Quick Look: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

I'm going to throw down in favour of FF XIII, I really liked that game. It was certainly a different experience from the past titles - especially coming off XII and the way that handled its world and combat. But I appreciated both of them: XII with its open-world, in-depth, pseudo-MMO stylings; XIII with its more linear, structured narrative and wider tactical approach to the combat.

I can see why the transition wouldn't sit with many people though - despite their overarching JRPG qualities, a lot of the games in the series are significantly different in how they handle, so certain titles will appeal to some people but others might not.

@sanj I agree, I think that they obviously wanted to play off the guaranteed sales of the franchise name but I feel as though a lot of the detractors to FF XIII and its follow-ups came from it "not feeling like a Final Fantasy game".

It's almost amazing how far up it's own ass ff13 has gone, it has somehow surpassed ff8 in terms of sheer nonsense.

Also lightning is a terrible character that needs to die.

Not enjoying the story as much as the first two, but maybe it picks up after a while. It just seems to jump into everything a little too quickly or something, I can't put my finger on it but there's something very strange about it. I am however actually enjoying the game, more than I thought I would, I wonder if I would have liked Majora's Mask.

Destiny is Destiny, guys

Yeah I agree, that's a real bummer too because I kind of like the art design and graphics from what I'm seeing in the Quick Look, and the systems seem interesting enough. It would be something I'd like to watch streamed with some good commentary maybe.

Love watching them play FF games... its sucks so bad for them. It makes me giggle. I hope they make games like this forever... its funny to see people buy them and play them and try to defend them.

@cale: Tru Dat brotha! I miss me the quirky, odd, and distinctive look Amano used to bring with his concept work for the series. I feel like most of these new characters should be doing shampoo commercials or something along that line.

While the combat seems interesting (thought a little lazy, I mean hey lets replace those pesky party members with costumes!) these games just aren't for me. You could see they really wanted to create these large city expanses and really nail the environment, but it just totally doesn't work. I hate the character design, I think it it just feels like a lack of art design. It started with FF7, but really hit with FF10.

As far as the use of European mythological elements used in JRPGs, as far as I understand it, some people in japan are really into it, in the same way that some people are really into Japanese culture in the west

To be honest, this doesn't look any worse that 13 itself (although that's still bad by series standards, I won't lie) I think I might pick this up.

Fuck everyone in the development, production, translation and distribution of this absolute piece of shit.

Dont really cafe much about this game, but DANG IT.....i want to know where those stupid numbers ended up being...

The game is great, so fucking whatever.

I don't get it, finally SE makes combat fun but won't let you gain exp with it?. It's bs

Is this a new game or have i missed something?

never played FF 13 and the other new ones, they look so terrible.

Those numbers are bothering me too now. I've to resist the urge to look up how that quest progresses.

Did Brad just look at the box and say "Yea, I know a lot about this game.". Shit, Jeff knew more about what was going on.

I haven't told you everything about erotica. Come here and I will tell you what you need to know.

Dude, it's Brad. It's not a Brad QL if he doesn't front like he knows stuff and then complain about not being told about anything.

This game is hot garbage, I got to Fang on the 5th day and I just had to stop. I don't understand who they were making this game for, certainly not the people that liked the other XIII games. XIII-2 was a fun little game.

The voice acting is good. The localization seems nice. I guess. But it might have been this way a long time. For me, the series actually stopped being fun at the transition to 3D, mostly because the ridiculous stories actually became more prevalent, I think crazy bad stories might be more forgivable in 2D. But that is just a theory. Also: whatever floats your boat.

Yeah nicely put. I also have a real problem with the story being so bland and contrary to what it seems to the developers, unimaginative. Mixing shit up like that seems so lazy. Like for real, Ygdrasil? Geeez. But I guess it works for Japanese people.

QFT

@brad and @jeff definitely heard a guy say there's a number "up there", an (!) Exclamation mark appeared on the map on a short path to the left, and they proceeded to forget the guy said anything and run in a random direction...

I finally bought this game, and I found the first number within minutes of starting the quest and two others soon after. The last one took me a while, but not as long as this Quick Look, lol.

Remember when everyone was unreasonably harsh against FFXIII series? I'll be getting this on PC soon.