Lightning Returns Review Thread

Toth said:
I am curious if there will be any backlash for Toriyama considering average reviews for the title. Probably not but he is at fault for the quality if the title.
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Fan backlash has been growing from title to title. And finally many reviewers are also taking note.

Whether the company takes any action is another thing though. They can't ignore the criticism. However I hear in Japanese business culture employees stay with companies for life. Just look at Wada...many fuck ups buy still in a position of some power after being stripped of CEO.
 
MogCakes said:
I come from not only a story/aesthetic standpoint but a functional and structural/design standpoint. You cannot simply say 'explained away by similarities in all FF's' without explaining what exactly you're talking about. Be specific.
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I absolutely do think that FFXIII branches off from FFX-2 moreso than it does from FFXII (outside of the use of hunts/marks) but I'm mostly talking about the actual game design too. FFX has backtracking, plenty of sidequests, exploration, and an emphasis on abilities over statistics, not to mention a great deal of freedom once you obtain the airship.

FFXIII is a dump-points-into-the-bucket game in a way that FFX never is. You can try to point out similarities like e.g. the use of items/loot for some sort of equipment customization, but the comparison completely falls apart under any sort of scrutiny because the equipment systems are so vastly different and FFXIII's version of the same is really just equipment *leveling* rather than anything like customization (which goes along with FFXIII's heavy emphasis on stats over abilities).

This isn't even a "FFX did everything better than FFXIII" post - it's mostly a much better game, of course, but there's certain stuff (like balance/difficulty curve and the resulting level of challenge) that FFXIII blows FFX out of the water on (albeit at the expense of having a sense of freedom within the game).

Shinta was essentially trying to argue that if someone liked FFX they ought to like FFXIII, and, lol, no.
 
Perfo said:
Definitely vindicated. I expected the worse but it seems now the game is at least getting some love. I've seen lots of positive reviews, also an important to me like the one from eurogamer, a magazine usually very believable.

I'm happy.

Lightning, let's walk this last path in joy dismissing haters and lack of money-hatting to these magazines for the sake of Toriyama's happiness. This is the best trilogy and games of the generation and I'll make sure to enjoy everything of it.

I'm READY!
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Dude, you're crazy.

But the type of crazyness you can only applaud. Never change.
 
You guys mean Chronostasis right? Overclock is what you use to slow down time during battles. Chronostasis freezes time completely while running around the overworld.
 
Kagari said:
FF14.
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Sure if you want bad stories, characters and getting stuck in million of hours farming FATEs and doing the same stuff for over 600hrs by spending 50 euros + 12 each month for doing so. Game'ss stop being fun once you hit lvl 50.

FF14 it's a nice game, but no savior.
 
Toth said:
I am curious if there will be any backlash for Toriyama considering average reviews for the title. Probably not but he is at fault for the quality of the title.
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I'm going to guess that the reviews and sales for this game are about what they expected them to be at the time they decided to make it.
 
Asd202 said:
Wonder how people will react if when SE will announce the inevitable FFXV-2 helmed by Toriyama :P.
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I think old fans eventually and finally will just let it go and stop buying and caring for these games. It'll be for the best, for the franchise and people that still loves it.
 
Perfo said:
Sure if you want bad stories, characters and getting stuck in million of hours farming FATEs and doing the same stuff for over 600hrs by spending 50 euros + 12 each month for doing so. Game'ss stop being fun once you hit lvl 50.

FF14 it's a nice game, but no savior.
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Someone is salty.
 
Perfo said:
Sure if you want bad stories, characters and getting stuck in million of hours farming FATEs and doing the same stuff for over 600hrs by spending 50 euros + 12 each month for doing so. Game'ss stop being fun once you hit lvl 50.

FF14 it's a nice game, but no savior.
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Perfo, dumping on 14 isn't going to make LR any better.
 
badcrumble said:
I absolutely do think that FFXIII branches off from FFX-2 moreso than it does from FFXII (outside of the use of hunts/marks) but I'm mostly talking about the actual game design too. FFX has backtracking, plenty of sidequests, exploration, and an emphasis on abilities over statistics, not to mention a great deal of freedom once you obtain the airship.

FFXIII is a dump-points-into-the-bucket game in a way that FFX never is. You can try to point out similarities like e.g. the use of items/loot for some sort of equipment customization, but the comparison completely falls apart under any sort of scrutiny because the equipment systems are so vastly different and FFXIII's version of the same is really just equipment *leveling* rather than anything like customization (which goes along with FFXIII's heavy emphasis on stats over abilities).

This isn't even a "FFX did everything better than FFXIII" post - it's mostly a much better game, of course, but there's certain stuff (like balance/difficulty curve and the resulting level of challenge) that FFXIII blows FFX out of the water on (albeit at the expense of having a sense of freedom within the game).

