10. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (2013) 

While XIII-2 felt like Square attempting to rehabilitate the image of Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the final game in the trilogy, feels like the company just throwing its hands up and saying, “fuck it, let’s make something weird.”

While, yes, Lightning does return to the starring role, she does so in a world unrecognizable from the one in which she began her journey in Final Fantasy XIII. Now she finds herself as the savior figure in a world that has been frozen in time for 500 years. This world is being replaced by a new one, and it’s up to her to help save as many souls as she can so they can migrate to a new world.

Despite the high stakes of Lightning Returns, our heroine spends a lot of time connecting with some of the most mundane parts of these people’s lives. Using a Majora’s Mask-style time system, you spend a lot of time in Lightning Returns rushing between areas and trying to bring grieving people to a place of peace so they’re ready to depart one life for another. But for every small moment of contentment, there are big, dramatic conflicts about the old cast’s love and loss. Lightning, who has always had trouble connecting with people, even allies, has to guide others through their centuries-long emotions, and it feels like a final culmination of a series-long arc for this woman to find that even when she’s put in positions of power, it’s okay for her to be human as well.

All of that acts as a stage for an action-oriented version of the Final Fantasy XIII battle system. As Lightning Returns is a mostly solo RPG, it replaces the Paradigm Shift system with numerous costumes that Lightning swaps between, each of which gives her different powers and abilities. This manages to marry both the modular aspects of the Paradigm Shift with the isolation Lightning experiences as the savior. While it still feels like a Final Fantasy XIII battle system, the focus on real-time action combat makes it distinct and feels like a final form for a series-best combat system.

Ultimately, while a lot of people were probably tired of Final Fantasy XIII by the time it came out, I still feel like Lightning Returns is one of the series’ most daring games, from a time when Square had nothing to lose. — Kenneth Shepard

Read More: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: The Kotaku Review