Final Fantasy 13-3: Lightning Returns

It's taken me a while, but I'm finally closing this Final Fantasy 13 saga of mine. I've previously written two other articles about FF 13 and 13-2, neither of which were really reviews but critiques on one or more things that baffled me about the direction Square had been taking the Final Fantasy series. This one will be no different, and more of a combination of the previous two.

Final Fantasy 13 I outlined just how horrifically bad the battle system was and that became the most popular post on this blog. 13-2 I went into great detail the many glaring plot holes I saw as I went. I picked apart what each game did the worst essentially and what stood out to me as really questionable. With 13-3 though...I honestly can't point to one thing, and that's not a good thing. Literally everything about this game leaves me scratching my head asking, why? Why did they choose to do this? Ultimately, I ask myself, why does this game even exist?

I think I will focus this blog on the main character Lightning. I've discussed in the past how terribly vexed I am about this character. How she can have 3 entire games about her and yet I know next to nothing about her at the same time. How is it that Cait Sith from FF7 has a deeper and more meaningful character arc than someone who's had 3 games devoted to her? She has no arc what-so-ever. Hilariously, the opening cinema of FF13-3 explains how God has taken her emotions away for her to complete her current quest. To which...if I had been drinking water, immediately spewed it at my TV in shock and dismay. Lightning, for the uninitiated has NEVER had any emotions to speak of to begin with. God took nothing away at all. Her entire character amounts to protect her sister....the end. She has no personal goals or needs. She has no sense of humor, no personality, she is completely a blank slate.

What vexes me so about her though isn't so much that she has literally no character to speak of, or that they had 3 games to develop her and didn't, no what vexes me is the creators of the games have all spoken out about how much they are going to miss working on games with Lightning. Interviews with them they go into great detail how attached they became to her, developing her, and going into her life and struggles etc, etc. Here I sit with my mouth agape reading this and wondering...what am I missing here? What is there about this character that has them nearly in tears having to part with her after this game? I am at a complete loss for words on this. Here are some quotes:

"We would never feel sick of these characters or these worlds," Kitase-san says. "Don't worry, we love them and we have an attachment to this whole story and characters. But in terms of this story, the whole Lightning saga story, this is going to be the end, and we're going to be moving on and not continuing in any sort of way. But the characters, since we do love them and do have an attachment to them, we're hoping there might be ways where they can make like a cameo, or something like that. For example, in Final Fantasy XIV, we're going to be doing like a collaboration with that game, and Lightning will make an appearance within the game. So we're hoping that there will be an opportunity to showcase them in some other form."

And this little ditty:


"What sets Lightning apart from the other [Final Fantasy hero] characters is that you don't see very many female heroines being the main character," says Kitase-san, "of course apart from maybe Terra from Final Fantasy VI. So that's definitely something that sets Lightning apart. She's not only a woman, but she's also very strong and also very cool, and she can put up a good fight. That's definitely one of her positive features. Even outside of the series, I got to go see the show floor at E3 and at Gamescom, and looking at other publishers I noticed that Lightning is probably one of the only female characters that pushed out in the forefront for their game titles. Of course, we had Lara Croft when Tomb Raider was about to be released, but now that that has launched, Lightning is one of the only female characters that is out there being the face of a title."

This one is my favorite:

“When I was making the game, I wasn’t really thinking about it, that I was going to have to say goodbye to her at the end of the process,” Abe told IGN through a translator. “But when I was playing the game during testing, when I reached the very end of the story, for the first time I felt a kind of weight. All the time that we’ve spent to create her from scratch and develop and progress her, it dawned on me there that this was the end, and that was an emotional moment.”

See what I mean? This is all from the creators of the game. Is anyone who played the games THIS emotionally attached to Lightning? I can't imagine how. I couldn't find the interview I wanted, one that I read around the time this game came out, but I recall reading how much time they said they spent developing her character, her background, her likes and dislikes, how she ticks, etc. Of which, NONE of that actually made it into any of the games and it floors me how that can happen. It's almost like how people describe their favorite color and why. No one ever really gives a great reason for it, you can't express it all that well, you just say that you like it, the look of it pleases you in some way. I swear that is the extent to which we have Lightning. They made something pretty to look at, and that was it. Then they try to go into how much depth she has, and that she's the female "Cloud" and us gamers scratch our heads and try to figure out what the hell they are talking about.

