FFXIII: Lightning Returns – Part 23: Lightning at Rest

Summary: Some brief final thoughts on Lightning Returns.

---

Bad Prediction Time - Reviewed

At the start of this playthrough, I made a few small predictions. Thought it’d be fun to see how I fared.

#1: Lightning will somehow reverse Serah’s death from the end of XIII-2. Yes.

#2: We’ll return to a full party system with 5+ party members. As “no” as no could be.

#3: We’ll meet the Maker this game, though not as a boss. Half right. We met our Maker, but as a boss.

#4: We’ll fight the other gods. I’ll give myself another half point. Bhunivelze summoned both Pulse and Lindzei as weapons, so… sorta.

Verdict: 2/4. I was kind of prepared!

---

Protagonist

Lightning and Lumina: One of my favorite FF protags. I loved her in XIII, and this game did justice to her. It captured her laconic nature (amplified by Bhunivelze’s work on her) while still giving her many moments of humor, empathy, and caring.

Lightning, by raikoart, posted by djinn87.

I especially love the Lumina reveal. She adapted when she was young to protect Serah, and finally, in a peaceful ending, gets to reunite with that part of herself. I wonder whether she’ll go by Claire or Lightning in the new world.

Lumina on her own reminded me of Amelie in how she helped people through these roundabout, playful pieces of mischief. It’s exciting to imagine Lightning with that side of herself reincorporated.

Lumina, by PrincessElemmiriel.

I just love them both a lot. Lumina spent most of the game dancing around the edges, but seeing her terrified of just fading away into Chaos on the final day hit me hard.

---

Antagonists

Bhunivelze: Not my favorite antagonist. Not exactly his fault I guess; we barely met him. Just saw gradually how big of a jackwagon he was through the fake Serahs and the hostages. The series’ best villains – the Kefka, Kuja, Lilith, Yotsuyu, Emet-Selch – had sweeping arcs that built their characters over time. Bhunivelze doesn’t really get that.

---

A Few Side Characters

Hope: I mostly like how LR gradually builds mistrust for Hope. It plays with how different this character is from the man he grew into in XIII-2, how WRONG it feels that he’s a kid again. Something’s been taken from us and from him.

It was satisfying to see his rebirth at the end… but I still dislike how he was reborn into kid form, not into some new adult form that might suit his actual place in life.

The Lost Souls: LR did a pretty good job of introducing these past characters as mini-quests.

Noel, Snow, Vanille and Fang (VANILLE AND FANG ), all got solid plots that make me think: “Yeah, hundreds of years into a post-apocalyptic world, I can definitely see this as where they wind up.” Their

Snow art by leirix, posted by djinn87.

Sazh is the exception. It just feels like the game didn’t know what to do with him, and so had him camp out for hundreds of years standing over his son. Yeah, they said he was searching fruitlessly for the soul pieces… idk. It still didn’t feel great.

---

Story/Tone

New Setting: Look at FFIV: The After Years. The world design was terrible. Boring, repeated from the original, uninspired.

LR went the opposite direction. Its four main zones were rich, expansive, and flavorful. They had their own feel and stories. It was certainly tied to XIII’s zones but built from the ground up. Excellent.

The End is Nigh: Very mixed on how the game handled the post-apocalyptic setting with the end just around the corner.

THE GOOD: The consistent theme. Everyone knew, almost as fact, that the end was coming. Some of the world building here was solid, like the religions or some of the quest flavor. However…

THE BAD: I’ve commented on this before, but it felt like they played things a bit safely. So many people just went about their normal tasks, their normal roles, for hundreds of years. Even at the very end, so many characters were going about their business a bit sadder but otherwise no different than if they’d been doing things for 20 years rather than 500.

---

Gameplay

Action-ish Combat: I wouldn’t want this for every FF game – I’m still hoping for a return to the slow, strategic pace of FFX – but it did feel fresh. Perfect blocks and perfect guards rewarded watching the combat closely and timing the enemy well, which engaged me in even rote, regular fights. No auto-attack spam here!

The only real “miss” on this front was Lightning moving around the battlefield. This felt sluggish. I wish she ran rather than walked.

