#lightningposting

[mrmallard]

oh nooooooooo, I ran out of time in Lightning Returns D:

Started New Game Plus on Easy mode to streamline the experience. I liked the story and stuff the first time around, but the gameplay sucked donkey dick. Hopefully Easy mode streamlines the experience, as well as retaining my stat increases from the first time around.

#lightningposting

[sctir]

i love charlies lightningposting bc every time i see them i make notes for my oc professional racer au

#wei.post #its actually v helpful

[snickeringdragon]

lightningposting

#snick snickers #lightning the rhinoceros viper #id in alt #plushie hoard

[lightning-total-drama]

Sha-contemplate the meaninglessness of sha-xistence

#lightningposting

[likelightning]

Nov. 5, 2017

So this last week went pretty great!

I managed two out of my attempted three runs! The program I’m using is a couch-to-5k app (because I am definitely living the couch life rn), and ideally I would be running three times a week to keep up with its pace. I’d already started doing some of them in late September/early October, though, so I was in between weeks. The two runs helped me catch up so doing three a week will have me right on pace!

Just for stats sake, my current “walking” pace is about 4mph, with my “run” going up to around 8mph. I’m still only running on the elliptical, though, until my ankles get stronger. :P

The two soccer games also went great! My team was short on subs for the first one, so I got to play the whole game! I was really surprised that I could keep up for that long, but I was pleasantly tired by the end instead of wanting to die halfway through. We tied the game, no scores on either side. 

The second game was a little more up in the air. I was in and out for a lot of it, and we lost, but it was so great to play with the girls’ league. The energy is real and it is healing.

Going into this next week, I’m aiming for all three runs and – since the soccer season is over – two games of netball! So excited!!

#lightningpost #soccer #netball #zr5k

[solareveille]

you can tell when i get stressed about one specific thing because i start lightningposting on tumblr instead of twitter

#rev.txt

[mrmallard]

So now I've bellyached about Lightning Returns so much, I will mention a positive aspect. On top of having a robust customisation system with the three Schemata loadouts, the game is also an effective dress-up game for Lightning with some really flashy outfits and a ton of accessories.

Like right now, the garb she's wearing looks like one of Elvis's jumpsuits. She's wearing aviator shades with pink lenses, and it makes her look like David Bowie cosplaying as Elvis. It kind of fucking rules.

And while the fights are tedious and pointless, you can occasionally get guest party members to help you fight. Right now, I'm in an open zone with Fang - she's making the fights go a bit quicker than before, which I i appreciate the fuck out of. Also I'm just gonna say it, the Fang scenario gave me a crazy fanfiction idea.

#lightning returns #lightningposting

[mrmallard]

Turns out I can't upgrade my shit properly in Lightning Returns until the second playthrough.

Pros: I like games that are built to be replayable.

Cons: I feel like that means that this first playthrough is meant to be frustrating and tedious - even if it is to reinforce narrative themes of like perseverance - and I feel like even if the intent is to set me up to fail the first time and then have the intended powerful second wind it seems like they're setting up, it doesn't erase the frustration of this first playthrough and the feeling that it's wasting my time.

I still feel like the action elements and the RPG elements are the worst of both worlds, and it's going to funnel me through that miserable slog until I hit a wall and fail this playthrough. And it might be to build me back up, but it still feels like a miserable waste of time. I'm having a terrible time with this game.

Also - one last complaint before I chill out and stop complaining? With the game having such an involved time management aspect - you have thirteen days to save the world, and an in-game clock that can only be extended and not rewound - so much of the game is designed to portion you off from certain areas at certain times, and/or just outright waste your time in the first place.

I'm going to see this through, but as of now? 13-2 is easily my favourite game in the trilogy. I do think LR has some interesting themes, and it's a lot darker than the other two games, but man I am just not enjoying the gameplay. And now I know that aspect of the game is gonna be actively hampered until New Game Plus, I'm mentally checking out.

#lightningposting #if this game ends up hitting it'll be great #but it's really souring me right now

[mrmallard]

I just found some really good writing in FF13.