Let me please destroy the comparison to Cloud if I may as well. Now to be perfectly fair the creators made the comparison in terms of "popularity" not to literally put boobs on Cloud and call it a day. The internet however has maintained that she's just like Cloud! Yet, offer zero reasons as to how this comparison makes sense. Cloud begins his journey as a mercenary who is only out for money. He makes jokes, snide comments, dresses in drag, he's full of personality. Then he grows attached to the quest of his comrades and eventually befriends them. So much so, that he'll risk his life for them. But then tragedy strikes one of his closest friends and he couldn't save her. This causes him to go into severe depression and he doesn't want to take on the responsibilities of leading his group anymore as he feels he is unfit to save anyone. His friends convince him otherwise as the quest progresses and Cloud gains a renewed sense of hope in himself. THIS is a clear character arc. This is also a very cursory glance at the depth to which Cloud was written and presented. There is so much more nuance into how he developed, how he thinks of himself, and how he views others thinking of him and I could go on all day about it. We were told all of this about him though in the game, he was very well developed. We know his mom, we know his friends as a kid, we know his hopes and dreams, we know how he reacts to tragic events and how he deals with stress. He is very well fleshed out.

Lightning though? Uh...we know she wants to protect her sister and she doesn't really give a damn about the other people in her group either. She's very cold, she's all about the mission, whatever that may be and that's really it, that's all we can say about her. She's also exceptionally gullible as we see in the first game the villain outright tells her what he needs her and her group to do, and she DOES it essentially helping him succeed at destroying Cocoon. Only slightly after that does she attempt to save it, but she was helpless to do so and her friends had to be sacrificed to stop it from being destroyed. GREAT job Lightning...In this third game she's also unquestionably following the orders of God to round up souls for a new world. Now I haven't beaten the game yet...but I did discover that God is the final boss...so clearly it was being evil in some way or another and once again our gullible heroine was helping evil apparently.

I'm not sure I've ever played a game where they wrote so much and said so very little about the main character except for those games where you create a character and it has literally no character at all. It's dumbfounding that a company like Square can make characters as profoundly deep as those seen in earlier FF games or Xenogears and then have an entire trilogy devoted to what amounts to nothing more than eye candy. That's Lightning's character, eye candy, and this game pushes that notion to the forefront. The battle system is designed around changing her outfits for fucks sake.

Even characters that didn't have any depth to them in previous efforts like Squall in FF8 still had some notion of character in how they reacted to problems. Squall's character arc went from not caring what happened to Rinoa to risking his life for her. The game doesn't do a great job expressing WHY they become close as Squall's dialogue amounts to "...." and Rinoa incoherently goes from wanting to jump Seifer's bones to immediately wanting Squall's wang after they presume Seifer to be dead...but the point is Squall does go through a character change in that he is no longer self centered. What change can we say about Lightning? That she went from emotionless to God stole my emotions so now I'm even MORE emotionless? That about sums it up right there honestly and really this is not only the most glaring flaw about this third entry, but definitely the overriding flaw of the entire 13 series of games.

*If it looks like plastic, smells like plastic, and tastes like plastic, then you just ate plastic...wtf is wrong with you?*

Final Fantasy 13 - Battle System

While my opinion of Final Fantasy 13 overall is not entirely a favorable one, I also do not think it to be a bad game or bad by Final Fantasy standards in general. With that said, I do think it has the worst battle system of any Final Fantasy game in the main series (yes worse than 12).

For the uninitiated, Final Fantasy 13 utilizes what is called the Paradigm system. This means nothing without explanation of course. What it means though, is that each character has set actions under a specific title given to it, or easier explained they are temporary job classes that can be changed on the fly. Those jobs are, Commando, Medic, Ravenger, Sabatour, Synergist and Sentinel. The goal of the system is to continually keep your party in check using the appropriate skill-set needed at a specific time to either keep your party alive, or ensure the enemies stagger meter keeps going. The main goal of every fight is to raise the enemy's stagger meter to the max, break it, and then kill the enemy quickly.

While on the surface this system seems interesting, it falls apart in various ways. The first major issue I have with the system is what it actually stands for. In this game you can only control one character, that being your leader. The remainder of your team is controlled by the AI and does actions assigned to the paradigm they have set currently. So the paradigm system in the end has one and only one major function, and that is to give the AI only a very specific set of options to use and hope it does what you want. While the AI is limited, you are also unfortunately very limited to your own role and what you decide to do as the leader. To make this easier to understand why this system is not only horrible and tediously restrictive, but also to show how poorly it was implemented I will break up the issues I have found by class.

