Final Fantasy XIII is a very polarising series within the Final Fantasy series. Critical reviews haven’t been awful, and compared to earlier games in the FF series, it’s hard to proclaim that FFXIII and its sequel are the worst games of the series. Nevertheless, the games don’t live up to Final Fantasy’s lofty heights set in recent years. It’s hard to imagine that the third game in the FFXIII series will garner much support. Many (including myself) question why we needed a third game (well, aside from the the cliffhanger ending in FFXIII-2), but since we are, here a list of requirements to make the game memorable and lift the FF name again.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: 5 Ways To Make It Memorable
5) Weapon And Armor Customization
Seeing as how we’ll be primarily (if not only) controlling Lightning throughout the game. Thus some mechanism of variety needs to be inputted in place of traditional character variety on the battlefield. One way to make up for this approach is to provide a lot of customization options. These options need to be versatile, not just improved specs over time but, customizations that allows freedom of playstyle and also varies in usefulness dependent on enemy.
4) Optional Dungeons With Bosses
Optional side-quests aren’t FFXIII’s strongest suite. Part of that is due to lack of variety, but another part is also due to having no real optional dungeons to explore and loot. Lightning Returns: FFXIII should incorporate optional dungeons back into the game’s world and also supply challenging bosses to face in these dungeons. Treasure and loot obtained should also be worthwhile.
3) Close The FFXIII Story
The story in the FFXIII universe is all over the place. The concept story was probably too big to be incorporated into a single series, let alone game. But enough is enough. FFXIII suffered from over-reliance on the datalog, whilst FFXIII-2 suffered typical time-travel plot problems. Neither really provided a full story either. Lightning Returns needs to end the saga. I know it has been mentioned that this will be the final game in the series, but Square-Enix still need to make sure they provide a competent ending.
2) Keep Funny Dialogue Options
Weirdly, one of the best things to come out of FFXIII-2 was the dialogue choices incorporated into the game. An added bonus being that there was a consistently ‘funny’ dialogue option to choose where the characters would poke fun at each other or say weird and random things. Oddly enough, this brought colour to the game and the characters. It was also a decent reason to replay the game, just for those dialogue options. It would be nice to see this feature return in Lightning Returns.
1) Battle System Variety & Harder Difficulties
The battle system in the FFXIII series has its share of fans and haters. I personally like the system, and I’d rather have variety in the battle system of the Final Fantasy series than re-hash the old. The one thing I will say though, is that there needs to be more variety in battle appraoch. For the most part, the system has you build up the stagger meter and then go all out attack. This happens too many times though, and there should be more variety in this approach. In FFXIII, there were a handful of battles where you couldn’t stagger the enemy, and these were a lot of fun to fight. There should be more approach to battles. In addition, there should be harder difficulty levels (if incorporated) compared to what was in FFXIII-2.