The bosses are the major highlight of this game and where combat shines, all except that final boss. At that point, I wanted to say stagger is good but shouldn't be centered, it should be supplementary.

The general gameplay loop of "side quest life progression" felt awful. 85% of the game was just busy work and real no connective tissue for the series. I get "hey, I want u to engage w/ the world" but barely any side-quest had great stories. I respect the effort tho, this is an idea that could be returned to, but modified. possibly in a self-constrained area instead of 2-3 areas at once.

Music, Cutscenes, and Animations were all great tho.

I am very glad that the final game in this trilogy was the best, Lightning Returns is not as big as the other two games, but the writing and questing system was really amazing. The ATB Battle System was the most fun with the Overclock mechanic.

The music is amazing as always, the story and characters were well written, Lightning is a true example on how to write a good strong female protagonist.

+Improved Battle System
+Beautiful Music
+Nice Explorable Areas
+Lightning is Best Girl
+Nice Open-Zone world
+Challenging Bosses for NG+ or NG+++
+PC port did not need fixing like previous two games

-Majora's Mask type of gameplay, in-game clock is always running and you can only stop time with Chronostasis Ability, which requires Energy Points. You can extend days left by doing Main Quests + Side Quests

-Normal Mode is almost like hard mode for first time players, just play on Easy mode to enjoy the game

-Encounter rate gets annoying sometimes

Conclusion: If you're a Square Enix/Final Fantasy Fan, and you completed most of the good games, then you might want to play this Trilogy. While it isn't as good as FF7 or FFX, it is enjoyable when you try your best to understand the story.

The last gasp of the XIII series, Lightning Returns presents great "new" ideas and confounding resolutions.

Look man, I'm just as surprised as you are.

One, because of my near year-long gamer sabbatical which...long story. And for once, I'll save you from it.

Two, because Lightning Returns is actually a good game. A genuinely fun game.

And I can't believe I'm saying that.

It seems the gang finally settled upon the obvious--that XIII's formula was trite and not worth expanding upon in what would have been an incredibly tired third game. I mean, the mechanics of XIII were already tired three hours into their own runtime. So, instead...

Now for something completely different.

XIII? Fuck that shit. We're now Majora's Mask meets Shenmue.

I shit you not. I couldn't believe it either. We've fucking given up. And thank god they finally decided to be the bigger man. The world is a better place for that.

Given new space to breathe, the team managed to create a lot of fun and interesting ideas in a short time span on a far lower budget. Lightning has now been embraced as the One-True-God (somehow both in gameplay AND narrative). All focus is given towards developing her gameplay systems and it usually works out for the best. Players are able to switch between three customizable classes--with fully customizable loadouts--to create their own creative playstyles that feel fast, reactive, and engaging. The simple addition of something like blocking, dodging, and moving around the battlefield in real-time is astounding in itself considering the team it came from. Everything in combat feels streamlined and intimate--there's very little on the table, so there's really no bloat to speak of...for once.

More than that, the Majora's Mask-esque "X DAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD" system actually interweaves with gameplay in very good ways. Dying doesn't make you return to a save point--it just causes you to lose time, etc. A lot of the systems--from the quest design, to the narrative presentation, to the general gameplay systems--actually feel in fucking harmony here. I can't believe it. I can't believe every time I saw an design choice and said "hey that's actually a good idea what the fuck." We even get to explore actual dungeons again!! Like fucking designed dungeons with puzzles and mechanics!! What the hell????

They managed to create a pretty fun game loop of finding small stupid side quests to do (in a small, but well-designed world) and then actually going out and doing them. I'd be lying if the game was making you perform any traditional EPIC JRPG tasks but...fuck it man its fun and goofy. What more could you want? All I know is that on my first few days of play (during some sick leave) I was genuinely hooked on the game. I used hardcore time management skills and planned my quest navigations to optimize everything. It was actually fun and made me use my damn head for once!

