Developer: Square Enix
Platform(s): PS3, X360
Reviewed On: Xbox 360
Release Date: February 11th, 2014
Genre: RPG
My Rating: 6.5/10
As Lightning, it is your mission to save as many souls as possible so that they may be brought to the new world. Along the journey, you will encounter familiar faces and engage new foes in all new lands. You must ultimately choose which souls to save and which to abandon...and fully understand Lightning's true destiny. It all ends here.
Hey. Lemme tell you a secret. I don't think anyone knows this, this is pretty major, but umm.... I'm actually kind of obsessed with Lightning Farron. I know right! I bet you weren't even expecting that. I mean it's not like I have a huge collection of profile pics of her or anything and that I'm using one of them right now, right? Who would've thought.
In all seriousness, though, from the moment I started the first XIII game, I was in love with Lightning. I think she's one of (if not the) the best female protagonists in video game history. She even trumps Lara freakin' Croft, in my opinion. I just love how she was always such a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point kind of girl. And besides, she is badassery incarnated.
So, given my unhealthy obsession with her, you may be wondering, why didn't I absolutely love this game?
Well.... We'll get to that.
The first XIII game was heavily criticized for being too linear. It seems like Square really took it to heart and so they sort of made XIII-2 a little more open-ended with the time travel system and all the different side things you can do. They amped it up even more with Lightning Returns and basically threw the word "linear" out the window. Right off the bat the game drops you into the world of Nova Chrysalia for you to do whichever quests you want to do, aside from the mandatory main quests of course. But here's the catch: the game is literally a ticking time bomb. There's a clock on the top left corner of the screen that counts down to the end of days, and it moves fast.
One of the major problems I have with the game is that it's basically Side Quest Simulator 2013. 85% of this game is side quests, because like it or not you have to do them for Lightning to get higher stats. There is no leveling system anymore. The Crystarium is gone. Dunzo. You have to rely on side quests and side quests alone to level up. Fighting monsters nets you no type of EXP or anything. The monsters will drop abilities if you're lucky and some components that you can sell, or give away to this certain questing system called the "Canvas of Prayers". This adds a pretty distinct layer of difficulty to the game since it gives little to no hand-holding, very unlike the previous games. Luckily I'd downloaded some of the DLC garbs that helped greatly during my playthrough.
Since a huge percentage of this game is side quests, this review will mostly be talking about said side quests. A lot of the NPCs you need only appear in certain times of the day, making this game near impossible to play without some kind of walkthrough, because then there'd be no way of knowing what specific time a certain NPC will show up. I had to do nearly every single side quest by following a walkthrough because of this. The game barely ever gives you any type of hints on anything.
The other positive thing about side quests besides leveling up, they'll give you a sort of power source called Eradia. These will basically extend time for you, giving you more time to complete even more quests. The more quests you complete, the more Eradia you'll acquire, thus the longer you can delay the end of the world. You can extend the time limit up to 13 days. But there's also a secret 14th day that you can unlock, and it's a dungeon where you can defeat the "Last Ones" of any type of monster species. What those are are basically powerful versions of all the types of monsters in the game, and by defeating it, said monster species will be extinct. The final boss of this dungeon is extremely difficult, though, so I would suggest for you not to attempt it.
Now let's discuss the battle system. Oh boy. Square completely scrapped the old battle system, and I have mixed feelings about this one. Maybe it's just me, but I'm sort of a wuss gamer and like to have my hand held, which is probably why I loved the battle system of the previous two XIII games so much even though most others disliked it for being too easy. The battle system in this game is very reminiscent of the one in Final Fantasy X-2. The schemata system to me felt like a nod to the dresssphere and garment grid system in X-2, which I actually quite enjoyed despite the backlash. The level of customization in this game however is through the roof. Besides a Side Quest Simulator, it's also a Dress-Up Simulator in a way. There's hundreds of different garbs you can choose from, and most of them you can even change their colors. You can also add little things called "adornments" to further customize her look. I particularly thought the Moogle bobble looks absolutely adorable on her.
