Lightning Returns Playing through LR for the first time: what was your initial reaction?

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Autzerain

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FFXIII was my first entry in the Final Fantasy series and what brought me to this site. I am now making my way through Lightning Returns and decided to start a blog in which to post about my thoughts about the trilogy and its characters, settings, and more.

Final Days with Light: A Lightning Returns playthrough blog

I've really enjoyed my time in the XIII universe and I wanted to keep a kind of memoir of my experience with the games before the saga comes to an end. Please feel free to offer suggestions on things you'd like to see and/or read about. More importantly, come share what you thought of the game in your first opening hours!

One of the first things that struck me about this game is how different it feels from the first two XIII titles. There's a sense of freedom in the new control style of Lightning that I really cherish. It's just fun to move and interact with the world as her.

I'm only about a quarter of the way in myself, so please hide/avoid spoilers for now.
 
I'm one of the rare people who enjoys the FFXIII saga, but for me LR was easily the weakest game. I love Lightning as a character but I hated the clock feature of the game. Having to constantly freeze time and micromanage everything made it a really stressful game to play - particularly if, like me, you want to get the platinum trophy. Games with easily missable trophies annoy me at the best of times, but being made to feel like every second counts... Was infuriating.
 
I really, really enjoyed Lightning Returns, as well as the other two XIII games. While I still think XIII-2 is the most concise and well thought out in terms of gameplay and design, LR offers something really interesting and unique. Whereas most people felt the clock was restrictive, I felt it was freeing.

In games like X-2 for example (which has no timer, but separates itself into chapters, each with missable quests) I feel boxed in, and end up playing really slowly. The combination of having all the time in the world, but needing to finish missable content that's required to get the best ending, makes it frustrating when I get stuck on something. Since there's no reason to move on, I just end up bashing my head against the wall. And by the time I do conquer whatever I was stuck on, I often don't even want to play anymore.

Likewise, since Lightning Returns adds a timer to that, I went into the game expecting that I probably wouldn't 100% it on my first playthrough. It's designed to play through multiple times. What that meant was that -despite being timed- I felt I could take my time; after all... if I won't likely 100% it my first time, there's no pressure to even try is there? Instead I could just enjoy whatever I was doing in each moment. That made the timer engaging and interesting, rather than frustrating and constricting.

Ironically, there actually is far more than enough time to do everything on your first playthrough, if you just budget it a bit. So the game is simultaneously freeing because you initially don't think you can 100% it your first time, and lenient because you eventually start to realize that you actually can. You have tons of extra time you can waste, and that's without even spamming Chronostasis.

I don't know if my logic makes sense to anyone else, lol. But the point is that it really made the game interesting and fun to play. It has problems, but those might fall into spoiler territory, so I'll leave it there for now.
 
I was also disappointed by the clock as otherwise the design, soundtrack and possibilty.
Still never defeated LR, or FFXIII. But finished FFXIII-2 no problem.
Whatever console gets a HD even HDier and gets all three onto one disc is the one I'll be playing!
Have gone back and back in LR. Not got Trophy stats to hand.
Going to be sometime before getting a PDF, but PS3 didn't exactly leave FF in as bad a shape as people could attempt to believe.
 
I gave it a shot and I never finished it. I remember I got to where you tend to a wounded chocobo and you get him healthy.
 
"these outfits aren't skimpy enough"
 
I expected it to not be very good, and was blown away on how much they improved upon the trilogy with LR. No more hallways, but a nice explorable world. A fun combat system, despite only Lightning. Good sidequests, which I expected as much as a good open world. Was a very pleasant surprise, I try recommending it to people..but most are still stung from 13 :(
 
funny thing is i own the game as am huge fan of the series just haven't too much time to invest into yet, so its just sitting there >_<
 
Graphics weren't the best, and the time was kind of stressful. But it was still fun :). Loved the new combat system and the open world. On easy mode (im a newb) I had 7 days left because I was constantly freezing time.
 
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I was open to embracing the game, the games Doomsday clock mechanic never bothered me. I think what initially struck me was how hard it became at points - Each area seems to have certain chapters and upon the last few I certainly noticed a difficulty spike.

I like the idea of the concept, Being a guardian of God sent down to the world to save people on the last days is interesting but the problem is the role/character simply wasn't Lighting - Which considering how the 1st game was focused on the breaking of her stoic attitude, this Lightning simply seemed stale and less human. I also think how they handled the Godly presence in this game was underwhelming - Maybe having insight into their intentions would have lessened the grand presence of their being but I was left feeling not much about the antagonist of this game in general - But that is something the XIII series has struggled with in general!

I enjoyed the focus on having 4 open diverse environments, each was a joy to explore and succeeded in having their own feel and identity.

I think the highlight for me was the encounters with past characters seeing how they'd been after such a long time.

I didn't enjoy the focus on Sidequests, they honestly felt like 70% of the game. Most of them were pretty generic and I didn't like how they were kind of mandatory to upgrade the stats of Lightning. I was more compelled with the games story events but felt I had to constantly withhold from continuing due to the difficulty spike in the story advancement - Which the game made you have to do these sidequests in order to be able to take on the task of the next story event.

One of the other highlights was very unexpected, it it's the sidequest where you have to eliminate every quantity of monster in the world, it was just such a different concept to anything I've experienced and I found it pretty compelling.

Overall I found it to be a decent game, certainly a mixed bag but I'm glad it exists - Even if I wasn't particularly fond of its ending.
 
Autzerain, that's actually incredible I didn't notice! This was your first Final Fantasy game? Envious! I am nothing but that!
I still haven't beaten it and put over five hundred hours into the game.
When I really need to get away from it all, it's Lightning Returns I put on.
 
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