I just finished the demo for Lightning Returns and I have some things to say about it and guess what... They are actually good things.
First off I have to say I was not really a fan for XIII to begin with. I found it boring the the characters kind of dull. XIII-2 was a bit better but still meh in terms when it comes to a Final Fantasy good and now this game comes and .... Wow. I actually love it. Although the demo was only a tiny tiny tiny bit of the game I already can see mass improvments.
The First thing I noticed was the how fluent the class changing in this game was. By pressing R1 or L1 you can switch between one of your three classes. I had Dragoon, Black Mage and The Savior. Anytime I wanted to switch it was on the fly and no change or slow up to combat.
At
the start of the Demo you can pick through six and keep three (Can swap
in or out at anytime). They had The Savior (Basic Fighting Class),
Black Mage, Red Mage, Dragoon (Fuck yes), Thief type (it seems) and one
other I can quite think off on the top of my head. My personal Favorite
was the Dragoon class due to the counter attack and how badass Lightning looked
About the combat. It is still the real time action thing we are use to know because most RPG's have this system in place. The way this game has it though is you have three mana pools/action skill meter lengths for each class. One for Savior, One for Black Mage and One for Dragoon. With each skill you use in a certain class the meter that represents the class drains, so once it is depleted or you used up what you wanted to us in that certain class you can switch and it will refill as you drain the current class meter.
They
also added a special ability which slows down time with the R2 button.
It builds up when you are in a battle and doesn't reset until you use it
which is quite awesome to say the least.
The combat revamp is hardly the biggest change in Lightning Returns.
Much more significant is the way it seems to have jumped on the
open-world design bandwagon slightly in advance of the rest of the games
industry.
But I was surprised by just how unbounded Lightning Returns' world has
turned out to be. When I first heard that the game would be adopting an
open-world style, I had concerns about how well they could pull it off
given the tubes 'n tunnels style of FFXIII, and even FFXIII-2. But no;
Lightning Returns looks legit.
It totally kills me that the game operates on a hard time limit, though.
This is the kind of world that makes me want to tell the plot to go
shove off while I wander aimlessly to see the sights. Preferably as my
heroine kills monsters while wearing a pretty a ball gown. Just because
you're stomping slimes in a mission to avert the apocalypse doesn't mean
you can't look good, dammit.