You're given certain types of outfits called garbs in the game, and you can assign whatever kind of weapon or shield you want with it. Most of these garbs come with their own predetermined abilities, with empty ability slots that you can fill with whatever ability you want. You can assign abilities for each of the four main buttons. Once you've fully assigned a weapon, shield and all the abilities you want, the garb becomes a schemata. You can have 3 different schemata in battle that you can switch on the fly. For example, you can make a full on magic schemata with a staff weapon and elemental spells, and another one that's going the full on physical attack route, and you can switch between them in no time during battle, which I liked. In the previous games, the paradigm shifts often were annoyingly long and my characters sometimes took damage while doing them. Switching schemata in this game however takes no time at all, which makes battles much more fluid and fast-paced.
There are also certain abilities called "EP Abilities" that can be very helpful throughout the game, be it in or outside of battle. They consume EP, which I guess is sort of like mana, but it's something that you have to use very sparingly. There's not a lot of ways to restore EP. Ethers are difficult to come by and the few you find you have to hold on to for when you really need them. Outside of battle you can use the "Chronostasis" ability, which stops time for a brief period. It can be a massive help, if used correctly. In battle, there's the "Overclock" ability that'll slow time and help Lightning get more attacks in.
In battle there is an ATB (Active Time Battle) gauge that depletes every time Lightning uses an ability. How much it depletes depends on the ability itself. The more powerful the ability, the bigger chunk it'll take out of your ATB gauge, so watch out. However, if one of your schemata has a low ATB gauge, you can easily switch to the other one and let the other fill up in the background. It will fill up much faster after you switch out for another schemata. The gauge at the top is the ATB of your current schemata, while the two below are for the others, so as soon as one fills up, you can switch right back to it.
Another gripe I have with this game is the different upgrade systems. You can upgrade both abilities and weapons. However, in your first playthrough, you can't upgrade weapons yet. For some reason Square only made that available for the New Game+, which you can only gain access to after you've finished the game once. I have no idea why they did that. I guess because they wanted to boost the replayability? In your first playthrough you can make spells more powerful with the synthesis system, but you can't level them up. For example, if you have Blizzard Lv. 2, there's no way to make it Lv. 3 in your first playthrough. That feature is only available in New Game+ as well. I found that to be a pretty big inconvenience and wish that Square just added those features outside of NG+.
Of course, I can't review a Final Fantasy game without discussing the story. When I first played this game, not only was I so confused and caught off guard by the huge gameplay change, but I also had no idea what the chocobo was going on with the story. One minute Lightning's a pink-haired Jesus and she and Snow are trying to kill each other and the next there's some chick that looks exactly like Serah wearing a gothic lolita outfit and I was like "WHAT"S GOING ON HERE????" And then Hope was all of a sudden a kid again, and Vanille is some kind of saint, like.... I was so confused. In all honesty, I didn't like where the story was going. It just became so overly complicated and just so....different. And not in a good way. If it didn't have the cast of the XIII series then it would be an entirely different game altogether. And the ending, well.... Gah, I dunno. I have a love-hate relationship with the story in this game. On the one hand I loved seeing all the characters again, even though they've all become so emo now, but on the other hand... Square, why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? D:
I guess I should also mention the graphics a little bit. A friend of mine told me before I played the game that they were a huge improvement from the previous games, but I completely disagree. Besides Lightning and the main cast, the character designs were mediocre at best, and the textures even worse, almost PS2-ish. I get that it's probably because this game has a huge, open-world-y map, but after the gorgeousness that was the first XIII game, I expected more.
Overall... I'd be lying if I said this game wasn't a huge disappointment. I thought the new battle system was innovative and quite fun, but I was just so bogged down with the plethora of side quests and the convoluted story. Not to mention the fact that this game literally has a strict clock that sorta made me have to rush through it all the time and never really gave me enough time to explore the world fully. I'd recommend this game only if you're a huge fan of the XIII series. I happen to be one of them, but even I thought this game wasn't that great, unfortunately. :/ I give it a 6.5/10. I appreciate Square's effort to make a unique game for the series, and while it shone in some parts, overall I thought it fell flat.
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