Commando: I'll start out with the game's least offender of problems. The commando class is essentially the Warrior class allowing the computer to use basically attack and blitz, blitz being an attack that affects many enemies. It is entirely straightforward and keeps the enemies stagger meter up, but does not increase it. How does the AI screw this up you ask? That answer is simple. If I want a team with two warriors, com/com/doesn't matter, the AI will attack whatever enemy I am not attacking, which is fine in some cases I may indeed want that. But I have NO choice in the matter. I can't further edit the Commando class to have the AI combo attack the same thing I am for some swift justice. Only if it is the ONLY enemy left on the field will the AI agree that it should also attack the same enemy I am.

This is just the first phase of the battle system telling me I am not allowed to decide how I want to play the game.

Ravenger: My issues with the Ravenger class stem less from the class itself and more from how the battle system is designed overall. But don't get me wrong the AI still manages to screw this up anyway. This class is the Mage essentially, and only casts offensive magic. Every enemy in the game has some weakness or immunity to one magic or another, however, the AI in all it's wisdom has no fucking clue what that weakness is unless you cast Libra. The game forces you to cast Libra JUST so the AI knows how not to be a retarded mess. Once Libra is cast the AI now knows the weakness, but it's a waste of a turn if you ask me. I KNOW the enemy's weakness 90% of the time without Libra, I've played RPG's since I was a wee lad so these games tend to make it obvious. The mere fact that because I cannot control my party means I have to play teacher for every new enemy just so the AI does what I want it to do pisses me off to no end.

So after Libra, how does the AI still manage to be a dumbass? Well it does manage this, oh yes it does. After an enemy becomes staggered you are given the ability to launch the enemy in the air preventing it from doing any damage at all. Now, I don't know about you but I want this to happen ALL the time. Here's the rub, Ravenger's only ability to launch an enemy is Aeroga (or however it's spelled) point is the AI will tend to not use this spell when I want him to, you know all the damn time after stagger. If I COULD control him that's what I would have him do. Even if the enemy is not weak to Wind, I don't care, I want that beast floating around till it's dead.

But I don't get what I want do I, no I'm playing Final Fantasy 13, the game on rails.

Sentinel: The Sentinel class is a defensive class that allows the user to literally just not die. It provokes surrounding enemies to attack only the sentinel in which next to no damage occurs. Oddly, this is the only class the AI does not manage to screw up, but I still hate it. I hate the idea that I need it (and yes you actually have to use this class). I've played countless RPG's and never was it my strategic prerogative to defend, ever. There was no need for it, even if my mage ran out of magic I'd still prefer it to attack for the measly 15 damage it could do or throw out some items. But again, I'm playing FF13 so I don't get to play the way I want to play.

The enemies in this game after a while literally force you to put up a Sentinel and either heal, or buff with the other two classes just to survive long enough to cast offensive spells. Now this is great for bosses, it actually makes you think you're outsmarting them, but when you have long 7 hour stretches of fighting enemies and waiting for the retarded AI to cast the CORRECT defensive buff (read Synergist section) on every fucking encounter, you start to want to kill yourself. Seriously, it annoyed me that much.

Sabatour: Sabatour is the class that casts debuff effects on enemies, ie slow, pain, etc. This one is funny to me. My annoyance with this class comes from my very own need to develop my own strategy in a game I've come to realize simply won't let me. The Sabatour class is the only class other than Commando that also keeps the stagger meter going without dropping briskly while having the added benefit of causing debuffs on the enemy. I love this, and hate this, here's why....the STUPID FUCKING AI.

So often I'll find myself in a tight bind in this game, nearly dead after some super attack the AI did. I want to heal, but I don't want to lose my stagger meter, and I wouldn't mind debuffing the enemy in the process. Simple solution, medic/medic/sabatour. This works great, fabulous even...until...until the enemy IS actually debuffed. I'm not fully healed yet, and the AI decides to stop doing ANYTHING because it figures the enemy is debuffed enough.

Actual conversation with the TV

"NO NO NO AI, I want you to keep casting slow before I lose my stagger meter! What are you fucking doing???"

So once an enemy is debuffed the sabatour class is actually completely useless and you may as well forget you have one paradigm setting. Oh yes, did I mention you only have 6 different settings to choose from? *sigh*

Synergist: I've saved my most hated two classes for last. Synergist is the opposite of Sabatour, it buffs your party. There are many problems with this class, I'm not sure where to begin. I'll discuss how the AI is programmed I guess. I've played this game for 40 hours now, and routinely see how the AI operates, and I just don't fucking understand its reasoning. My party is Lighting (leader), Hope, and Fang. Hope is the Synergist if you didn't know, and the rules of this game state that if your leader dies, you lose, got it? Good.

