I originally wrote the below review for Nerd Junkies back when I worked with those guys. I feel it's time to dust it off almost 2 years later to ward off any optimistic folks out there that haven't heard the news about this horrific dress-up sim. So yes, Lightning Returns is coming to Steam as of today, it's on the UK store at £11.69 (approximately £50 too much in my opinion) and you shouldn't buy it. Hopefully the below will convince you of this. If not, I pray for you.
After being sat here for a long time with a blank page, trying to find a way to provide a balanced view of this game, I’ve ultimately given up and decided to go with my gut feeling. This…. really isn’t very good at all. Hopefully I’ll be able to show you why this offended me personally while touching upon enough points for you to be able to make up your own minds.
So, Lightning has made her return (if you hadn’t worked that part out already) and she needs to save the world (again). She has been styled into some form of reaper of souls and the saviour of this dying world. I’ll try not to get too much into the nitty gritty and leave that to those of you that want to play. But safe to say, you are the only woman who can save the entire world once more and battle the Chaos unleashed from the previous game.
I tried to like this. I tried to think this would be the radical reimagining that turns the corner in this series and really picks it back up. XIII was fairly cool, very pretty, but too linear. XIII-2 was a lot more free but lacking in storyline oomph. Now, Lightning Returns seems to have taken the open world, removed the worthwhile story and tried to keep the game together regardless.
But, before I delve into the bad, I suppose we really should take a look at the good points of the title. The graphics are stunning. The opening FMV sequence is probably one of the most stunning pieces of video I’ve seen for quite some time. Very cool, very slick, really sets the scene well. You can see elements of the cutscenes that are frankly breathtaking in the video below and just how powerful they can be when employed correctly.
However, these stunningly beautiful sequences seem to be few and far between which is a little disappointing. These displays of artistry were a mainstay of the series for so long that its a shame to see the focus taken away. To my knowledge, the only proper FMV sequence I’ve seen so far is the opening one. The rest are rendered in real-time using gameplay graphics which, while its entirely acceptable, can lead to some odd bugs with people wandering in shot or odd character placement losing some of the drama of the scene.
The world environments are very well crafted, each city feels like a naturally made sprawling setting that you would stumble across in the real world. There are a lot of inexplicable platforms standing around but perhaps its a little over-critical to comment on those as they serve a purpose. Its always a nice distraction to try to find an awkwardly placed chest hovering in the middle of nowhere, if a little odd.
These are all entirely new areas that have developed over the past 500 years or so on Gran Pulse (the main world rather than the floating Cocoon the previous games focused on). Its across 4 main areas that you can travel between to complete a series of main and sidequests to quell the chaos and save individuals in need.
Costume design is extremely hit and miss. You have the wonderful pre-order ‘garbs’ to give you a Cloud Strife look or a Yuna look from previous game iterations, which actually do look the part and look reasonably good. However, the majority of the outfits you find through playing the maingame look a little like someone wandered in a charity shop with eyes closed and pick out the first 3 things that came to hand.
The battle system has some merit due to it being somewhat unique. Different garbs hold different skills and stats which you can then place extra skills you’ve found or gathered from enemies into. You can also further improve these skills via a synthesis method to combine 2 skills of the same kind to make that skill stronger.
Once you’ve finished gathering skills, you place them into 4 slots on your garb which ties into your 4 main action buttons. You then spend points from your ATB bar to utilise these skills with a separate bar tied to each of 3 outfits you have equipped at any time to batter away at your enemy. Its definitely unique, its definitely interesting but different isn’t necessarily good. It feels another place the developers have strained for an open choice style but have overshot the mark.
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There are no boundaries to what you can do with your set up. You want an outfit that gives only strength stats with only magic attacks? Go for it, you can. Nothing would stop you other than the difficulty that you’d face doing that. However, this flexibility comes without true guidance. The abilities you obtain could potentially be useful, but how and where and in which combination? There’s nothing to signify that adding a light slash to your setup would compliment that outfit etc. Choice is good, but within structure.
The storyline is pretty weak throughout. Plotholes dotted throughout making the entire game play like a lace curtain. Things left unexplained which may get explained later in time but just feel like stunted and intentionally truncated sentences at the time said. Characters will actively omit important and vital pieces of information from a conversation because they want to spin it out until later in time. Its not good storytelling, its not compelling and its not a way to push you forward to find out.
The quests can be entertaining and fun in places. Times where you get taken out on a date for example or nurse a chocobo back to health are pretty entertaining and quite rewarding. However, the side quests that feel like an MMO offcast are not quite as appreciated. ‘Go kill 20 of X monster to obtain Y items and then return to Z person for a reward’. These aren’t even enjoyed in their traditional MMO setting, so I’m not entirely sure what the thought process was behind slotting these into a semi-traditional RPG.
The music is one of the saving graces here though. There are even a few tracks that I would go as far as to call achingly beautiful within the soundtrack. However, a lot of the tracks are recycled from the previous games in the series and so have lost a fair bit of their lustre by now. I appreciate that its set in the same universe, there really isn’t any need to use the exact same tracks. Especially considering 500 years have supposedly passed since we last heard them.
There are some nice touches here and there such as NPCs playing new versions of some older songs while busking in the street. However, the overall AI of all the NPCs seem to ruin this by making them put away their guitar midsong as the strumming continues unabated. That or they may choose to endlessly run into a brick wall which just makes me think of this Vine that cropped up a little while back:
I could probably carry on for quite some time about each small thing that irked me in this title and how it just feels like it was thrown together with little thought or care, but I think I’ve covered off most of the parts that make a large impact on the game and its playability. What it comes down to is that this is solely for those that are a strong fan of, not just the franchise, but the XIII arc within itself. Its also of note for fans of skimpy outfits and putting Lightning into them as this seems to be one of the larger draws for this title.