Zero Punctuation: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

[Yuuki]

Christ, is the FF series really that godawfully bad at this point? I mean the game sounds at least FUNCTIONAL and that's more than we can ask for these days, but those colossal plotholes make no sense and it sounds like an absolute torture (and/or bore) to play.

I feel Square Enix are specifically targeting this at a very...specific audience. An audience I will never understand. Oh well, carry on FF series.

 

[Trishbot]

On the side of Lightning characterization? The guy who made the games/Lightning character said that she's really popular in Japan. I want to know if that's even true. Is a character that has no character really that popular? Heck, those idiot main characters in harem mangas seem to have more character than Lightning.

No. No she is not as popular as some have claimed. Lightning Returns debuted to poor sales in Japan as the lowest-selling console installment of the entire series (yes, even Dirge of Cerberus), and was outsold the following week by the 13-year-old port of the PS2 game Final Fantasy X. When your BRAND NEW game that is the final installment in a trilogy of games fails to excite people more than a decade-old port most players had already played, that speaks very poorly of your franchise's direction. For more perspective, it sold less than 85% of what Final Fantasy 13 did (from 1.5 million at launch to a mere 200,000 at launch...)

The reason Lightning is often brought out and trumpeted as "amazingly popular" (especially by her creepy creator, Motomu Toriyama) is because she "won" a poll in Japan as their favorite Final Fantasy girl... a poll conducted by 500 people... on Final Fantasy's official forum... right when Final Fantasy XIII-2 came out. That poll made the rounds all over the place, with the results published on their facebook account. Not exactly a good barometer of tastes, even in Japan.

 

[Charli]

"The enemies were too hard so I gave up."

Good review.

This is the same man who put out a Dark Souls review barely a week prior yes?

So clearly that is not his main gripe with the game or it wouldn't have steered him off.

Unless he gets his evil twin Smartsee Smoshaw to do JRPG's specifically he was quite within his right to call that bullshit a deal breaker.

 

[Krantos]

snip

Yeah, despite how mean Yahzee can be to some games, on a rare occasion he will give a fair shake to a game disliked by critics and come to its defense. Though, I think he may fall into your definition of the 'hardcore Thief fan.' I have not played the game personally, but I was someone who was disappointed by Tomb Raider 2013, so the whole of Eidos and of SquareEnix is something I am doubtful about, I hope you can understand.

Understandable, to each their own. They way I look at it, there's no way we'd get an ardently faithful sequel to the thief franchise. It just can't happen in today's market. Rather, I'm just glad we actually have a modern game that favors the ghost playstlye over the more action heavy ones. Unfortunately, given the reception it's gotten, we're unlikely to get anything else like it anytime soon.

C'est la vie.

snip

"Combat is very stacked against you"

There's combat in a Thief game. There's your answer right there.

Give it two weeks max, and you shall then understand. In the meantime please stop subjecting to yourself to that abomination of a game with the misplayed delusion that it's anything but a waste of time. You'll one day look back and realize what a regretful decision it was to give it the time of day, so I plead you now to stop before it's too late.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

You know, I think it was Vanille that had "hooters" that dispensed soft serve ice cream.

I mean, With a name like Vanille.... XD

Also, I'm kinda shocked at Yatzee hitting a massive difficulty wall of one hit deaths with no obvious solution. I mean, if he was taking all kinds of quests, shouldn't he have been easily able to buy new class upgrades/underwear/whatever it is to deal with that?

 

[sky14kemea]

Wait, so Chocorodeo, the person literally threatening the lives of about a dozen people on this thread, only got a 3-day suspension? Escapist, ban that person permanently. I do not take kindly to that type of behavior, and it should not be remotely tolerated by the moderators.

I was going to say exactly this.

It's amazing how much people are allowed to get away with here, and still be allowed to come back again.

If you have issues with the Moderation, please contact a member of Staff. Airing your grievances in a thread will not get any attention.

 

[KingdomFantasyXIII]

"The enemies were too hard so I gave up."

Good review.

