Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Demo Out Today on PS3

143 14
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Demo Out Today on PS3

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

If you haven’t been lucky enough to attend E3, San Diego Comic Con, Penny Arcade Expo, or the other shows that have hosted Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, we have good news. We’re excited to announce that you can get hands-on with it in a playable demo that’s dropping TODAY.

From now on, you don’t have to take our word for it that this game is unlike anything Final Fantasy has ever done before, because it’s finally time for you to see for yourself.

First off, downloading the demo scores you an exclusive piece of DLC that we’re giving to you PlayStation fans — the Utsusemi Samurai garb — that you can use in the main game (it’s not in the demo itself, so don’t panic if you don’t see it). Again, this offer is exclusive to PlayStation owners too, so right off the bat you’re getting something not everybody’s going to get, JUST for downloading it. You can’t tell, but I’m winking at you, especially at all you Final Fantasy XI Ninjas.

So what’s in the demo itself? Of course, you’re playing as Lightning, but you’re now mysteriously tracking down her old friend Snow Villiers in the city of Yusnaan. As Lightning, it’s going to be up to you to fight through the chaos to see what happened.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

And the battle mechanics? No Final Fantasy is without battles, and this demo gives you just a taste of the real-time elements incorporated into both the field and the battle system, and it includes but a fraction of the ways you can customize Lightning.

Your default equipment sets (or Schemas, as they’re called in-game) are The Savior, Dark Muse, and Black Mage, but three battles into the demo you’ll unlock some Final Fantasy series favorites — Dragoon, Red Mage, and Heart Stealer, which may remind you of a certain thei–treasure hunter.

Once in battle, you’ll notice how the battle system has evolved from the traditional paradigm shift party system into strategically using Schema. Each Schema has its own ATB gauge, allowing you to attack relentlessly with commands mapped to corresponding buttons. Then you’ll switch to a new Schema, and all of your attacks change too, allowing you to pummel the enemy with different elements and attacks. Lightning is a one-woman army.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Finally, one of the features that the demo shows off is called the “Outerworld,” a way for other players to communicate their progress via social networks like Facebook and Twitter to post their battle scores. While in the demo, this is all you can do with Outerworld. The full game offers much more Outerworld functionality, including buying and selling items your friends may have.

While sharing your game scores with 9,999 of your closest Facebook friends may not appeal to everyone, we’re excited to give you even MORE free stuff. If you can beat the Zaltys monster at the end of the demo and you post your score via Outerworld, you unlock the Siegfried Garb in the full game. Who is Siegfried, you ask? Play Final Fantasy VI, and all will be revealed.

Okay, so we’ve thrown a lot of information at you, so let’s recap, shall we?

  • The demo is available. For free, of course.
  • Just for playing, you get the PS3 exclusive DLC — Utsusemi Samurai garb. Again, for free.
  • Just for posting your score after the final battle, you’ll get more free DLC. As a note, this DLC will never be available aside from doing this.
  • If you’ve forgotten, just for pre-ordering, you unlock Final Fantasy history with Cloud Strife’s SOLDIER 1st Class Uniform.

Another awesome tidbit we wanted to share with you guys is that if you have save data from Final Fantasy XIII and/or Final Fantasy XIII-2, you get up to two more garbs based on Lightning’s outfits from each of those games — both Guardian Corps and Etro’s Guardian garbs.

We’re so excited over here to have you check out the demo and tell us what you think about the new battle system and gameplay. So what are you waiting for? You can pre-order Lightning Returns here to get free stuff, and of course download the demo later today.

Comments are closed.

143 Comments

14 Author Replies

  • Loved the demo! Toughest part was deciding which retailer to visit for pre-order. Anyone know if you have to post final battle score to Facebook for additional DLC? Does posting to twitter count?

  • Omg! the game looks so good! I love FF XIII games!

  • Do the posted battle results have to be a certain rank for the second garb to be unlocked? Mine was, embarrassingly, 1-star since I’m still getting used to the new staggering system, but I posted it to Twitter anyway and didn’t get a “Hey, garb unlocked!” type of message. I figure it probably records that the results were posted and it’ll be there in the full version from my system data or something, but I just wanna be safe! Thank you! (Great collector’s edition unboxing video, btw!)

  • @50
    Speak for yourself. Having not played the recent series and loving the old stuff, I praise XIII – the story has so many mature undertones and a lot deeper than people see on the surface and give it credit for. Takes a little more than a thought to see the pure beauty of its simplicity and complexity intertwined in the story, it’s nice that Square is growing up as we are too.

    I love Lightning

  • Do you have a release date / time for the demo’s release in New Zealand? Pretty gutted that it’s still not available here.

  • pffff give me FFX/X-2 HD remaster >;(
    people actually want it more than FF lightning returns :) i had a crazy dream about it being out today too bad it was just a dream!!

  • how come FFXIII isn’t on playstation store?

  • 107^ Because you can own the bluray version for cheap cheap cheap. Physical copies are always better anyways.

