Lightning Returns Blends Final Fantasy With Dark Souls

[Cognimancer]

Lightning Returns Blends Final Fantasy With Dark Souls

Looks like Square Enix is taking cues from its peers to reinvent Final Fantasy.

The Final Fantasy series has achieved its impressive lifespan by keeping things fresh. Each new installment plays with the mechanics of a genre that would otherwise be excruciatingly familiar. The upcoming second sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, dubbed Lightning Returns, brings the series' combat to a whole new level of action-RPG. In fact, the game's producer thinks the gameplay might feel right at home in the unforgiving world of Dark Souls.

"If I were to describe the gameplay," says producer Yoshinori Kitase, "I'd say that there are some elements with the severity of [something like] Dark Souls." The similarities are visible in what we've seen of the combat - gone are the days of waiting for your turn to attack. In Lightning Returns you'll be fighting solo with full control over your movements. Monsters will have weak points to exploit and can be staggered to buy yourself precious seconds of safety.

Meanwhile, Lightning Returns seems to be borrowing other classic game mechanics as well. The game's story must be completed in seven in-game days, so time management is critical - but, with successful completion of missions, that timer can be pushed to thirteen days. There are also limited inventory slots, forcing you to carefully manage your gear. So it's a Final Fantasy game in the clothes of Dark Souls, with a dash of Majora's Mask and Resident Evil. If Square Enix can pull it off, that's one heck of a recipe for greatness.

Source: Kotaku [http://www.famitsu.com/news/201306/20035283.html]

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[Gearhead mk2]

So Lightning is gonna die over and over and over and over again.

Sounds good to me!

OT: This does actually sound pretty cool, but I doubt they can do it. High hopes, low expectations.

 

[schtingah]

But I like Final Fanatasy -because- of its turn-based combat .

Oh well, here's hoping they can make it work but colour me pessimistic.

 

[crimson sickle2]

This doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I'm a little surprised they decided to even make this game, but whatever...I can't think of a single time that limited inventory in a RPG was anything other than annoying, and I doubt the in-game day limit will work with an action-rpg. Day limits have worked a lot in the past with slower, story-based games, but action-rpg's tend to have some of the longest learning curves. I'm guessing time only moves forward with story events, or else I don't see it working. However, as the captcha says: "sky's the limit," maybe with her new outfit Lightning can transform like Gundam Wing and just jet through the game and that solves the time issue.

 

[piinyouri]

Sounds like something different.
Cool.
This along with the new Final Fantasy (what is it....17 now?) actually look fairly decent.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Ya know, I'm totally okay with them doing that.

With a franchise that's been going on for this long I would think they would want to do new things with it so it's not too boring or easy. I have no idea how this is all gonna work, but I'm hoping the end results are awesome.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Dear Square Enix:

I'm pretty sure the reason people played Final Fantasy was for the story and interesting characters, and not for the gameplay. I mean, really, who cares about how combat if it can be easily broken and doesn't scale with your progression - People just want a fantastic story and deep, interesting characters to come first, dammit!

 

[CyberMachinist]

Well I wonder how this is gonna turn out, The main FF series has left it's turn based roots, what happens next only time will tell.

Is it me or am i starting to see a trend here? First it was dragons dogma, then it was that indie game(can't remember it's name), now this taking ques from DS, It's like metroidvania rising, back in its time, except this time it's about a difficult game instead of a genre.

 

[Shadefyre]

The biggest thing keeping me from being too interested in this is that it'll probably be a sequel to XIII-2, and I'd have to slog through one mediocre JRPG and one okay one to get the story stuff. Which is kind of the focus of Final Fantasy.

EDIT: Then again, I like Dark Souls and can probably take killing giant monsters with skill over all the backstory.

 

[Baresark]

I'll believe it when I see it. The truth is, I don't think they even know what Dark Souls combat is like. They may think it's like Dark Souls because you are by yourself with full control over your character in third person melee combat, but Dark Souls is so much more than that. It's strategy and knowing how to play your character. I also somehow thing the customization is gonna be far far far more limited than the souls games offer up. But we'll see. Anything would be in improvement at this point. The truth is, the biggest improvement would be them firing everyone who worked on FFX and FFXIII. Those people are hacks.

