Reseñas

• gamedeal user

  Nov 7, 2021

  The conclusion to the Final Fantasy 13 trilogy. This title is probably the best of the 3, with the best visuals and scenery of the 3, a strong story, very little travel based bottle necking, and of course, like always, A fantastic score that lives in my music playlist. The game moves a bit faster than the previous 2, but manages to keep throwing surprises. All around, a good game.
• gamedeal user

  May 27, 2022

  [h1]Almost 500 hours. I'd say money well spent.[/h1] Lightning Returns finishes the FF 13 trilogy with a bang in the form of a race against the clock to save as many souls as you can before the chaos that was unleashed in FFXIII-2 destroys the world completely. But don't worry, it's not nearly as stressful as it sounds. If you can't do it, you get to go back to the beginning and try again, with any items and gear and stats you may have earned previously. It's a pretty neat mechanic - not my favourite, but that doesn't mean it's not worth your time. You start out with a few days to go before the end of the world, but as you progress through main quests, and even side quests, you can extend the life of the world and give yourself more time. Considering I could get most all quests done in 4 days in my speedrun videos, leaving 9 days free to do whatever you want, it's quite forgiving. Some quests can be found early on, while others might only open up after a few days, or after main quests are completed. The reward is usually increased stats - a bonus to HP, Strength and/or Magic. There are a decent number of quests, but I do sometimes feel like it needed more minigames, something commonly found in other FF titles. It does have a few things to keep us glued to the screen. A unique system of extinction comes into play in this title that is perhaps not seen at all in Final Fantasy titles thusfar, where there are only a finite number of (most) enemies in the game. Ergo, it is possible to exterminate whole species of monsters, almost like a No Encounters reward, but the game makes you work for it. It *would* be a nice reward, but there are some minor exceptions to the rule that cannot be extinctified. No, that is not a word. But you get what I mean. There are four distinct maps, and some familiar faces to encounter from past FF 13 titles. One strange thing I couldn't get my head around was the fact that they talk about the chaos being released 500 years ago, but in the last game it looked like it covered the world in an instant. Anyway, in this strange limbo existence, people don't age, which is why all your old friends are lounging around getting on the beers. Plot holes aside, the graphics are good in some parts, but lacklustre in other areas. Main characters tend to be passable (some even get new clothing!), while NPCs can be a bit on the cloned side. City environs have more detail, but things like the Dunes, or the open grasslands just seem like wasted space to make the game seem big. Even the cinematics are on the mild side, mostly all at the start and end of the game. Past titles, and I mean all the way back to FFVII, VIII and IX, there would be more, signifying significant plot developments. Griping aside, perhaps one of the better parts of the game is what they did with the Lumina character. The way she keeps popping up to taunt Lightning is cute, and her similarity to Serah may throw the player into confusion, wondering if she is a friend, or foe, or just a psycho escaped from a loony bin (which was my initial reaction, seeing her prance around in a chaos infusion before summoning a Zaltys). One factor that I've capitalised on is New Game+, which I'm sure I've done at least 20 times. After completing the game, replays are possible, as is changing the difficulty. This is really useful for things like farming more abilities, which can then be used for ability fusions, needed to make them stronger. Looking for missing garbs to buy, new weapons and shields to buy, not to mention upgrading both of those too. With so much customisation, all sorts of new tactics become available, allowing for lots of replayability. Most garbs can be colour customised as well. And there are lots of pretty adornments too. There. I said it. I must say though, not all of the outfits suit Lightning. There are a lot of skimpy, underwear-showing things that just don't make any sense given her disposition. Thankfully you don't have to use them. The Soldier garb from FFVII, together with special garbs from other titles are a nice addition and good fan service. Despite all its little flaws that could have been improved on, I obviously still really enjoyed the game. I've made animated gifs of my waifu Lighty, video guides of some of the tougher monsters, and put in a lot of hours. I'm not a fan of gimmicky combat that requires things like perfect timing, but I got through the whole game, and hard mode, without having to worry too much about it. I think I just enjoyed the concept of turning Lighty into a goddess, getting to the point where she kicked everything's butt. Do you want to be a saviour? It's time to save souls and wear slick shades.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 10, 2022

  i dont care what the majority said, i love the story of the ff13 series.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 28, 2022

