As you all know, I gave a fairly detailed review of Lightning Returns. I played through the game thinking, “why is this game getting so much hate?” But then I had time to reflect on it. And I began realizing some of the flaws. And I thought, “Okay, so it’s not perfect. I still like it.” And then I remembered the claim they made back at e3: “Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII will be the most polished Final Fantasy title yet.” Not the most polished Fabula Nova Crystallis game, not the most polished current gen Final Fantasy game, but the Most polished Final Fantasy title ever. And that’s when I began to feel ticked off. Now don’t get me wrong: There are some things that this game does right. The music, the gameplay, the main antagonist (his appearance was short but sweet), some of the cutscenes, Fang and Vanille’s story arc. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much this game did WRONG.
Now instead of just saying “oh dis gaem iz krap heurhur”, I want to talk about ways it could have been improved. Because even though the storyline was crappy, it wasn’t the level of royal diarrhea that Final Fantasy 8 was, and could have been redeemed with some key changes to how it was handled. Even though the gameplay had its weak points, it wasn’t bad in theory. So, here’s my list of ways that Lightning Returns could have been a great game, instead of a mediocre one.
-GAMEPLAY-
-Get rid of all the particle effects during battles. Like, during one battle, an enemy cast Firaga on me, and I decided to count how long the effect lasted. This caused a huge smoke cloud to hang right in the middle of the battle field, which legitimately lasted about six seconds after the damage was dealt, and was obscuring my view of the fight. Just getting rid of that wouldn’t have hurt anything, since the battles weren’t ugly graphics-wise.
-USE A FREAKING LEVEL UP SYSTEM. Seriously, I don’t mind having some side quests, even fetch quests. But don’t give us an awesome battle system, and make it essentially pointless to fight enemies. Like, I wouldn’t mind if side quests still gave us stat boosts, as long as we could still level up in battles as well. Or, better yet- gain experience from battles, and also gain experience from side quests instead of just straight up stat boosts. That way, players who enjoy side-quests could use them to level up, and players who enjoy fighting could level up that way. Or both!
-Change the weather so that it gets more and more bleak as the days go on. This is more of a minor aesthetic thing for me, but think of how cool it would have been. In the original game, every single day was just bright and sunny, and it didn’t look like we were looking at a dying world. What would have been cool, is that on the first day, the sun was shining and at night you could see the stars. And as the days go on, it begins to become more cloudy and bleak, until by the end, every area is dark and there are thunder clouds in the air, and the weather is fierce and scary. (similar to the thunderstorm in the opening FMV.)
-Don’t put Lightning in slutty clothes. It’s totally out of her character, and the amount of fanservice Toriyamyam was going for is frankly embarrassing. Does he think everyone is just drooling over Lightning and doesn’t care about anything else? Lightning was cool in XIII and XIII-2 because she was a decent character who was beautiful without being sleazy. It’s like the creaters completely missed the point of the character they meant to base the game around.
-Nerf the final boss, but just a little. Seriously, I played in normal mode, and it was a piece of cake for the most part until I came up to Bhunivelze. Bhunivelze is legitimately the most difficult final boss I’ve fought for a long time, if not ever. Now, if my previous suggestion was utilized, this wouldn’t be an issue as much. The player could just try fighting him, go “oh crap, he’s too hard, I’ll go level up some more,” and just level up until they can fight him again. No biggie. But giving the player no option to level up AND making their only choice a NG+ is bad game design, plain and simple. Also, just make it so that Bhuni deals out less damage or is less vicious with his attack pattern. Otherwise, keep the final battles the same. They’re climactic and awesome, and the sheer difficulty only detracts from the fight!
