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LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII on Steam
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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 on Windows, Steam Deck and Steam Machine.
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:
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System requirements
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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:
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User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Lightning Returns has always been considered the black sheep within the Lightning saga. It's a very bizarre and ambitious title and some would even argue that the ambition was never fully realized. I am not one of those people. I can see the arguments for it being a lesser-than title from its predecessors, but in my opinion it is the 2nd best game in the trilogy. Right behind Final Fantasy XIII, and honestly overall, one of my favorite Final Fantasy games in general. The new battle/traversal systems, the return of Lightning as the protagonist, the music, the worlds, all of these things just clicked for me and worked so well together that it’s hard for me to see how this game isn't anything other than an accomplishment. I personally never found an issue with the forced timer. By the time I was done with the Main Scenarios for every location, I still had about 5 days left to do side quests. Which was more than enough time to finish most of the bigger ones and give Lightning some very nice stat boosts. And where do you put those stats to use? In the new combat system of course! In conjunction with the garb system, the new Action RPG-like playstyle was genuinely such a fun change of pace, especially coming from the XIII and XIII-2. While I love the combat in both of those games for different reasons, there is just so much more freedom and depth to be had in build crafting in this entry. One of the things I really enjoyed in this entry was the almost soulslike combat system of the guards and perfect guards. Dark Souls was even cited by some developers as inspiration for the combat system, and you can really tell! It rewards fast reactions with full damage negation, and sometimes even staggering enemies outright. Also, as a side note, some of the garbs are just so stylish man I mean come on, who wouldn’t want to play dress up with the Lightning Farron? In regards to the story set up however, I will say that the Main Scenario’s of each primary location are great. They have good mystery, great character reunions, and progress the story at a good pace. My personal favorite was Luxerion’s Main Scenario Quest, but I’m a sucker for a good gothic city, what can I say… Each location felt like it mattered. I never felt like I was just checking lists and moving on to progress the narrative or to get more stats. However the real heart of this game lies within it's side quests. 70% of the game is spent saving what little remains of humanity’s souls, in the form of side quests. This would be incredibly boring if it weren’t implemented in such a good way. The fact that Lightning has been stripped of her emotions in becoming the Savior, allows her to figuratively gain pieces of herself back when saving others. Because of this, I was incredibly curious throughout my playthrough to know how these cities and locations have been affected by the Chaos. How has humanity changed? What has 500 years of stagnation done to civilization? Why do some people seek absolution, while others seek the destruction of the Savior? How do they grieve? Mourn? Even just live? All while knowing you have less than two weeks until everything is gone. It’s bleak to say the least, but it makes for some really memorable moments and some great character studies. Another thing that's insanely memorable about this game and the trilogy in general is the music. I could talk for hours about how much of a genius Hamauzu is but I'll keep it brief. There are some incredible stand out tracks like Ouroboros Festival, Divine Love, Savior of Souls, and of course Almighty Bhunivelze, which is just an insane 13 minute song *filled* with easter eggs spanning across the entire trilogy. That and the fact that this game gets the privilege of pulling from the previous two games makes it a joy on the ears and I'm glad the trio from XIII-2 being Naoshi Mizuta, Mitsuto Suzuki, and Masashi Hamauzu came back and created a lot of great new music for this entry. So many big story beats are accompanied by variations of Lightning's Theme, one of my favorite tracks in gaming all together, and it works some incredibly well. Speaking of story beats, let's get into one of the bigger points of contention with this game. It's story. Lightning Returns concludes a four year journey that started all the way back in 2009 with Final Fantasy XIII. It’s a story that, to me, is about what it means to *be*. The world has been frozen in time for 500 years, and soon, it’ll be gone. God is destroying this world and remaking a new one is his image. Yet, at the end of the day, Lightning just wants her sister back and to fully be herself again. What I love about this, is how a lot of this is shown throughout the side quests as I mentioned before. Lightning was stripped of her emotions to become a “perfect” soldier for Bhunivelze’s will, but as she helps the souls of others, she helps heal her own soul. Her emotional arc being woven through the stories of regular, ordinary people despite being a near godlike being, is such a special aspect of the story telling for me. It hits even harder when you remember her connection to Etro, the Goddess of Death who cared deeply for humanity. It’s tough to articulate everything I love about this story and this world but I’ll finish it with this. I am absolutely satisfied with how it ended. I can’t think of a single plot point or character narrative that didn’t get resolved in a way that I wasn’t happy with. When you beat the final boss of the game, you get met with potentially the most incredible CG cutscene in any FF game, and when you get to that big reveal at the end of it… I tear up just thinking about it, it’s magical. Despite my positive feelings about the ending and the story of the trilogy overall, I’m not so blind that I can’t see that not everyone is a fan of Motoru Toriyama’s storytelling. I was raised in the streets of Kingdom Hearts, so this kind of non straight forward and, somewhat convoluted, storytelling is *right* up my alley. I totally understand if it isn’t for you though. Lightning Returns encapsulates for me what it means to be a fan of video games as a medium. This story, world, music, characters, all mean so much to me that it’s hard not to overstate. There hasn’t been a month that goes by where I don’t think about this trilogy at least once. I am forever grateful that Final Fantasy XIII was my entry point into the franchise, and that I finally worked up the courage to finish the trilogy proper. Is this game perfect? No . I like it because it isn’t. It’s got problems, sure, but it’s unapologetically itself. I will never forget this trilogy for as long as I live, and remember, don’t ever be afraid to hope in the face of despair!