  • I am very happy!! Made my day!!

  • Maybe a little off subject, but with this demo dropping… Any hopes of us getting the FF Sale that EU just got? I’d love to finish off my FF collection digitally leading up to this!

  • Meh, not a huge fan of the battle system. I’ll just have to think of it as something other than a Final Fantasy and get through one more of these. Please ditch the Real Time combat and go with something that resembles the core Final Fantasy battle system for future games in the franchise.

    I have a couple questions: How do you know if you will be receiving the extra DLC for posting your score? Will you get a code via email, or will the full game check and automatically unlock? Doesn’t seem to be anything in the demo to tell you that it has been achieved….

  • I don’t know how to feel about this game after playing the demo. I played it a few times last night and again before posting this. As of right now I’m unsure if I will be purchasing Lightning Returns on release, which would be a first for me for a Final Fantasy title. The game just seems really unpolished and rushed. Comparing it to XIII and XIII-2, it’s the worst looking. The environments look bland and flat and some areas have some really bad/low textures. The trees and grass look like something you would find in a PS2 game. Even the menu looks bland compared to XIIIs nice clean/sleek look. This is a shock to me because when I hear the Final Fantasy name I associate that with beautiful graphics and detail.
    1/3

  • The camera in the field is too far from the character and you can’t zoom in on the model. In XIII the camera would slowly zoom in on the character when you’re not moving and you can bring it in even closer by angling the camera downward. They should have kept it the same for LR. The camera is also too slow in combat and there is no way to adjust the sensitivity. The walk animation just looks terrible and so stiff in battle. The way the weapon floats on the characters back has too much of a gap, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have brought it a bit closer to make it not so noticeable or even just made it materialize/dematerialize when swung in the field.
    2/3

  • Everything just doesn’t seem to have the same love and care that went into XIII. It almost feels like this was a spinoff title that was outsourced with a small budget. I decided to check online to see if there were any reviews and found the following.

    http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/12/lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii-import-review/

    http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2014/01/09/lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii-review-ps3-import/

    http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/681990-lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii/68012110

    They all seem to complain about the same thing and now I feel even more unsure about purchasing. I can understand why the game has done so poorly in Japan.
    3/3

  • I really enjoyed the demo and already have it pre-ordered. My only question, as with everyone else who asked, how do we know if we unlocked the armor at the end of the demo? I played it a few times and saw nothing.

  • @ LokeSTL: Not likely to happen i’m afraid, FFXV is even more “Real-Time Combat” oriented than the FFXIII series.

    @ Exampel: That question was already answered… people need to stop asking that question and read.

  • I’ll re-post this for those who can’t be bothered to read the thread… a simple google search will show you this:

    “You get the Siegfried garb that you unlock in the demo in the full version game. You won’t get a notification until then.
    IN THE FULL GAME ~> Load your save or start a new game, you should get a notification.
    Press Triangle to go to your menu, you can buy the new costume at 0 gil.”

    This is how it was for the JP version… and there is no reason to think it won’t be the same for all.
    Hope this helps set your minds at ease. ^_~

  • @omega_alpha-610

    I was under the impression that XV has the KH battle system. That is much more manageable than where LRFFXIII is taking things. Just personal preference I guess….

    Thanks for the clarification on the DLC.

  • Tetsuya Nomura said in a recent interview and I quote: “…the combat system in “Final Fantasy XV” will take place in real-time, Tetsuya Nomura stated.”

    Square Enix has released new footage of their next gen game Final Fantasy XV, with an extended look at the game’s ‘real-time battles’.

    It appears that the ‘turn-based’ jrpg feel of the classic Final Fantasy games is to remain a thing of the past, at least for the foreseeable future. ;_;

  • @Mat Kishimoto, or anyone that knows. I uploaded my score of Zaltys to Facebook, but did not unlock the Siegfried outfit. Do you receive a notification that you unlock it, or is it retroactive? I noticed the Samurai costume was part of the download.

    Please Reply.

  • Thanks Omega, not sure why this wasnt clarified elsewhere in the post.

  • Just finished the demo. Time to pre-order.

    The internet loves to hate FFXIII. I don’t get it. I’m a Final Fantasy fan and a Final Fantasy XIII fan. I’ve played through VII multiple times. I LOVED VI. I love IV. I overcame III. I personally love FFVIII. I liked IX. When X came out it was too next-gen for me. I played it again a few years ago, and loved it. The song “To Zanarkand” makes me almost cry. I didn’t play XI very much because I’m not an online gamer. I didn’t get into XII that much (it felt like a single player MMORPG to me), I’ve yet to finish the original and V, but I really like both, and I’ve barely played II. So I have no set opinion on it.

    I’m not new to the series. I know how amazing most of the past games are. I’ve felt like a part of those worlds, and many characters felt like friends. Is FFXIII or FFXIII-2 the best in the series? No. Do I prefer turn based battles? Yes, I do. Do I miss Overworld Maps? Yes, I do. Does a Final Fantasy game have to include those things to be a GOOD Final Fantasy game? No.