  Great game. My favorite part was when Ligthning said to Snow, "Back off, I'm about to Light it up." And the scene where Lightning says, "It's time to Lightning!" while killing a few creatures, was also beautiful. 💀 💀
• gamedeal user

  Dec 30, 2022

  i remember always playing it on ps3 now im playing it in 4k looks so stunning i still enjoy this game as i did back then
• Sukiichi

  Jan 29, 2023

  This is just a speedrun game disguised as a final fantasy title, also the superboss Ereshkigal was a joke using overclock, OC should have never step in this game, it just makes everything so casual even in hard mode.
• WUTAR356

  Feb 2, 2023

  🔵 Requires light tinkering To fix resolution problem change the "high DPI settings" of the game executable: - Find the game executable LRFF13.exe on your system (manage > browse local files). - Right-click the executable, then select Properties. - Switch to the Compatibility tab and click on Change high DPI settings, under "Settings". - On the new window, under "High DPI scaling override", activate the checkbox: <✓>. - Select Application from the dropdown menu and confirm with OK. - Click Apply, then OK on the Properties window. - Launch the game. To fix button prompts go to Settings > On-Screen Button Explanations > Controller Type. This should enable proper xbox prompts. The game settings (and exit button) hidden in the corner menu. To access it you can either use the mouse mode of a controller or touchscreen (tap top of the screen). Info on 60 fps bugs: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Lightning_Returns%3A_Final_Fantasy_XIII#Some_bugs_occur_when_the_game_is_running_at_60_FPS Tested on: OnexPlayer Mini Pro 6800U Follow Handheld Friendly
• NN010

