Jak and Daxter vs Jak II

The age of the Playstation and the Playstation 2 is one that I think a lot of people look upon with much fondness. There are a lot of old Playstation classics that came out of that time which people will talk about to this day. One of the things that stick out in my mind the most was eagerly awaiting my monthly edition of Playstation Magazine, a publication that often had something to say about the newest Ratchet and Clank or Jak and Daxter game. It seemed like the two series had something of a rivalry going on, and the gamers loved it. At the time I was happy enough playing nothing but RPGs every day, but these days I feel a compulsion to go back and see what the fuss was all about. Luckily, this is made pretty easy by the existence of HD collections. I rather enjoyed my time with the Sly Cooper collection, and now the time for Jak and Daxter has arrived. At the time of this writing, I have completed the original, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy and am about half way through Jak II. The purpose of this article is to compare the two, because I feel like there is a lot to say on the matter.

So let's start off by talking about the original game. Jak and Daxter is ultimately, a pretty simple game. It's a game about exploration, collecting pickups, and platforming. It does all of these things quite well, boasting a surprisingly large world that is entirely seamless (unless you are warping) and more to the point, well constructed. The levels are complex, but not to the point that they are difficult to navigate even without any form of map. The areas are colorful and interesting, and the same is true of the game on the whole. It has a lighthearted cheer about it that's quite endearing, and it doesn't bog you down with superfluous things. Story is minimal; the characters are interesting but don't overstay their welcome. Overall the game just compels you to not only play, but to perfect it. It's very easy to open up your menu and see that you've collected 142/150 precursor orbs and 5/7 power cells in an area. Finding what's left may be a little tricky, but the counter both tells you where to look, and encourages you to do so.

That's not to say it's a perfect game by any means. Jak's attack animations have a lot of character, but the game's actual combat feels pretty hamfisted, and I don't know that it really adds anything to the experience. Like many PS2 era games, Jak and Daxter also suffers from some camera woes. It's not especially bad, but the camera movement feels somewhat leaden, and situations where you can't look where you want are pretty frequent as a result. There are also a fair number of vehicle sections, which are pretty decent for the most part, but can be pretty frustrating at times because of difficult platforming which is often coupled with instant death mechanics. I found that most of the time when I died, it felt like I hadn't really done anything particularly wrong. Thankfully the game has pretty plentiful checkpoints and so it's easy to get right back in there and try again. In the end I was entertained enough that I never really wanted to stop playing, and there was never any question that I was going to 100% complete the game.

Now let's look at Jak II... So in the sequel, Jak is turned into an angsty badboy, given a voice, imbued with dark powers, given guns, placed into a dystopian city... You get my point. The game's entire feel is changed. It's not fun and carefree anymore, instead it feels like it's trying really hard to be dark and edgy and I really don't like the change. But that's just my personal opinion. Thematic changes aside, the biggest difference between the games is that while Jak and Daxter was a free roam collectathon, Jak II is a mission based open world. The thing is that this world is just boring, needlessly windy, and only really serves to create busywork. You go from one end to the other, watch some kind of scene that's try too hard to be gritty, then you go back across the city to complete your mission. Along the way you'll probably bump into a guard, the entire city will go into "hunt down Jak" mode (which they may or may not eventually abandon, for some undiscernable reason). When you get to the entrance to another area you won't see a loading screen, but you will sit in an empty room waiting for a giant door to open. Everything about this city just irks me, and you spend the vast majority of your time there.

Playing Jak II immediately after Jak and Daxter, I feel like the game flow has none of the elegance, and the overall theme has none of the character and charm. The areas aren't as well put together, the collectibles are fewer, you don't have the same collectible counter to drive you to find them. The game's focus has shifted significantly towards more combat, which doesn't really feel any better than in the first game. If anything it feels worse because there are very few checkpoints in the game, meaning death usually puts you back at the start of the level with all enemies being respawned. On top of the lack of checkpoints, the game's overall difficulty seems to be higher to boot, and the two combined lead to significantly more frustrating moments. The game's story is much more in your face, and it always feels like it's trying way too hard to be gritty and edgy. The vehicles are a lot more annoying to handle, they blow up easily, and you have to drive them much more frequently to get around the city, complete races etc...