But beyond gameplay...even the narrative has taken...some improvements. This mainly stems from the fact that Lightning Returns story is so damn insane that its hard not to revel in how stupid it is. Lighting is fucking Jesus Christ. We're going around towns where everyone is talking about how much they love praying to God! People are like a thousand years old for no fucking reason. Etc. etc. The game lives for its own dumb narrative--and the fast, upbeat, and what-the-fuck tone of it all makes it really work.

There really is something special about seeing Lighting and Hope (who have more or less been accepted by this game as the only good characters in XIII worth using meaningfully) work as an odd 'odd guy / straight man' routine. Its genuinely funny to see Lightning take on the most 'what the fuck' quests from strangers and talk things over with Hope in his new "we played Arkham Asylum and thought Oracle was cool" form. Every other quest I was getting a good giggle at how fucking stupid everything was. But, for once, it almost felt like the dev team was in on the joke. It works on a similar level to Yakuza-esque gags, albeit not nearly as punchy. Still, I can make Lightning wear a cowboy hat the entire time so...that's a massive win in my book.

Of course, the great things couldn't stay forever. The game really starts to drag in its final few hours. And the combat systems do sort of shallow up by then too. I think they could have used some additional systems or levels to really make the final portion of the game have any developments of note. Instead, you can't help but feel its spinning its own wheels. And, of course, the story has to actually conclude more-or-less all of XIII as a narrative...so we have to spend a lot of time on droll cutscenes that might as well amount to melodramatic nonsense making you ask "who the fuck caaaaaaaaaaaaaaares?" every few minutes.

That might sound unfair but...hell, the writers of XIII couldn't keep their own story straight. Every fucking game has been in a wildly different environment/context where nothing has really maintained consistency beyond the fact that our marketable characters appear. And even then, their personalities can be wildly different from their original XIII forms. The plots barely make sense but that clearly never mattered to anyone involved. Remember when XIII actually had a FF-like plotline about a band of characters forming an actual party and going on an adventure? Fuck that feels like forever ago.
Now we're left with Lightning-Jesus and her detective pal Angel-Hope solving mysteries for GOD in a world entirely unrelated to everything else where everyone can't die and the party members of XIII has all been reduced to barely-present side characters. All while a lady that looks like a tiktok star torments you from the distance.

Seriously, the re-use of characters but putting them in such wildly different continuities and re-adapting their character traits so hard they give you whiplash is...well it feels like kids role-playing on the playground at school. Sure, it's the same kids every day, but they'll go from trying to be Star Wars characters to WWII commandos to Lord of the Rings guys every fucking lunch break. It undercuts any chance the narrative has to actually be effective and reduces everything to "Kingdom Hearts bullshit."

Still, remember, I enjoyed most of my runtime. So you might as well. Just be sure to skip a few of those cutscenes in the final hours.

In general, Lightning Returns is a fun, wacky, and memorable adventure that I would recommend to anyone looking for a goofy good time. I could have used some more gameplay developments and less narrative nonsense to clean up its final third but...overall its still a very fun experience worth your time. I'm going to remember a lot of fun areas, characters, quests, puzzles, and designs that genuinely had me with a smile on my face for a good majority of the game's runtime. They just needed to either put a few more interesting things in...or cut the game down a bit. Oh, and make that final boss less fucking bullshit.

Lightning Returns also serves as a nice reminder that teams working on a small budget with little time can put out far more interesting ideas than massive triple-A games that take ages and trillions to produce. Its crazy for me to imagine...but Lightning Returns might be the last bright spot in Final Fantasy's history (no I'm not counting the MMO you can't make me). Especially now that any game with a roman numeral slapped on it needs to have a 20 year development time, be made with quintuple-A graphics in Unreal, not be an actual RPG...and have gameplay systems that would have bored Super Famicom players.