Something more akin to this: The difficulty in the monster fights are asininely game breaking, since the explicitly stated game mechanics of "You have X hours to beat the game/save the world" makes grinding for levels something you cannot do.

On the side of Lightning characterization? The guy who made the games/Lightning character said that she's really popular in Japan. I want to know if that's even true. Is a character that has no character really that popular? Heck, those idiot main characters in harem mangas seem to have more character than Lightning.

It actually is. I found polls that showed this:

http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/01/japan-ranks-their-favorite-female-characters-from-the-final-fantasy-series/
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/01/06/final-fantasy-airborne-brigade-players-vote-yuna-popular-heroine/

She's always in some form of top 3 females in the Japan FInal Fantasy. It's surprising to some I know, but this is the same country that thinks Tidus is the 4th most popular and amazing male main character in the FF series (save for Zack, Cloud and Zidane).

Believe me, Japan thinks ind much different ways.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Christ, is the FF series really that godawfully bad at this point? I mean the game sounds at least FUNCTIONAL and that's more than we can ask for these days, but those colossal plotholes make no sense and it sounds like an absolute torture (and/or bore) to play.

I feel Square Enix are specifically targeting this at a very...specific audience. An audience I will never understand. Oh well, carry on FF series.

Play Bravely Default. It's the high quality Final Fantasy game we have been asking for, while Square wastes millions ruining the Final Fantasy series on console.

The reason Lightning is often brought out and trumpeted as "amazingly popular" (especially by her creepy creator, Motomu Toriyama) is because she "won" a poll in Japan as their favorite Final Fantasy girl... a poll conducted by 500 people... on Final Fantasy's official forum... right when Final Fantasy XIII-2 came out. That poll made the rounds all over the place, with the results published on their facebook account. Not exactly a good barometer of tastes, even in Japan.

As someone who is a Tales fan and is occasionally subjected to the latest Tales character polls, it's ALWAYS recency biased. Lightning is the most popular character because she was the main character of the most recent Final Fantasy game and thus more recognizable to survey participants. No other reason. Certainly not because people actually like her.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

"The enemies were too hard so I gave up."

Good review.

Compare the real-time doomsday clock to the one in Dead Rising: what was its purpose? In Dead Rising, it was to give the investigation a sense of urgency. You're trying to find out why there's a zombie apocalypse in smalltown Colorado, but there's also dozens of survivors to rescue. It forces the player to choose: sooner or later, you're not going to be able to respond to all the distress calls and uncover the truth. The golden ending is still uncovering the truth, but there's a reason the second-best ending is still basically saving everyone you could without getting to the bottom of the overall mystery.

What the game didn't do was wildly alter the difficulty of the standard enemies. The zombies get buffed at night, but that gives you an ebb-and-flow of game difficulty. You get somewhat better at fighting zombies, but you mostly gain your edge by discovering new combinations of weapons and gadgets.

Now, imagine if Dead Rising increased the power and toughness of the zombies based solely on how long you'd been playing the game, and if you played the wrong missions or rescued the wrong survivors, you'd be up the creek without a paddle.

Technically, you're right, in the same way that if I said, "Ooh, look: Yahtzee posted another caustic, snarky review of a game that we knew he wouldn't like. How original" while rolling my eyes like a possessed marionette, but it'd be an oversimplification. The enemies got tougher and stronger, but that's what TES4:Oblivion did, and while it was still a good game, people hated that bog-standard bandits would suddenly have hellforged platemail and soul-cleaving blades just because you were at a certain level and the game decided to make things harder for you. It's lazy game design and makes leveling up feel pointless. Why bother why all it means is that, best case scenario, you're dispatching enemies with same strategies and speed at level one as you will a dozen levels from now?

Also, holy crap, everyone look at Chocorodeo's comments on page one. They're hilarious. It's like his brain warped and cracked from his red-hot love of all things FFXIII colliding with Yahtzee's cold disdain.

 

[BX3]

"blocking didn't seem to do shit. So what am I supposed to do now, game? Grind? Buy beter underpants? I've only got 4 in-game hours to do this bloody quest!"

