LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Lightning Returns is the concluding chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII saga and series heroine Lightning's final battle. The grand finale of the trilogy brings a world reborn as well as free character customization and stunning action based battles.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is a rpg, jrpg and female protagonist game
developed and published by Square Enix.
Released on December 10th 2015 is available only on Windows
in 8 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 4,427 reviews of which 3,508 were positive and 919 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.7 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 15.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows® XP SP2 or later
- Processor: 2GHz Dual Core CPU
- Memory: 1500 MB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA® Geforce® 8800GT / ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 VRAM 512MB or later
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 22 GB available space
- Sound Card: Sound card compatible with DirectX® 9.0c
- Additional Notes:
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Lightning Returns is the best part of the Final Fantasy XIII series, reminiscent of Zelda: Majoras Mask due to the time limit to complete the game, but without puzzle temples. The time limit may seem stressful at first, as you probably won't get much done in the first two days, but you can easily complete all the main quests in time. The reason for this is the Chronostasis ability, which stops time and can be used almost indefinitely as it costs EP, which is earned through combat. There are semi-random encounters: monsters spawn in front of you, and you can usually choose to engage or avoid them. There are also some platforming elements that require jumping and running, but these are rudimentary. In terms of gameplay, I think this is one of the better Final Fantasy games. The best thing about this game is the customization of the protagonist: Lightning can wear different garbs, shields, weapons, and accessories, each with different abilities and bonuses, which allows for experimentation. In addition, each garb often has a unique look, which can even be adjusted in color. Lightning Returns features the first fully action-oriented combat system in the series. It is a unique combat system with some resemblance to the dresses in Final Fantasy X-2. The main difference is that you control a single character - Lightning - instead of giving commands to a group of characters, and you can change your garb instantly by pressing R1 or L1 on the controller. However, I often find myself accidentally changing into the wrong garb in the middle of a battle :-) You must also be aware that changing your garb will change your ability set on the four main buttons on the controller, so you must remember which buttons you have set for each of the three active costumes. The combat itself requires some reaction skills, which I am pretty bad at, but it is still fun and perfect timing is not necessary to complete the game. One thing I generally find annoying in the FF13 series is the rotating camera during combat. In Lightning Returns, this camera movement is even worse, as you often can't see the enemies, which makes it harder to react to them in time (e.g., to block their attack). From a technical point of view, this game is a step backwards. Especially the textures look much worse than in previous games. The game also seems to run on an emulator. Among other things, the game supports 4k resolution, but it still doesn't look very sharp or feel very smooth. Pop-ins - objects such as NPCs and monsters suddenly appear - are very noticeable. Moreover, the game hints only show keyboard buttons instead of controller buttons. A proper port is needed, Square Enix! However, the game runs very stable and does not require any fan patches like the previous Final Fantasy XIII-2. The art style and level design is good, but I found the starting city in particular very confusing and difficult to navigate at first due to its cramped architecture. The other areas of the game are clearer and less claustrophobic. Each area has its own look and feel. Musically, Lightning Returns doesn't stand out from the other games in the series, but it's on a high level. Story-wise, the game is good. I am still disappointed that Lightning Returns has very little to do with the original world of Final Fantasy XIII. The original characters are back, but not really... I would have liked to see more interaction with the original characters and more depth in their development. The same goes for the main character, Lightning. She's cool and I generally like her, but after three games I still don't know much about her. Speaking of dialog: Hope talks a lot - a little too much at times. He usually talks to Lightning via radio, but these conversations are almost always interrupted when Lightning interacts with something in the world (e.g., monsters or NPCs), and I was not willing to sit still and just listen to the conversation because of the time limit. It's a shame, but it's a design problem: the dialog should have taken place in isolated moments. There are a lot of quests and NPCs, which are quite varied, but unfortunately most of them are told in an unexciting way (static dialog) and boil down to errand quests. More surprises during quests would have been nice. I usually complain when a game gives you unrelated side quests from random people, because story-wise the protagonist should focus on progressing the urgent main quest, but in this game fulfilling side quests actually fits into the story. Speaking of the main quest: I find the first main quest to be a poor introduction to the game, as you have to search for graffiti in various parts of the city. Coupled with the initial feeling of time pressure, this quest creates some unnecessary stress in the beginning. Some quests can only be accessed or completed at certain times in the game. This makes sense thematically, but it can be annoying to have to wait. In general, I like it when quest markers don't appear on the map until you discover them. In Lightning Returns, however, no quest markers are created on the map at all - you have to do that yourself. Even more annoying is the fact that you have to look up the location and time period of each active quest in the menu. The menu also opens with a delay, making the process even more tedious. It would have been better if the game had automatically displayed the necessary information on the map. Interestingly, there are no experience points for killing monsters in Lightning Returns, only for completing quests. I think this is a good approach, as it potentially eliminates the need to farm monsters. However, there is still a lot of grinding involved in this game, as monsters drop certain resources that are needed for upgrades or to complete quests. The ability upgrade system seems unnecessary at first, as there's little you can do with it - it's expanded a bit later on, but I wouldn't have missed it if it wasn't there. All in all, Lightning Returns is a good game with a good story. However, it lacks in character development and quest storytelling.
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Beat the game. Did a Hard Mode NG+ run and didn't have the foresight to buy elemental or hero potions for the final boss. Even with meta builds, I couldn't deal enough damage to the boss before he killed me. I had no way to purchase these potions in the endgame, either. Then the game taunted me by placing the object that restarts the whole game next to the boss door. Needless to say, I was livid. 10/10 game. Would play again.