So, you know what, Lightning Returns? Cheers to you. You're perhaps the final interesting gasp of breath for this series. And a very characteristic way to close the book on years and years of Watanabe/Toriyama madness. In 2014 I might have disliked you...but in 2024 I just wish we could have more of you in this world.

I really want to love this game more, but the plot related problems with it started in 13-2. On its own, there’s cool stuff especially with the character Lumina, but it’s hard not to judge it in the context of the whole series. Gameplay wise, it is generally a fun game with very challenging boss fights, and I could recommend it to anyone who isn’t as particular about writing consistency and doesn’t mind the challenge of a time limit. One good thing I can say, is Lighting was truly the “savior” for the following FF games; the 13 saga walked so 14-16 could RUN.

The Good: The world is new and more interesting to explore than the prior 2, many side quests are charming, engaging, and aren’t extremely boring fetch quests, and the combat is generally engaging even though different. Lumina’s character was a highlight, as the whole time you’re questioning her true intentions and you get a good although obvious payoff from her revelation by the end. The tone of the game is dark, gritty and edgy, and there’s a sense of overall despair and urgency in the world. I’ve always loved the visual aesthetics of this series. Runs pretty much perfectly on the Steam Deck.

The not so good: The new combat was a little jarring at first and not as forgiving, especially when enemies were inconsistent in difficulty and staggering isn’t as clear. I much preferred the Paradigm System. The time limit to beat the game (or else, game over/New Game+) was a big source of stress and anxiety for me going into this, because I’m not someone that enjoys replaying most games. While a lot of people say it’s not a big deal, I was CONSTANTLY thinking about it, and it was making me not enjoy my experience until I decided to follow a walkthrough. The time limit wouldn’t have been nearly as bad, had finding side quests to earn EXP not been so tedious. Some side quests are only available between certain times of the day, and the game doesn’t make it obvious which ones those are/no map markers to help with that. As a result, I found myself wasting a ton of time running around, trying to find these side quests in the world, and then realizing some of these side quests require you to go to another area of the map at a much later time, or in an entirely different map where traveling to them consumes an hour of time. I wasn’t advancing my main quests fast enough, and you need to finish a set of main quests in order to gain an extra day to your time limit. It was just constant stress figuring out how to tackle these side quests efficiently, and a walkthrough made this issue disappear. You have to beat quests/side quests to gain EXP, fighting enemies don’t give you EXP. Fighting enemies do however give you a means to “stop time”, so I stopped time pretty much every second I could. Another issue with this time limit mechanic is the openness in what order to complete your main quests. There’s no right or wrong order, there is an optimal order to make sure your boss fights aren’t harder than they need to be and to make context of certain cutscenes make more sense. Because of this openness, all your cutscenes before a day starts are intentionally vague/don’t really move the plot forward because the game doesn’t adjust these scenes according to what main quests you’ve completed. As a result, the whole vibe of the game felt weirdly empty. The OG cast felt more like side characters, shells of their former selves. Snow and especially Sazh had no real impact into the events of this game, they were just existing in this world with their own problems. None of them seemed to learn from their past/grow as a person after 500 years. 13 had so much character development and interesting interactions that drove the plot, while this feels totally opposite of that.

///SPOILERS///

The biggest issue though has to be the plot/lore, and that issue started with 13-2. To recap: 13 started with some interesting lore about the fal’Cie and their desire to open Etro’s Gate (by destroying Cocoon) in order to awaken their Makers (Pulse and Lindzei), who would then awaken God (Bhunivelze), but they don’t exist in the story of 13-2, because the death of the fal’Cie Orphan killed all Cocoon fal’Cie in 13. Lindzei essentially fails his task to find the metaphysical gate as all his fal’Cie dies. Pulse’s task was to find a physical gate, but he takes a backseat by now for some reason, and no Pulse fal’Cie continue this search. At the end of 13-2, the Chaos that flooded in from killing Etro’s heart opened the gate, and presumably caused Lindzei to wake up Bhunivelze. Now, all of that god lore isn’t made clear in the game, this is information I had to dig online for a few hours, and I find that to be pretty bad storytelling. Because of this lack of info threading these games together, we jump into a sequel that on the surface, seems to have NO relation to any of the events that occurred in 13, and only shares the same world and characters. Instead of fal’Cie opening Etro’s Gate, this plot is given new motivations: 13-2 introduces Caius, who on his own, is a great character, but has completely different reasons to open Etro’s Gate. This results in 13-2 feeling like a spinoff. Caius wants to open it to save Yuel from her cycles of rebirth by bringing about the end of the flow of time. (These cycles were made worse after Etro got involved with saving the party at the end of 13). While Caius/Yuel existed long before the events of 13/War of Transgression, they are only now being fully introduced in 13-2.