 

[Abomination]

I can't see this happening, mostly because Dark Souls had relatively practical armour that effected how your character behaved.

This is Final Fantasy, practical armour is as alien to them as non-broody protagonists.

 

[Dark Knifer]

So people getting a bit annoyed about it not being turn based combat?

It's not like you have like 14 or so final fantasies with turn based combat you could play and it doesn't mean the end of turn based combat for the games, just not for this one.

Hopefully this game is good but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[WeepingAngels]

This sounds terrible.

- Action RPG, I prefer turn based and we don't seem to get very many these days
- Unforgiving difficulty, no thanks.
- Limited inventory, never liked a limited inventory
- Time limit, no thanks. I absolutely hate time limits.

Sounds like this game isn't for a Final Fantasy fan like me.

 

[Therumancer]

Sounds pretty awful to me. People have been telling Square for years that we basically want a classic, turn based, RPG, updated for new technology. Instead we seem to be getting games that either want to take the control almost entirely away from you and automate as much as possible, or translations into action games. I also hate time limits in RPGs since I like to explore and take my time to do things.

Hey, who knows, maybe it will be a huge success. I'm not going to be running out to buy it though. From the way this is described it's pretty much a Frankenstein monster constructed from pretty much everything Final Fantasy is not supposed to be.

I'll also be honest in saying that the mention of time limits and Dark Souls somehow gave me an image of Dark Souls with a "Dead Rising" type Draconian time limit. You have so many hours to play with an "overtime extension" if you get all the missions. Except in this case the game kills you off like a machine gun with all that time coming back and rezzing counting towards the time limit after which the game wipes and starts you all over as a newbie rather than just at your previous fire.

I confess, there are limits to my masochism... when this is the image that comes to mind, I think I'll say "no thanks" right off the bat. That said if this delivers anything like this, we'll definatly see something for the "ultra hardcore" gamers that make regular hardcore ones look like casuals in comparison.

-

Also to be honest on some levels this is starting to remind me of the hype for "Jaws Of Cerberus"....

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I do think it's interesting how devs think mentioning Dark Souls as inspiration somehow makes their game automatically better. Considering that Toriyama is STILL involved I very much this is going to be the point where the XIII series becomes good.

 

[deathzero021]

hearing this actually makes me a bit more interested. when i first saw the trailer, i wasn't too impressed, although I did respect Square for at least adding some amount of gameplay to FFXII. The first one is just awful. i'm not sure why they keep using that boring ass character too. why are they keeping XIII going? i'm pretty sure it's the worse received of the entire series. Why not just create a new character for this game? ...

Well i might pay more attention to this and if reviews turn out good i might give it a shot.

 

[zellosoli]

The 13 series has been nothing but a train wreck from the word go and only continued but the developers grasping at the few positive comments whatever fanboy who didn't decide to take his/her blinders off.

Then again I'm reminded of when metal gear went the devil may cry route and that game was pretty darn awesome


So I guess I'm hopeing for the best but ultimately expecting the inevitable worst

 

[Jamous]

You know what? Just for that ridiculous mix of stuff I might just check this out. I have no idea what FFXIII was about after the second Barthandelus fight I could never beat, but to hell with that. This sounds like an interesting mix.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

fuck, if i wanted Final Fantasy to play and be as hard and unforgiving as dark souls, i would play FUCKING DARK SOULS! i don't like playing hard games at all, this is why i started playing JRPG's, you can make the game more challenging or less challenging by either leveling up or not.
"The Final Fantasy series has achieved its impressive lifespan by keeping things fresh. Each new installment plays with the mechanics of a genre that would otherwise be excruciatingly familiar."
you say this like you hate the classic turn based games, if anything this constant need to change what it means to be a final fantasy game has ruined final fantasy. I am sick and tired of all of these pseudo TB/ATB and leveling mechanics. I just want a final fantasy game. the only thing that EVER needed changing is that each game needs to deliver a compelling story, it's these stories that have JRPG fans coming back for more, not the gameplay.