On February 11, (or the 14th if you live in the UK like me), the story of Final Fantasy XIII will finally come to an end. It’s a series that has a huge dividing effect on the Final Fantasy fandom, with some people loving the new look, battle system and story, while others disapproved of its linearity and characters, unaffectionately naming it “Final Hallway XIII”.
The sequel, improved on the linearity quite a lot, offering a truly open romp through time, being able to jump in and out of locations, and time frames at will, but personally I still feel like the story wasn’t exactly compelling, and Serah and Noel were by no means interesting characters.
So when the demo was released on Xbox live and PSN, I decided to give it a go before the game came out, to help make my decision on whether I planned to buy it, or if it would be the first console Final Fantasy I miss since I’ve been old enough to buy games.
I’ll be honest, the concept of the game intrigues me, there are 13 days left until the world is destroyed by “Chaos” which as far as I can tell is black gooey stuff that monsters come from. This 13 days happens in real time, with each in game day happening in about 2-3 hours in real time, and battles eat into this time, but you can use certain abilities to stop time for a while to help out with exploring the world, which they have described as big enough that they don’t expect many players to have explored it all in one play through, or stop time in battles to help turn the tide in your favour. The concept, which is not in any way similar to Majora’s Mask at all, is an interesting one but from what you are allowed to see of the story in the demo is kind of overshadowed by this religious overtone that seems to come from nowhere.
I’m used to RPGs having gods, Dragon Age has the Church of Andraste, The Elder Scrolls have the Nine Divines and the Daedra as demons, but I’ve never seen one that makes its main character into a Jesus like figure. People refer to Lightning as “Savior” and it’s her job to save the souls of the living before this “Chaos” overruns everything. Even one of the new characters, Lumina, refers to her as one of “God’s chosen ones”. I’m not saying this is definitely a bad thing, but it’s a little off-putting when they are forcing it on you and the world just seems to accept it as fact, but still try and fight you every time you come close. Maybe it’s something that will be explained in the full game, and when I have a full review I will let you know if it ever made any more sense or maybe it’s just something I don’t get and if someone could explain it that would be great.
The demo itself wasn’t that long, and involves Lightning chasing another character around a building fighting off the chaos, since she crashed an end of the world party at the same time as some huge monsters, and the host decided he didn’t want to let Lightning save him from the end of the world, admittedly it was quite a linear bit of gameplay, but dungeons tend to be a bit like that, and I think the main purpose of the demo was into introduce the concept and the combat, as well as the Outerworld system. As far as I can tell, the Outerworld system is an idea where people can upload their battle scores, or screenshots of the game to other people playing online, but also to social networks like twitter and Facebook. It also seems like people can leave tips and items for other players, which are indicated by people running around with their gamer tag above their heads in big blue lettering. I ran past a few that simply left a message saying “it’s not this way” and a few that tried to sell me items when I chose to interact with them. It’s an interesting idea, and I imagine if there is a hidden chest somewhere I would probably leave a note to other players saying “OI secret chest this way” to help them out, but I’m hoping there will be more to it, maybe a ghost system where you can fight other peoples Lightning’s, similar to A Link Between Worlds street pass battles.
There is one thing about Lightning Returns that stands out though, and that is the combat system. XIII’s paradigm system was interesting to play around with, but eventually led to you just tapping auto-battle and occasionally changing class if you feel you need to heal up, but it did look good. Lightning Returns improves on this system, despite only having one character in battles, and makes it fun and interesting to battle. One of the powers Lightning has been given as “Savior” is the ability to switch outfits in the blink of an eye, by pressing the bumpers, with three outfits being accessible in the battle. These outfits are known as Schematas, and are set outside of battles, and change the moves and abilities Lightning has access to. The demo gives you a few to play with, Savior, Red Mage, Lancer, Black Mage and a few others, and they are quite fun to play around with and make different combinations. Each outfit has a separate ATB bar that gets used up when you choose to do an action, with different ATB costs for each action. For example a simple attack may use a couple of blocks of the bar, and a more powerful one may use 4 or 5, and choosing to block causes a slow gradual drain for as long as you hold the button, and this is what makes the battle system more dynamic and fun. Each button on the control has a different attack assigned to it, so in the Savior schemata, B was a simple attack, X was guard, Y was lightning magic and A was an AoE attack, and each Schemata has different attacks to choose from, and while you are using up your ATB bar in one outfit, the other two are recharging theirs, so as soon as one is empty you can swap classes and carry on with your onslaught, without missing a beat, and it kind of make each battle feel a bit like a hack and slash game, especially when you stagger an enemy and juggle them into the air.
At the moment it seems like its combat system is the games only saving grace. I’ve decided to get the game, but I’m going into it cautiously. I don’t know if I will enjoy the story, or if there will be any characters I like, and since I already know Hope is in it, I know there will be at least one character I hate, but the combat looks fun, and interesting, and the promise of a huge open world has caught my interest. It could all be a massive disappointment, and I am prepared for that, but the demo was good enough, if a little short, to sell me on giving it a try.
Lance out -
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