Ultimately the point I'm trying to make here is that Jak II feels nothing like Jak and Daxter. Almost everything I liked about the first game is now gone or altered beyond recognition. It's pretty apparent that Jak II is trying to be a completely different kind of game. That isn't inherently a bad thing; I think there's something to be said about managing your player's expectations, but different doesn't mean bad. That said, the truth of the matter is that I'm just not enjoying my time with Jak II that much. It's not like it's a bad game per se, but I find it to be a pretty annoying experience that is somewhat lacking in actual fun parts. I don't know how the sequel turned into this thing, maybe it's just me, Jak II has a reputation of being a good game. I suppose I'll just have to keep playing, maybe I'll find some fun in it yet.

E3 2014 Impressions

Another year, another E3. Being as the PS4 and XBox One are now out in the wild, this year was never going to be as exciting as the last, but I for one was pretty interested to see how Sony and Microsoft would follow up the blowout that was E3 2013. For most people, this year was probably about Nintendo. The Wii U has been struggling for almost 2 years now, and is only now beginning to pickup steam. Mario Kart 8 is a big success, Smash Bros 4 is rapidly building excitement, and there were a lot of big Nintendo franchises people were hoping to see this year. Ubisoft and EA were there too, as they always are. For some reason. I saw it all, and even took notes this year, so here are my thoughts on E3 2014.

Microsoft

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it seems like they are still battling the perception that there is nothing to play on the XBox One, and thus no reason to buy one. I think this is expected so early in a consoles life, now that multiplatform releases are so prevalent, but Microsoft seems to be struggling with it a bit more than their competitors thanks in part to their focus on non-games during the consoles reveal. Microsoft put on a pretty good conference though. They focused on the games, showing a good 20 or so titles, including some interesting exclusives. Sunset Overdrive still looks like a wonderful collection of color and smarm, Platinum Games' Scalebound is sure to be a hit (because they are Platinum Games and they cannot fail) and Ori the Blind Forest is intriguing to me. I'm sure the Halo Collection and Halo 5 were very exciting to people, too.

My biggest complaint though, is that I don't think Microsoft really managed to break their image of generic games for college guys. Not a lot of what I saw in this 90 minute presentation deviated from "shoot and race and stab people with up to 4 players!". I'm also becoming rapidly more annoyed by phrases like "available first on system x!" or "exclusive console release on system y!". I don't really want to watch a trailer of a game that is going to be included in another conference, I don't want to watch cinematic trailers, and I don't want to watch fake gameplay footage wherein some shmuck walks on stage and pretends they are actually playing the game. Microsoft definitely isn't the only one doing these things, but somehow it annoys me more when they do it. I suppose perhaps I am just biased against Microsoft, but there you have it.

EA

I seriously doubt that anyone went into EA's conference with very high expectations. They aren't a very well liked company on the whole, and being known as the sports/sims guys who buy other companies doesn't really help. I will say however that their conference started out very strongly. Showing Star Wars Battlefront before saying a word was certainly heartening. I'm not usually a fan of musical presentations at E3, but following Star Wars up with a lady with a Cello playing to the Dragon Age Inquisition footage was pretty awesome, too. In fact all of the Dragon Age footage was pretty awesome to see, and I'm sure a lot of people are very hyped about it. Unfortunately after Dragon Age EA's conference changed from a decent show, to what was in my opinion, the worst this year.

But then EA started saying words, and it was all over. They managed to talk about a lot of games without actually saying much of anything about them, and they said a lot about their annual franchises which, let's be honest, there really isn't much to say. Bioware announced that they are working on a new Mass Effect and an unannounced game, Dawngate was confirmed to exist, and there was a lot of talk about sports, which I've always assumed the demographic for E3 really does not care about. I think my favorite was GOLF WITHOUT LIMITS on the Frostbyte engine, with no loading between holes! Mirror's Edge 2 was officially unveiled but again, we didn't get much out of it except that it is in fact Mirror's Edge 2. That said, it's good to see, as Mirror's Edge is a well loved game with a very unique and refreshing aesthetic and concept. Then we got a good look at Battlefield Hardline, which looks a lot like it did last year when it was Battlefield 4.

