Time for a juicy bunch of new details for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, this time focusing on the battle system, plus a new location and costume too.
First up, some screens from Yusnaan, the city of revelry, focusing in on one area in particular – The Slaughterhouse. As the name implies, it’s not the most savory of destinations… it’s home to nightly battles between mighty combatants in a brutal arena. I’m pretty sure you can figure out who’s going to end up getting involved in all that, eh?
Also, time to lift the lid on a nice little sync-up with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII by way of some more costume links – this one allowing you to don the garb of the famous Miqo’te character from the forthcoming PS3 and PS4 MMO, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. You’ll be able to equip the Lominsan Cutlass and Escutcheon to give you some awesome rapid attacks and leave enemies dead in your wake.
And last, but by no means least, a bit more detail on the game’s battle system. In some battles, you can destroy sections of a foe, and if you succeed in disabling a specific area then the enemy will not only be weakened but you can also gain different items as rewards once the battle is won.
Plus, there’s also a new counter attack system – by timing your counter perfectly with the enemy attack you can negate it and land a punishing blow of your own that could stagger the foe. However, you need to judge when best to use it – it’ll use up a large portion of the ATB gauge, and it’s only effective against physical attacks… not magical ones.
Finally, check out the new “13 Days” trailer for the game – first shown at San Diego Comic-Con!
That’s it for this update – let us know what you think in the comments. Stay tuned for more updates on the game, up until its release on February 11th, 2014!
Waiting for FFXV instead. Maybe I’ll play this one later, just like I did with FFX-2, but changing robes isn’t a feature for me at all, lol.
How about putting her in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale?!!
Very excited for this game. I’m sure it will keep me entertained for a while before FFXV arrives.
Question: This game was recently announced to be Day 1 Digital right? Will KH 1.5 be day 1 digital as well?
Wait so is it going to impose a time limit during gameplay like Dead Rising? If so, then count me out!
So does I understand this right?
You get the Miqo’te costume by owning FFXIV.
This game looks as bad as the original, and with a time limit. Sorry but no costume is worth the buy.
meh, bring back my old final fantasy
I hope SE fire Toriyama after this BS come out, this guy is creepy.
so is just Lightning!?
I cant wait for this game. Now comes the people who call the game crap and swear its fact and bla bla bla.
13 days? PLEASE tell me its just scripted or a story element and I’m NOT going to feel constant time pressure to finish the game in “13 days” of the game’s internal calendar like the Dead Rising series.
@8 Toriyama made Dragon Ball :)
In-game time limit, changing costumes, play as only one character. Looks like it’s Final Fantasy XIII: Majora’s Mask…
@12 And was the designer in Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger too ;)
You make me remember how great DQVIII is, and now I’m sad that probably it was the last DQ console game (MMO doesn’t count) :(
“You have 13 days” “Why 13?” “Because thats the name of the game.” “What game?”…………….ugh this is corny.
Please give us FF15 and FF10 release dates. I don’t care about FemCloud.
Hello Phil!
1) Do you have to complete the game in 13 days, or can you jump back and forth in time within a 13 day time period?
2) Can we get a release date for FFX|X-2 HD? Aren’t we supposed to get this before FFXIII-3?
I wish hating Final Fantasy XIII games didn’t become the cool thing to do. Have half of the whiners actually played through them? XIII was good and XIII-2 was great, and I am looking forward to Lightning Returns.
@17 BioSpock
I have played played FFXIII and FFXIII-2 to completion. I have platinums for both. Feel free to check my trophies.
While I enjoyed FFXIII-2 to some degree, I still feel they botched the ending of that game among other critical parts. There is such a huge list of things to cover that I can’t cover them in a comment box here on the Blog. I’d have to write a essay to get it all out. Everything from the world to the characters had no personality to them and you ahd no means of exploring that. The battle system was not bad, but it also felt half baked. It lost things that made FF1-12 had.
So yes I’m complaining, because I did play the games. FF15, Type-0, and FF14RRB have all shown more promise than FFXIII has ever shown in release.
Akira Toriyama isn’t Motomu Toriyama, guys…
Also: Square, here’s another post asking you to release the PSP Final Fantasy I & II Anniversary Editions, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII to the PSP&Vita stores. Please.
Excited for this. Just finished replaying XIII and XIII-2. Hopefully this game will explain more about the end of XIII-2.
Also find it interesting that they are doing 13 days til the world ends when FFXIII had first 13 days.
Man.. SE either loves doing their own thing or simply refuses to just give the fans what they want.
Who in their right minds would pay full price for this after the other two iterations and now that there may be a time limit attached?
FFXIII-2 went from $59.99 to $39.99 in less than 3 months.. and then dropped to $19.99 – 24.99 roughly two months after that. There is an obvious reason why this happened – supply was much greater than the demand.
I loved XIII, but XIII-2 was just ok, this looks great BUT
Can I use my FFV PSOne classic on my Vita, FFI and FFII psp versions on psn, as well as KHBBS and Crisis Core.
Ohh and to this day I still can’t believe, Square Enix won’t release Final Fantasy Type-0 here smh
@D-Squad3 Will you stop bringing up Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale to every company?! You do know they have no control over that, but I’m guessing your too stupid to know. Just focus on Dart right now, not Lightning.
@19 I think he was joking… I hope so.