Shinta was essentially trying to argue that if someone liked FFX they ought to like FFXIII, and, lol, no.
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XIII has backtracking, albeit much more limited than X. There are also sidequests in XIII, albeit they come in the form of c'ieth crests. Exploration? That is present in neither XIII nor X. Both have corridor environments, there is little exploration to be had. The airship amounts only to an area select screen in X, so it doesn't grant all that much freedom, and this goes to the backtracking point. I agree on X having more emphasis on individual abilities, but X also did not have the ATB system like X-2 and XIII do, as I mentioned before.

I'm not making the same argument that Shinta is, only that X and XIII are similar in many regards. This is something I don't think can be disputed.
 
By Metacritic on PS3 (most reviewed SKU):

FFXIII: 83
FFXIII-2: 79
LR:FFXIII: 68

Maybe they should make a fourth game and see if they can get into the 50's.
 
Perfo said:
I think old fans eventually and finally will just let it go and stop buying and caring for these games. It'll be for the best, for the franchise and people that still loves it.
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And, considering the sales trend this gen, do you think those old fans will be replaced? Or will the series dwindle into irrelevancy as a small and shrinking group of cheerleaders praise each new installment?

MogCakes said:
I'm not making the same argument that Shinta is, only that X and XIII are similar in many regards. This is something I don't think can be disputed.
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I haven't played X but plan to when the Vita HD version releases - I'll be interested to see how I feel about it, given lots of people seem to like it and dislike XIII. Shinta makes a good case for their similarity (although to stretch that to "therefore if you like one you should like the other" is absurd, though I didn't see Shinta argue that) and if I enjoy X it'll be a fun project to put my finger on why, given I loathed XIII.
 
Nirolak said:
By Metacritic on PS3 (most reviewed SKU):

FFXIII: 83
FFXIII-2: 79
LR:FFXIII: 68

Maybe they should make a fourth game and see if they can get into the 50's.
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FF: Dirge of Lightning? A 3rd person shooter set in
Paris
. Serah was kidnapped by terrorist and Lightning goes on a quest to get her back.
 
Perfo said:
Sure if you want bad stories, characters and getting stuck in million of hours farming FATEs and doing the same stuff for over 600hrs by spending 50 euros + 12 each month for doing so. Game'ss stop being fun once you hit lvl 50.

FF14 it's a nice game, but no savior.
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You get a lot of flak around these parts, but I am going to go ahead and agree with you on this one. It stopped being fun for me after the month trial period for the very reasons you specified. I could not justify paying every month for the boring quests, ugly armor, horrid UI, spammy combat, and horrendous Duty Finder wait times. Gorgeous world, though.
 
Toth said:
I am curious if there will be any backlash for Toriyama considering average reviews for the title. Probably not but he is at fault for the quality of the title.
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I don't think SEJ gives a single fuck about what western fans of the series think about Toriyama or their opinion in general about the quality of the series (with the exception of XIV).I think they care much more about the opinions of theirJapanese fanbase and if i'm not mistaken Japanese fans generally liked the XIII series.
 
FryHole said:
And, considering the sales trend this gen, do you think those old fans will be replaced? Or will the series dwindle into irrelevancy as a small and shrinking group of cheerleaders praise each new installment?
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It'll be a solid 500k-1.5ml franchise like certain ATLUS games. Better this way.
 
badcrumble said:
Progression in X isn't particularly linear at all - there's plenty of actual branching, there are the things like teleport/friend spheres (and backtracking along the Sphere Grid) that make it pretty clear that this comparison isn't a useful one.
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It uses points earned in battle to progress along a mostly linear grid with some branching paths along the way that are blocked by locks instead of your place in the story. Given how many of the lock spheres can only be obtained during certain points in the story the impacts of that distinction are limited.

There are teleport spheres, friend spheres, etc. as you said, but all of those items are fairly rare and as such are rarely used at least until end game when I believe you can farm certain types. FF XIII actually does better than the sphere grid by allowing you to progress along multiple paths simultaneously while keeping your place and without needing to waste time (and points or items) backtracking. The only thing you need to worry about is having adequate CP.

The sphere grid is slightly more flexible than the crystarium system in that everyone is on the same grid and so theoretically can obtain the same skills, but it makes that so time-consuming to do that I would estimate less than 1/10th of 1% of the people who played the game explored it much.
 