Ubisoft

Following in EA's footsteps came Ubisoft. Historically their conferences have been about little more than Assassin's Creed + awkward live performance + something, and has hinged on being quirky and French as well as the divisive Aisha Tyler as host. This year had seemingly more games than others, but still delivered on it's MO. Probably the thing that has stood out to me the most about Ubisoft at E3 this year as well as last, was the immaturity of their conference. E3 is the biggest platform video games have, and I think it reflects poorly on us when the face you choose to show to the media and investors is Aisha Tyler saying things like "It's hella fuckin smokey as shit, apparently it's 420 in this bitch". I held the same opinion last year when we opened with a trailer containing nudity. I'm definitely not trying to say these things aren't ok to have in games, but trying way too hard to be edgy isn't exactly the best way to legitimize our favorite pastime.

Anyways, rant aside, Ubisoft's conference was at least a bit better than EA's but not by much. Far Cry 4 had no gameplay, but there was a very engrossing intro cinematic that I liked a lot. Conversely, Assassin's Creed Unity had both cinematic and gameplay, but a worse showing than in the Microsoft conference. Just Dance is yet another annual franchise, The Crew has yet to give me a reason to care about it and Shape Up seems like a mediocre exercise game, despite seeming better than what's already out there. The Division and Valiant Hearts win the award for most depressing trailers ever, which made me lose interest in the game and conference both. Ubisoft closed with Rainbow Six: Siege, which seemed like a decent enough game, but was so staged it's really hard to judge. I find it amusing that Ubisoft is also catching a lot of flak this E3 because of their use of a female hostage in the Rainbow Six demo, and the lack of playable females in Assassin's Creed. Oh Ubisoft. Maybe one day you will learn how to present yourself.

Sony

Ahh Sony. The defending champion. They wrecked Microsoft last year with their cheaper, more powerful console and less restrictive feature list. This year the race is much closer, and Sony's conference much more complacent. There were a lot of subtle little jabs at Microsoft that came across as a bit distasteful to me, like throwing a punch after the bell has rung. Sony's conference was also really poorly paced, opening quite strongly, and then transitioning into boring PSN features and weird pieces of hardware. These new things may well be things people care about, but we aren't going to know until they are released, and as cool as YouTube is, it's not a great way to build E3 hype. The show ended with should be some pretty exciting games, but after the boring middle, there was no hype left.

On the whole Sony showcased a more colorful selection of games, thanks to the likes of Entwined, Abzu and No Man's Sky. It had it's own share of exclusives too, with the likes of The Order 1866, Bloodborne and Uncharted 4, though none of their presence were very surprising. Unfortunately they were also stricken with PS4 ports of PS3 games (Grand Theft Auto V and the Last of Us), a trend that I find somewhat annoying. I also really enjoyed the tongue in cheek introductions that Magicka 2 and Grim Fandango got. I think a lot of people were hoping for some kind of showstopper from Sony, as well as some Kingdom Hearts of Final Fantasy. Unfortunately we didn't really get any of those. I think the closest we got to a showstopper was No Man's Sky, which is a game we saw at VGX and, despite being really pretty, struck me as kind of ephemeral.

Nintendo

Finally, we have Nintendo. They have always kind of done their own thing both in and out of E3. As I said at the beginning, there were a lot of eyes on Nintendo this year, especially after the previous 4 conferences all ranged from mediocre to straight up awful. I don't think Nintendo knocked it out of the park. I think a lot of people are still waiting for a lot of things from Nintendo. But I think they did well enough. They wasted a lot of time trying to convey just how much love and care goes into creating the games they showed. It is a sentiment that is important, but one that I think they conveyed without the diatribes, and one that doesn't really engage the viewer. What I will say is that this year Nintendo really made great use of the digital medium through which they were presenting, with Robot Chicken sketches and CG Reggie/Iwata.