-REFERENCES TO THINGS THAT DON’T NEED TO BE REFERENCED TO-
Don’t try to reference things that don’t need to be referenced to. For example: The number 13. Like, 13 days before the end of the world. Fang and Vanille woke up 13 years ago. Hope was transported to the Ark 169 years ago, and 169 is 132. The final boss theme is specifically 13 minutes long. WHY?! WHAT IS THE POINT OF MAKING EVERYTHING REFERENCE THE NUMBER 13?!! I mean, it works in Kingdom Hearts, because the number 13 has actual significance with the series! But in this series, 13 is just the number of the title! It has no significance in the series, and it feels like Toriyama was just like “oh hurr letz trey to blow theier miendz by makeing everthing reffrence the num 13!!!1 it worked 4 nomura-san, so y not??!!”
The final boss track makes references to Caius’s theme and Barthandelus’s theme.
Disclaimer: I quite like this final boss theme. And just because I say these things about it, doesn’t mean I don’t like listening to it.
So about the fact that it references other characters’ themes: Again- this is a concept which works in Kingdom Hearts! Ventus’s theme referenced Roxas’s, and that makes sense because they’re essentially the same person! But why on earth should Bhunivelze’s theme reference Caius or Barthandelus? Because… they’re both antagonists? Like, that track would have worked fine without having those references in it. Sure, it doesn’t sound bad with them in it, but I just don’t get why they needed them in it. I almost feel like it was one of two things: Either they said: “oh hey, I like how Shimomura-san is doing that with her music! I want to do it too!” which is a stupid reason. OR they said: “well, Toriyama said we need the final boss theme to be 13 minutes for whatever reason… so let’s throw these into the song to increase the running time,” which is also a stupid reason. TL;DR: It’s a good track. I just don’t get why the references need to be there.
-STORYLINE-
-Actually freaking show the world getting destroyed. That’s something we never see, as far as I can remember. Before the final level, have some big cinematic FMV of the world getting consumed by chaos, showing that this really is the end of the world. The end of the game didn’t leave me with an impression of, “wow, that world got freaking obliterated. They weren’t kidding when they said it was gonna end.” That’s the kind of reaction I wanted to have to it. In a game about the end of the world, we should at least, I don’t know, see the end of the world.
-So FFXIII-2 gives us an amazing antagonist named Caius. Now Caius isn’t only my favorite character in the XIII trilogy, he’s also one of my favorite villains ever. PERIOD. He’s that good. By the time I finished XIII-2, I felt sorry for him, and saw how great of a villain he was. His motivation was emotional and sad, and he was an incredible character with a great voice actor who poured real emotion into his lines. SO WHY IS IT THAT HE GETS TEN FREAKING MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME IN THIS GAME?!!! SERIOUSLY TORIYAMA, IS THAT ALL YOU COULD GIVE HIM?! YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM A MAIN ANTAGONIST OF THE GAME BECAUSE YOU’RE SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME ON FREAKING LIGHTNING?! COME ON. Honestly, this makes me so freaking mad. Could you possibly waste your game’s potential any worse than you did here?
Here’s how I would have handled the storyline, generally speaking:
So, picture this. The game starts out as normal, but as you play, you find that Bhunivelze charged Caius with a task the same way he charged Lightning: While Lightning is out to save souls for the new world, Caius was told to purge (kill) any souls that were not worthy of the new world. Lightning would have had Serah as incentive like she did in the actual game, but Caius would also have an incentive: Yeul. In my version of the story, Caius’s actions in the end of XIII-2 didn’t actually save Yeul, but instead killed her, and left Caius living in complete regret of his actions for 500 years. So when Bhunivelze offered Yeul back to him in return for his actions, Caius was quick to jump on the opportunity, in an effort to erase his mistakes. It would have been entirely in Bhunivelze’s character to do something like this, since he saw humans as his own personal rag dolls, and being completely ignorant of the fact that they have souls. So as the game goes on, it plays out similar to how the actual game played out: Lightning slowly realized that Bhunivelze’s plan was not for the better good of humanity, and begins to turn against him, since he and Caius are destroying souls. By the end of the game, the world gets destroyed, and the only ones left are Lightning, Caius, and Hope/Bhunivelze (whose story is more or less the same as it played out in the actual game). As a final test, Bhunivelze pits Lightning against Caius, to decide which of them he will choose as his god/goddess of death. Lightning beats Caius (it’s a video game after all), who realizes that Bhunivelze betrayed him and tried to turn him into the very thing that Caius destroyed in XIII-2. Bhunivelze captures Caius’s body, and then proclaims to Lightning that she is his new goddess of death, in a scene similar to the one before the actual final boss fight (except replace hope with Caius when he goes all ragdoll). So Lightning fights Bhuni, and attempts to save both Caius and Hope from him, and…
