Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3
May. 27th, 2015 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro500 years after the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning awakens from her crystal sleep. She has only 13 days until dying world truly ends, when God wakes and ushers the souls of the saved into the new world. And Lightning is the only Savior around who can help them.
This was not what I expected, in a bunch of ways: The combat system from the first two games has been replaced with a similar but more action-ish solo battle system which requires timed button-presses to attack and block. The Crystalarium is gone and there is no character advancement from battles: Lightning only gets stronger from equipment and completing quests. The game takes a cue from Majora’s Mask in that you only have 13 days until the world ends, and you need to prevent it from being destroyed earlier and also save as many souls as possible in that timeframe; and in-game time progresses relative to real time. (One minute every few seconds.)
And as you might guess, it’s much more open-ended/free-roaming than the original FF13 or even FF13-2. You can do virtually anything in any order you want at any point in the game; enemies are at roughly similar power levels outside of the “opening” areas and only get stronger as in-game time passes.
This is the sort of game that expects you to stumble through it multiple times, because even with the “chronostasis” ability that lets you spend EP (regained by fighting monsters) time just moves too freaking fast to get things done unless you know exactly where you need to be at exactly what time. (Rule of thumb: If your game’s mechanics remind me of the rightfully-maligned Ephemeral Fantasia, perhaps you’ve done something wrong.)
Needless to say, that meant this wasn’t really the game I had been anticipating. I’m not usually a big fan of games that give me limited time—and limited windows—to find everything and complete quests. The first thing I did was set it to Easy mode, which restores HP after battles and removes the 1-hour penalty for losing or retreating from a battle; and also apparently makes enemies generally easier. Similar to a SaGa game, I wanted to play in “tourist” mode, with my lessened fear of dying or getting frustrated (Easy Mode) and my Fodor’s Guide at hand (Gamefaqs).
And after those concessions, it really grew on me—in fact, you have way more time than you “need”, as long as you use a FAQ to tell you where to go, so you don’t waste too much time searching all the empty corners. A speedrun can apparently finish virtually everything in the game in 4 days; I had the majority of it done in 6.
The ability to genocide a species of monsters is clever and I think a first for the series. There are only a set number of each kind of monster in the game (which makes particular sense in this world where no one ages but no one new can be born; also because the game explicitly takes place in the span of two weeks), and when you kill all but one, the final one spawns as an “Omega” boss version. Killing that nets you some nice prizes and is involved in at least two quests. (There’s also a quest to genocide EVERY monster, which apparently can only be completed in a New Game +.) Upon reflection, it’s really just the old standard “defeat 80 of this monster” quest, but dressed up by the fact that every one of that monster you kill counts, and when you finish, you’ll never meet another one.
(There’s a bonus dungeon that unlocks on the 13th day if you’ve done enough sidequests; it contains all of the Omega monsters you haven’t beaten yet. Doing this also can make an end-game area much easier, because the souped-up versions of various monsters don’t appear if they’re already extinct!)
The “easiest” way to play the game actually seems to be to front-load it: You only get stats from completing quests, but monsters get stronger on the 7th, 10th and 13th days. So it actually is in your best interests to try to complete all of the quests (main and side) as quickly as possible, while trying to kill as many monsters in that time as you can, and then spend whatever remaining time you have before the 7th day trying to genocide all of the nastiest monsters. That means, of course, that you end up with 4-5 days with virtually nothing to do, but you can go to an inn or just while them away. (And there’s one Canvas of Prayers quest that leads to a trophy that only opens up on Day 9.) I effectively skipped days 10-12.
Plot-wise? There are some intriguing bits. A lot of it focuses on how people handle being semi-immortal in a dying world, and the nature of the human soul. A lot of it also ties the mythology of the series in and around itself and up its own ass. It’s a moderately satisfying conclusion for some of the characters, but despite hundreds of years most of the returning folks are still stuck on the same problems they were back in the first game (which generally boil down to “Serah,” “Dajh,” “Vanille,” and “Dear God you people”). And then they kill God, which isn’t really a spoiler if you’ve ever played a video game.
They also re-use a lot of the FMV cutscenes from the previous two games as flashbacks. Sure, fine, whatever; it was a little annoying.
Overall: I ended up enjoying this—in the manner I chose to play it—much more than I thought I would on first impression. It certainly isn’t worth your time if you haven’t played/enjoyed the rest of the series, because even if you’d like the new mechanics, you wouldn’t have any clue what was going on or who these people were.