As expected, games like Hyrule Warriors and what little there was to say about Wii U Zelda generated a lot of hype. Smash Bros was surprisingly excited to see, despite there already being large amounts of information about it out there. I'm a really big fan of what Nintendo is doing to stylize their graphics in games like Yoshi's Wooly World and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. Even if it's done to mask the Wii U's inferior graphics capabilities, it makes for a really cool aesthetic. Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that I was really excited for going into this E3 (and still am) but the footage they showed during the presentation I found to be ugly and uninteresting. The clear surprise act here was Splatoon, though. A third person arena shooter wherin you control a squid trying to cover the arena in more ink than your opponent. It's a surprisingly clever and elegant game, I'm a little dubious as to how well it will actually sell though. The whole Nintendo aftershow kind of killed the hype for Splatoon though. In fact the multiple day long after show is pretty lame on the whole to me, but to each their own I suppose.

In Summary

So who won? What are the standouts? After the first day, this was Nintendo's E3 to lose. They definitely pulled it off in my mind. I didn't see as much as I wanted to from them, but their conference got me excited in a way that none of the others did. This E3 made me feel like soon my purchase of a Wii U will be justified, and there are at least 3 games that I definitely want to own ASAP, which is 30% of the games in Nintendo's presentation. Also Nintendo's Smash Bros Invitational is probably the most hyped I've ever been about E3, but that wasn't a conference so it doesn't count, ok? I think Microsoft had the second best presentation, but I find I am more interested in the games that Sony had to show. I didn't see any "must have"s out of either of them, but about 3-5 "would play"s out of each. On the whole I would say this E3 was pretty mediocre. But then every E3 seems to end up more mediocre than I hope. I would say that this year was slightly ahead of the average. I saw some cool games, I saw some cool presentation ideas, and I didn't see too much that actively offended me.

Transistor Review

Back in mid 2011, a little company named Supergiant Games took the gaming world by surprise. As a company nobody had ever heard of, they created a game called Bastion. Bastion quickly garnered large amounts of praise for being a highly polished, artfully crafted and all around profoundly beautiful game, and has since been ported to a plethora of platforms. For a while, people wondered what was next for Supergiant Games, and there was some doubt that they would make a second title. After all, how do you follow Bastion? In March of 2013 this question was finally answered when similarly gorgeous cyberpunk action-RPG Transistor was revealed. A little over a year of intense anticipation later, and the game has finally been released. I played it, and here is what I think:

First out of the gate, I want to state that I played the PC version of the game, and to be honest, I wish that I had a PS4 to play it on instead. The downside to Transistor's stunning art style, is that there are no graphics options to speak of, which is a problem when I was struggling to run the game at 20 FPS. The game is definitely very pretty, but it doesn't look like a game that should be particularly taxing. Perhaps this is simply an issue that will be resolved down the road via patching. I also felt as though the keyboard controls did not work very well at all, which was surprising given that they were fine in Bastion. It felt in general like much of the game's controls were a little sluggish, but it's hard to say how much of that was the low frame rate, and how much was my 360 controller being bad. I will say that, I played the game on a PS4 at Pax, and none of these problems existed.

Platform complaints aside, the game is a joy to play. I mentioned earlier that Transistor is an action-RPG, and I am glad to say that it's combat is incredibly deep. It has two main things going for it: the function system, and the Turn() system. Functions are essentially your abilities, however each one can take one of three forms. You can assign it as an active ability, you can assign it as an upgrade to another function, or you can assign it as a passive. With 4 active abilities (each with 2 possible upgrade slots) and 4 passive slots, there is an astounding amount of flexibility in how you can choose to play. I also really like that, when your health bar depletes, rather than dyeing immediately, one of your functions overloads and temporarily becomes unavailable. It forces the player to replace that ability in the interim, and thus try out abilities and strategies that they maybe wouldn't otherwise use.

