Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (2013)

What the heck happened to Square? How did they go from making some of the best role playing games ever, to making the Final Fantasy XIII saga? The first game was all glitz and pretty graphics, but the game play was sorely lacking as one did not get to do a lot of the things one does in a role playing game. The second one did do more things one associates with an RPG; however, the story heaped a huge chunk of story and mythology on top of what was already established in the first game making it seem very cluttered. I also could not stand the fact you had to use monsters in your party, rather than having new characters or using old ones. The monster gathering never works for me unless it is Pokemon. Now, here comes the third installment. We get towns to explore, people to talk to and lots of quests to do. Why, this could be the best of the bunch; however, it is not. Someone had the brilliant idea of making it a game with a limited number of time to get a thousand things done. So you just cannot take a breather and look around the city, go to an inn and replenish one's health or try and make your character stronger because every second counts and you have to race the clock as you must get a certain number of quests done or the game may end even sooner! I play games for fun and as a means to relax. Not saying a game cannot be hard and that I should not curse certain areas, but I also do not want to have to try and speed through a game either trying to get as much done as possible and then they throw curve after curve as you can only do certain things at certain times meaning one simply cannot get the main portions of the quest out of the way so you at least do not have to stress about them.

The story has Lightning serving a weird named god and trying to save souls as the game heaps more mythology onto an already weighted down cake. The chaos released in the previous game has taken out most of the world so that only four huge areas remain and the end of the world is approaching in 13 days, less if you do not get enough quests done! The remaining people who live in this now shrinking world never age, which seems a cheap way of trying to explain how Snow is still around after 500 years. Lightning, along with Hope who is a kid again, work together to try and gather as many souls as possible so that these people can live on in a new world created by god. Though a strange little girl named Lumina seems to know some things that are not exactly favorable of this being who has given Lightning incredible powers.

The fighting is a bit more involved this time, but still not that good. It is like a Tales game in some ways, but more limited and there is way too much customization to go along with it. It kind of has the dress spheres first seen in Final Fantasy III and also prevalent in FFX-2, but not quite the same as you have to set stuff up with them and skills and it just becomes overwhelming when you also have the whole running out of time thing going on. The fights can take forever too, it seems fast paced at first, but as you progress you will learn early on it is kind of a pain. You get a skill that can stop time, but that still cannot stave off the flow of time forever! So you try and do quests for people and then with even the most mundane quest the NPC will talk your ear off!

So, I give this game a six. It could have been good had they not made this thing so stressful. Just let the game progress when the main quests are completed or something as it might not have been as bad if I could just enjoy taking my time doing side quests and not needing to do them and as many as I could to extend the amount of days. I may have been able to handle the fact the game was done in so many days if they just let it be 13 and did not initially make it like seven days and you had to increase the amount of days by doing every quest possible. I did six or seven side quests and three or four on that bulletin board and it somehow did not increase the days on my third day and then I went into another area only to find its layout was even more insane than the first area's. That is another problem, you limit the time, but make the layouts of the areas as confusing and frustrating as possible and I just could not do it. I did something I loath doing and simply said, "I cannot do this." With a little less worry, this one could have been good, but as it is the game is simply too much!