…
Something. I really don’t know how I would want this story to end. Feel free to suggest your own endings to my story. But speaking of endings…
-ENDING-
Okay, so the more I think about the ending of the actual game, the angrier I get. It’s literally like they just decided to take all the characters we ever liked in the XIII series, and completely wrap up every single one of their storylines in five minutes flat. And even better, it gives us absolutely no indication of what life is like in the new world. It’s just:
Bhuni diesà Lightning gets Serah back à they go to new world à credits. LIKE WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THEY GET THERE?! How does Yeul try to live in her new life? Does Snow marry Serah? Does anybody do anything? THEY DON’T TELL US!!!! Like, even an ending like KH2’s, which was a bit of a Deus Ex Machina, left us content. We saw the characters’ storylines finish, and we were treated to seeing them settle back into normalcy and live happily ever after (I know the other newer KHs turned that on its head, but that’s not the point). In the end of Lightning Returns, we are left with NOTHING about how the characters live their new life. There’s no “and they lived happily ever after”, nothing. Just, “tie up every character’s storyline in ten minutes and show new world being created, and roll credits. Okay great game guys, that’s all we need, let’s pack this up and sell it.” NO.
Okay, I'll admit I don't give much of a solution for the last point I made. But I hope you guys enjoyed reading this, and I hope to start a good discussion on how much potential this game had. Again, I don't dislike this game, in fact I'll probably play through it again and enjoy it. But it's fun to think of what it could have been.
As you all know, I gave a fairly detailed review of Lightning Returns. I played through the game thinking, “why is this game getting so much hate?” But then I had time to reflect on it. And I began realizing some of the flaws. And I thought, “Okay, so it’s not perfect. I still like it.” And then I remembered the claim they made back at e3: “Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII will be the most polished Final Fantasy title yet.” Not the most polished Fabula Nova Crystallis game, not the most polished current gen Final Fantasy game, but the Most polished Final Fantasy title ever. And that’s when I began to feel ticked off. Now don’t get me wrong: There are some things that this game does right. The music, the gameplay, the main antagonist (his appearance was short but sweet), some of the cutscenes, Fang and Vanille’s story arc. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much this game did WRONG.
Now instead of just saying “oh dis gaem iz krap heurhur”, I want to talk about ways it could have been improved. Because even though the storyline was crappy, it wasn’t the level of royal diarrhea that Final Fantasy 8 was, and could have been redeemed with some key changes to how it was handled. Even though the gameplay had its weak points, it wasn’t bad in theory. So, here’s my list of ways that Lightning Returns could have been a great game, instead of a mediocre one.
-GAMEPLAY-
-Get rid of all the particle effects during battles. Like, during one battle, an enemy cast Firaga on me, and I decided to count how long the effect lasted. This caused a huge smoke cloud to hang right in the middle of the battle field, which legitimately lasted about six seconds after the damage was dealt, and was obscuring my view of the fight. Just getting rid of that wouldn’t have hurt anything, since the battles weren’t ugly graphics-wise.
-USE A FREAKING LEVEL UP SYSTEM. Seriously, I don’t mind having some side quests, even fetch quests. But don’t give us an awesome battle system, and make it essentially pointless to fight enemies. Like, I wouldn’t mind if side quests still gave us stat boosts, as long as we could still level up in battles as well. Or, better yet- gain experience from battles, and also gain experience from side quests instead of just straight up stat boosts. That way, players who enjoy side-quests could use them to level up, and players who enjoy fighting could level up that way. Or both!