    I can’t wait to play Lightning Returns. I just really hope this trilogy gets the ending it deserves.

  • Do you get a notification if you unlock the Siegfried garb? I posted my score and everything but never got a notification or a download that popped up like the other garb that I got by downloading the demo. Just kind of worried I won’t have it.

  • This demo was amazingly short. It lasted about 20 minutes before ending. I am disappoint.

  • I enjoyed the demo. The only Final Fantasy I’ve ever played was FFVII and FFIX. Coincidentally, I’m in the middle of replaying FFVII (still holds up, I’m having a blast despite ancient graphics) but I paused to check this out since the demo was on the front page of PSN.

    The combat system is definitely different, but it’s a fun change up. Graphics look beautiful, but that’s probably cause I’m playing FFVII right now and anything looks beautiful in comparison.

    I never played FFXIII or the sequel, so I can’t comment about the story, but from the demo, it seems a little weak and I don’t know if I like the characters.

    I will probably pick this up. Not right away, but eventually when the price goes down. You can get FFXIII and XIII 2 for less than $10 each, so if anything, this just perked my interest in those. However, I still have a huge backlog of games I need to eventually get to, with the crazy PS Plus free games they’re releasing.

    I didn’t like Bioshock Infinite at first so I traded it for Borderlands 2 (best move ever), but playing it again from PS Plus, I’m really enjoying it for what it is this time.

    Ok, rant over

  • Is there any way to verify if we got the second DLC costume? I played the demo twice and had to put in a new nickname each time, and while I uploaded my score at the end each time I am not sure how the game will know if I unlocked that DLC or not.

  • this is amazing stuff, wish more companies do stuff like this ^^

  • How exactly do you share the score after you beat it? I didn’t get an option to share when I finished the demo.

  • Looks good enough

  • Just download and finish the demo.

    The graphic is acceptable but the background(i mean, building) looks like PS2 HDversion…..

    Also, I have a hard time to post my score. It always said it has errors and please redo in a few second…..I repeat again and again in 2hrs!

    And HOW CAN I KNOW THAT I GOT THE FREE GRAB with No message & No dl notices?

  • Loved the demo, looks absolutely beautiful and stunning. My fiance preordered for me, looking forward to this amazing game ^^

  • @104 “Speak for yourself. Having not played the recent series and loving the old stuff, I praise XIII – the story has so many mature undertones and a lot deeper than people see on the surface and give it credit for. Takes a little more than a thought to see the pure beauty of its simplicity and complexity intertwined in the story, it’s nice that Square is growing up as we are too.
    I love Lightning”

    XIII is nothing like classic Final Fantasy that Final Fantasy fans love. Why couldn’t this have been a completely different series or spin off? Where is the turn based combat/being able to control all characters?

    There is nothing complex about FFXIII; it is a “Game” (not sure it has enough gameplay to be called a game) made for babies, and it’s incredibly linear and simplistic and bare bones. Growing up, how so, by making mediocrity?

    What is good about Lightning? Even Kratos and the Incredible Hulk have more personality. Very horrendous character.

    LIGHTNING SMASH!

  • This is very cool and I wish more companies would start including these type of bonuses (plus it makes for a great incentive to try out the game). If I did everything right, I should have the following waiting for me; “Utsusemi Samurai garb” just for downloading the demo, “Siegfried Garb” for posting my final battle score to Facebook and Twitter via the Outerworld feature and since I have save data from both previous games (which I’m going to have to reply to jog my memory), I should get the respective garbs (all of this on top of pre-order bonuses).

    I don’t know if anyone is monitoring this post anymore but can the demo (possibly including game data?) be deleted from my system (i.e. it’s already tied to my account) or should I hang onto everything for a couple more weeks?

  • whn will the pre-order go up on psn? thanks

  • Just downloaded the demo and trying it out now. Is the DLC Kaminari costume playable in the demo and automatically saved? Because its nowhere in sight? :) Is it just playable when the full retail releases?

  • I just finished the demo and it was awesome!!!

  • Same question a lot of us have posted and have no answer yet:

    I’ve beaten the Zaltys monster at the end of the demo and posted my result to the Outerworld, now WHERE IS MY SIGFRIED COSTUME?!?!?!?!

  • So how do we get the DLC after submitting our score?

  • so do people who preorder this game on the PSN store still get the cloud dlc costume as well? I been trying to find this answer but have yet to find an answer. hopefully someone knows.

  • So I beat the Demo and I shared my final score after beating the boss, but it didn’t give me the option or mention anything about the Paladin DLC for doing that, but I did get the Free one for downloading the game. Is anyone else having this issue and can you help? I did this 3 different times. . . Please Help!

  • I downloaded the demo and beat it yesterday and i am considering preordering the game. Keep making great games Square!!!

  • Can’t wait to see the difference in the battle system.

  • Ordered the collector’s edition. can’t wait!

Please enter your date of birth.

Date of birth fields