Basically, the lore is that l'Cie - humans who've been branded by a fal'Cie, which are basically an alien, magical god-species who exist on a whole other level of consciousness and existence than the mortal man - have a certain amount of time to fulfil a "Focus" - a vague, blurry image of a desired outcome that the fal'Cie wants them to bring about - before the l'Cie brand advances to its final stage.

The brand implants a crystal into the branded l'Cie. If a l'Cie fulfils their Focus, they're wholly turned to crystal and they live forever; that's the Good outcome. But if they fail their Focus, they're overcome by crystal shards covering their entire body, turning them into mindless monsters called Cie'th. After hundreds of years, the final stage of being a Cie'th turns the unlucky recipient into a living, floating crystal that stays in place, existing only to broadcast their despair over their plight for the rest of eternity.

These "Cie'th Stones", as they're called, basically exist as job noticeboards for you to get a monster bounty. The unlucky l'Cie failed to kill a Behemoth King? You go and kill the Behemoth King and fulfil their Focus for them. They're still Cie'th Stones though - they just glow now. Basically, it's a ton of gloss to add context to a very gamey gameplay mechanic.

SO - with that context - check out this Cie'th Stone mission I just got.

For the sake of clarity, here's what it says:

"I have been charged with putting down a stray adamanchelid that wanders the steppe's eastern tors, no doubt seeking its lost parents.

What kind of monster could perform such a deed? Not a day goes by [where] I don't recall the pain of losing my own child to a rampaging beast. Would I now subject other parents to that fate? No, I forsake my Focus. The cycle of suffering ends here."

Most of these Cie'th Stone descriptions are about people defeating monsters to defend their villages, or killing monsters to avenge their fallen family members. One of them got lost in a subterranean maze and missed their mark by just a couple of meters.

But this person became a Cie'th, and then subsequently a Cie'th Stone, by refusing to fulfil their Focus. They saw their Focus as senseless murder, and they said "No. This is murder, and I refuse to bloody my hands and perpetuate the same pain I've felt".

And the unpleasant twist to all this is that I, as the player, can now take up their Focus and slay the adamanchelid in their place.

Usually, doing one of these Cie'th Stone quests avenges the Cie'th and gives their weird undeath-limbo thing a sense of closure. It was too late to help them in life, but their failure can be laid to rest, hundreds of years later.

But doing this quest muddies the Cie'th's original intention. By picking up this quest, their eternity of hellish, semi-conscious limbo was for nothing. The cycle they sought to break is perpetuated, and their hands are retroactively bloodied through the hellish existence they subjected themselves to in the first place - if they had died as a person instead of becoming a Cie'th, their Focus and their values wouldn't have survived to be perpetuated through the Cie'th Stone.

That is, imo, some really fucking good incidental writing.

#final fantasy 13 #lightningposting

[mrmallard]

Okay FF13 let me allocate all my XP, I'm normal about the game again.

Fun fact, there are only four mainline Final Fantasy games that aren't available on Switch. FF1-6 are available as Pixel Remasters, and the PS1 trilogy remasters - with 7 and 9 both releasing years before FF8 allegedly due to lost source code - are there as well.

The Final Fantasy X remaster is on there with its own sequel, Final Fantasy 12 got an updated remaster that got ported down to the Switch and Final Fantasy 15 got a phone game-ass looking demaster that lets you play the entire game on the Switch.

The four games that aren't on the Switch are FF11, which is an MMO; FF14, which is also an MMO; FF16, which is a triple-A game release from 2023 that's exclusively on the PS5 for the time being... and Final Fantasy 13.

My relationship with the game is clearly tumultuous - I like the characters and I defend them based on the strength of their arcs, I think it's a gorgeous game (it still looks great even in 2023) and I don't feel cheated by it because I bought it for ten bucks in like 2015. The combat is fun, and now I'm a more experienced RPG player I can actually work with what the game is giving me. I didn't really get into using buffs and debuffs until I played Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne for the first time; pretty much every time I hit a roadblock in FF13, I googled during my first playthrough. Nowadays, I'm handling everything pretty handily.