-Change the weather so that it gets more and more bleak as the days go on. This is more of a minor aesthetic thing for me, but think of how cool it would have been. In the original game, every single day was just bright and sunny, and it didn’t look like we were looking at a dying world. What would have been cool, is that on the first day, the sun was shining and at night you could see the stars. And as the days go on, it begins to become more cloudy and bleak, until by the end, every area is dark and there are thunder clouds in the air, and the weather is fierce and scary. (similar to the thunderstorm in the opening FMV.)
-Don’t put Lightning in slutty clothes. It’s totally out of her character, and the amount of fanservice Toriyamyam was going for is frankly embarrassing. Does he think everyone is just drooling over Lightning and doesn’t care about anything else? Lightning was cool in XIII and XIII-2 because she was a decent character who was beautiful without being sleazy. It’s like the creaters completely missed the point of the character they meant to base the game around.
-Nerf the final boss, but just a little. Seriously, I played in normal mode, and it was a piece of cake for the most part until I came up to Bhunivelze. Bhunivelze is legitimately the most difficult final boss I’ve fought for a long time, if not ever. Now, if my previous suggestion was utilized, this wouldn’t be an issue as much. The player could just try fighting him, go “oh crap, he’s too hard, I’ll go level up some more,” and just level up until they can fight him again. No biggie. But giving the player no option to level up AND making their only choice a NG+ is bad game design, plain and simple. Also, just make it so that Bhuni deals out less damage or is less vicious with his attack pattern. Otherwise, keep the final battles the same. They’re climactic and awesome, and the sheer difficulty only detracts from the fight!
-REFERENCES TO THINGS THAT DON’T NEED TO BE REFERENCED TO-
Don’t try to reference things that don’t need to be referenced to. For example: The number 13. Like, 13 days before the end of the world. Fang and Vanille woke up 13 years ago. Hope was transported to the Ark 169 years ago, and 169 is 132. The final boss theme is specifically 13 minutes long. WHY?! WHAT IS THE POINT OF MAKING EVERYTHING REFERENCE THE NUMBER 13?!! I mean, it works in Kingdom Hearts, because the number 13 has actual significance with the series! But in this series, 13 is just the number of the title! It has no significance in the series, and it feels like Toriyama was just like “oh hurr letz trey to blow theier miendz by makeing everthing reffrence the num 13!!!1 it worked 4 nomura-san, so y not??!!”
The final boss track makes references to Caius’s theme and Barthandelus’s theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbfCyhCNJDI
Disclaimer: I quite like this final boss theme. And just because I say these things about it, doesn’t mean I don’t like listening to it.
So about the fact that it references other characters’ themes: Again- this is a concept which works in Kingdom Hearts! Ventus’s theme referenced Roxas’s, and that makes sense because they’re essentially the same person! But why on earth should Bhunivelze’s theme reference Caius or Barthandelus? Because… they’re both antagonists? Like, that track would have worked fine without having those references in it. Sure, it doesn’t sound bad with them in it, but I just don’t get why they needed them in it. I almost feel like it was one of two things: Either they said: “oh hey, I like how Shimomura-san is doing that with her music! I want to do it too!” which is a stupid reason. OR they said: “well, Toriyama said we need the final boss theme to be 13 minutes for whatever reason… so let’s throw these into the song to increase the running time,” which is also a stupid reason. TL;DR: It’s a good track. I just don’t get why the references need to be there.
-STORYLINE-
-Actually freaking show the world getting destroyed. That’s something we never see, as far as I can remember. Before the final level, have some big cinematic FMV of the world getting consumed by chaos, showing that this really is the end of the world. The end of the game didn’t leave me with an impression of, “wow, that world got freaking obliterated. They weren’t kidding when they said it was gonna end.” That’s the kind of reaction I wanted to have to it. In a game about the end of the world, we should at least, I don’t know, see the end of the world.