To further add to the combat depth, is the turn() system I mentioned, which works something like the VATS system in Fallout 3. Essentially, any time you wish you can pause the combat, and input a certain number of actions, which you will then execute in quick succession. After turn() has concluded, you have to wait for it to recharge before you can use any abilities. This creates an interesting dance wherein you have to decide how much combat you want to do in real time, and when you want to use turn(). It allows you to use many attacks at once, but that isn't always what you want to be doing, and it leaves you vulnerable for a while. turn() is also not infallible. The game will predict how much damage you will do, if an enemy is out of range, if your attack will be blocked by terrain etc. This prediction is not always how it turns out though, and it encourages you to learn how your abilities and your opponents behave. It's actually kind of astounding how good a job Supergiant has done of making sure that spamming turn() every time it is available isn't always the optimal course of action, but still a very deep and strategic system.

Unfortunately, once we move beyond the realm of combat, things start to look a little bit less sunshine and lollipops for Transistor. I think the word I would use for it is "whimsical", though I saw someone describe it as "impenetrable", and I think that works well too. The problem Transistor has is that it makes no significant effort to explain itself to you. Certainly there is something to be said for leaving things up to the player's imagination. Supergiant chose this option at every possible juncture though, and you are left with a game that feels pretentious at best. The player is just dropped into this deserted city and has no recourse but to make their way from point to point. Nothing is explained explicitly or otherwise. None of the characters or locales are properly introduced or fleshed out, and you aren't given any good indication of what their motivations are. Everything just kind of exists. The Transistor itself talks constantly, much like Basion's narrator, and yet it feels like he never says anything worth hearing. There are tons of little interactive bits in the area, and yet they don't flesh out the world so much as say "hey, there's this thing here, isn't that cool?".

On one hand the player is left to interpret things as they wish. On the other hand, I personally end up just feeling really confused by this empty void of a world and what seems like multitudinous plot holes. By the end of the game I had just kind of accepted that I wasn't going to get a cast of characters or a world I cared about. I accepted that nothing was going to make sense, nothing was going to be explained, and that I should just put my head down and enjoy the combat. Perhaps the game's narrative just isn't for me and someone else will be able to understand it just fine. I can certainly see it being something that some people do enjoy, but it most assuredly left a sour taste in my mouth. However that being said, I still enjoyed the game quite a bit purely on the strength of it's combat. Luckily the minimalist approach the game takes to everything else means that it's pretty easy to pretend fighting the process is all that Transistor is about.

Thomas Was Alone and Narrative in Gameplay

We live in a very interesting age for video games. 20 years ago the market was still growing; AAAs weren't quite so monolithic and the the market didn't have the accessibility or the infrastructure for indies to thrive. Yet in a world where game budgets are getting outrageously out of hand, the indie market is flourishing. In a world where Activision and Ubisoft and Gamefreak are pushing yearly releases of big franchises, we have a plethora of indie games. Games which can be successful thanks to digital distribution, word of mouth. Games which, without hundreds of millions of dollars riding on them, can get away with taking creative risks. It is in this world that a game like Thomas Was Alone, a game about colored rectangles, can sell over a million copies. Myself being among them, I thought I would talk about what makes such a simple game so great.

So aside from rectangles, what exactly is Thomas Was Alone about? Well the idea is to reduce a puzzle platformer to it's most basic elements. Image a game like Trine or The Lost Vikings, wherein you control a group of characters one at a time. Each character has a personality and a backstory and a set of abilities, and you must combine these abilities in order to get the entire crew to the end of a level. All of these things are also true of Thomas Was Alone, except instead of Eric the Red and Baelog the Brave, you have Thomas the red rectangle and Claire the blue square. While they don't have fancy graphics or flashy abilities, I would argue that the characters in Thomas Was Alone are much better defined than most games without ever saying a word, and the game's narrative is shaped significantly better than most, too.

