2026-1 - Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII - ★★☆☆☆

https://store.steampowered.com/app/345350/LIGHTNING_RETURNS_FINAL_FANTASY_XIII/

★★☆☆☆
Playtime: 45 hours

There are some genuinely interesting ideas in here. Then there's the rest of it.

every quest in Lightning Returns: NPC: Got a square hole here. Lightning: A square hole... that means we need a square peg. Hope: Light, you need a square peg that fits inside of the hole. [find square peg] L: This peg. It's got four sides. H: Light, that's the square peg that fits inside that hole.

— Iro | Obsidian Moonshine (@iro.obsidianmoonshine.com) January 26, 2026 at 8:23 PM

This is primo late 360/PS3, in a way that I only found charming for 5-8 hours. The game never shuts up with its condescending tutorial/guidance dialogue and makes a lot of assumptions about how much you want to dress up Lightning in sexy cosplay. Which, fair, I guess; presumably most people buying the third game in the FFXIII subseries actually do care enough about Lightning that they'd be excited about not only her name being in the title but also the ability to make her wear a silly fake beard during every cutscene.

...I cannot believe the entire weapon upgrade system and most of the skill upgrade system are gated behind NG+. I think I have had enough of games that expect you to play through multiple times.

I was much more interested in the setting's premise. Time has broken, everyone has lived in a weird semi-immortal stasis for 500 years, and everyone knows the apocalypse is upon us as the void begins swallowing everything. The city of Luxerion is run by a religious cult praying for the end times, while Yusnaan has descended into pure nihilistic hedonism.

(Aside: this is weirdly similar to an original RPG campaign premise I cobbled together a few years ago; I even ended up using an image of Nova Crysalia in the outline doc. That's the main reason I was curious, honestly.)

Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game because of its haunting atmosphere, with the moon hanging ominously in the sky and NPCs running the entire spectrum of reactions to their impending doom. I was hoping for some of that in Lightning Returns, and there's very little of it. What is there is mostly in the sidequests involving children, since there's some pathos to be mined from the "actually it would suck to be 10 for 500 years" idea.

The time mechanics are the most interesting part by far. Battles do not give you experience points, but fill up your Time Juice, which has various versatile uses. You can stop the clock for a few minutes, teleport to waypoints so you can skip waiting for the train, heal up, stop time in battles, et cetera. You could really do something with the concept with a bit more iteration.

I mean hell, you know what, just make a new Valkyrie Profile game Square. I'd be more into that.