On the downside - I just can't square up the decision to lock your levelling progress behind story chapters, then thin out enemy resistance so that you get drip-fed the exact amount of XP you need between bosses, and then cap it off by making it a janky endeavour to even attempt grinding in the first place - which might end up biting players in the ass the one part of the game that they might *need* to grind. I appreciate this game, even if I think the foundation of the gameplay is abjectly broken.

And yet, I would still like to see FF13 (and its sequels) release on the Switch. Every other mainline game - except for two MMORPGs and a butt-spankingly new installment in the mainline series - is on there. Warts and all, adding FF13 would complete the set from FF1 to FF15.

And honestly, I'd encourage an RPG enthusiast to play through the game. It's flawed, but there's a lot to process and a lot to potentially appreciate beyond the most sour notes of the criticism.

If I were feeling cynical, I could say that experiencing the bad makes you appreciate the good. You could apply that externally to the entire Final Fantasy franchise, implying that this is the Worst Final Fantasy Game Ever, or you could apply it internally where great visuals, stylish combat and a surprising amount of gameplay depth meet with bafflingly restrictive game design from traversal to core gameplay systems and a rich, detailed narrative that's mostly confined to the optional datalog.

Either way, Final Fantasy 13 is a fascinating game. I have very mixed feelings on it. I think what this game does right - the strong, interwoven character writing, the graphics and the ending of the game - is done worse by its direct sequel, 13-2 - I remember the story regarding Noel being simple and sappy compared to everyone's mess in the first game, the framerate and moment-to-moment graphics are noticeably rougher than the first game, and the game has to retcon itself into existence with a literal deus ex machina.

But by that same token, all the gripes I have with 13 - a levelling system that lets you acquire XP while capping how much of it you can spend, and gameplay environments which are linear to the point of dullness - are absolutely blown away by FF13-2. It's such a fun game. One reason I'm even playing FF13 is because I wanna play the two sequels, including the third game I never got to play. But even then, I just think people should experience what the hell this game is, for better or for worse.

#final fantasy 13 #long post #lightningposting #apologies for neglecting that last tag. i forgot about it while I was playing kingdom hearts

[mrmallard]

Okay I have three seperate FF13 posts I'm gonna squish into one.

1: I understand why Lightning is as apprehensive as she is regarding her sister and Snow; like he's a fine dude who makes Serah happy, but he clashes so much with Lightning's more serious and regimented demeanor that you can see how they'd clash. To her, Snow is some layabout dickhead with no prospects who doesn't have anything practical to offer to Serah compared to everything she's been to provide for the two of them, so when things go wrong, she's gonna blame him. Serah sees his best qualities, and that's what matters, but Lightning and Snow are like chalk and cheese. It makes sense that there'd be conflict.

And in the first third of the game, even though it's in the infancy of her character development, you can see that she understands that the way she's tried to look out for Serah has driven a wedge between them, even if her disdain and even outright hatred of Snow persists in the wake of the game's events. She's a tough nut to crack.

2: dude Lightning is like 21 years old, and only by a few days so she's still like a 20 year old. Yeah she's gonna be standoffish and not be able to relax and take everything super seriously. She's capable, but she's not a people person - proficiency and agency tend to mix easier the older you get, and I think most people who've been 21 haven't known how to be the ideal adult yet y'know. Like shit dude it happens. She's a stunted edgelord, it happens.

3: Jesus Christ Lightning is only 21, she should be at the club

#final fantasy 13 #lightning farron #lightningposting

[mrmallard]

Been playing Lightning Returns again.

Before I started my unholy bitching about the game, the first impression I got was that it felt like that sort of weird 2007-era PS2 action game that has a wacky vibe to it, usually unintentionally. You've got a lot of bold UI elements, you have jank-ass action combat and it has a very gritty/edgy tone, and there's something about it compared to games that came before it that just feels kinda... done. Not necessarily in the sense that "this has been done before in other games", but like "this game is one of the last shaking breaths of its era, and even though it's short and awkward, it'll be gone soon and you can already kind of feel its absence".