By LR, only Bhunivelze truly remains from the lore, and for some reason, it took him 500 years after Etro’s Gate opened at the end of 13-2 before intervening in LR. Bhun wanted to open Etro’s Gate to find and kill Mwynn (his mom), who he believed cursed “death” upon the visible world (he was only paranoid as she didn’t actually curse the world). I assume he found out to be wrong, realized Mwynn actually died, and saw the Chaos destroying the visible realm he sought to preserve before. I guess it took him 500 years to access the situation and do something about it. The plot in LR is driven by the main quests involving the main cast, and they’re not as strong as the prior games. They’re not bad at its core, but the execution isn’t good. Everyone’s goals in this game are much weaker and feels redundant/recycled and not fully rounded. Caius by the endgame cutscene is somehow able to rid Yuel of her curse/grant her a normal life, without a clear explanation, but my guess is he wasn’t able to until he officially became the god of death. If you don’t look deeper into these games’s lore/plots from online threads/wikis, you’re definitely going to miss out on a majority of what is driving everything. And I’m potentially still misunderstanding some things after hours of reading.

You can say the 13 saga is about humans struggling to exist in this complex world suffering under the varying plots of these gods, and the specific lore/plots of the gods themselves aren’t as important, they’re just catalysts for the choices the characters make, and how these choices impact the world around them. These game simultaneously feel like they’re barely direct sequels and barely spinoffs because of the lack of threading between them in certain areas. Had Caius been subtly introduced earlier, perhaps by being manipulated by a fal’Cie to seek Etro’s Gate in 13, and continuing this goal in 13-2, these games would have felt more threaded together, but his introduction suddenly in 13-2 started this strange tonal shift that never really ends. I feel really mixed, I love the characters and the general plot/lore, but by LR, all of these ideas aren’t carefully well integrated with each other. Underneath all this is a great game, but it’s hard for me to definitively say if I can recommend it. Yes for those who love FF games and plan to finish this series and read deeper into the lore, maybe no to most anyone else who don’t care about reading up on stuff after beating a game.

An extremely underappreciated and underrated game that was bashed because of a herd effect and because most people haven't truly understood what it is and means.

LR is not a standalone game. Yes, it was sold as a standalone game, but it very much is the end of Lightning story and the end of FFXIII. The whole FFXIII saga should be treated and appreciated as a single game, rather than three separated and different games.

That's the reasoning behind the structure of LR: it's the traditional sidequest rush and worldbuilding before the last boss. While Lightning is in the cover, the main characters are the world and it's people, the discussions on eternity, longing, loss, end and new beginnings. The game portrays a dead world and you're the merciful executor. There is beauty in its themes that is almost always ignored by people who consume for pure consumption and take their worldview from youtube essayists and opinionated hacks.

The class system with different outfits is good and reminisces of another ill-received but mechanically sound FF entry, X-2. It is also a reflection of the pacing choices made the creators in turning the entire game into the pre-ending portion of a traditional jRPG.

The soundtrack is effective in conveying its themes for those who want to hear it. It is a Final Fantasy entry, so this is something that should be the case anyway. Graphically, the game is competent - not groundbreaking as the debut of the Crystal Tools engine, but still pretty good.

