Lightning Returns

[Funkmasterr]

I played the demo for this, I liked the first two in this trilogy so I was already getting this game, but the demo definitely sold me. The combat system isn't greatly changed from the previous two, but it's definitely refined, and from the tiny bit you get to mess with it in the demo, I can say it's going to be a ton of fun. You can have three different setups basically (and you can customize outfits for each), and switch between them on the fly as you could before. However it's geared a little more towards fast paced combat than before, and each of the three setups has it's own ATB gauge, so you can be almost perpetually attacking as long as you plan things out.

There also seems to be a cool social tie-in. I didn't pay too much attention to it as it wasn't something I was going to bother with in the demo, but it looks like you can sell items and stuff to other players, amongst other things. It will be cool to see exactly how this works. You can also replay boss battles for high scores that you can upload to leaderboards.

Looking forward to this, it should be pretty fun. I also have to remember to finish the tie-in event in FFIV the week this releases.

[Animalor]

After the cliffhanger at the end of XIII-2. I'm anxious for this one.

[Winnow]

I grabbed Lightning Returns for the PS3 and played about 90 minutes.

I always want to like Final Fantasy games but so far I'm not liking this one for the most part. The more disappointing things first:

I don't know if they outsourced this game or some of it but the cities are really generic. The game shows it's age with the graphics. The best word to describe the look of the game is uninspired. The textures are low and blurry and most things are blocky. (this has nothing to do with PS3/360, they'll be crap on either console) I really don't mind older style graphics and when I look at FFX and FFX-2, which are much older, I still enjoy those games due to the great atmosphere they present. They presented a world to get lost in while FFXIII can be outright cringe worthy to look at.

The music, up to this point, isn't even close to any other FF game I can recall. I kept muting it as it was actually annoying.

This is personal opinion but Lightning is one of the dullest main characters ever. She's not appealing to look at (and that's saying a lot as just about all FF female characters are visually appealing) and her personality is nil.

The constantly counting down timer (you have six days to save the world which can be increased with quests) serves no purpose to me except to cause artificial stress. I like to look around the world (well this one isn't that interesting) in FF games and now you have a constantly counting down clock to deal with that really isn't necessary.

The story makes no sense. That's not unusual for a FF game but this time Lightening is basically Jesus sent by God to save the world...seriously. Hope up in the "Arc" is constantly referring to God and his plans and that Lighting is the only chance for everyone's survival and she must save souls in order to do this. Maybe something was seriously lost in translation from the Japanese original intent but there's way too much God talk and soul saving talk in this game. And this is more like RL God than an RPG one. The "Arc" that serves as Hope and Lighting's safe haven looks like I could have designed it in about an hour using the building tools in Second Life. This makes me wonder again if this game's art was outsourced as it's really sub par for an FF game.

The AI is pretty bad too. In the city you're supposed to tail a group of people while hiding in the shadows. There was no nice flow to this. The NPCs bounced all over the screen with horrible pathing.

The battle tactics are a little interesting. You can instantly switch between three outfits which hold different powers. The idea behind this is so you have to switch up your play style but I loaded up two of the outfits with the same spells. Mostly the swapping between the three outfits during combat is when you run out of mana. This might end up ok although I'd prefer to have three characters instead of three outfits and have a slower battle for more strategy based play rather than fast switching. This again is personal opinion but I'd prefer the FFX combat system.

The 80-100 outfits at least will keep lightning's look fresh for the entire game. Its somewhat of a dress up doll game as you can stick various glasses, hair clips, earrings etc that have no effect except visually. Unfortunately animations are lackluster as well.

Biggest disappointment is that the world isn't interesting in the way other FF games have been. You kind of expect an FF game to look good and sound good and this game is weak in both categories leaving a really bad story and so so combat as it's other main features. The usual bright, unique FF world is missing.

Being a fan of FF games, this would be hard to recommend to even a FF fan much less someone trying out the series for the first time. As an example, a game like Lost Odyssey which game out in 2008, is better across the board...game play, music, story , art and fun. Sorry to bring bad news. It's possible things could improve as I'm only 90 minutes in but somehow, besides the combat, I don't think the dull blocky graphics and uninspired design will suddenly improve unless totally different art teams worked on different sections. The actual story itself is amazingly bad. Square-Enix should have put the Lara Croft team on this game. It's hard to believe they came from the same company.

