Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII - Review (11 Years Later...)
"You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're gonna get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible." - The Doctor
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy is the end of a bizarre experiment by Square Enix. After being unable to achieve the same heights of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X, and receiving an underwhelming response to the original Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix wanted to stretch as much as they possibly could from the Fabula Nova Crystallis universe. With Agito being reworked into a PSP game, and Versus being reworked into the next mainline iteration that was stuck in development hell for thirteen years, the only way for them to take advantage of the Crystal Tools engine was to reuse the assets created and make cheaper sequels.
Releasing on the PlayStation 3 in Japan a week after the PlayStation 4 had launched in 2013, this is the first direct second sequel that has been released for the Final Fantasy mainline titles. Due to the increased likelihood of DLCs and Expansions in the currently gaming landscape, LR:FFXIII is likely the only time a second sequel, or even a direct sequel, is going to be released for Final Fantasy.
So the question must be asked: Was this experiment with multiple sequels worth the risk?
Story
The benefit of having a second direct sequel to a game like Final Fantasy XIII is that there is a rich history already established, with characters and plots that have already previously played out that can be drawn upon. This means that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII can introduce characters into it’s plot without really having to delve into what they’ve done in previous games with too much explanation. The drawback of having a second direct sequel… is that it guarantees that players will have needed to have played the previous two games to recognise 95% of the characters in the game.
LR:FFXIII tries to explain quickly reappearing plotlines and characters, but in my humble opinion, if any there was way of the player being able to understand what the hell is going on in this game, they need to have played both FFXIII and FFXIII-2. There’s just no way around this fact. However, in this experiment, I have indeed played both of the predecessors, so how does the story stack up?
At the end of FFXIII-2, Serah and Noel accidentally killed Caius, which killed the last remnant of the Goddess Etro, which allowed all the Chaos of the unseen realm to spill out into the normal world. Serah, who was able to see the timeline, experiences one final vision, before dying. Lightning, knowing this has happened decided to go back into Crystal Stasis, hoping to wake up in a time where she could save Serah.
LR:FFXIII begins with Lightning having been woken up from her Crystal Stasis and has been given the title of Saviour by the other deity, Bhunivelze. Since the Chaos has been released from the unseen realm, time has stood still, entropy has accelerated, the remaining humans no longer age and can no longer procreate. Bhunivelze, the God that created this world has decreed that a new world and a new universe must be created, a clean slate. Lightning has been chosen as the Saviour by Bhunivelze to gather souls from her world, now renamed Nova Chrysallia and shepherd them to the new world. Lightning agrees on a single condition: Bhunivelze must bring her Serah’s soul to the new world. Lightning is given a time limit, save as many souls as she can within 13 days, or they will be lost forever.
Lightning travels the four main areas of Nova Chrysallia to ease the troubles of the people and gain their souls. She travels through Luxerion, where she is accosted by a cult and Noel who blame her for sending Serah to her death. She redeems Snow in the city of Yusnaan, who as the last living l’Cie is now holding a continued party in the end of days. She assists Fang in the Dead Lands desert to find a McGuffin that will help shepherd lost souls from the Chaos. In the Wild Lands, she helps heal a white chocobo that is the reincarnation of her previous eidolon Odin, and she recovers the lost soul of Sazh’s son, Dajh. All the way across the world, she is interrupted by Lumina, an apparent demon who torments her and her allies, who looks suspiciously similar to her sister Serah.
Throughout her travels meeting previous allies and helping solve issues, Lightning uncovers a plot by the last remaining church. They have found Vanille, who is able to hear the voices of the dead. They have plotted to use the Holy Clavis, the McGuffin found in the desert, to guide the souls from the Chaos to Luxerion and destroy them, which will ultimately kill Vanille. Fang knowing that Lightning is trying to save all these souls, despite it being God’s Will to have them destroyed. Lightning, believing Serah’s soul is in the Chaos, defies Bhunivelze’s will and reasons with Vanille to prevent this from happening.
Lightning reasons, with help from Lumina, that Bhunivelze was never going to give her Serah’s soul back in the new world, and resolves to destroy him after he’s made the new world. Bhunivelze, who can control matter, cannot make new souls and offers Lightning to replace the Goddess of Death, Etro. Lightning agrees to be the Goddess of Death, and help create new life on their new world, but only after she kills Bhunivelze. A gigantic fight ensues, and after assistance from all her previous allies on the 13th day, Bhunivelze dies, the new world is created, Lightning is given a repreive from Yeul, who protected by Gaius, will become the new Goddess of Death.
Noel, having spent his life trying to save Yeul attempts to give his life to Caius to do so. Caius agrees, sending the final body of Yeul with Noel to the new world, allowing them to live a life together, on the New World, alongside Lightning and her friends. The camera pans out to show our friends travelling and beams of light to the New World… which looks suspiciously like modern day Earth.
LR:FFXIII is a weird RPG, even in a series of weird RPGs. There is a primary focus on completing quests, but due to the open world-ish nature of the world, they can be completed in any order that the player requires. Even the main story quests can be done in any order, which felt very fragmented in my opinion. As the main story was separated into 5 different mini stories, the game never really felt like it was ramping up to anything. It was just 5 mini stories and then the climax.
While I enjoyed the story for what it was, I kind of wished that the story was more linear, and guided through. I felt like the story in each section was so concentrated and didn’t reference other things that were happening.
Combat
With another entry in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, one would expect that the same battle system that appeared in the previous two games would appear, but no! This is not the case. A new battle system for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is implemented, Style-Change Active Time Battle!
