know how many days there will be so you can only guess. I was pretty frantic and stressed at first, but it turns out the time limit is pretty generous so you can afford to make mistakes. Even when NPCs claim an event only happens on a certain day, it will happen the next day and all progress carries over between days even if it doesn’t really make any sense. It also doesn’t flat out tell you but if you fail you go into new game plus so technically it’s unlimited provided you redo all the quests (which can take multiple hours and you would definitely want to avoid). That said, it does work to create a sense of pressure. You never feel like you want to idle and plan your questing efficiently.
The other massive change is the battle system. This provides a true link from Final Fantasy XIII’s battle system to the action oriented system of Final Fantasy 15 and later entries. In XIII you rapidly queue up attacks and abilities with the paradigm and auto ability system which makes the game feel like giving orders to troops who play themselves, going from strategic control to tactical. Lightning Returns further simplifies and gets us a stone’s throw from direct control. There is only one character in battle, Lightning. Taking queues from the paradigm system Lighting Returns has “schemata” which is a class build. Each schemata is made up of a garb which sets the basic abilities, a weapon, a shield and then you slot in abilities to fill out the 4 action buttons. These abilities are mostly things from the rest of the series like spells but they can also be attacks including light and heavy variants, and guards. Guarding is as essential as attacking. The battles generally work off a parry system so if you mistime guards you will lose a lot of health. Depending on the enemy you can easily lose 2/3s in a single attack and at least initially there are no easy ways to heal. Get it correct and you typically increase the enemy stun meter by a lot and perfect guards will often block all damage from the attack. Unfortunately the window is very tight and a lot of enemies have awkward wind-ups. It never feels as natural as something like Super Mario RPG. You also use your ATB bar to guard so you have to be careful you even have enough, meaning you don’t just manage timing but also how long you can sustain using other abilities. To increase ATB you have to switch schemata as the active one recharges slowly. This gets complex quick because now you are managing 3 ATB bars between different classes making sure you have enough on your defending class while also making sure you aren’t animation locked and can respond to enemy attacks which might have very short tells. It’s a lot. Attacking too has a timing component but it’s even more fickle and cannot be relied upon especially because the timing changes not just based on distance or the part of the active combo, but also the weapon. Once you do get it it adds a nice rhythm but can make things more exhausting while not providing enough of a satisfying damage boost.
As I mentioned health is hard to replenish. Your health is now persistent between battles, there is no cure spell until later in the game and you have 6 total item slots. Though you can increase this with quests to a max of 10 (for a single playthrough) it’s extremely rare. Enemies, even simple ones if not well guarded can easily chew through your bar in just a few attacks. It feels almost helpless until you get the timing down. If you lose all HP then you must escape which costs you 1 hour of time. More likely you get caught in a battle against and enemy you cannot win against and have to forfeit and hour. Enemies often have ridiculous armor or HP to the point where battles last minutes which can be exhausting on the player. It feels very unfair to get trapped in them because they spawned in a narrow hallway. Sometimes they even have things like regen status and so your DPS isn’t even high enough to make progress. Bosses are even worse. Even with good timing they can be absolute slogs because it just feels like your DPS output is too low but any mistake on your part and you need to use one of your items. This is even with many staggers. These did not feel balanced correctly at all.
Interestingly you don’t increase stats by killing things. You only get stat boosts from completing quests. I think this was probably a good call but it makes the battles feel even less productive. You are guaranteed drops of specifical materials from killing enemies though which aside from money is why you should do them. In fact the game has an interesting mechanic where if you fight enough of them, the monsters become extinct and you’ll never see that enemy again. The final version of an enemy gets boss-like stat boosts and gives you rare items. Enemies also auto-level based on the day and location. If you could consistently clear a large enemy one day you might not be able to at all the next day until you level up more. Or it might be nearly the same. It’s very inconsistent because making it hard to decide if you want to go for it. Bosses also level up on a certain day (7 I think) so if you were feeling confident day 6 you will get wrecked and probably need to do quest for a few days if you were working on it. It makes it much more chaotic to plan.
Clearing all the main quests allows you to advance to the final boss on the last day. Failure and you start over but keep your stats and items. I actually tried to speedrun the game a second time to give myself a boost in the final battle. It only somewhat worked but overall was probably a waste of time. Garb and items tend to add more than stat boosts themselves and if you clear quests on the early days you earn less stats anyway because the bosses are easier. So I had to get good but the winning strategy needing overclock to land stagger is surprising because at no other place is that required.
Unlike the other PC ports for Final Fantasy 13 and 13-2 this one actually has settings so you set an unlocked framerate and higher resolution. It’s actually a really good looking game for its age. Although the framerate increase apparently caused some issues with one quest for getting fireworks but it luckily can be worked around. Otherwise it uses most of the same models from previous games though Lighting gets a substantial new wardrobe and while some like the default look stupid, others are actually decently designed.
Musically, it’s mostly just rehashing tracks from the other 2 games with only a few new ones here and there. But I do want to note how the title screen music and graphics feel completely retro and out of place. I honestly laughed at how cheap it looked compared to everything else. The voice acting remains good but Hope constantly radio talks to you and it’s literally always cut off because multiple things in the environment trying to talk over him. Very strange decisions there.
The game as a whole is a mixed bag. Still, I had a much better time playing this than the other 2, it’s definitely the best of the trilogy. I think the rough edges give it character in a way that Final Fantasy 13 doesn’t. The mechanics are genuinely interesting even if confusing or frustrating. It’s also just too long. Especially since it suggests doing multiple playthroughs it should be about half the length it is. But it’s especially interesting to me it’s basically is how it neatly bridges the gameplay into what became 15.
The Final Fantasy 13 trilogy is not terrible but it definitely shows declining quality in the Final Fantasy series. Too much emphasis on action without the gameplay to back it up. I think 2 and Lightning Returns get a reprieve because they knew they weren’t going to sell as much so they could try new things and worry more about playability rather than being a cinematic showcase but even they aren’t amazing. The other thing that really stood out is how lesbian-coded the whole thing is. Fang and Vanille’s relationship are the most obvious but it’s very obvious in tomboy lady boss Lighting as well. But I can’t remember this ever getting the scrutiny or analysis a modern game would get for these same themes or really held in any regard despite the fact it actually wears those themes pretty well. The shared Nova Fabula Crystallis mythos is also nonsense. It’s to be expected for Final Fantasy post VII but the weird and literal Deus Ex of fake Gods in FF13, to real gods in FF13-2, to the one true God in Lightning Returns gets ridiculous and by 2 we’re already running a multiverse of timelines so it feels like everything just loses all meaning. I think they were learning the wrong lessons here about what really made the series.
Back to Home