When you first start the game, Thomas is quite literally alone. You are given several levels to get the hang of what Thomas can do by letting the play figure it out (as is the case with every new character you are introduced to). While you are learning, the fantastic British narrator introduces you to the story of Thomas, who is lost, confused and lonely. Over the course of the journey you are introduced to other rectangles, such as Chris the pessimistic orange rectangle and John the narcissistic yellow rectangle. Each level the narrator tells you a little about the characters, sometimes a little about the story, which in truth, is barely there and really kind of irrelevant. The story is about the characters and their journey more so than the game's actual plot. Sure there are puzzles. They are well made, they are well paced, they make you think without being too hard, everything a puzzle game should be really. Yet to me, what really sets Thomas Was Alone apart is the unspoken narrative.

I think Chris really tells the tale of Thomas Was Alone. When you meet him, he is down, antisocial, and not much use to be frank. He's small, he can't jump very well, and he constantly needs the other characters' help to get around. But sometimes there's a spot that only Chris can reach, you need his help to progress. The same is true of every character. Some characters are more capable on their own, but at some point they all need help, and no matter how pathetic a character may be solo, there always comes a time when you need their help. Nobody can make it on their own, and when they work together not only can you make it to the next level, but your little rectangles grow as people(polygons?), too. Their personalities perfectly match their abilities, and each character has real and measurable character growth. I often found myself identifying with the little shapes, sharing in their woes, and celebrating their accomplishments. It's truly astounding how such a minimalist game can send such a powerful message, and it's all because the narrative and the gameplay are as one. Sure, the narrator is great and lines are well written, but the strongest messages are the ones that are inferred rather than stated.

Of course, you can have all of these things and have a game that isn't actually much fun. Often this is the case with the most "artsy" games. I don't believe this to be the case with Thomas Was Alone, however. None of what I mentioned is thrown in your face if you aren't looking for it. If you are just looking for a puzzle platformer, Thomas Was Alone does that, too. You don't have any grappling hooks or rocket boots or arcane magics, but figuring out how to use each character's size and abilities does make for quite an interesting game. It's not very hard nor exceptionally long, but it will make you think in a way that no other game will. It's also very good for short sessions, with most levels being easily beaten within 15 minutes. All in all, I would say that if you are looking for a good puzzle platformer, an interesting game, a strong narrative or any combination therein, Thomas Was Alone is definitely worth your time.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Review

It's no secret that the Final Fantasy franchise has been a bit of a mess for quite a while now. Final Fantasy XIII was pretty heavily panned, and XIII-2 was a very divisive sequel. By now a large portion of the audience is just done with the XIII trilogy; they either hate that Lightning Returns exists, or just can't find it in them to care any more. Personally, I rather like Final Fantasy XIII and always hoped that sequels would be able to live up to the potential that I saw. However this time around, Lightning Returns is a very different game from it's predecessors. In this final installment Lightning is going it alone, and she is faced with a fairly open world to explore and interact with. What's more, the game features a 13-day "doomsday clock", which much like Majora's Mask, counts down to the impending... well, doomsday. All these things had me pretty excited for the possibility of Final Fantasy returning to greatness. Having now played the game for 70 hours and completing everything it has to offer, let's break it down.

I think that the doomsday clock is the most apparent feature to this game, as it features pretty heavily in both the gameplay and the narrative. The fact that the events of Lightning Returns occur over 13 days is both a blessing and a curse. When the game first starts, I really enjoyed the sense of urgency the doomsday clock gives. It feels like every decision matters, and so does your performance. You don't have the time to grind (in fact, you don't even level up in any way from battles), you just have to manage the resources you have. The problem is that this model falls apart more and more as time goes on. The problem is, you have 13 whole day. We aren't talking some short cycle that you have to do repeatedly like Majora's Mask (or Ephemeral Fantasia for all 2 of you who know what that is), and unlike the aforementioned games, quest progress is the only thing that does not persist if you have to start the clock over. It's quite possible that you will finish all of your main quests by day 5 and have 8 whole days to just chill, which completely removes all urgency from the game. Or maybe you don't manage to complete the main quests and you fail to save the world. You get to keep your stats and gear, but now you have to start over from day 1 and re-do all of the quests. Obviously neither of these scenarios are very good.