Taking inspiration from the previous game’s paradigm systems, Lightning can equip up to three different outfits that she is able to change at will within battle. Each of these outfits has different stats, ATB timers, and attacks / spells that can be equipped. As one would guess with an RPG, equipment with better stats are found throughout the game, incentivising the player to change regularly. The problem with this is, that the main body clothes are something that appears in cutscenes, so if the player finds an outfit that they really like and it’s suboptimal, the player will either have to discard it or play sub-optimally.
The main change that LR:FFXIII installs is that of the ATB meter. Initially each of Lightning’s three outfits, or Schemata, as the game calls them, have 100 ATB charges. Attacks and skills cost anywhere between 5 and 100 ATB charges. The idea of the the Style-Change Active Time Battle system is to drain your ATB bar with all your attacks, and then switch to another schemata, where your previous schemata’s ATB will recharge at a faster rating. This works like an semi-real time combat scenario, where Lightning can attack at will without having to wait. As someone who was not aware of the combat of LR:FFXIII prior to playing this, I was pleasantly surprised at how engaging and fun the combat system is compared to that of FFXIII and FFXIII-2.
Another new addition to the game is that of Energy Points. Through completing battles, Lightning gains energy points which she can use on certain abilities in and out of combat. These range from Curaga, a full heal, to Chronostasis, stopping the world timer while being able to move around at normal, to Quake, an attack that stuns enemies in battle. Lightning can only hold 5 EP at the beginning of the game, and gains more through completing story quests, but I found that I was killing random trash just so that I’d gain more EP so I could bang on Chronostasis and not worry about the world timer, honestly, I was chaining Chronostasis over and over again. It’s how I managed to get over my anxiety of the world timer. It’s a super interesting mechanic and I wish it had more flexibility and use outside of this title.
Just like other titles in the FFXIII trilogy, Experience Points is not something that’s earnt within the game. There’s no manual progression system like the Crystarium. Instead, stats like HP and Magic and Strength are increased through the completion of quests. The reasoning here is that when a quest is completed, Lightning will receive the soul of the person she’s helped, each soul increases Lightning’s capabilities. Outside of the main story, there’s side quests that can be picked up in the open world to help increase Lightning’s abilities and a quest board that has a bunch of quests that only require picking up monster materials and items from the ground. It’s a neat little experiment on how to subvert the long standing trappings of JRPGs, something that I admire Final Fantasy for always playing with.
Sadly, the main criticism that I have for LR:FFXIII is regarding the boss fights. Boss fights are always my favourite parts of RPGs, they’re where we get to put our skills to the test and fight some of the hardest enemies in the game. They appear regularly in LR:FFXIII, but the problem is due to the flexibility of the combat, they’re just too damn tanky. They’re some of the spongiest enemies I have ever encountered. Some of these bosses would regularly take 10+ minutes of fighting. The stagger bar makes a reappearance, but the problem with this is that it’s not a steady bar like in the previous two games. The stagger bar appears as a heart beat, going from blue to yellow to red and red/yellow. It’s so easy to get confused with how far the stagger bar is engaged that most of the time it’s easier to just ignore it and keep attacking as normal.
Presentation
In 2018, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins released it’s first trailer and the internet collectively laughed at how much the term “chaos” was mentioned within it. My thoughts on this retrospectively are: “they must not have played Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII”. Holy moly, Chaos is mentioned constantly. It’s shown within the game as a dark misty cloud, and it’s a representation of the souls of people who have died, but haven’t been able to pass on to their representation of Heaven. It’s almost comical the amount of times that the word is used. I know that it’s the main conceit of the game that Lightning is trying to save people from the chaos, but man. It’s so overused.
The chaos itself, look, even I’m doing it now, is represented through the game in a couple of ways. The physical representation is that of a big ol’ misty cloud, but that’s only when the chaos is concentrated, but chaos is throughout the world represented by a checkerboard pattern. Energy will flow with the checkerboard texture waving in, it will be on the walls, clothes, everywhere through Nova Chrysallia. It’s a neat way of showing how infused everything is with the Chaos after five hundred years of being steeped within it.
FFXIII was praised upon it’s release due to the impeccable fidelity of it’s graphics. Even in 2024, when I played through the game, I was astounded that a game from the PS3 era looked that good. Sadly, this doesn’t really continue in LR:FFXIII. It’s clear that the budget for this game was a lot lower than it’s two counterparts, the textures are muddy, and there’s so many reused assets at a lower fidelity that it’s just striking to me. I’m not necessarily someone who is that graphically focused, but it’s definitely something that I noticed, coming off of both FFXIII and FFXIII-2.
Just like with graphics, I’m not really someone who notices music very often. I usually game while I have some thing streaming on in the background. However, towards the end of the game, there was a bunch of music that I couldn’t help but be feel familiar. There were incredible FFXIV vibes from the music. From what I can tell, FFXIV’s master musician Soken doesn’t have his hand on this title. It could just be a coincidence, but it was a very pleasant one regardless.
In Conclusion…
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is a game that subverts the expectations of it’s originator. Gone are the endless hallways, gone is the paradigm system, gone is the party system. Lightning stands alone and is the The Saviour of the Nova Fabula Crystallis project. Being the only character that is recognisable outside of the game, it stands to reason that the swansong is based solely around her.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is a fitting end to a trilogy that had high expectations that were just shortly missed. Even 13 years after the initial release, this trilogy has some of the worst memories and is typically at the bottom of tier lists. I can’t say that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy does much to change that, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the experiment.
For these reasons I can only give Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII three thumbs up.
Next Up: Final Fantasy XV