Schemata Customization: Big fan of this. Every new weapon and garb I got felt so rewarding, like it opened a whole new world of strategy. In practice, I didn’t mess around with my schemata TOO much. Found a few core ones that worked and tinkered with them. I appreciated the options nonetheless.

The Clock: BOOOOO HISSSSS! It was at best unintrusive, something to be ignored with enough uses of Chronostasis. There were some neat moments where different doors opened at night, or more monsters came during day or night, but I still wish this weren’t a mechanic.

Lightning in front of a clock art by Aureta.

Quests: Another positive. I like the openness of the main story quests, how you can pick which zone to work on first. [Non-rhetorical question: are the later-numbered main story chapters still considered tougher than the earlier-numbered main story chapters?]


The mix of side quests and Chocolina’s canvas quests were also good fun. Little check-boxes that sometimes added flavor or even just got me exploring and engaging with expansive zones more fully than I would have otherwise.

Pace: The pace at the end felt very strange. Completed most of my quests in the first six days, so the final seven days were just weird, sleeping the days away. Not a big deal I guess.

---

Music

Just liked the other XIII games, a great mix of orchestral music with electronic, guitar, and just SO many varieties. Some favorite pieces:

-Eternal Midnight. Smooooooth af.

-The Ark. Not something I’d listen to on its own, but it was so hilariously angelic that I gotta give it credit.
-Bluesy Chocobo/Chocobo Returns/Marimba de Chocobo. Such chill, bouncy melodies.
-Lumina’s Theme
-Army of One

---

Art

Similar to the rest of XIII. The cinematics were brilliant. (Artistically anyway, I still hate the “earth” ending if that really is the canon explanation.) The design on the main zones was pretty sweet too! I especially liked the two contrasting cities, Yusnaan and Luxerion.

Two other highlights for me:

-The way they portrayed the Chaos. Murky miasma at times, and that brilliant lifestream at the end.

The God Bhunivelze,” by rune33.

-Bhunivelze. HIS ART WAS SO COOL! There are times when the series makes the final bosses a chaotic mess (e.g. the Creator in FFIV the After Years), but Bhunivelze’s design was just so cool. I especially liked how he puppeted Hope, and how the ground rolled up behind him as the fight went on, Inception-style.

---

Length

Clocked in just under 67 hours. I’m sure it didn’t need to be that long, but I was having fun chasing down some Last Ones (not about that Last One-filled dungeon) and exploring side quests.

Felt about right. Not too long, not too short. I could’ve pushed to the end earlier if I’d wanted.

---

Replayability

Moderate. There’s a lot of room for mechanical improvement, but I feel like I got most of the story. I don’t really feel the urge to go back and try, say, Aeronite on hard mode. Or anything on hard mode lol.

---

A Brief Ranking of the Side FF Games It’s Just One Small Opinion Please Don’t Kill Me

1.Tactics Advance
2. X-2
3. XIII: Lightning Returns
4. XIII-2
5. IV: The After Years
6. Tactics A2
7. Tactics
8. VII: Crisis Core
9. II: Soul of Rebirth
10. X-2: Last Mission
11. VII: Dirge of Cerberus
12. XII: Revenant Wings

---

So that’s the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy!

I know it gets a bad rap relative to classics like FFVI and FFX. It’s not in that tip-top tier for me personally, but it’s right in the second tier for me as a franchise. Let me take a quick stab at how I feel about those franchises as a whole, sequels included:

TOP TIER: VI, IX, X, XIV
SECOND TIER: V, VIII, XIII
THIRD TIER: IV, VII, XII, XI
HISTORICAL VALUE TIER: I, II, III

Lightning and Serah are brilliant protagonists, top notch! Some of the side characters are as good as anyone in the FF series, especially Fang and Vanille. And perhaps the biggest surprise was how strong the sequels were! Innovative gameplay, interesting stories, risk-taking character arcs.

The series is a gem. I’m so happy I got to play it. And if you made it this far, bless your soul for reading. I appreciate you deeply.

---

Next time: a brief break from a non-XIV FF game. Around Halloween, I start Final Fantasy XV.