There are few times where Yahtzee sounds this genuinely frustrated with a game.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Lightning keeps coming back because she is Nomura's waifu and he wants to dress her up like that girl at the conventrion who is trying waaaay too hard to get noticed.

He even gave her breast implants. By the way, is there an in game explanation of that, or do they just hope no one will notice?

 

[Roofstone]

"clop"

I googled that you horrible person! Not only am I scared and sad, I still don't understand what it means!

OT: I've played this game, it is the first game I returned on the sole basis that it is bad. It is just unplayably boring.

 

[Trishbot]

It actually is. I found polls that showed this:

http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/01/japan-ranks-their-favorite-female-characters-from-the-final-fantasy-series/
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/01/06/final-fantasy-airborne-brigade-players-vote-yuna-popular-heroine/

She's always in some form of top 3 females in the Japan FInal Fantasy. It's surprising to some I know, but this is the same country that thinks Tidus is the 4th most popular and amazing male main character in the FF series (save for Zack, Cloud and Zidane).

Believe me, Japan thinks ind much different ways.

Actions (and money) speak louder than polls. Lightning's game sales tanked HARD. You could have many polls where she wins, because die-hard Lightning fans will vote for her over anyone else (and the vote is more split between all the other characters... Aerith or Tifa alone splits FF7's fanbase's vote), and she has the benefit of being shoved in your face more than any other FF character in recent memory (Terra and Celes could be considered much better, but they haven't received NEARLY the promotional push that Lightning has and Lightning is far more recent and plastered all over the covers). And then there's the fact one of the major polls was from their own webpage with only 500 votes split between 42 characters. That's an incredibly small sample size.

But, again, sales numbers. If Japan really loved her like Toriyama claims, then why was her game the lowest selling console Final Fantasy of all time, behind even junk like Dirge of Cerberus? Why was it outsold a week later by a port of a 13-year-old PS2 Final Fantasy game? Why did Bravely Default nearly match it in sales despite being on just one single portable system with a lower install base? Why did the FF13 series SHRINK by 85% following FF13's launch where most trilogy of games INCREASE as they get better and gain more players?

The Japanese love for Lightning is vastly overstated, and the circumstantial polls conducted aren't supported by the sales of the games. What I'm told is, mainly, she's fun to look at and cosplay, but even people in Japan don't actually love her character.

Lightning keeps coming back because she is Nomura's waifu and he wants to dress her up like that girl at the conventrion who is trying waaaay too hard to get noticed.

Spoiler

He ever gave her breast implants. By the way, is there an in game explanation of that, or do they just hope no one will notice?

Square Enix let someone create a terrible game who's sole point was for one man to play dress up with his emotionless, idealized sex doll masquerading as JRPG. A wish fulfillment sex doll that no one else likes or cares about. They deserve all the derision they get at this point, final fantasy is beyond a joke.

Even worse, this same idiot is the guy who really thought FFX would benefit from playing dress up with the girls in Final Fantasy X-2... and then AGAIN in The 3rd Birthday (yes, he's the monster responsible for that abomination of a game). And then AGAIN in Lightning Returns.

He's made three games now taking otherwise strong female characters in earlier games, and reduced them to cosplaying fetish dolls with increasingly skimpy and implausible outfits. THREE TIMES he's done this.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

To be fair Yahtzee, pretty much ANYTHING loses to pie.

 

[kanetsb]

Well, since the game ends with Lightning killing God, who stole Hope's soul and was pretending to be him, creating our Earth and living happily in France or something like that... I would say mr. Y missed a bit there in the review.

Also, that target switching bit + guarding... I'm on new game+, hard mode, towards the end - never did I actually had to do any target switching ever. I'm sure some people do that. Can't explain why though.

Then the grinding thing because the combat got tough in the beginning - umm... don't know how to say this, without sounding like some fan boy but... there are weapon stores in the game, and those STR and MAG stats are there for a reason. The first upgrade weapon is ~twice as effective as the defaults so... there's a hint there what needs to be done. Also - you're suppose to do areas in parallel in this one. It's tough? Go elsewhere, do quests, return later. Also - do not go to the Chaos Temple unprepared... really... don't... please.

