And not only does the time limit add nothing of significance but on the default difficulty you’re likely to have completed all the main quests before more than half your time is up.Īn additional, and unexpected, problem is the quality of the graphics, which are easily the worst in the trilogy – despite reusing an awful lot of assets.
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Repetition quickly sets in and you’ll soon recognise they’re just a series of dressed-up fetch quests and monster-hunting tasks. There is a central thread of story missions but they’re usually not much longer, or more interesting, than any more minor quest. Soon enough you begin to realise that Lighting Returns is almost nothing but side quests.
And they really are all but meaningless, as you don’t earn experience points in a fight, only by completing quests. There are no random battles as such but it’s often hard to avoid minor enemies, leading to a lot of meaningless battles you’re never in any danger of losing. There is some depth to the system, but while it avoids the primary pitfall – of falling between the twin stools of action and turn-based strategy – it’s really only the boss battles that offer up any kind of satisfying challenge. Guarding and block is key, as is ‘staggering’ your opponent by hitting them with a style of attack they’re particularly vulnerable to. Each outfit has its own meter which quickly depletes, with the idea being you switch to another while you wait for the previous one to refill. In any case the combat works fine as you switch between three different sets of clothes at a time, each one representing a fairly standard Final Fantasy ‘job’. It’s not even just a Japanese thing, as the last game we played with the same idea was the recent Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD.) (Although once again we have to wonder at the low level sexism that still seems to permeate so many video games, as this is yet another female character whose primary gimmick revolves around an obsession with clothing and apperance. This essentially turns her into multiple characters in one, and makes the customisation tools one of the game’s true highlights. Although you only get to control the one character, instead of the usual team of heroes, magically changing Lightning’s outfit in battle gives access to a completely different range of abilities. The attempts to overhaul the battle system are more effective though, with Lightning able to move around and attack manually, but still with elements of the original turn-based combat retained. As you clamber and jump around the world it’s clear that nobody involved with the game has ever made a straight action game before, as you struggle with the fussy, imprecise movement controls. But exploring the open world environments still feels like you’re moving around an inanimate doll’s house, rather than a fully interactive landscape. In terms of gameplay Lightning Returns attempts to be much more action-based than previous titles, with clear attempts to mimic aspects of Western action adventures like Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider. None of them feel like real people, not least because they all rely on bog standard anime tropes and some wretched dialogue and voice-acting. And yet this has always been Final Fantasy XIII’s biggest failing, in that there’s not a single character in any of the games we came anywhere close to actually caring about. The actual plot has rarely been a highlight of any Final Fantasy game though, and it’s more the characters and themes that have left the lasting impressions.