Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 Demo Review 7.5/10 (PS3)

    Final Fantasy holds a special place in my heart. Over this past generation, I’ve been trying to decide whether it still affects me in the same way or if it’s just nostalgia… whether Final Fantasy XIII was actually bad or if I was the one doing something wrong… whether I want the series to evolve and give me something entirely new or if I just want them to go back to what worked before. I’m not alone in these questions. There are fans around the world, new and old, asking similar things. If it’s to be believed that Square-Enix has heard us and is indeed listening, then the next question we as fans should ask is… “Is Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 the answer we’ve been looking for?”

    The demo starts off with a cutscene that attempts to introduce players to the conflict that’s already spanned two titles. While I didn’t quite follow everything that was going on, and didn’t expect to, I did get the gist of the story and thoroughly enjoy the visuals that the Final Fantasy series has been known to deliver. The graphics are crisp and showcase what the developers are capable of doing now that they know the hardware inside and out. It’s enough to make you forget that there are better looking games on the horizon. I was particularly impressed with the amount of colors they’ve fit into this game. It may sound like a trite point to make, but it’s an achievement to create a world that can believably house a palette like the one the developers have drawn from. That, paired with the character design, by series mainstay Tetsuya Nomura, will have you commenting about the functionality of the world while at the same time questioning if it really matters when it’s this beautiful. All in all, the Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 Demo is simply stunning whether in cutscene or real-time gameplay.

    I was annoyed that the demo launches from the Playstation XrossMediaBar, or alternatively the Xbox Dashboard, straight into the same cutscene mentioned above minus the dialogue. It’s a small thing that’s probably unique to the demo, but experiencing it once in all its glory would have been a much more poignant intro and a better use of my time.

    One of the things in the demo that can at one minute go unnoticed but at the next take the narrative by the reigns is the music. It’s not only epic when it needs to be, but it’s also magical at all times. It goes on to reassure the player that this is a cohesive thought out world. Just like previous entries in the series, the music could stand alone. It’s no wonder the series has given birth to orchestral tours featuring tracks from the games.

    A new feature that I encountered during the LR:FFXIII-3 Demo is the Outerworld system. This system allows you to take pictures at any time and share them over the internet via Facebook and Twitter. It also allows you to make comments, cheer on other people’s snapshots, and purchase items people are selling. All you have to do to access this Outerworld feature is pause the game when you’d like to take a screenshot and upload. After that, your screenshot and profile is displayed by a random avatar in other people’s games who are playing online. Sadly, the Outerworld system never revealed itself to be more than a free publicity gimmick during the demo. I couldn’t figure out what I would gain by sharing pictures with everyone who follows me on my social networking sites. I couldn’t figure out how these spectral avatars bearing screenshots somehow fit into the narrative LR:FFXIII-3 is trying to tell.

    You can argue whether the last decade has produced Final Fantasy games worthy of the series’ pedigree, but one thing you can’t argue is that they’ve all been divisive. Ever since Final Fantasy X, Square-Enix has been making changes to the formula. In the LR:FFXIII-3 Demo, we finally get to see what they’ve come up with next, and this time the battle system has received the most notable iteration.

    In LR:FFXIII-3, Lightning, the title bearing main character, has the ability to change costumes at any time during battle. Changing costumes instantly grants Lightning new stats and four new attacks that each have their own strategic value. These attacks also cost ATB points to use. ATB, short for Active Time Battle, is the battle system anyone who’s played XIII or XIII-2 should be familiar with. Basically, in the ATB system, the battles play out in real time, without pause for action, forcing the player to think quickly. One thing that stands out between the previous games and the LR:FFXIII-3 Demo is that you only play as one character that switches roles instead of playing three characters that each have different roles.

    The battles also play out more like an action game now. Players used to have to select attacks until they filled up their action bar before the avatar would attack, but now as soon as you press the button, you attack. This encourages fast gameplay and is rewarded after the battle in the form of battle score, which can be uploaded using the Outerworld system. LR:FFXIII-3 has also done away with the battle menu system altogether, in favor of assigning those same options to face buttons.

    The Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 PS3 Demo receives an 7.5/10. It was long enough to fit in all the new and exciting additions to the game, but too short to tell if they’re going to be improvements.