[Fairweather Pure]

I played FF13 for about 2-3hours and kind of didn't like it. I bought that at launch. I later bought FF13-2 for like, $10 or less and have yet to play it. I'll likely do the same with this. I don't actively dislike the series, but I'm definitely more more indifferent to it's existence than ever.

The FF series kind of fell on it's face last generation and was surpassed by a slew of other JRPGs in consoles and handhelds. I think the Tales series filled the niche that FF once did.

I would really look forward to another FF Tactics style game though!

[Funkmasterr]

I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan always have been. I loved the firsy two in this series and if the rest of the game is anything like the demo, I'll love this one.

The graphics aren't even close to add bad as winnow makes it sound. If the story makes no sense, is because you didn't play the other two games in their entirety, which would then make your lack of understanding make sense, but it's hardly something you can Fault the game for.

And the tactics are more than mana management and outfits. Not having a good understanding of how and when to stick, keeping things juggled, and staggering is key, and by late game you won't be able to progress of you can't do the things right. Again, this is how the other two games were, and judging by the demo that hasn't changed.

[Winnow]

You're Final Fantasy's #1 fan if you plop down $60 for this game. For anyone familiar with the downward spiral that Final Fantasy games have been on, this game continues the downward spiral. Reference my post above. It's bad when compared to other Final Fantasy games and really bad when compared to other games that have that have become what FF used to be.

I'm not an FF hater. FFIV is impressive after the revamp. It's sad that an MMORPG looks way better than a dedicated RPG game. Big FF fans will buy the game no matter what but I imagine the reviews will reflect mine more than Funks.



Above are the opening sales for the last three FF games in Japan. See a trend?

Opening sales of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII were 53% of Final Fantasy XIII-2′s numbers and 18% of Final Fantasy XIII’s launch. Final Fantasy XIII-2 sales were 35% of Final Fantasy XIII’s launch.

We never expected Lightning Returns to do outstanding numbers, especially in light of the drop in sales from FFXIII to FFXIII-2, but judging by these sales, it’s probably for the best that this is the last game in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. It’s time to move on.

Here's a comment about the costumes and poor quality control:

The easiest example is how Lightning's breast size fluctuates wildly between costumes; so much so that I thought the Red Mage was actually a male body. It took me a second to notice the raisin bumps on her chest, which is not that big of a deal except the other bodies have at least B cups, if not outright jiggling knockers. The Black Waltz costume actually has a totally different skin tone than her head! The body has black/tan skin, while her head is still stark white, not to mention the body is about a size smaller than it should be while Lightning's head stays the same size; the end result looks like a leukemia patient who waded neck deep into a vat of liquid tanning spray.

No idea why they made a third game in this series. They should have dumped this and put their efforts into Versus to revive the series. I guess they saved money by not putting a lot of effort into the game.

They used the same cut scene of Lightning standing on a clock tower three times in the first ten minutes. Watch for it (it's her taking off her glasses). It's not even that great a cut scene but I supposed they couldn't budget in something different. Textures bad (don't have to take my word for it, everyone notices they are bad

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/681990-l ... i/68511942

Less cut scenes due to budget and I'd be curious if they changed composers for the music.

You can pay $60 but they didn't put that kind of effort into this third FFXIII that deserves it. I'll stick with "uninspired" as my one word description of the game and you get the feeling the development team (probably the C-Team with A and B on Versus and something else) didn't care much about it.

[Winnow]

Playing a little more today. Adds these to my more detailed comments above.

Textures:

Incredibly bad. Like Doom 2 bad along with same ugly brown texture color scheme that goes against the usual bright colors seen in FF games. The textures are horrible. They are a blurry mess.

I'm sitting in the "Arc" right now laughing at how bad it looks. It really does look like a newbie that just learned how to build basic block structures made this game. It's sparsely filled in with objects and those objects are anything but interesting to look at. It's an embarrassment.