This was not what I expected, in a bunch of ways: The combat system from the first two games has been replaced with a similar but more action-ish solo battle system which requires timed button-presses to attack and block. The Crystalarium is gone and there is no character advancement from battles: Lightning only gets stronger from equipment and completing quests. The game takes a cue from Majora’s Mask in that you only have 13 days until the world ends, and you need to prevent it from being destroyed earlier and also save as many souls as possible in that timeframe; and in-game time progresses relative to real time. (One minute every few seconds.)
And as you might guess, it’s much more open-ended/free-roaming than the original FF13 or even FF13-2. You can do virtually anything in any order you want at any point in the game; enemies are at roughly similar power levels outside of the “opening” areas and only get stronger as in-game time passes.
This is the sort of game that expects you to stumble through it multiple times, because even with the “chronostasis” ability that lets you spend EP (regained by fighting monsters) time just moves too freaking fast to get things done unless you know exactly where you need to be at exactly what time. (Rule of thumb: If your game’s mechanics remind me of the rightfully-maligned Ephemeral Fantasia, perhaps you’ve done something wrong.)
Needless to say, that meant this wasn’t really the game I had been anticipating. I’m not usually a big fan of games that give me limited time—and limited windows—to find everything and complete quests. The first thing I did was set it to Easy mode, which restores HP after battles and removes the 1-hour penalty for losing or retreating from a battle; and also apparently makes enemies generally easier. Similar to a SaGa game, I wanted to play in “tourist” mode, with my lessened fear of dying or getting frustrated (Easy Mode) and my Fodor’s Guide at hand (Gamefaqs).
And after those concessions, it really grew on me—in fact, you have way more time than you “need”, as long as you use a FAQ to tell you where to go, so you don’t waste too much time searching all the empty corners. A speedrun can apparently finish virtually everything in the game in 4 days; I had the majority of it done in 6.
The ability to genocide a species of monsters is clever and I think a first for the series. There are only a set number of each kind of monster in the game (which makes particular sense in this world where no one ages but no one new can be born; also because the game explicitly takes place in the span of two weeks), and when you kill all but one, the final one spawns as an “Omega” boss version. Killing that nets you some nice prizes and is involved in at least two quests. (There’s also a quest to genocide EVERY monster, which apparently can only be completed in a New Game +.) Upon reflection, it’s really just the old standard “defeat 80 of this monster” quest, but dressed up by the fact that every one of that monster you kill counts, and when you finish, you’ll never meet another one.
(There’s a bonus dungeon that unlocks on the 13th day if you’ve done enough sidequests; it contains all of the Omega monsters you haven’t beaten yet. Doing this also can make an end-game area much easier, because the souped-up versions of various monsters don’t appear if they’re already extinct!)
The “easiest” way to play the game actually seems to be to front-load it: You only get stats from completing quests, but monsters get stronger on the 7th, 10th and 13th days. So it actually is in your best interests to try to complete all of the quests (main and side) as quickly as possible, while trying to kill as many monsters in that time as you can, and then spend whatever remaining time you have before the 7th day trying to genocide all of the nastiest monsters. That means, of course, that you end up with 4-5 days with virtually nothing to do, but you can go to an inn or just while them away. (And there’s one Canvas of Prayers quest that leads to a trophy that only opens up on Day 9.) I effectively skipped days 10-12.
Plot-wise? There are some intriguing bits. A lot of it focuses on how people handle being semi-immortal in a dying world, and the nature of the human soul. A lot of it also ties the mythology of the series in and around itself and up its own ass. It’s a moderately satisfying conclusion for some of the characters, but despite hundreds of years most of the returning folks are still stuck on the same problems they were back in the first game (which generally boil down to “Serah,” “Dajh,” “Vanille,” and “Dear God you people”). And then they kill God, which isn’t really a spoiler if you’ve ever played a video game.
They also re-use a lot of the FMV cutscenes from the previous two games as flashbacks. Sure, fine, whatever; it was a little annoying.
Overall: I ended up enjoying this—in the manner I chose to play it—much more than I thought I would on first impression. It certainly isn’t worth your time if you haven’t played/enjoyed the rest of the series, because even if you’d like the new mechanics, you wouldn’t have any clue what was going on or who these people were.