And it's crazy to me because it's the third game in a trilogy, the first game of which was Square Enix's flagship Final Fantasy release of its era. Between Final Fantasy 13 and Lightning Returns, two mainline Final Fantasy games were released - the first one was Final Fantasy 14, which released a year after 13... and the second one was also Final Fantasy 14, rebuilt from scratch after the original game bombed in every conceivable way, released three months before LR. The XIII trilogy - despite arguably being the franchise's Main Product at the time, from 13 all the way through to LR - kind of haunts this era of Square Enix's output, and LR feels like a weird outcast rather than this grand capping-off point that you would expect from the third game in a trilogy.

And a part of me wonders on this weird fucked up mental level - is this how Final Fantasy 7 fans felt about Dirge of Cerberus?

Is Lightning Returns the Dirge of Cerberus of Final Fantasy 13?

#lightningposting #despite that like latter-day ps2 game comparison I'm liking this game a lot better on easy mode #i really tore this game a bew asshole for something I could have changed myself huh

[mrmallard]

So I've played a bit of Lightning Returns on New Game Plus - meaning my stat increases carried over, so increased strength, magic, HP etc. - as well as on easy mode as opposed to the first playthrough being on normal mode.

And frankly, in hindsight, I think I was just being a massive scrub.

I should have just played the first run-through of the game on easy. I played Normal and bitched and moaned about how shitty and difficult it was, and now I'm playing on easy I'm cutting through everything at a much more manageable pace. There's less of a resource cost for things and enemies are going down a lot easier, and I have no doubt that this is the optimal way to level your character the first time to make subsequent playthroughs a lot less tedious.

For the most part, I can handle a normal mode right off the bat. Lightning Returns really puts you through the wringer on normal, and I wasn't in the mood for that. And man, I REALLY fucking complained. Jesus Christ.

I'm changing my opinion: if you ever pick up Lightning Returns to play for yourself, play the first run on easy. It's much, much less of a headache, and you probably won't run into the headaches I ended up getting over the course of that first playthrough.

I never positioned myself as a skilled gamer, though I still think there's making a game difficult for the player to adapt and overcome and there's making a game difficult by jacking up the stats and making the game a miserable slog. LR felt like the latter on normal, at least right out of the gate. But there was an easier difficulty mode to pick.

I could have chosen the easier difficulty mode and I didn't. Now I've got a few stat buffs from the first playthrough and the enemies are easier to fight, I'm having a better time. I'm really embarrassed about how heated I got about the game, and I just wanted to put the word out - I'm enjoying the game a lot more on easy, and if anyone ever ends up playing this thing, I really can't urge you enough to just be a scrub and jump in on easy mode the first time.

#lightningposting #I'm having a hangover from all my hating. man I was such an asshole about the game #that dislike was very real but it was something I could have bit the bullet on and changed. now I feel like a horse's ass #a big apology to my followers who witnessed any of that hating I did

[mrmallard]

LR has me so discouraged I might actually start playing Final Fantasy 8 to whet my RPG appetite. I'll still play it to completion, but this game isn't even an RPG to me. I won't be able to really pin it down until I finish the game, but something is seriously wrong.

I made a post yesterday that was like "I can't talk about the game without talking in circles", and it's still true. And it's such a complicated and messy fallout because like, I've called Final Fantasy 13's gameplay "fundamentally flawed on a foundational level", and my more critical opinions of that game never reached outright hostility like I'm feeling about LR.

Like as flawed as the levelling in FF13 was, at least for my own personal tastes, it felt more like a concession the developers had to make to get the game finished. The entire experience was meticulously micromanaged, and you could call it an integration of gameplay and story with the lack of freedom granted to the l'Cie characters, but I feel like the game was designed that way because the engine wasn't as robust as they had hoped, they were millions of dollars in the red and putting the game mostly on rails was the one way they could deliver on a "next gen Final Fantasy experience" that all the flashy trailers promised for years.

