Lightning Returns Blends Final Fantasy With Dark Souls

[LordMonty]

Last few FF's have been a bit flat so even though it may not be super original if its borrow is too obvious, i'd let it slide if breaths new life into the game.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Sorry if this is off the point but if we are going to bang out repeated sequels of a specific Final Fantasy's could it not have been 6,7,8 or 9, you know, the good ones?? I really hated all the characters in 13, particularly that Vanille one. It was like she had some sort of mental disorder and was disconnected from reality. Maybe that actually goes somewhere, I wouldnt know, I almost died of boredom by the third disc and stopped playing. Which brings me back to the point, sequels of the good FF's would be nice.

To be fair, Vanille is gone in FFXIII-2, as far is i know (haven´t played that many hours yet), actually the entire cast seem to be different from FFXIII.

The new characters aren´t that great though, i think Sazh is the only character i liked in that game. And maybe Fang, but she was kinda forgetable.

 

[Olrod]

Realtime combat AND a time limit? The two things I dislike most about RPGs. I think I'm going to die from not-excitement.

 

[Scars Unseen]

On the one hand, this sounds like something I could enjoy playing.

On the other hand, so did Dirge of Cerberus before it actually got released...

 

[Riobux]

Count me in as interested with the Action combat. I have not enjoyed the turn based combat in FF games since FFX and it is good they are changing it up a bit, but if we still have to go into a new 'battle zone' or whatever you call it whenever you fight something, then no thanks.

Same to the letter. This has actually got me curious despite not liking the series at all since FF10 (well, FF10-2 if you include the combat mechanics that I actually really liked). However, I love Dark Souls so I'm incredibly interested in this.

 

[fwiffo]

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!

Agreed. SquareEnix should make anime instead of games.

I'm sick of innovation with this franchise. I'd be happy if they were still doing 2D dropdown RPGmaker-style games & focusing more on telling a story with compelling characters & less of fighting mechanics.

It must be sad for SquareEnix when fans of your "games" want you to get rid of the "game" part.

 

[BaronIveagh]

I'll just point out that the limited inventory thing has been done well in the past, by Square no less, in Parasite Eve 1.


(now there's a game I wish would get a remake...)

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

This is the first time I've been genuinely interested in a Final Fantasy game. Their pretty hallway simulators were never that interesting to me. I like JRPGs, but FF is a bad representative of the genre. Suikoden, SMT, and the Xeno- games are all superior. Also, I couldn't help but laugh at the "impressive lifespan by keeping things fresh." Wait, what? XD

 

[AwesomeDave]

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.

I absolutely HATE time limits in games... I want to be able to explore, check every corner, pick up every gil off the ground... Atelier Rorona ruined that series for me with its restrictive deadlines... I would hate to see the same thing happen with FF.


Captcha: smashed potato. What's taters, precious? What's taters?!?

 

[Something Amyss]

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

Sounds good to me!

Beat me to it. Actually, most FF games would be improved by the deaths of their main characters.

 

[Matthi205]

This looks like a decent game for once. I loathe the combination of turn-, menu-based combat and real time combat all of the newer FF games had until now. Let's also hope they don't decide to turn the grind up like they did in FFXII, or continue using instanced combat.

Plot of XIII-2 can be summed up as 'Time machines'.

Slightly more seriously, the heroes lost.

Spoiler

Caius managed to destroy the timeline, erasing all of existence in the process. Serah dies immediately afterward because her ability to see into the future slowly killed her, and then Noel is left alone in a void of nothingness. Meanwhile, Lightning faced off against Caius in the ruins of Valhalla, stuck in an endless battle for an eternity.

Lightning Returns, from what I understand, has all of time collapsed into itself to create the End of Time, which is the town that the game takes place in. Time has stopped completely in this town, because the concept no longer exists. How they have have a time limit of 7-13 days in a place where time explicitly does not exist is a mystery, however.

Thanks for the plot summary. I was getting worried about the time limit, because it was probable that you couldn't go a slower and more methodical way, as opposed to a speedrun. But seeing as time has stopped existing... 7 days are a lot of time...

Then there's the biggest plot hole yet: How the hell can anything happen if the concept of time has stopped existing? My understanding is that if we lose the 4th dimension, we won't be able to know it until it returns and something has been changed, simply because human thoughts and actions always also move forward in time, in addition to what is happening on XYZ.

Also, for both FFXIII-3 and FFXV: I want to be able to choose which character I play as in combat (if possible, in general, too). I don't want to be stuck playing emo prick number n+1... or a female character with an incredibly stupid voice (wait, this is Square we're talking about... that's not going to happen, is it?).

 

[JetFury]

This is terrible. They have managed to completely kill final fantasy for me. Ugh....

 

[GAunderrated]

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.

That's the thing that bothers me is they arn't doing "new things" but rather just copy-pasting ideas from other developers have been known to work.

All this does is prove that the developers for Final Fantasy have completely run out of original or new ideas (with the possible exception of FFXV) and are now just going to paste FF characters with other game's formulas.

It is sad to see a series I loved lose their identity.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

This game just looks better and better the more I hear about it. I'm especially interested to see how the time limit plays out in practice.

I don't know why people are complaining about the loss of turn-based combat now, when Final Fantasy hasn't really had it since IV and the previous two FF XIII games didn't even pretend to be turn-based.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

What is wrong with the proposed combat? It was fine with a somewhat similar style in Kingdom Hearts and the last few FFs have had horrible combat and levelling systems in place. Even if it is a bit "harder" I guarantee you that you can grind to make it easier like pretty much every RPG(bar some WRPGs). The ATB has never been a great turn based combat system anyway. Also can we stop throwing around buzz words like emo and brooding when only one FF protagonist I can think of even comes close to it and he is more just a self absorbed ass hole than anything else.

The series has needed some major overhauls for a long time at which points varies from person to person and if you ask 10 people at which point in the series you'll get 11 opinions.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I'll just point out that the limited inventory thing has been done well in the past, by Square no less, in Parasite Eve 1.


(now there's a game I wish would get a remake...)

They did time travel well in the past too, in Chrono Trigger but managed to screw it up in XIII-2.

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.

I absolutely HATE time limits in games... I want to be able to explore, check every corner, pick up every gil off the ground... Atelier Rorona ruined that series for me with its restrictive deadlines... I would hate to see the same thing happen with FF.


Captcha: smashed potato. What's taters, precious? What's taters?!?

With inventory limits, exploration would still be punished even without the time limit.

 

[WeepingAngels]

This game just looks better and better the more I hear about it. I'm especially interested to see how the time limit plays out in practice.

I don't know why people are complaining about the loss of turn-based combat now, when Final Fantasy hasn't really had it since IV and the previous two FF XIII games didn't even pretend to be turn-based.

ATB was a turn based battle system. Both 12 and 13 had turn based systems behind the scenes. If it's strictly turn based that you are talking about, you forgot about 10 and 10-2.

 

[Gormech]

Hm ... the games know almost entirely for their cutscenes and turn based combat want to turn into the next big adventure game with semi-hack/slash combat. Something seems really wrong here and it's not looking like another Dragon's Dogma take. They should stick with making movies. The games are linear enough as is.