The pacing is weird, but deliberately so. The game is, as mentioned, just the latter third of a larger game so it might have weirded people out that the whole game feels like an ending portion - there's no discernible early or middle story portions. This weirdness is the thing I'm most fond of about the game, however.

The ending was cute, but I'm still kinda torn about it years later. While I like it, I can understand those who think it's too corny.

ever so slightly better than 13 1, but still what a fucking mess of a game

honestly it sucks cause it has some neat ideas, but everything around the ideas is so weak or unfun or tedious that it just gets in the way

i like the time progression stuff but it feels like the first iteration during development that never got polished? if you have to restart in ng+ cause you didn't progress fast enough, redoing everything is so boooooring, they should've... i dunno... done better? ha ha ha !

i cannot believe theyf ucking ended up in regular ass real life style world with regular ass planes and trains and automobiles after everything that happened

at least the terrible ending is consistent with the rest of the 13 series

anyway whatever i'm done with the trilogy thank god

2º juego que más me gusta de la trilogía.
Yo no pensé que XIII necesitase secuelas porque pensé que ya cerraba lo suficientemente bien. Sin embargo, creo que este juego cierra muy bien la trama que el segundo juego dejó a medias.
Pasamos de tener un equipo a llevar un único personaje que tiene que salvar el mundo por su propia cuenta, con tiempo límite, pero en ciclos eternos. La idea es que fallemos al intentarlo, y regresemos al principio conservando las mejoras y estadísticas obtenidas, facilitándonos el trabajo, hasta que podamos vencer a todos los jefes y resolver todos los problemas en el tiempo que se nos ofrece.
Está interesante y no se me hace tan pesado como el 2º, a pesar de cambiar el estilo de juego de forma tan radical.

Yay, I've finally finished the wild ride of FF13! It's taken me just under 2 months of playing almost nothing else. I feel comfortable in saying that it's my second favorite experience with the Final Fantasy franchise, with only FF Tactics narrowly beating it out.

I don't really feel up to writing a proper review or a larger list of thoughts, so I'll just jot down a couple of things so I can look back and remember why I liked this rather divisive game.

The world built in this game is my favorite of all Final Fantasy games. I absolutely loved the exploration of what would happen if people stopped aging for 500 years and no new life could be born. Consequently, Lightning Returns was one of the rare JRPGs where I actually cared about doing the side quests. Which was good, since that's the way you level up lol. Also the voice acting was rather hit or miss.

The combat system is also excellent. Learning enemy patterns and jumping between costumes to pull out the right attacks or blocks/dodges/counters at the perfect time is very rewarding. Again, it's good that I felt this way, since you'll have to fight quite a lot if you want to continually freeze the timer.

Oh yeah, the timer. It was cool in that it gave you the sense of urgency you'd want with this type of story, but also a little annoying at times. In the end, I had more extra days that I just threw away than days I actually needed, though, so the negative aspects were largely mitigated.

You get to play dress up a lot and that's been a favorite thing of mine in video games since I played City of Heroes back in the day. RIP.

The main story was a little thin, but I liked it. None of the twists were particularly surprising, but it was what I was hoping for. It was also very cool to see how all of the main characters were affected by the horrible fever-dream of a world. The ending was completely over the top, but in the best and most thematically appropriate way possible. I loved it. I loved this game.

Edit: Oh yeah. Excellent music again. Not quite as striking and varied as XIII-2, but definitely something I'll turn throw on from time to time while I'm at my computer.

Back in 2014 I tried to beat this but the final boss had me feeling incapable, so i shelved it out of frustration.
10 years or so later I tried again, feeling confident as i dug deep in the games systems and alot of the extra content.
Unfortunately I was once again humbeled and left with a sore feeling as I was left fruitless after 35 hours.

Fine game thou, dont regret chilling out in its micro open world and indulging on a few grinds. The story is pretty bad but the side quests provide some charm.