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Lightning didn't do anything wrong. People weren't ready for this game when it came out. Still stands the test of time and is gorgeous. Really was fun when I got to replay it. Love the garb system. It's similar to dresspheres from ff10-2. Story's great and bosses are challenging. Also has stellar music.
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I love this game. Some of that love is nostalgia, but having just finished it I do think it holds up. The side quests are really not as bad as a lot of people make them out to be and many of them can be completed without much effort. The open world and ability to do the mainline quests in your preferred order is really nice (I do like to spend a lot of time in the Wildlands). The very first time I played this game when I was younger I missed a mainline quest unknowingly. This did cause me to be unable to complete the game and had to move on to NG+, so just look out for that. The atmosphere of the game is very cool and fun, the combat system is easy to use and feels decent, and the characters are great. I cannot recommend it enough.
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Going into Lightning Returns, I was hesitant - XIII-2 is such a mess of a game to come off of, and Lightning Returns represents a pretty hard gameplay shift compared to its predecessors, ditching the linearity of XIII and the convoluted plot structure of XIII-2 in favor of a wide open world with a big timer ticking down in your face. As the concluding piece of a strange, uneven trilogy, it feels thoroughly uninterested in providing a smooth landing, but the world-building, character interactions, and individual moments throughout the narrative end up easily justifying the game's existence, easily vaulting it to second place on my list for the XIII trilogy. Gameplay-wise, Lightning Returns is a huge departure, with its structure dictated entirely by the narrative conceit - it's the end of the world, and you have, ostensibly, seven in-game days to get as much done as possible. You're kind of dumped into the main game without much preamble beyond that, left to fend for yourself and figure out your own way through the game's open world and narrative, with five major story arcs that can be tackled in any order, and a heap of side-quests to pad out the time between those arcs. This is all pretty daunting, and it's made that much more stressful by the ticking timer that's constantly on-screen, ostensibly setting a hard limit on how much you can explore and dick around. Functionally, the timer can be mitigated to the point of being a non-issue with the Chronostasis mechanic that pauses the clock for a couple of real-world minutes at a time, but I personally never once forgot that it was there, and always felt kind of pressed by it. That a lot of in-game events are dependent on certain times of the in-game day made this harder, too - if you miss a time window, you're fucked, and you'll have to come back to that event the next day. I've seen people go back and forth on this, some saying it's a dogshit mechanic that ruins the playing experience, other people saying that it can be minimized so completely that complaining about it is pointless. I feel like, ultimately, it's more detrimental than beneficial, and would have preferred for it not to be in the game, but it admittedly did not ruin the playing experience the way I thought it would. Combat is a little different compared to XIII and XIII-2 - you still have multiple battle styles to rotate through in a fight, but you have much more granular control over them in Lightning Returns, able to set separate commands to each of the face buttons. Some of these are tied to the garb mechanic, where the dress Lightning is wearing affects her battle attributes (Dresspheres 2.0 lol), but generally you have an incredible amount of freedom by the mid-game point when the game turns the battle system entirely over to the player, and I found it just as satisfying as the other two games in the trilogy. You can make Lightning an absolute monster in this game, and she'll need it, seeing as she gets no help for the entirety of the game. No party, no partners, just Lightning. It has a slow start, and remains laden with Final Fantasy nonsense as you might expect, but the story is easily the most engaging of the trilogy, shaking the trappings of XIII and XIII-2 that bogged their respective stories down. The open, somewhat non-linear nature of the game's narrative contributes to this, but I also found that so many of the side-quests are just incredibly affecting, something that I didn't expect going in. End-of-the-world stories that feature a lot of regular people struggling to cope with the reality of what's happening provide a lot of material for writers to work with, and they certainly make the most of it here. The main story is similar, with Lightning checking in on her former party members and allies, seeing the places they've carved out for themselves in this broken world, and it was really nice to spend that time with them after so many of them were reduced to cameos in XIII-2. The end of the game is a particularly satisfying victory lap for people invested in this trilogy and its core cast, and I came away from it feeling surprisingly attached to them, despite the remarkably uneven nature of these games. The XIII trilogy takes a lot of beatings in the fandom, for reasons that I certainly understand - all three games have tons of pain points that can make them unbearable to play, and those pain points are different across each game. This era of the franchise was strange and rocky, these games mixing in with the perpetual delays of Versus XIII and the horrible launch of XIV 1.0, but it feels to me like XIII takes the brunt of the abuse in that regard, while people tend to forget that XIII-2 and Lightning Returns even exist. For me, I think it's a shame that Lightning Returns truly requires you to play XIII and XIII-2 to get to it, because this is a really interesting, lovingly made game, and if it didn't have so much homework associated with it, I think the wider fandom would hold it in much higher regard. Do what you have to in order to get here - watch a let's play, read some in-depth summaries, whatever. Give this game a play. It's worth it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is currently priced at 15.99€ on Steam.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 15.99€ on Steam.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII received 3,508 positive votes out of a total of 4,427 achieving a rating of 7.69.
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LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII was developed and published by Square Enix.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is playable and fully supported on Windows.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is not playable on MacOS.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is not playable on Linux.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is a single-player game.
There are 2 DLCs available for LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII. Explore additional content available for LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII on Steam.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII does not support Steam Remote Play.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 05 June 2025 03:25 |
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| SteamSpy data | 12 June 2025 03:28 |
| Steam price | 14 June 2025 20:45 |
| Steam reviews | 13 June 2025 19:46 |
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Game modes
Features
Online players
64
Developer
Square Enix
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
10 Dec 2015
Platforms