In my opinion, this is the best entry in the trilogy — especially the ending, which is exactly the kind of ending I'd want to write for my own game. The combat system sees a great evolution here, and I'd strongly recommend playing it as part of the full trilogy alongside the previous two entries. Fantastic story, great side quests, and a genuinely well-built open world — the best I've seen in a game (yes, even better than The Witcher or Baldur's Gate, in my opinion). The devs clearly evolved a lot after the previous two games in terms of world design, side content, and pacing — it's just excellent. Spent 130 hours on the trilogy total, 40 of which were on this game alone, which honestly felt slightly too long — if it had been 3-5 hours shorter, it would've been perfect. Didn't touch the optional content (the two extra chapters) — heard it's weak — but otherwise the game is fantastic, highly recommend it to everyone.
Surprisingly, My Favorite of the Trilogy Returning to Final Fantasy 13, after never beating it on release, one thing I have heard is that FF13-2 is the best and FF13-3 is a mixed bag. To my surprise, Lightning Returns ended up being my favorite for various reasons. It is my favorite in the trilogy, but also goes above many other Final Fantasies for me, too. From what I thought was FF13 fatigue while I was playing through FF13-2, this game has the charm and gameplay I was waiting for. Pacing This game is as open as you want it to be. Among the Main Objectives, you can decide to tackle them in whatever order you want. Additionally, the same can be said about the Side Quests. You can do as many, or as little, as you wish in whatever order you want. For a couple of reasons, with how the main mechanic in this game works, that aspect actually bodes itself well for the pacing of the game. With every decision comes a reward, progression. With every freedom comes efficient or casual time spent. You decide what or how much you do; How long this game takes is something you have control over. Combat Building off of what the trilogy has had before, Lightning Returns commits to it's ideas and executes them. FF13-2 felt like it had alot of ideas but didn't commit to any of them, creating some possible friction points. You ARE your 3-person Party in this game. 3 different setups, builds, JOBS, all controlled within a single Character - Lightning. This plays like an Action game at times, with various routes to success. All-Out Assault? Passive Defensive Play? Exploiting Weaknesses? How about....PARRY mechanics? You can experiment, find what playstyle works for you, and succeed with plenty of tactics. The combat in this game hides it well, but it truly is all the great features of previous Final Fantasy games combined into a single Character + modern Action game mechanics like Parry, Block, Combos. Enemies you encounter are susceptible to more than just different Elements of Magic. They can be weak to Parries, or Blocks, or simply timing the chain of Attacks. It is a very open, up to you, Combat system. The Boogeyman The infamous Zelda: Majora's Mask, Countdown mechanic...Let's talk about it. It is nowhere near as bad as it sounds. There are abilities to negate this mechanic outright. It is super lenient. You have plenty of time to do everything possible in this game, and have several days to spare, before finishing a playthrough. For example: this being my first, and blind, playthrough of the game, I was able to do everything in 3 in-game days. You have 13 days. It is super fair, especially when you use the tools the game gives to you to make the most of every bit of time given --- or stop it completely. To be fair, this mechanic alone is a big boon for me. I loved Majora's Mask and the implementation of this mechanic there as well. So, coming to this game unlocked that uber-efficient planning that Majora's Mask taught me long ago. The thing is...you don't need to be anywhere near as efficient as I was. Like I said, I only used 3 out of the 13 days to unlock the "secret" 14th Day. This game very much allows you to do everything in one go. If not, it almost seems designed to be played again. After your first playthrough, whether you do everything or not, you unlock New Game+ and a bunch of other features that will take your Gear much higher than you could before. None of it is needed, but it will certainly help guarantee that Perfect Ending and/or the optional Super Bosses/Dungeons you can expect from any Final Fantasy, if you didn't get that far your first playthrough.