Just give me Xenogears 2, FF7 remake exclusive for ps4. Im happy u gave us KH3 but mad that u went multiconsole, Happy that u gave us VS13 (15) but mad u sold out to M$. and im FReAKING MAD! that u keep pusihing this horrible 13 saga! Nobody cares about this saga! (nobody meaning the real FF fanbase which was bigger than the noobs u have with 13)
so all in all u have me half half.
Just give me FF7 Exclusive to ps4 and i swear to God that after that i wont bother u like NEVER EVER and will live forever happy ever after with u guys.
And D squad…. Lighting would be the last FF character they should put in all stars. God….
Tell me the Arena is coming back at least? @DarkOne_PR – good point. They should pit cross story characters against her from different FF titles (i get that probably defeats the purpose of Dessidia) and wouldn’t that be cool to face off Cloud, Titus, Squall etc … put more in the game … those Bluray discs can surely hold it
Way to recycle that Kingdom Hearts quote.
Is anyone actually excited for this game?
Can’t wait to play this game.
Gotta admit, I was a bit bored when playing XIII, but I feel the games have improved a lot since then. And even tho I was bored during the first game, I’d say Lightning is easily my second favorite Final Fantasy character ever. Second only to Cloud, and followed very closely by Squall, Terra and WoL.
Also, can’t wait to play Lightning’s missions in FFXIV. I’m incredibly curious about how that’s going to play out.
Never played this but this will be great anyway.
Is not that they sold out to MSFT, they’re having some financial trouble after TR and Hitman: A not sold as expected and FFXIV: A Realm Reborn eat a huge I mean HUGE amount of money to be redone, they really need FFXV and KH3 to be mult.
/\
Answering DarkOne_PR
Sigh… more Lightning.
Ok I’m going to be honest, I have literally hated every final fantasy in this series, I bought ff13 day one when it came out, and didn’t even finish it. I bought the second in the series hoping maybe it got better was wrong again. I’m a Final fantasy guy, but this franchise is going down hill. The new combat system is just horrible, spending hours on simple monsters is crazy. I’m not saying they should take it back to the good old final fantasy 7 days, but something needs to happen. The characters are just plain boring and story line is nothing short of a b movie. I wont even pay this one much attention since i’m sure it’s more of the same old crap i don’t like.
@DarkOne_PR – While I agree with you on the FF7 remake, Square-Enix won’t be able to make Xenogears 2. If you didn’t know, Xenogears is part of the Xeno series owned by Monolith Soft and they’re now a first party developer for Nintendo. If there’s going to be a Xenogears 2, it’ll be exclusive for a Nintendo console.
All Square-Enix is able to do is publish the first Xenogears as a PSOne classic (as they did) since they still own the publishing rights to that game. Namco Bandai might still be able to publish the Xenosaga games as PS2 Classics though.
/\
They don’t own Xenogears name, SE owns it.
So if SE wanted, they could do it.
But this will never happen
@21
So a fan is only someone who doesint like ff13? Also on price drops all games do this.
I can’t wait to get this game soon, the final FF13 game for lighting and her world. :) I hope their go out with big bang on the ending.
@18
Ff13 series IMO has a great battle system one of my favorite in the series
@ Hitokiri_03 Ahh yea, that’s true. While Monolith Soft has full control of the Xeno series, they just don’t have a say when it comes to Xenogears because Square-Enix still owns that name. Forgot about that.
I must say though. If Square-Enix isn’t going to do anything with the Xenogears name, they should just sell the rights to Monolith Soft. At least they would likely do something with it. You just won’t see it on a non-Nintendo platform is all.
I love the FFXIII series, and FFXIII is my favorite FF. Can’t wait for Lightning Returns! Just wish it came out earlier.
@2 +1
Still looks like a rental to me. Too many other more interesting jrpgs coming out that i will buy full price.
make the walk in battles into a bit quicker movement and this will be a near perfect battle system
I have played all of the Final Fantasy games (except 11) and I found 13 to be great and much better than 12 in my opinion. It didn’t beat the likes of 7, 10, 4, and 6 (in no particular order) but for me it was a solid RPG. It was an interesting story, creative gameplay, and had beautiful graphics. When I played XIII-2, I liked the gameplay but found the story to be convoluted and weak. This seems like an even more convoluted story losing the traction of the original world. Just because you throw in cameos from the first game doesn’t mean it is enough to feel like it’s in the world of the first game.
I’ll still play it because I like to try everything but I do have my concerns.
Square Enix will be keeping me very busy for the next several months!
Every time I see a trailer it just shows more and more how the first two games have stories that have nothing to do with anything outside of returning characters. The story makes absolutely no sense at this point other than interesting characters were killed off simply so Lightning can abuse the story some more.
I’ve played Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, and Tactics. I loved 7, 8, and 9, but I couldn’t stand 12 at all.
One thing that disappointed me the most with later games was the lack world exploration. They went from having a whole world map in games like 7 and 8 and changed it into a “get in the airship, warp to this location, run through a nearly-straight line.” It just seemed so much more restrictive than previous Final Fantasy games when it came to exploration. Then they started changing the battle system with 12… oh my god that was horrible!
I’m glad you guys don’t seem interested in remaking Final Fantasy 7. You’d probably destroy everything that made that game fun.
Coooooooooooool!!!
I’ve played all FF titles from FF7-FF13-2 and I’m totally happy with the FF13 trilogy. FF12 was very pale, uninteresting and plot-less while FF13 has a very enjoyable gameplay, story and characters. This particular game is going to be amazing since it’s a finale to the trilogy, or so I hope it will turn out to be. I hope we’ll have a happy ending for all characters from FFXIII and FFXIII-2.