Final Fantasy XIII | Final Fantasy XIII-2 | Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Initially, this was going to be an entry for the original Final Fantasy XIII, but actually, it’s an entry for the entire XIII trilogy, because it all whips. The Paradigm Shift mechanic makes for one of the series’ all-time best battle systems, and if you actually put your head down and read some codex entries, its world is more interesting than the game ever dares to present in the main story. But its sequels, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII are also really great. Some might even say Lightning Returns’ Majora’s Mask-style end-of-the-world time management makes for the best single-player Final Fantasy entry since the Final Fantasy X duology. All that being said, by the time Lightning Returns was released, people were fatigued with the XIII characters and conflicts. And it felt like Square Enix was just spending millions of dollars and an entire console generation trying to make Final Fantasy XIII “happen.” These games didn’t click for a lot of people, but they were willing to try and take new, experimental spins on the series each time.

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