So the AI when it first casts buffs casts them on who first? Take a wild guess. NOPE not the Leader! Well what about the Synergist himself? Fuck NO! The order of buff, and this never changes, is to cast it on the third useless character FIRST for no god damn reason. I don't CARE if the third character dies, the game ends if I fucking die! I wouldn't even mind if the Synergist buffed himself so he survives and buffs my leader. But NO he buffs himself last, which makes even LESS sense considering he has the lowest HP and can die very quickly. Again, if I were in control this would never happen. You want to know the shittiest part? Say I have Com/Syn/Sent up, guess who he casts protect on first? The FUCKING SENTINEL!! What sense does this make?

There is more...

You literally get no control in this game, have I mentioned this before? The only control you get is to tell the AI what set of spells or attacks he is allowed to use at a given time. Keyword, SET of spells or attacks. Here we have the Synergist, whom has...how do I put this...an ASSFUCK set of spells that you do NOT get to decide the order in which they are cast.

Actual conversation to the TV

"Hope...Hope! Cast protect on Lighting Hope...Anytime would be great...No I didn't want shell on Fang...I don't want shell at all. Nope didn't want Veil either. What the fuck does that even do (I found out later, and really don't give a shit about Veil). Waste more time please..."

That was a normal encounter folks, one of many...This happened through all of Chapter 10 I'd say.

So here's the deal, instead of allowing the user to further customize the Synergist (or any) class telling it specifically what order you want what, or to exclude this or that, you get NO choices at all and are simply subject to the AI's whims at all times. They will literally go through the order of buffing you with every god damn spell they have. It is a waste of time!

Medic: This is my most hated class for the AI to control. It encompasses everything about how the AI and battle system functions that makes it completely atrocious and every time I see the AI use it I ask myself this, "Why can't I control what my party does?"

Oh boy here we go.

So the healing class, probably the most important class in any RPG in the hands of an AI I can't tell what to do. In Final Fantasy 12 you could tell it what to do. You could specifically set its program to revive, to heal at a certain % of health or whatever, it was your call. The Medic however, is designed thus, to heal whatever character has the lowest hit points at the time. This is a detrimental design flaw, and really the only one that actually breaks the game sometimes. Bosses and some powerful enemies have devastating attacks that will send the whole team to red. You have to HOPE and PRAY that the character in your party with the LEAST HP is your Leader. Yeah that's right, you want your leader to be on the verge of death so the AI will heal it and you'll survive. That's a perfect world though, as I've had countless battles where the AI will decide to heal another character with lower hit points all for the sake of who the fuck cares. So my leader sits there dying, and often does with the next blow while the AI thought it to be a wonderful idea to heal the THIRD character whom means NOTHING at this juncture.

Why is it programmed this way? Wouldn't you ALWAYS want the leader to be alive? Wouldn't you always want it to have top priority? Hell at LEAST heal the leader if it is blinking RED, but fuck that, the third character has less HP, heal that instead. Stupid....stupid....stupid!

Here's another fun flaw in the Medic. The raise spell. What does it do? Brings back a ko'ed character. Fucking useless in a game where if your leader dies you lose the game. So the raise spell doesn't work on one of three characters. OH WAIT! It doesn't work on TWO of three characters either. That's right, the Medic himself also has no fucking use for the raise spell....cause he'd be dead.

It gets better. The raise spell is further useless to the AI because it will never fucking cast it unless BOTH remaining characters have near full HP. I have seen it go through 4 turns making sure both he and I were literally at MAX HP until it used raise to bring the third character back. WHAT....THE.....FUCK?

Conclusion: The sad thing is all of this could have been easily avoided if you were allowed to further customize how the AI operated in their respective class. While my personal preference would be to never ever let the AI control my party anyway, I would have liked more options, more choices. The way FF13 plays now I feel like I have no control, and I'm just paradigm shifting simply to stay alive and allow the battle to play out all by itself. There is no sense of accomplishment, no sense of actual strategy either. The AI just comes out and spams all its debuffs and all its buffs because it was programmed that way. Instead of having strategic uses for any of these classes you are locked in to simply just watching shit happen, oh and casting Libra to make sure the AI doesn't fuck up more.

The intentions of this battle system are clear, it was built for noobs, 5 year olds, people who like games on auto-pilot. This was not built for gamers, not built for RPG players used to setting up sound strategic options against tough foes. There is no sense of accomplishment with this system. There is never a critical moment where you saved yourself or your party because of a decision you made. There are no decisions to make in this game, there's only what the AI chooses to do. Oh, and did I mention you also have an option called "auto battle." Prove to me this game wasn't made for noobs and I'll mail you a cookie.

*lamest battle system ever*