Lightning Returns is a strange game, and an extremely strange Final Fantasy game. With the benefit of hindsight we might call it a Soulslike, even though it released just 2 years after DS1 and one year before DS2. What I mean is that this game is straight up an action game. Juggling stamina (ATB), perfectly chaining your attacks, and reacting to enemy attacks to perfect block them is the name of the game. Instead of a party, you control just Lightning, but to compensate you can freely switch between three outfits, each with its own skills, equipment, and stamina bar that regenerates quicker when not selected. It's glorious, and has a lot of depth to it, but you do need to approach it with an open mind. Combat is thus much faster-paced. There's nothing to compensate for that; you have to be able to deal with the action, or you're not going to have a good time... is what I'd say, but if you drop the difficulty to Easy, it's, well, easy enough to get through the entire story. You're under constant time pressure in this game, including on the overworld, and that's where I think it suffers. The devs made a beautiful world, added just the right touch of darkness to it, put in so much for us to explore and so many feels to be had... and then they put us on a timer. Those people who tell you that you can complete everything easily in the time given? They're probably right. It's possible to unlock the super-secret ending in 3 in-game days, with appropriate abuse of Chronostasis, and consulting the appropriate guides . That's where I think Lightning Returns failed me, and where I failed Lightning Returns. I started the game intending to not consult any guides. I lasted about 8 hours before I got frustrated enough to look one up, and then it was just downhill from there. If you only have time for one playthrough, you almost certainly will end up having to refer to a guide, since being unable to beat the final boss means a 30 hour run got wasted. You see, even though they give you enough chain to walk around the entire house, that doesn't change the fact that you're still on a chain. It's there; you feel it; it changes how you act, no matter how much it's actually restricting you. I would have much preferred the freedom to explore the world at my own pace, but I get that it's not the vision the devs had for the game, and I appreciate how much more coherent of a vision Lightning Returns displays. Every game mechanic ties into the overarching intent for the game, and mechanically, it's an amazing game. Lightning Returns seems like a game made for hardcore JRPG enjoyers. The casuals among us- if you're reading this in English, that probably includes you- should play the game on Easy and just leave it at that. There's a lot of optimization, mechanical depth, and postgame content, but it requires so much effort and concentration to get into that the game stops being enjoyable for me past easy difficulty. Story-wise, it's alright. I certainly enjoyed it more than FF13-2, which was messy and all over the place, though I liked it less than FF13. You see, an open world doesn't really lend itself to telling a coherent story, which is the centrepiece of a good RPG, since there's absolutely no way to pace out story beats. You just have to put lots of stuff into the world and hope the player manages to entertain themselves. The solution to that is in sidequests, which are small enough that they can be self-contained, and that's where the magic is. FF13's sidequests are almost universally dark and contemplative, the natural result of a world where nobody wants to link the fire. Or something. In fact, I distinctly felt that there were at least 3 different writing teams. One team writing the sidequests and missions, who took inspiration from film noir (seriously, you arrive in town on a train at night, narrating the story to yourself, and land right in a murder "mystery"). Another team, probably the directorial team, turning everything they touched dark and psychological. And the last team, making sure it stays recognizably a JRPG. Seriously, the ending starts with a psychobabble "I'm you, no you're me" scene, then the main characters kill God with the power of friendship, "the real Serah was in you all along", "just kidding", then the endless Rei clones make a cameo, and then everyone turns into blueberry Tang . I'm serious.
Closing out one of the weirdest trilogies I can think of with the weirdest entry in it; Lightning Returns switches up the combat system for its most confusing-to-learn and difficult-to-master version yet, moves even further away from the infamous "hallway simulator" of the first game with what feels like the most open maps in the series, and tries its hand at a Dead Rising style clock system, which is daunting at first until you realise you can do 90% of the main story within the first 3 of the 13 days you get to play with. (If you freeze time a lot, that is) Much like XIII and XIII-2 before it, this game is flawed and confusing at times, but this game's approach with the sole protagonist and a focus on interacting with/helping NPCs gives it a level of worldbuilding and immersion that was lacking in its predecessors. Also you can play dress-up with Lightning which is dope. The music still ♥♥♥♥♥, the story was pretty solid imo, I think 2's is better, as is its antagonist, but with XIII's cast, XIII-2's story and LR's cathartic conclusion to the saga it's honestly harder than you'd think to rank them fairly. All this to say that Lightning is hot and I hope she returns again in 4K when they reveal a remake/ster next month just to spite me for finally playing the trilogy :)
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Frequently Asked Questions
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is currently priced at 15.99€ on Steam.
No, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 15.99€ on Steam.
Yes, 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.
Yes, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is not playable on MacOS.
No, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is not playable on Linux.
Yes, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is playable on Steam Deck, though it might require a few minor tweaks. Make sure to check the Steam store page and community feedback on ProtonDB for exact compatibility details.
Yes, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is playable on Steam Machine, though it might require a few minor tweaks. Make sure to check the Steam store page and community feedback on ProtonDB for exact compatibility details.
No, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII does not support VR.
LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII is a single-player game.
Yes, there are 2 DLCs available for LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII. Explore additional content available for LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII on Steam.
No, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, 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 | 18 September 2026 21:23 UTC |
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| SteamSpy data | 15 October 2026 12:42 UTC |
| Steam price | 27 October 2026 04:07 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 22 October 2026 10:07 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about LIGHTNING RETURNS™: FINAL FANTASY® XIII, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
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Game modes
Features
Online players
48
Developer
Square Enix
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
10 Dec 2015
Platforms