    So… “Is Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 the answer we’ve been looking for?” I can’t tell you. This is just a review of the demo. What I can tell you is that Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy series is trying to find that answer. It’s not sitting idle. It’s not just trying to cash in. It’s experimenting. And though this may not be the answer we’ve been looking for, this is a step in the right direction and proves that they still have plenty of magic that’s worth your time.

    I would love to pre-order this game so that I could get the exclusive Final Fantasy VII Cloud Strife DLC, but alas I haven’t even played through FFXIII-2. And since I’ve already pre-ordered the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, which comes out a month after LR:FFXIII-3, I can’t realistically see myself purchasing this until June. I will say that there is a big part of me that just wants to go ahead and dive into LR:FFXIII-3.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 releases in the US on February 11, 2014 for Xbox 360 and PS3 at 59.99 for the Standard Edition and 89.99 for the Collector’s Edition.

+ Evolved battle system

+/- Pre-order exclusive costumes (Cloud Strife, Yuna, etc.)

+/- PS3 exclusive costumes (Utsusemi Samurai Garb just for downloading)

+/- Demo exclusive costumes (Siegfried Garb if you post your battle score after defeating Zaltys)

- Free Xbox Live Silver members can’t download until Jan. 28th (Did not take this into account when assigning a review score since it’s probably more of an Xbox thing than a LR:FFXIII-3 thing)

- Timed demo

.hack//FF>ME (Part 3)

    .hack is far from perfect but that’s where some of it’s charm comes from. To play a game that’s quite flawed but still draws you in is something that happens less and less nowadays. Many gamers choose what to spend their limited time playing based on reviews. Games that scored low or didn’t have enough money or time put into their marketing often slip through the cracks. It’s hard to say whether the .hack series had enough time or money, but there’s no doubt it was made with lots of love.

    When I first began writing about .hack I wanted to talk about how it was one of the first games to succeed with a multidisc story arc. Mass Effect is definitely the pinnacle of multidisc story arcs, but it certainly wasn’t the first.

If you own any of these, you're automatically a collector.

    Looking back, one of the many problems the .hack series faced was that each installment of the game played out more like an episode of a show. By the end of a .hack game, one of the reasons you wanted to play the next one so badly was because there was little conclusion. After finishing .hack Part 1 and Part 2, I didn’t feel as if anything was really resolved yet. I’ll compare it to an episode of Lost. Every episode of that show ended on a cliffhanger. I may be exaggerating there, but I think it’s understood what I’m trying to say. Hopefully by the end of Part 4, I’ll feel as if the .hack story wraps up.

Imagine watching Season 3 first. Now imagine playing Mutation first. Same thing.

    In Mass Effect, you never felt compelled to finish subsequent releases in order to complete the story arc. After finishing the original Mass Effect, I wanted to play Mass Effect 2 in order to get more out of the characters and the world. I didn’t need to play Mass Effect 2. The original Mass Effect story reached a rewarding conclusion. I’ve even heard that people playing the Mass Effect series out of order still enjoy it. People playing .hack for the first time that picked it up out of order would probably be disappointed. I imagine they might be taken aback by the mystery of the world, but certainly to enjoy it they would have to track down previous games and play them first.

I wish .hack would have a compilation.

    Rather than comparing the .hack series to Mass Effect, I think it’s more appropriate to compare it to the Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy became one of the first multidisc story arc games. The difference being that you got all the discs at the same time. After finishing disc 1 of Final Fantasy VII you would certainly need to play the next 2 discs in order to reach any resolution. There was no conclusion before changing discs. Final Fantasy simply needed many discs because the game was too big for just one cd-rom.

I own this game on PSN. If only .hack was available there too.

    I don’t know if the .hack series released the way it did because of storage limitations, but it might have been a better game, and better received, if all the parts were originally released as one. If they couldn’t do that, it would have been nice if the separate games would have finished with stronger conclusions. As the series stands, sometimes it feels like they made the entire game, then just decided to ship parts of it every 6 months. Again, I don’t see anything wrong with this, but none of the games felt like seasons. They all felt like episodes. You absolutely needed the next installment to make sense of the first one and vice versa.

    I wanted to applaud .hack as being one of the first games that carries over saved data. I wanted to compare it to Mass Effect, but thematically, it just doesn’t compare. .hack is more comparable to a Final Fantasy game that chose to release and sell their games separately. It’s still a very rewarding experience, but certainly not an easy one to have.

    In the next article of this 4 part series I’ll be looking at the future of the franchise. Stay tuned for next Friday!

- lvl 99