I sympathize with FF13. It has issues borne from a bunch of different sources, but I engage with those issues at face value because of those circumstances and look for the positive.

Lightning Returns feels like it's deliberately wasting my time. And it feels contemptuous, like someone spitting in my face. It's a deliberate design choice to feed the player scraps - crumbs, even - before turning around to prompt them to hurry up and beat the game every ten minutes. It's a frustrating, miserable experience, and it's frustrating and miserable by design - and after stonewalling you for an entire 14+ hour playthrough, they expect you to pick the game up and play it again, front to back? It's arrogant and insulting.

It's like, FF13 was at least a victim of circumstance. Lightning Returns feels like it follows a bold, confident design ethos, but that design ethos is actively hostile to the player unless you play the game, front to back, three or four times to grind your stats up to a point where the game is fun. It's genuinely fucking terrible. Lightning Returns sucks in a way that doesn't make logical sense, but despite that, it sucks deliberately - and that's what pisses me off the most.

So, uhh... yeah. Lightning Returns doesn't even bother me in the same way that juggling multiple RPGs bothers me. I genuinely need to play something that plays more like an RPG to wash the taste of this game out of my mouth. I'm enjoying the fanservice (in that I'm getting to see all the characters from the first two XIII games again, not in the sense that I'm making Lightning wear a bikini), I'm enjoying the darker tone - but this is the worst RPG I've played in a long time. Maybe ever.

#toxicposting #lightningposting #as much as the time limit bothers me - I've played and enjoyed atelier games in the past #as much as the more involved action combat bugs me - I've liked bayonetta before. and shit i don't like dark souls but I respect it #LR is the slow parts of action combat mixed with shallow rpg combat design with none of the reward factor tied to rpg combat #this game is just rancid man

[mrmallard]

It's been hours since I stopped playing lightning returns and most of what was on my nerves is out of my head at this point. but I just started watching a ff7 rebirth stream VOD series and I am fucking SALIVATING over the different ways you can level your shit up and get stronger.

This game either has two ways to level - weapon upgrades and a new system called folios - or it has three if regular linear levelling is still a part of the gameplay on top of those two systems. I have no way to play Rebirth, but when I saw how folios worked? Something in my brain CLICKED.

And while it's faded a bunch since I stopped playing it, it's kind of like adding insult to injury with Lightning Returns - given that it's an RPG where you don't actually level your character and the stat boosts you do get are drip-fed to you, and the entire levelling system is based around drops from enemies rather than experience points gained from battle. I couldn't be more turned off by LR's levelling, but I'm straight up chomping at the bit about Rebirth's levelling. Holy shit, I'm losing so bad with this game. Jesus.

#lightning returns #lightningposting #I'm going to gush a bit about what the folio system looks like to me so to make sure nobody gets spoiled #even though it's an entry-level game mechanic in a game that's been out for a month already #I'm padding out the tags to bury it beneath the 'see more' option. this should be enough #DID THE DEVELOPERS INTRODUCE THE FUCKING FFX *SPHERE GRID* INTO FINAL FANTASY 7 REBIRTH??????? #that by itself is HUGE but like. what if it's the folio system. PLUS regular levelling. PLUS *WEAPON UPGRADES* #ARE YOU KIDDING ME. THERE'S SO MUCH SHIT TO BUFF YOUR COMBAT ABILITIES #YOU CAN GET SO BUSTED AND STRONG #even if it's like. you gain SP and fill out the folio and once you unlock enough slots that's when your level goes up from 20 to 21 #the fucking. sphere grid system #fuck yes

[mrmallard]

So I've played a bit more of Lightning Returns.

I don't like it.

Here's the thing - you don't get experience points from fighting monsters. You get monster materials, which seemingly only exist to cash in for quest rewards, and you get skills like Fire and Slash and Aeroga which you then have to combine at a shop to incrementally increase their power. Like, if a regular fire spell had a 1.20x damage multiplier, synthesising a stronger fire spell would increase that to 1.30x. And then eventually that caps until (to my knowledge) you get a Fire Lvl.2 drop from another monster.

