After all these years I finally got to play through the legendary Lightning Returns game. I remember this one being pretty controversial when it came out and after playing it through I can see why that is the case. In a lot of ways it does invalidate parts of the first two games as well as putting the characters through a ton of grief for a very long time. Even with a reasonably happy ending….although a very mixed one, it’s not going to erase those memories. It is an epic story though and one that will keep you at the edge of your seat.

We start off in the future where the world is coming to an end. In 7 days it shall be no more. So the god of the multiverse awakens Lightning to be reborn as his herald. She is to save as many worthy souls as possible by achieving their heart’s desires. Then those survivors will make up the citizens of the new world and Lightning will rule alongside him as a goddess. She only agrees to help in exchange for bringing her sister back to life. This god agrees but is he really being straight forward with her? That remains to be seen.

The whole 7 days thing may make you a bit nervous and I’m afraid that your fears would be well founded. This game uses a day system similar to Pikmin. The minutes go by in real time as one second is roughly equivalent to one minute. As a result the days go by quickly. You have to complete 5 main quests within the 7 day period. This is a true open world game so you can do the quests in any order except for the 5th quest which requires you to complete half of quest 4 first. You can use your time abilities to freeze time temporarily but at the cost of your EP. This is a big deal because the EP is how you use your most powerful abilities within the game and you can’t actively gain any items to recover it. (You can get a 1-2 ethers in the game but that’s it. You can only recover it by defeating enemies or going forward to the next day. Of course with the enemies you typically recover EP very slowly and often times you will lose more time than it is worth.

If you are not able to beat the quests within the 7 days then you go back to the beginning of the game and get to start over. You do keep your stats and equipment (minus key items) though which is handy. Still, you lose all story and mission progress. I was not able to beat the game on my first try so I did have to go back and beat the game again. This time the final boss was not too bad, the Ultima weapon is an absolute must though. I was able to beat him with just 2 EP since I was rushing but with the full 9 set it would have been really easy without a doubt. Of course if you tell anybody that they have to play the game twice they’re going to give you a look.

It’s the one thing keeping this game from being an easy 9. I just can’t support the day system because it forces you to rush a lot. This is a pretty big game with a lot of content and it’s annoying having to skip so many quests and things to do. It doesn’t feel like good game design even if that is the purpose of the overall plot. Completing a lot of side quests can increase the 7 days to 13 but even then it’s ultimately not going to be enough to do everything unless you plan it perfectly with a guide or something. That’s really your only bet.

So that was unfortunate. The story is really interesting like I said before though. I feel bad for the characters as some had to live for centuries in the worst timeline imaginable but at least the ending itself finally brings back some hope. It’s a very depressing game in a lot of ways as we see how futile the first two games were. That is still a little hard to come to terms with but I give this game a lot of credit for really going there. It did not pull any punches at all as the heroes really had to contend with what happened. We also got a ton of homages and references to the first two games which was nice. It helped to tie this all together as a full trilogy.

Meanwhile the graphics are really good as you would expect. All of the characters look solid and I definitely enjoyed the special effects. The full cinematics are all really good and of course the soundtrack is on point too. I wouldn’t say it beats the original 13 but you’re bound to find some tunes that you enjoy here. There is a wide variety of tunes after all so the numbers are really in your favor.

The main game took me around 40 hours counting both playthroughs so there’s a lot of content here. Technically speaking it would be one of the quickest Final Fantasy titles if you were to speed run through this but I feel like most people are going to need 2 playthroughs to actually save the world. Having those extra stats from two runs is just so important since the final boss has 4 different phases and hits like a tank. You also have a hard cap of 12 recovery items so it’s not like you can just store a bunch of potions either. The game is made so that you have to make a whole lot of difficult choices.

Finally I’ll also give the game some credit for having multiple paths for several quests. For example on your first playthrough you tend to have to follow the rules. There are some stealth missions and you have to be careful not to get caught or you’re quickly murdered by the cult followers. On the second playthrough I just went ahead and attacked them all and it worked out since my stats were so high. I was breezing through everybody and you really feel like a goddess in that second playthrough.

Overall, Lightning Returns is controversial and rightfully so. The game played around with some mechanics that weren’t quite winners like the day system. The fact that Lightning is by herself for the whole game is also quite rare for an RPG. Usually you would definitely be expecting to have had a full crew of fighters with you. instead you have tons of costumes you can access which all have different powers. It’s fun and unique but I do ultimately prefer having a full squad. Ultimately this is a great game even with the limitations though and I would recommend checking it out.

Overall 8/10