MogCakes said:
XIII has backtracking, albeit much more limited than X. There are also sidequests in XIII, albeit they come in the form of c'ieth crests. Exploration? That is present in neither XIII nor X. Both have corridor environments, there is little exploration to be had. The airship amounts only to an area select screen in X, so it doesn't grant all that much freedom, and this goes to the backtracking point. I agree on X having more emphasis on individual abilities, but X also did not have the ATB system like X-2 and XIII do, as I mentioned before.

I'm not making the same argument that Shinta is, only that X and XIII are similar in many regards. This is something I don't think can be disputed.
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And what I'm saying is that outside of the aesthetic similarities, they're similar, but only in the sense that all FFs are similar to each other. The execution of anything else they might seem to have in common is so wildly different in approach and quality that only a very surface-level analysis can call a lot of these things genuine similarities.
 
Perfo said:
I think old fans eventually and finally will just let it go and stop buying and caring for these games. It'll be for the best, for the franchise and people that still loves it.
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There aren't enough new fans of XIII to support the series in its current form. 1-2mil sales is not enough.

And XIII has damaged the brands appeal so attracting newer fans is now a bigger challenge.
 
Kagari said:
I do not care for MMOs but I love FF14.
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Yeah, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I actually do like MMOs (played FFXI and WoW for years), but have been unsubbed to XIV for a few months now. That's not uncommon with me and MMOs, though because I get tired of the end game after a while. The journey to 50 was great, but then my excitement for the game kind of stalls out when I realize how much grinding I need to do to get new gear and such. I always love MMOs initially, but then get tired of them - that's why I prefer the singleplayer entries in the series. I can always go back to them later and love them just as much as the first time. That wouldn't really happen with MMOs.
 
badcrumble said:
And what I'm saying is that outside of the aesthetic similarities, they're similar, but only in the sense that all FFs are similar to each other. The execution of anything else they might seem to have in common is so wildly different in approach and quality that only a very surface-level analysis can call a lot of these things genuine similarities.
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Disagree. The areas and themes present in them as well as the progression (both fully 3D, both corridors) mark these two games as uniquely similar.
 
SoraanTribal said:
Yeah, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I actually do like MMOs (played FFXI and WoW for years), but have been unsubbed to XIV for a few months now. That's not uncommon with me and MMOs, though because I get tired of the end game after a while. The journey to 50 was great, but then my excitement for the game kind of stalls out when I realize how much grinding I need to do to get new gear and such. I always love MMOs initially, but then get tired of them - that's why I prefer the singleplayer entries in the series. I can always go back to them later and love them just as much as the first time. That wouldn't really happen with MMOs.
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The end game of ARR is absolute shit.
 
Sadly, the mediocre audio production is a major distraction. You explore and reexplore the game's four zones as Lightning, who usually travels alone, with Hope chattering in your ear via transponder so frequently, you wish he'd just shut up. He drones on so often, in fact, that he's constantly cut off mid-sentence whenever a battle suddenly occurs, when you trigger a cutscene by walking into a new area, or when you engage another character in order to complete quests. In the most extreme examples, Hope cuts off his own dialogue, though even when he isn't the one providing his own interruptions, lines are constantly shut down mid-sentence, sometimes to be repeated, and sometimes to be forgotten.
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Ahahaahahahahaha
 
Geesh, this trilogy...

Now that its over....its time for SquareEnix to make a Final Fantasy game.

I have hope for FFXVI (XV may be fine, but those troubled development cycles only cause more issues).

If they can give us a FF like FF14:ARR not a mmo, ill be back on the bandwagon.

Until then, I will look for this in the bargain bin.
 
Perfo said:
It'll be a solid 500k-1.5ml franchise like certain ATLUS games. Better this way.
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Fair enough. Well, let's hope they can survive on that for their flagship brand while maintaining a level of polish that keeps sales even at that reduced level, eh?
 
SoraanTribal said:
Yeah, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I actually do like MMOs (played FFXI and WoW for years), but have been unsubbed to XIV for a few months now. That's not uncommon with me and MMOs, though because I get tired of the end game after a while. The journey to 50 was great, but then my excitement for the game kind of stalls out when I realize how much grinding I need to do to get new gear and such. I always love MMOs initially, but then get tired of them - that's why I prefer the singleplayer entries in the series. I can always go back to them later and love them just as much as the first time. That wouldn't really happen with MMOs.
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Hmm well I play only with GAF people so it has become more enjoyable that way.
 
Kagari said:
Keep digging that hole.
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That's common opinion as far as I know.

LiK said:
Perfo is getting desperate.
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I'm just realizing the series has been killed - if has been killed for real - by its fanbase and not by bad games. I guess I gotta deal with it, a series can't live for 50 yrs, people just get tired of it in the long run. A good game will not change anything. Well... I hope a new franchise will rise someday, somewhere, able to replace this one. Sad day.
 
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