You raise your base stats by cashing in those quests, i.e. handing over 5 Goopy Oils to raise your attack power by one. So you're grinding monsters not for experience, but for drops. At which point you slowly, incrementally power yourself up, a handful of stat points at a time.

I will say this; there's a "garb" system where you can swap your costume, and each costume has like in-built abilities like Fire Lvl.2 or Galeslash Lvl.1, or they raise your attack or magic stat. You have three "Schemata" loadouts which you switch between on the fly, where one's for physical attacks, one's for magic and one's for buffing, and I can see how that can provide a sense of strategy to someone who's really invested in the gameplay. Pick your garb, pick your abilities, strategize between your three loadouts.

But the combat is tedious, not just because you're fighting for arbitrary drops and the chance you'll be able to up your damage multiplier from 0.5x to 0.7x, but because they've simplified the combat to four usable skills per Schemata loadout. The combat is basically holding down one of the four face buttons, switching to a new Schemata loadout when you run out of action points, and repeating that between your three loadouts until you've beat an enemy. Again - not for experience points to make yourself stronger, but for drops to cash in for incremental stat increases or tedious skill upgrades.

It's watered down RPG combat tied to a reactive action combat system on the overworld that's less "press X to swing your sword and damage the opponent" and more "if you don't get initiative in this combat encounter, we're going to take away 5% of your health". Some enemies can be staggered in combat by performing a perfect guard, which is ostensibly a parry - you're still locked into an RPG battle encounter, you just have to stop attacking them and wait for the parry opportunity. To me, that draws the fights out and makes them more tedious.

And again, it's not for any actual XP or anything, but for drops you can then cash in for minor stat increases or to marginally level up your Schemata abilities.

Lightning Returns is shaping up to be a miserable experience. It's stripped the RPG combat way back - you have four buttons to choose from and three loadouts to switch between, giving your a grand total of twelve actions to perform per battle - and added my least favourite aspect of action games: doing piss-weak chip damage to enemies, impotently waiting for an animation to trigger instead so I can hit a parry, and then getting my shit wrecked if I miss the window.

At least in an action combat game, whether it be a pure action experience like DmC or an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts, you can run around and freely swing your sword and feel the impact of your attacks. At least there, it's fun to capitalise on the opportunity that a successful parry gives you to damage the enemy.

In Lightning Returns, you're locked into an RPG combat encounter where your actions - all twelve of them - use up meter, and you then have to stop using meter until you can hit a perfect guard. At which point, your attacks do a bit more damage, and are still bound by how much meter you have left to spend.

It's the worst aspect of an action game, waiting for animations to play out to counter instead of actually doing something, combined with a piss-weak RPG combat system that has most of the appeal of that combat stripped out.

And it doesn't even have the appeal of getting experience points and getting stronger. It wants you to farm monster drops for CRUMBS of power. Fucking CRUMBS.

Long story short, I don't like Lightning Returns.

#lightningposting #you can probably guess but I'm not a fan of dark souls or monster hunter either #I'll play an action game like dmc or no more heroes. l like kingdom hearts a lot but the rpg elements help #but this. this is just miserable #I'm thinking of just playing it on easy mode. christ. #something I thought of is that I'm frustrated in a similar way that kingdom hearts chain of memories was frustrating #where you had a deck of the same cards in the same order that did the same damage #and rather than getting stronger - though you did level up - you were basically just farming cards and optimising your deck #and now I think about it that game had a prominent parry system too. but like I'll give chain of memories props #the way it handled parries and stuff like that - even though I didn't like how the combat flowed or how your power was tied to your cards #rather than your combat level #at least the number system for the cards and the duels you could get into could be frenetic and fun #lightning returns is just a slog. it's the slowest and least effective aspect of action games with all the appeal of rpg combat removed #worst of both worlds. i hate it #toxicposting