LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII
Lightning Returns is the concluding chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII saga and series heroine Lightning's final battle. The grand finale of the trilogy brings a world reborn as well as free character customization and stunning action based battles.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is a rpg, jrpg and female protagonist game
developed and published by Square Enix.
Released on December 10th 2015 is available only on Windows
in 8 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 4,306 reviews of which 3,420 were positive and 886 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.7 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 6.39€ on Steam and has a 60% discount.
The Steam community has classified LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows® XP SP2 or later
- Processor: 2GHz Dual Core CPU
- Memory: 1500 MB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA® Geforce® 8800GT / ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 VRAM 512MB or later
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 22 GB available space
- Sound Card: Sound card compatible with DirectX® 9.0c
- Additional Notes:
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
I love this game. Some of that love is nostalgia, but having just finished it I do think it holds up. The side quests are really not as bad as a lot of people make them out to be and many of them can be completed without much effort. The open world and ability to do the mainline quests in your preferred order is really nice (I do like to spend a lot of time in the Wildlands). The very first time I played this game when I was younger I missed a mainline quest unknowingly. This did cause me to be unable to complete the game and had to move on to NG+, so just look out for that. The atmosphere of the game is very cool and fun, the combat system is easy to use and feels decent, and the characters are great. I cannot recommend it enough.
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Going into Lightning Returns, I was hesitant - XIII-2 is such a mess of a game to come off of, and Lightning Returns represents a pretty hard gameplay shift compared to its predecessors, ditching the linearity of XIII and the convoluted plot structure of XIII-2 in favor of a wide open world with a big timer ticking down in your face. As the concluding piece of a strange, uneven trilogy, it feels thoroughly uninterested in providing a smooth landing, but the world-building, character interactions, and individual moments throughout the narrative end up easily justifying the game's existence, easily vaulting it to second place on my list for the XIII trilogy. Gameplay-wise, Lightning Returns is a huge departure, with its structure dictated entirely by the narrative conceit - it's the end of the world, and you have, ostensibly, seven in-game days to get as much done as possible. You're kind of dumped into the main game without much preamble beyond that, left to fend for yourself and figure out your own way through the game's open world and narrative, with five major story arcs that can be tackled in any order, and a heap of side-quests to pad out the time between those arcs. This is all pretty daunting, and it's made that much more stressful by the ticking timer that's constantly on-screen, ostensibly setting a hard limit on how much you can explore and dick around. Functionally, the timer can be mitigated to the point of being a non-issue with the Chronostasis mechanic that pauses the clock for a couple of real-world minutes at a time, but I personally never once forgot that it was there, and always felt kind of pressed by it. That a lot of in-game events are dependent on certain times of the in-game day made this harder, too - if you miss a time window, you're fucked, and you'll have to come back to that event the next day. I've seen people go back and forth on this, some saying it's a dogshit mechanic that ruins the playing experience, other people saying that it can be minimized so completely that complaining about it is pointless. I feel like, ultimately, it's more detrimental than beneficial, and would have preferred for it not to be in the game, but it admittedly did not ruin the playing experience the way I thought it would. Combat is a little different compared to XIII and XIII-2 - you still have multiple battle styles to rotate through in a fight, but you have much more granular control over them in Lightning Returns, able to set separate commands to each of the face buttons. Some of these are tied to the garb mechanic, where the dress Lightning is wearing affects her battle attributes (Dresspheres 2.0 lol), but generally you have an incredible amount of freedom by the mid-game point when the game turns the battle system entirely over to the player, and I found it just as satisfying as the other two games in the trilogy. You can make Lightning an absolute monster in this game, and she'll need it, seeing as she gets no help for the entirety of the game. No party, no partners, just Lightning. It has a slow start, and remains laden with Final Fantasy nonsense as you might expect, but the story is easily the most engaging of the trilogy, shaking the trappings of XIII and XIII-2 that bogged their respective stories down. The open, somewhat non-linear nature of the game's narrative contributes to this, but I also found that so many of the side-quests are just incredibly affecting, something that I didn't expect going in. End-of-the-world stories that feature a lot of regular people struggling to cope with the reality of what's happening provide a lot of material for writers to work with, and they certainly make the most of it here. The main story is similar, with Lightning checking in on her former party members and allies, seeing the places they've carved out for themselves in this broken world, and it was really nice to spend that time with them after so many of them were reduced to cameos in XIII-2. The end of the game is a particularly satisfying victory lap for people invested in this trilogy and its core cast, and I came away from it feeling surprisingly attached to them, despite the remarkably uneven nature of these games. The XIII trilogy takes a lot of beatings in the fandom, for reasons that I certainly understand - all three games have tons of pain points that can make them unbearable to play, and those pain points are different across each game. This era of the franchise was strange and rocky, these games mixing in with the perpetual delays of Versus XIII and the horrible launch of XIV 1.0, but it feels to me like XIII takes the brunt of the abuse in that regard, while people tend to forget that XIII-2 and Lightning Returns even exist. For me, I think it's a shame that Lightning Returns truly requires you to play XIII and XIII-2 to get to it, because this is a really interesting, lovingly made game, and if it didn't have so much homework associated with it, I think the wider fandom would hold it in much higher regard. Do what you have to in order to get here - watch a let's play, read some in-depth summaries, whatever. Give this game a play. It's worth it.
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Finished the FF13 trilogy finally, with the last game "Lightning Returns". It was overall an amazing trilogy. The last game was a departure from the first two, as it essentially also incorporates Majora's Mask elements (time-of-day mechanics) as well as FFX-2-style class systems (Dresspheres are now called Schematas and can be customized). For those who are expecting an experience similar to the OG FF13 and FF13-2 might be disappointed, but if you don't mind some new ideas mixed in (MM and FFX-2), then this will be great. Definitely underrated this game.
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This game is CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED. If you give it the time and attention. Many people hate the "Doomsday Clock" that this game imposes on them, which I totally understand since the time limit also irked me. I had an on and off relationship with this game for almost 10 years, but I finally finished it fully. Armed with knowledge, I want people to understand this, you are fully welcome to fail your first run because... the game is built for New Game Plus. You can NG+ even if you fail, and you can NG+ an unlimited amount of time. I did not know this until recently, meaning this is almost Souls-like. Through NG+, you can complete prior quests faster, build Lightning better, progress further. There is a sense of joy to see progression reflected directly to the game's "Day". Another point of contention is the removal of combat EXP, you only level up by doing quests and completing the Canvas of Prayers. Whilst this is a massive departure from traditional RPG game design, this experimental mechanic perfectly fits Lightning Returns and would not work in another setting. This has to do with the first point of the "Doomsday Clock". You do not have enough time to traditional grind mobs for tiny amount of exp for the next exponential number needed to level up. But by knowing the quests and their requirements, you can level up so much faster and get stronger MUCH easier. Who in the right mind would rather grind 100 little mobs than to just hand over 5 items.
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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 happening, 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 either FF fans who love reading up on lore for hours, or anyone who isn’t particular about story and writing consistencies. 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.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 19 November 2024 19:21 |
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| SteamSpy data | 19 December 2024 16:01 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 20:47 |
| Steam reviews | 23 December 2024 09:53 |
Online players
65
Developer
Square Enix
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
10 Dec 2015
Platforms