In the cities everything looks blocky. Squared off as if they were only allowed like 10 polygons to create things and then stick 48x48 textures on them...a fucking eyesore. IT's crap. As in walls, railings, ANYTHING is a rectangle with 2D low texture slapped onto it. Textures look bad from far away and downright atrocious up close.

Timer:

I hate the timer. The first day is over and I really haven't done a fucking thing. There's absolutely no reason to present this forced mechanic into the game. Really dumb. I guess it's there to rush you through the game so you don't notice how fucking horrible it looks.

About every ten seconds you hear an announcement that there is an APB on the Savior. Shut...the fuck...up! All it does it combine with whatever Hope is trying to tell you in his echo voice, causing a headache.

The whole idea of the timer defeats the purpose of exploration and discovery in an FF game. Can't believe they were that stupid.

This game reminds me of a cheap FF knockoff game.

The only fun thing in this game has been messing around with outfits but the crappy low textures distracts from that.

Hope:

Annoying voice that acts as a guide. They give him some kind of echo audio effect that sucks which make it feel like a CoD game with some dude giving mission instructions. The annoying echo voice gets interrupted constantly when you interact with crap and then continues mid word with whatever nonsense he's talking about after you're done.

The animations in this game are on a level not seen since the early 2000's in a AAA game. As for effort put into looks, an NPC's glasses were two perfect circles with two straight lines going back with one solid color texture. His Hat? A fucking dunce cone that may have had starts textured on it.

Here's a great line from Hope:

"I don't know who I am. I don't even know how I know the things I'm telling you".

Voice acting in general: BAD (along with the generic dialogue)

I wish I could switch characters and kill Lightning.

Maybe this was meant to be an iOS game. Without the FF name attached to this. The game would be given a 2/10.

Besides those few things, hope you enjoy the game!

[Winnow]

Game has a 68 on metacritic and even that is way too high.

it’s all very average, something that works but is wholly forgettable. Combat is more often than not a chore, the world is depressingly dull to look at, and the story feels like the last ingredient Square Enix threw in the pot, and at the very last moment no less.

[Funkmasterr]

You've made your point, fuck off. I'd appreciate you not ruining every thread with your bullshit for once you pathetic little cunt, it's beyond tiring.

That being said, mentioning review scores or metacritic score for a JRPG says a lot. A 68 on metacritic for JRPG is like a 90 for anything else.

[Winnow]

The game blows ass

[Winnow]

That being said, mentioning review scores or metacritic score for a JRPG says a lot. A 68 on metacritic for JRPG is like a 90 for anything else.

To go along with the sales figures posted in this thread:

Metascores:

FFXXII: 89
FFXIII: 83
FFXIII-2: 78
FFXIII-2 too many: 68

To be fair, the sales have fallen faster than the Metascores. I guess FFXIII was really like a 110 Metascore, better than any game ever released in the history of gaming and FFXII has a score that only Prince could see as it's so high there's no way to post it except for maybe using a god-like symbol.





Here's an excellent example of the colors, textures and uninspired sights you'll see in Lightning Returns.



Typical buildings (actually better than most you'll see in the game) Square with flat dull textures.

I'm not here to talk anyone out of getting this game (get it on PS3 if you do get it and buy a Sony TV while you're at it) but it's worth noting this game looks like complete crap before you pay 60.00 for it and will be supporting a once great franchise that will keep pumping out crap as long you keep buying it.

What FF games used to look like 10 years ago:

[Show]

Lightning Returns is a pathetic effort in all aspects for this franchise.

Even the worst character in FFX destroys Lightning when it comes to character and being interesting.

[Funkmasterr]

Thanks for ruining yet another thread. I'll find somewhere else to post about games, unless we do what we should have ten years ago and ban your sorry ass. I'm not sure how many long timers need to get chased out of the already dwindling population here before it becomes clear that it needs to happen.

[Winnow]

What "we" should have done? I didn't ruin it. I posted good info. The game is crap and it's a shame it was allowed to be made. There's not an ounce of creativity in it. they stripped away the colorful atmosphere that made FF games tolerable and left a rust themed, horrible characters, generic dialogue, jibberish story mess.

Go spit on someone.