-So FFXIII-2 gives us an amazing antagonist named Caius. Now Caius isn’t only my favorite character in the XIII trilogy, he’s also one of my favorite villains ever. PERIOD. He’s that good. By the time I finished XIII-2, I felt sorry for him, and saw how great of a villain he was. His motivation was emotional and sad, and he was an incredible character with a great voice actor who poured real emotion into his lines. SO WHY IS IT THAT HE GETS TEN FREAKING MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME IN THIS GAME?!!! SERIOUSLY TORIYAMA, IS THAT ALL YOU COULD GIVE HIM?! YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM A MAIN ANTAGONIST OF THE GAME BECAUSE YOU’RE SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME ON FREAKING LIGHTNING?! COME ON. Honestly, this makes me so freaking mad. Could you possibly waste your game’s potential any worse than you did here?
Here’s how I would have handled the storyline, generally speaking:
So, picture this. The game starts out as normal, but as you play, you find that Bhunivelze charged Caius with a task the same way he charged Lightning: While Lightning is out to save souls for the new world, Caius was told to purge (kill) any souls that were not worthy of the new world. Lightning would have had Serah as incentive like she did in the actual game, but Caius would also have an incentive: Yeul. In my version of the story, Caius’s actions in the end of XIII-2 didn’t actually save Yeul, but instead killed her, and left Caius living in complete regret of his actions for 500 years. So when Bhunivelze offered Yeul back to him in return for his actions, Caius was quick to jump on the opportunity, in an effort to erase his mistakes. It would have been entirely in Bhunivelze’s character to do something like this, since he saw humans as his own personal rag dolls, and being completely ignorant of the fact that they have souls. So as the game goes on, it plays out similar to how the actual game played out: Lightning slowly realized that Bhunivelze’s plan was not for the better good of humanity, and begins to turn against him, since he and Caius are destroying souls. By the end of the game, the world gets destroyed, and the only ones left are Lightning, Caius, and Hope/Bhunivelze (whose story is more or less the same as it played out in the actual game). As a final test, Bhunivelze pits Lightning against Caius, to decide which of them he will choose as his god/goddess of death. Lightning beats Caius (it’s a video game after all), who realizes that Bhunivelze betrayed him and tried to turn him into the very thing that Caius destroyed in XIII-2. Bhunivelze captures Caius’s body, and then proclaims to Lightning that she is his new goddess of death, in a scene similar to the one before the actual final boss fight (except replace hope with Caius when he goes all ragdoll). So Lightning fights Bhuni, and attempts to save both Caius and Hope from him, and…
…
Something. I really don’t know how I would want this story to end. Feel free to suggest your own endings to my story. But speaking of endings…
-ENDING-
Okay, so the more I think about the ending of the actual game, the angrier I get. It’s literally like they just decided to take all the characters we ever liked in the XIII series, and completely wrap up every single one of their storylines in five minutes flat. And even better, it gives us absolutely no indication of what life is like in the new world. It’s just:
Bhuni diesà Lightning gets Serah back à they go to new world à credits. LIKE WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THEY GET THERE?! How does Yeul try to live in her new life? Does Snow marry Serah? Does anybody do anything? THEY DON’T TELL US!!!! Like, even an ending like KH2’s, which was a bit of a Deus Ex Machina, left us content. We saw the characters’ storylines finish, and we were treated to seeing them settle back into normalcy and live happily ever after (I know the other newer KHs turned that on its head, but that’s not the point). In the end of Lightning Returns, we are left with NOTHING about how the characters live their new life. There’s no “and they lived happily ever after”, nothing. Just, “tie up every character’s storyline in ten minutes and show new world being created, and roll credits. Okay great game guys, that’s all we need, let’s pack this up and sell it.” NO.
Okay, I'll admit I don't give much of a solution for the last point I made. But I hope you guys enjoyed reading this, and I hope to start a good discussion on how much potential this game had. Again, I don't dislike this game, in fact I'll probably play through it again and enjoy it. But it's fun to think of what it could have been.