TheFinal Fantasyseries has had plenty of highs and lows, with some titles becoming incredibly divisive between fans, none of which separating the fanbase more thanFinal Fantasy 13. It is the first and only title to launch during the PS3/Xbox 360 era, thanks in part to the trilogy that was built around the game’s success and the embracing of the series’primary protagonist Lightning.
Unfortunately, Lightning and the other characters ofFinal Fantasy 13have taken a bad wrap since the trilogy first launched, due more to the issues players took with the gameplay and convoluted story beats than anything else. As a result, the character is vastly underrated and underutilized in some of the crossover content that has come out ofFinal Fantasy, such as theDissidiaandKingdom Heartsseries.
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While characters likeSephiroth are makingSmash Bros.appearances, Lightning has been relegated to becoming a virtual fashion model at best and sidelined to obscurity at worst. This is the same for many ofFinal Fantasy 13’s characters, like Snow, Saaz, and Hope, who each held enough fan appreciation at release to warrant their continued use in future titles in the trilogy. However, the responses to the gameplay likely didn’t help keep the game relevant, and as a result kept the characters from really taking off with the same type of iconic flare as other series favorites like Cloud and Sephiroth.
The Final Fantasy 13 Trilogy’s Reputation
At release, players were so excited by the prospect of thehighly anticipatedFinal Fantasy 13finally coming out that many fans burned through the game in a blind rush, quickly taking in everything the game had to offer. It wasn’t until looking back on the game, or during the grindy side quest segment that takes place right before the final dungeon that the flaws of the game became more apparent. From there, one critique came out on top of all of the others, with many players comparing the incredibly linear world to a series of hallways with fights littered around them.
Futuregames in theFinal Fantasy 13trilogyeventually addressed these issues, as well as retuning the paradigm combat mechanic to make each playable character feel much more useful. However, as the story introduced the dreaded time travel plot device and randomly killed protagonists in ways that didn’t even follow the series' established rules of magic, players felt bogged down by a convoluted narrative. This led to a one-off title eventually turning into a legendarily criticized series where Lightning goes from fighting a god who wants to destroy and recrate the world into becoming a JRPG archangel who again fights a god with the same motivation as the last one.
Lightning’s Brief Stint as a Gaming Icon
WhileLightning Returns, with its completely reworked combat system andDead Rising-style time mechanics, wasn’t the most well regarded departure for the series, it did open the door for the character to become a solo icon. Lightning would eventually grow to idol status in Japan and had a brief moment of fame after the release of her solo outing, but the overall reception of the game still keeps her from rising to the heights of otherFinal Fantasycharacters. It’s an unfortunate situation that the character finds herself in, since she came out into the series as a total action hero and was eventually given some of her most emotional moments in a game where she was supposed to be emotionally held back.
The aftermath ofLightning Returns, however, led toLightning becoming a fashion model, and it seems like Square Enix has since leaned into the character’s attractiveness as opposed to her other strengths. This has led to the character eventually being overshadowed by the games that followed, which isn’t too unusual forFinal Fantasyprotagonists like Zidane or Tidus, who belong to more beloved titles, but aren’t as iconic as other leads. Some of these shortcomings are best reflected in the ways that Square Enix uses characters like Lightning in crossover titles, which often act as a litmus test for how the developer currently ranks these characters.
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Treatment in Square’s Crossover Titles
Two of the biggest crossover titles by Square Enix include theDissidiaseries, most recently releasingDissidia NTandKingdom Hearts, whichomittedFinal Fantasycharacters inKingdom Hearts 3altogether. The fighting gameDissidiain particular may show why Lightning hasn’t risen to the heights of Cloud in recent years, with her lack of a compelling antagonist removing the human element from her struggles. In the ways that Cloud has Sephiroth, Terra has Kefka, and even the lesser appreciated protagonist Zidane has Kuja, Lightning is often forced to fight against new enemies in every game and often isn’t given time to establish a real rivalry.
This lack of a compelling villain to take along with her made Lightning a solo fighter inDissidia NT, who was eventually given Snow as a DLC companion to join her fromFinal Fantasy 13. However, the lack of a compelling protagonist/antagonist dynamic could explain crossovers outside of Square Enix’s wheelhouse, like the recent addition ofSephiroth toSmash Ultimate. While it’s true that Sephiroth has made a more recent appearance inFinal Fantasy 7 Remake, Lightning is still from the more recent originalFinal Fantasytitles, with either her or Noctis seeming like the more obvious choices to join a crossover.
The Rest of the Final Fantasy 13 Cast
Much of these observations extend to therest ofFinal Fantasy 13’s castas well, who have even been pushed to the side in later games within their own trilogy. Among these characters, few are as poorly regarded and utilized as Snow, who is clearly the trilogy’s number two, considering that he also made it intoDissidia. Then other characters like Saaz, who fills the same archetype asFinal Fantasy 7’s Cid as an old airship pilot who is often played used as comic relief, has almost entirely been forgotten by the series.
It’s the unfortunate reality of a game that initially performed so well to immediately get signed on for a sequel before the full critical consensus had come back about the originalFinal Fantasy 13. So now, the trilogy is bogged down by a complicated story that feels like it was cobbled together one piece at a time, with a conflicting plot that is nearly impossible to really follow from start to finish. The result now being that, whileFinal Fantasy 13’s Lightningcame out as an action hero, she has been sidelined as a lower tier character even though she deserves a better deal than she eventually got.
Final Fantasy 13is available now for Mobile, PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
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