 

[KingdomFantasyXIII]

It actually is. I found polls that showed this:

http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/01/japan-ranks-their-favorite-female-characters-from-the-final-fantasy-series/
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/01/06/final-fantasy-airborne-brigade-players-vote-yuna-popular-heroine/

She's always in some form of top 3 females in the Japan FInal Fantasy. It's surprising to some I know, but this is the same country that thinks Tidus is the 4th most popular and amazing male main character in the FF series (save for Zack, Cloud and Zidane).

Believe me, Japan thinks ind much different ways.

Actions (and money) speak louder than polls. Lightning's game sales tanked HARD. You could have many polls where she wins, because die-hard Lightning fans will vote for her over anyone else (and the vote is more split between all the other characters... Aerith or Tifa alone splits FF7's fanbase's vote), and she has the benefit of being shoved in your face more than any other FF character in recent memory (Terra and Celes could be considered much better, but they haven't received NEARLY the promotional push that Lightning has and Lightning is far more recent and plastered all over the covers). And then there's the fact one of the major polls was from their own webpage with only 500 votes split between 42 characters. That's an incredibly small sample size.

But, again, sales numbers. If Japan really loved her like Toriyama claims, then why was her game the lowest selling console Final Fantasy of all time, behind even junk like Dirge of Cerberus? Why was it outsold a week later by a port of a 13-year-old PS2 Final Fantasy game? Why did Bravely Default nearly match it in sales despite being on just one single portable system with a lower install base? Why did the FF13 series SHRINK by 85% following FF13's launch where most trilogy of games INCREASE as they get better and gain more players?

The Japanese love for Lightning is vastly overstated, and the circumstantial polls conducted don't match the actual sales don't support it. What I'm told is, mainly, she's fun to look at and cosplay, but even people in Japan don't actually love her character.

Sales do not equal popularity. Look at the FF7 compilations. None of them sell ANYWHERE near as much as FF7 despite both CLoud and Zack being top two male FF characters. Dirge of Cerberus sold only 1.7 million copies but it took a year.

Plus look at FF13-2. It started with only 500,000 copies sold initially, but it jumped to 3.1 million copies by the end of the year. Initial sales do not equate to well sold game. Any game can sell poorly initially but the yearly sales are what matters. Persona 4 Golden only sold 108,000 copies initially by Persona fans and it was regarded as the best Persona game ever. But by the end of the year, Atlus was waving around that it sold 700,000 copies in a year and that's about as much as a Persona game sells. Same thing with Xenoblade Chronicles. It sold initially bad at first despite the critical acclaim, but the sales spiked big time by the end of the year. Mario game focus on selling yearly sales instead of intial as well. Square does the same with their games. They don't start parading around their sales until the end of the year.

 

[crimsonspear4D]

y'know, if Yahtzee is still reviewing PS3 games I wonder if he'll ever get to Dragon's Crown? Artistic depictions aside (which I love btw) it's still a whole lot better than most Q1 crap that's out now for the current consoles.

 

[Cybylt]

Lightning keeps coming back because she is Nomura's waifu and he wants to dress her up like that girl at the convention who is trying waaaay too hard to get noticed.

The FF14 crossover set? There's an entire race that looks like that in that game.

Spoiler

When you wear that suit it changes the battle and victory tunes to ones from 14. There's also swords from each of the main regions of the game in 13-3.

Oh, and it's not Nomura, it's Toriyama. Nomura had nothing to do with any 13 except for Versus, which is now 15.

 

[Darth_Payn]

"God is building a better world, with blackjack and hookers..." Did Yahtzee just say God is Bender? Eh, wouldn't be the first time that happened. And why in the name of Cyborg Jesus did they bring back Lightning, the most misnamed character in a JRPG? I know for sure I didn't ask for this.

I expect Adam Jensen to chime in about that any minute now.

 

[SporkySpork]

I've already shared Yahtzee's opinion since watching Two Best Friends shit all over the game. In other news, Bravely Default is the best Final Fantasy since Chrono Trigger, guys.