Thankfully, exploring the world itself is pretty interesting. There are lots of places to go, lots of things to do, and the environments are fairly captivating. Each of the games 4 areas also offers slightly different kinds of quests. For example, Luxerian has Lightning playing detective a lot of the time, whereas the Wildlands involves a lot of monster hunting and plant gathering. I legitimately enjoyed running around completing random quests, and just seeing what the world had to offer... Most of the time anyways. The issue here comes back to the fact that, once the game's main quests are done, things really slow down. Side quests give you much less direction, or else just require grinding for monster bits. Sometimes the result of this is that you end up just wandering around an area without really knowing where to look, hoping to find something you need or perhaps a new quest. Wandering around with a clear objective is one thing, but it feels pretty atrocious to be wandering around desperately looking for something to do or waiting for a certain time of day. Unfortunately the longer into the 13 day cycle you go, the less new quests start appearing, and the more your wandering becomes aimless.

Aside from the doomsday open world madness, the other thing Lightning Returns does to change things up is having Lightning go it alone. In place of having 2 allies, she instead has the ability to rapidly switch between a set of 3 customizable "schemata", each wielding it's own equipment and abilities. The level of customization you have is actually quite fun to play with, but in reality I didn't find myself changing my setup too much over the course of the game, save for direct upgrades. As nice as the customization is, I still feel like Lightning being alone really messes with the dichotomy of battle. Aside from the schemata system and a fancy new UI, Lightning Returns' battle system actually hasn't changed that much from the last 2 games. Except now Lightning has to worry about doing everything on her own while also being the sole focus of every enemy. Being so restricted can be very frustrating at times, although it does also add weight to your decisions, which is nice. While I think I prefer having a party, there are definitely strengths to Lightning Returns' combat as well. Primary among those is the fact that it feels more skillful. There are a lot of special cases that exist now that reward you for good timing or attacking an enemy in the right place. Combine these with rapidly switching between schemata to use the right ability in the right situation, and it can feel really awesome when you tear an enemy apart. It can feel kind of gross if you don't have the right ability setup for a fight or you are waiting on the ATB for schemata #3 to refill, but I think the annoyances and the badass moments more or less cancel each other out.

And with all that said, I think all that's left to speak on is the story. Normally I try not to talk much about a game's story, but this time I thought I would make an exception. Final Fantasy has been known to have pretty ridiculous plots in the past, but the previous two XIII games were considered by many to be particularly bad. The plots were just weird, the characters were weak, and XIII-2 in particular had an ending that I personally consider to be a slap in the face to the player. Lightning Returns was supposed to be a proper ending to the trilogy, and I suppose it is. Kind of? If you are paying attention, it does give some closure to the absurdity that is XIII-2. The fact of the matter is Lightning Returns turns the weird up to 11, and despite being predictable, just kind of stops trying to explain what's going on. The game's plot felt kind of superfluous to me, really. What I did find interesting was the world though. Every person living in Nova Chrystallis has lived for 500+ years without aging at this point. That creates some pretty interesting scenarios, which I think the game did a pretty good job of exploring. Lightning is still a flat and uninteresting vessel, and the game is definitely too expository for my taste, but I still found the world interesting. I couldn't tell you what happened in the ending cinematic, though.

Lightning Returns is just a really weird game, honestly. It has a lot of really strong points, it has a lot of really weak points. There were points where I was really enjoying myself, and there were points where I just wanted it to be over. It's not the game I was hoping it would be; I think it would have been a lot better if the doomsday cycle was a lot shorter or didn't exist at all. The combat was different, and interesting in it's own way, despite creating some new annoyances. The world was really well built, and even though the plot is absolutely ridiculous, what JRPG isn't? It's definitely not a game that everyone will enjoy and it's a bit of a mess, but in the end of the day I still enjoyed my time with Lightning Returns.