Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) Review

What can you do in 13 days?

 

 Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII marked the end of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy when it released in the tail-end of the 7th gen in late 2013 in Japan and early 2014 worldwide. Lightning's back from a deep slumber for one final adventure and it's a race against time. Often regarded as the weakest of the trilogy, I've been excited to finally play it since I got into Final Fantasy around this game's release. As the last entry in Lightning's saga, there's a lot to go over here as it's gonna be a long review!

 After the events of XIII-2, Chaos has been unleashed into the world, bringing upon its destruction with humanity losing its ability to age and reproduce. Lightning Returns picks up 500 years later in the end of days where Lightning returns as a messiah for the deity Buhnivelze. In exchange for reviving her sister Serah, she's tasked with saving as many souls before the world ends and gets completely reborn in just 13 days. Along the way, Lightning will also be guided by a younger version of her ally Hope and the enigmatic Lumina, who bears a striking resemblance to her sister. 

Light's back for her last outing.

 The story was... a mixed bag. It tries to neatly wrap things up after XIII-2's time-travel mess though it still managed to confuses me the more I look deeper into things. It had me engaged initially with the premise but went overboard with the religious themes and Chaos bits. Light's character finally gets fleshed-out as you get to see her kinder side when she helps those in need. Characters from prior games like Snow, Noel, Sazh, Vanille, and Fang come back one last time, though sadly most didn't get equal screen-time. Without spoiling much, the villain was pretty threatening and cool-- though not as cool as Caius! The ending took a wild twist but I felt that it wrapped up the trilogy nicely. 

 Lightning Returns completely overhauls the gameplay formula of XIII and XIII-2 as now, it's an action-RPG with a new twist... Costumes! Replacing the Paradigm mechanic is the new "Schemata" system, where Light unlocks exclusive skills based on the attire she wears, while also equipping accessories. For example, her default "Equilibrium" outfit has an exclusive attack skill whereas the "Electonica" outfit features a thunder skill and you can also add various skills to each outfit-- so there's plenty of room to experiment for all kinds of builds. In a complete U-turn, the Crystarium has been omitted and now, you level up your stats such as health, magic, and strength by strictly completing side-quests as Lightning spends her time saving people. 

The gameplay feels a lot more engaging due.

 The most controversial addition is that of the clock, which shows the elapsed time Lightning spends on earth as you only have 24 hours each day to beat the five main quest-lines and tackle as many side-quests as you can. Kinda like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, you'll be constantly racing against time each day, planning out your strategies of completing quests (as some NPCs and items appear in set times of the day) while progressing the story. It definitely was stressful at first, but you slowly get used to the gameplay loop as you go on. Should your days expire without progressing the story, then its Game Over and you'll start a new game with some progress carried over. 

 The game features four new levels to explore: the bustling town of Yusnaan; dreary city of Luxerion; grassy fields of the Wildlands; and deadly sands of the Dead Dunes-- all of which are packed with things to do. There's plenty of side-quests to check out by exploring the game's four levels, which you can tackle in any order. While they're mainly simple fetch-quests, I did come across interesting ones like tracking down a man who murdered another's family, using one's tears to make a living, and a family that's a tendency to fake their own deaths, to name a few. There's also some extra content with secret super bosses to beat, an added dungeon by the final day dubbed "Ultimate Lair" that's filled with tough enemies and loot, a battle arena, and new game plus mode. All in all, the game took me around 32 hours to beat with me mostly exploring and doing over 60 side-quests.

 Being a late 7th gen game, Lightning Returns is a visual disappointment. Aside from the great main character models, the game looks rushed with muddy and unpolished textures plaguing it. It sticks out like a sore thumb in cut-scenes with NPCs especially (and they look bad too!). It's odd coming from Square Enix, who always go all-out with major FF releases. Still, the pre-rendered scenes (only three) were stunning. It ran decently aside from slow-downs and long load times due to the bigger areas. The voicework was great with Ali Hillis giving a fantastic performance as Lightning. As for the soundtrack, it was good with the main battle theme, Yusnaan's theme, and Luxerion's might theme being my faves.

Apart from the amazing CG scenes, the presentation is a step-down.

 For an epic conclusion, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII has it's ups and downs. I enjoyed the new gameplay changes and non-linear style, but I didn't enjoy much of the story as I thought I would. The presentation itself is a whole other story too. I liked Lightning Returns more than XIII-2 but not as much as XIII. In fact, I still believe that FFXIII had the perfect ending and didn't need to be expanded upon yet I still enjoyed my time with its sequels. Still, Lightning fans should stick around for her final outing.