Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns: 6 Things We Learned From The Demo
2. One Character Combat Is Surprisingly Fun
We have gone from a game featuring a traditional party of distinguishable characters, to two, and now a solo act. Despite the obvious fact that it feels like Square is stripping away RPG elements, Lightning Returns has the most creative and intriguing battle system to date in the trilogy. Immediately noticeable is that you now have total movement control of your character in this case its obviously Lightning similar to a Tales game. The combat is more about learning how to guard and counter, when to guard and counter, and where enemy weak points are and how to take advantage of them to inflict the traditional Stagger status. You also take in three of your Schematas (costumes) at a time, and can flip between them instantly with L1 and R1. Its pretty much the Paradigm Shift system but under a new term and with those aforementioned distracting outfit changes. Its a feature that cant be ignored though as not only does each Schemata come with different abilities useful at varying times, but each have their own Active Time Battle gauge which naturally decreases as you execute moves. In that regard, it seems as if the combat is more about skill and technique, but in practice the game is still mind-numbingly easy to the point where most battles consist of players holding down Circle/B and occasionally pulling off some special moves to break up the monotony. Just because you can doesnt really mean you should though, and the game could have had Lightning overpowered for demo purposes. Easy or not, its flashy, fun, and serviceably entertaining.
