LIGHTNING RETURNS: A Much Anticipated Guided Tour

Final Fantasy XIII has a bit of a hole to dig itself out of, and Lightning Returns is its last ditch effort to close this chapter of Square Enix’s mighty franchise on a good note. The good news is that, from everything we've been shown, it appears to be headed in the right direction, and Square Enix’s latest guided tour trailer just sweetens the pot. Lightning Returns takes X-2’s costume based class system (called garbs here) and ups the customization. Once a garb is chosen (you can pick up to 3 at a time to swap out on the fly, with each giving you different stats and abilities) you can then customize the color scheme on multiple parts of the outfit (similar to Soul Calibur's system, just not as extensive), and that doesn't even count your interchangeable shields and swords, which all have varying stats as well.

In some franchises, having direct control of your protagonist is not such a novel feature, but a good portion of the trailer shows just how much the control has evolved since the initial title in the trilogy. Your previous options were limited to jumping when the game told you to as well as only moving forward and back for the first 40 hours of the game. As long as the control is more precise than FF XIII-2 , consider that a major plus, as that game suffered from some awkward and loose controls, and for the accuracy needed in this title, that cannot be the case here. For naysayers of the turn based combat in previous games, you will be much happier this time around, as every action requires a direct button press, and the temp is much quicker. Elsewhere in the trailer we see most of the cast from the previous games making a return, including Chocolina. While not my favorite character, it is entertaining to see her interact with the very no nonsense Lightning.

For those looking for something different that includes the gorgeous aesthetics of Final Fantasy, Lightning Returns might just be up their alley. Peep the full trailer below for more details, and catch some screens from the game in the gallery above.