  Mar 6, 2023

  Much like Final Fantasy XIII-2 before it, Lightning Returns is a product of Square Enix’s early 2010s financial struggles. An effort to bring in as much money as possible by reusing many assets from Final Fantasy XIII whilst Final Fantasy Versus XIII (which eventually became FFXV) continued languishing in development hell & Final Fantasy XIV was gearing up for its big relaunch as A Realm Reborn. The interesting thing about Lightning Returns is that, whereas XIII-2 felt like a game built around its accelerated development cycle, Lightning Returns is a game that feels too ambitious for its own good. Whilst XIII-2 reused as much from XIII as possible & used the time-travel premise as an excuse to reskin both old environments from XIII & most of the few new ones multiple times & made minimal changes to the gameplay; Lightning Returns completely overhauls the combat to more closely resemble an Action-RPG, mostly sets itself in new locations & has an ambitious & risky new mechanic that required a lot of balancing work to get right (more on that later). Perhaps this is a byproduct of Motomu Toriyama, the director of the Lightning Saga, & his… passion… for Lightning (seriously, this guy’s love of Lightning borders on waifu territory) and a desire to give her story a happy ending & unforgettable sendoff. Maybe the XIII team as a whole wanted to stretch their legs & try some new things after XIII-2 mostly played things safe on the gameplay front so they could apply the lessons learned to future projects. Funnily enough, much of the team at Business Division 1 that made Lightning Returns would go on to develop Final Fantasy VII Remake & having played both games I can definitely say that game is much more of an evolution of this game’s combat than it is of FFXV’s combat. So you could call Lightning Returns’ combat a dry run for VII Remake (if it weren’t for VII Remake initially being planned to mostly be developed by CyberConnect 2 rather than by Business Division 1 themselves). Regardless of the reasoning, the aforementioned overambition has a noticeable impact on the game’s graphics. The visuals noticeably take a step back from XIII & XIII-2, with the best-looking assets in the game being either reused from the previous two games or costumes for Lightning. The environments, in particular, look pretty bad for a game that was released for the PS3 & 360 in 2013 (The Last of Us & GTA V were released for the PS3 (and 360 in GTA’s case) earlier that SAME YEAR and look a lot better than Lightning Returns on the same hardware). The more wide-open Wildlands & Dead Dunes fair the worst, but even the more closed-off Luxerion & Yusnaan fail to meet the visual highs of XIII & XIII-2. These hits to graphical fidelity were likely a combination of having to create so many new assets in less than a year and a half that fit in the memory pools of the aging hardware the game was made for & Crystal Tools being pushed to its limits to make this open-ended design happen. To think this trilogy started by raising the bar on this front… It’s also worth mentioning that, like XIII-2, there are only three pre-rendered cinematics in the entire game (one at the beginning, one at the end & an unlockable post-credits scene). Going back to the combat, it’s probably the best thing about this entire game to be honest! As mentioned before, Lightning Returns utilizes an action-combat system with some turn-based elements like an ATB bar that’s very similar to VII Remake in it’s approach to mixing action-combat & turn-based combat. And for this team’s first attempt, there’s a surprisingly high skill ceiling involving timing, learning enemy attack patterns & maximizing the amount of stagger you dish out to an enemy. It’s a real joy to engage with & I’m glad that the dev team has evolved it into the system many people love in VII Remake. But perhaps the most unconventional element of combat is how you increase Lightning’s stats. Rather than doing so by gaining XP in combat, in Lightning Returns the only ways to get more powerful are through quests & the Canvas of Prayers (essentially a “Get X in exchange for power” system). While this is definitely a unique approach & I didn’t hate this (it’s especially great from a ludo-narrative synchronicity standpoint), I’m also glad that this concept hasn’t caught on in other RPGs (and that this didn’t carry over to VII Remake)... Anyways, I’ve talked around it enough. Let’s talk about this game’s time limit, by far the single biggest & most divisive change made to Lightning Returns compared to the previous two games & the mechanic everything else about this game revolves around. Lightning only has 13 days to save as many souls as she can before the world ends, and the game imposes this deadline upon players as well. Each in-game day corresponds to around an hour of real-time (2-3 hours on Easy mode), meaning you have 13 hours (+ however much time you spend in cutscenes, conversations & combat, which pause the timer) to finish the game (26-39 hours on Easy mode). Oh, and at the start of the game, you only have 7 days and have to unlock the remaining 6 days by completing the main story quest chains. As for my personal opinion on it, at first, I found the time limit very daunting. But eventually, as I played through the game (on Easy), I started to come around on the idea. Plus it turns out that said time limit is actually pretty generous, so an average player might be able to complete the game in one go once they have their head wrapped around the combat. Fortunately, the PC version of Lightning Returns is the best of the Lightning Saga’s PC ports. There is a healthier amount of graphical options than XIII & XIII-2 & the game is much more stable, less crash-prone and generally works just fine right out of the box. No mod manager is needed. There are some performance issues in certain areas, but never quite as bad as XIII-2 is out of the box & it’s clear that Crystal Tools was not designed for the kind of game Lightning Returns aspires to be. Finally, let’s talk about the story. Going into this game, my expectations were tempered by the mostly negative reception to the story. But this is where Lightning Returns surprised me most. While the story isn’t perfect and the high degree of non-linearity can lead to things feeling disjointed, the overall story is pretty good, even if the identity of the main villain is pretty obvious after a few hours. I’d say the story is at its best when it’s exploring Lightning’s flaws & worst tendencies as a character and at its worst when it devolves into a bunch of fetch quests (looking at you Sazh). As a finale… It’s a good ending to the Lightning Saga, but it’s no Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker for sure. Conclusion Lightning Returns is a very experimental game, an interesting choice for the for the finale of a trilogy (even if the devs marketed this as a “new experience”, the story is very much written like a trilogy capper), but I suppose a highly experimental & ambitious game that tries out a bunch of new ideas is a very Final Fantasy way to cap off a trilogy. Not all of Lightning Returns’ experiments are successes & even some of the ones that do work are things I wouldn’t want to see in every Final Fantasy game going forward, but I applaud the ambition of this team, especially when, given the context of this game’s creation & their company’s financial troubles, they could have easily phoned it in with a safe & iterative finale. But they didn’t and that’s worthy of praise (even if their ambition did ultimately outstrip the time they had to ship this game). It’s not a perfect game, at times it’s actually a pretty messy one. But it’s definitely my favourite of the Lightning Saga & I’ll likely do a New Game + run in the not-too-distant future… Ratings: Creative score: 8/10 Technical score: 6/10 (not bad for the time, but the PC port has some issues out of the box) Business Practices score: 7/10 Overall score: 8/10
• oddyseyt

  Jul 9, 2023

  Delves unabashedly into religious and political issues and flips them all the bird. Lighting rocks.
• Dylvision

  Jul 19, 2023

  It's a good game I can't recommend to newcomers. I love a lot about it but I also hate a lot about it, much like the other two entries.