Here's a Narrated Gameplay Demo of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

My left ear feels lonely. =(

It's unfortunate how much hate this game seems to be getting, because I think the game looks great. One thing that always frustrated me about FFXIII and XIII-2 was that you didn't have direct control over your party's placement on the battlefield and they're finally fixing that. Mapping the abilities to the face buttons is also really smart and should give the game more of an action-oriented feel, while still keeping a lot of the strategy the series is known for. Hopefully they are just overleveled for this demo though, because Lightning barely takes any damage against the boss.

The art direction also looks better than FFXIII-2 by a long shot, which makes up for the aging tech as far as I'm concerned. My only gripe from the video was hearing music being reused again and the new battle theme didn't grab me. Still, I'll probably be picking this up.

This is one of the few games manages to anger me with the more reminder that it exists. Oddly enough, the few other games that have that effect are all in the Final Fantasy series.

Why couldn't you leave me with my memories of your glory days, Square? I don't want to see you working the street, hooking your soul away while wearing a million belt buckles and riding stupidly over designed robots and spaceships.

The combat looks boring. The animations of Lightning are stiff and weird, this just seems like creaky old tech form 2006 being passed off as an end of generation game.

Moreover, the lines of dialogue are weirdly simplisti, as if zero effort was put into translation or the original script in Japanese was written for children... no hard words...no complex ideas. What is worse is the voice actors (likely with the director asked for this) deliver each line in a monotone as if nothing that is happening on screen matters.

I don't like being critical but it seems like Square's jRPGs are so out of step with modern games. Even Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch at least tried for the first half of play to provide a bit of deeper meaning and better delivery in English. There was less dialogue, and story in the later game of Ni No Kuni seems to run out of gas (or they ran out of money), but at least it tried to be bouncy and fresh.

Square seems like it not even trying, just writing a script a computer could translate into twenty western languages, than hiring voice actors to give the most monotone delivery they can just plug in anywhere. It probably is costly and difficult, but it comes across cheap and dull. That is why I feel bad, this probably was hard to develop, it probably too a ton of effort, but none of that effort shows off very well.

This video is really screwed up.. looks like it's not Giantbombs fault though as I looked it up on youtube and it had the same issues.

Anyways, the battle system actually looks potentially interesting I thought the outfit changes would be dumb but it looks pretty good imo, better than your roles/class switching just by a label on screen changing like xiii. Wish you still had party members though, doesn't really feel like a FF game without a party, even if it's automated and might make the combat too easy/dull to only have to worry about 1 character.

@iceman228433: basically the problems than XIII and XIII-2 still suffered from?

Yes, the video goes to shit when she's in the store and goes back to being good close to the end of the first fight.

And wow, those are some pantyshots right there.

And wow, those animations are pretty awful.

Man, every time I see something about this game it just bums me out.

Can't wait to play Fainaru Fantajī Verusasu Sātīn on the One.

WHERE! IS! MY! SAZH STAND ALONE GAME! I wana have endless customization options for my fro!

What is with the Lightning fixation?

I am probably going to pick this up. I actually like the switching roles and schemes business. Although, I hope that the game isn't overly long.

I am super hype for this shit. All the negativity make me sad...

I simply cannot stand the world and the characters of FFXIII.

I know not everyone is a huge fan of the character, but this looks like one of the more interesting and unique FF games in the history of the series. I like them trying this kinda stuff more than just making another turn-basedish ATB game.

@thedigitalistic: I don't think so, because it was doing the same thing with the downloaded video. I don't know if Square sent them a bad file, or if their off-site compressor derped out (I don't even know if they send PR-provided videos through that compressor), but all that weirdness is why I came here to see if anyone else was having a problem. Guess I'm not alone!

@orexis97: For me, in both HTML5 and steaming players, video got unbelievably artifact-y, to the point of being straight up unwatchable. Also, after roughly a minute, the sound only came out of my right ear. I thought that was an issue with the video itself, but I could be wrong.

Are they doing live editing on the video player or something?

Edit: At around 3 minutes, the video became perfectly fine for me in the steaming player. Maybe that stuff was due to some kind of buffering or something? Still. Never seen any buffering that actually hindered the ability to watch a video.

Why is the UI so damned cluttered? It is really necessary to have that fruit salad along the bottom third of the screen all the time?

I hate pants, too so I agree with her on that aspect. Gotta let it all hang out, man. You gotta let'm breathe.

@sgtsphynx: Yup, have the same problem with the Streaming Player. Also, the sound starts to only come out of my right speaker around then.

Clumsy UI, slow combat, dull line delivery, and a main character we get to play dress up with who comes off as prudish, cold shouldered and apathetic. Sorry, but I can't get invested into this game from what I've seen. I want to like it, but no.

I'm pretty much getting this impression too. It looks like another X-2, only without the nice combat refinements.

More of the worst FF chars ever! No thanks! Square has gone soo far down hill its not funny.

@sgtsphynx: yeah I was having a lot of weird issues in full screen/windowed, but if it was the normal player, no problem.

This actually looks more promising than previous trailers.

I must buy this game.... but i just can't watch that Chocobo die. I can't... i won't. God dammit SquareEnix... you masters of intrigue.

Man this lady really hates pants.

Few problems I see one it looks like random battles might take way to long, and if she keeps saying that same thing, that could get real old fast.

@anab0lic: You shut your mouth, FFXII was amazing >:c

@sgtsphynx: yeah, having that same problem when watching.

Did the video get all artifact-y at around the 1 minute mark for anyone else?

Says she can win with a single blow twice, and hits the monster like 50 times before she actually wins.

What the hell?....

All of her Animations are totally weird...

Am i wrong?

Bravely Default > This. One of worst things they did to the FF series was remove the much loved turn based combat.

Thanks again Alex for your curious devotion to posting all these FFXIII-3 trailers!

I getting more excited with each new video I see. Seems like a more solo adventure with Lightning this time, so the Paradigm system wouldn't really apply here. The costume system seems like it could get pretty deep with all that customization. Time will tell.

Already looks like it'll have the best gameplay of the XIII trilogy. If Square can put together another solid soundtrack and wrap up the story well, they'll have a good game on their hands.

Don't fuck this up!

Eh, I didn't get that impression. It's been a mainstay in many of the Final Fantasy games that when you'd change jobs/classes you'd change your appearance. Recently, in XIV Online, character classes are linked to the gear you wear, so changing classes = changing outfits. This game seems to be continuing that. It's also a neat visual effect to see happen during battle. Besides, the outfits here aren't that revealing....crotchless Dragoon armour aside...It could be way worse, s'all I'm sayin'.

Some decent ideas there, but not decent enough for me to want to try them out.

Well this convinced me. There's no way I'm getting this.

I'll look forward to Square Enix moving on from this series though and maybe making something I can get into.

Behold, the most expensive Bishōjo game of all time -_-

That combat seemed even more boring than XIII somehow. This also looks way too much like a "dress-up the female character" game for my tastes. If that's the case, I'm pretty sure all the best gear will be really lewd or revealing - as if letting people change the color to skin tone wasn't going to be bad enough.

I'm liking this.

Did sound cut to only the right speaker for anyone else? I thought my headphones died for a second.

mono sound sucks ass

Last FF XIII game hopefully.