Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Review
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix, Tri-Ace
Platforms: Playstation 3, X-box 360
Release date: Out now
The Final Fantasy XIII trilogy comes to its conclusion with Lightning Returns which picks up 500 years after the events of Final Fantasy XIII-2. With Caius Ballad’s successful release of Chaos into the world and destroying the goddess Etro, time came to a standstill. No one aged or even died of natural causes, instead death only came to those affected by illness or killed in battle. Eventually the days became shorter losing two hours from its original twenty six hour days to twenty four hour days with no explanation as to where the lost time went.
The story of “Lightning Returns” picks up from here. Featuring the return of Final Fantasy XIII protagonist Lightning over XIII-2’s protagonists Serah Farron and Noel Kreiss. Lightning now chosen by God (Bhunivelze) becomes his saviour of humanity and is giving thirteen days to save the souls of as many people as she can. In return for this Bhunivelze offers to reunite Lightning with her sister Serah. The game features four new locations for the player to explore, Luxerion the capital of the Nova Crysalis world. Yusnaan a city of endless celebration and feasting before the end of the world, The Wildlands a lone portion of the land left untouched and brimming with wildlife and finally The Dead Dunes, a desert brimming with treasures, danger and home to a notorious group of bandits. Each of these locations looks, plays and feels unique in their own individual way and are extremely fun to navigate through. Each are filled with side quests to complete, secrets to unlock, along with encounters with classic Final Fantasy XIII characters such as Snow Villiers, Oerba Yun Fang and others.
Gameplay wise the game drops the class system used in XIII-2 in favour of a garbs system. Lightning can obtains different garbs to wear and equip different weapons, attacks, adornments etc. in order to accommodate for personal play preference. This is a welcome addition and fits the gameplay quite well. You can have one garb as an all attack garb, one as a magic garb and one as a mixture of both, or a defensive garb or garb for boosting abilities.
The choice of the player’s three garbs is left to the player. The game also introduces the option to take screenshots and send messages to other players via an Outerworld online service that can post these screenshots online to social networks such as facebook or twitter but also sends them so that other players can see, rate your screenshots and even buy items you send with them. In my play through this was very prominent and I’d always come across some funny screenshots other players had taken. The game also features a clock system for the thirteen days of the game. The player won’t have all thirteen days available to them right away, they will need to save souls and complete the main story of each area in order to extend the time before the end. This clock system makes you very conscious of time wasting as you go about the world and since certain missions can only be initiated at certain times it can be a little annoying for some people but I liked this method it keeps you on your toes at all times trying to do as much as you can with the time you have. You can no longer level up with random monster fights, instead you gain boosts on your strength, magic etc. via the missions you complete in the game. This was an odd move but I guess encourages players to complete side missions rather than farming monsters our in the wild for a majority of their time.
Visually the game looks great, the characters, especially the locations and cutscenes all look great and there is a lot of detail in the environments. There were times when npcs popped up out of nowhere when I was travelling around and that took me out of the feel of the world in the game a little but if you can get past this it’s a minor inconvenience. The story seems to jump around a lot, it follows a lot of loose ends in Final Fantasy XIII and I felt at times like everything was going to wrap up well but later in the game it goes all over the place again up until the very end and I must say as a finale to Final Fantasy XIII I found it a disappointing ending.
Overall: For fans of Final Fantasy this is worth a play through, the overall game itself is quite good and quite an experience. Its lacklustre story though will leave more than a few players wondering if all that time spent playing the game answered any of their questions. If you’re looking for an RPG while waiting for Final Fantasy XV or Kingdom Hearts 3, then it’s worth playing Lightning Returns in the meantime.
Score: 3.5/5
Reviewed By Dave Kiely
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