So what kind of story does FFXIII have to offer? Well…I’m not sure, honestly. If I could put it into one sentence, it would sound like this: “the protagonist from a floating world pretends to be an outcast to save sister but fails and gets turned into outcast with sorry group of individuals who try to protect an ancient being from being destroyed to prevent the Creator from coming and remaking the world but ultimately fail due to the fact that said group decides to attack the ancient being for unknown reasons causing floating world to collapse.”

That was terrible, I know. It was quite honestly the best I could do after playing through the game, reading all of the datalogs, and doing some “quality” research on GameFAQ message boards.

It makes me sad that I can no longer take a SquallEnix game and reduce it to something cohesive, like “girl accidentally gets sent back in time, boy rescues girl, discovers ancient evil sucking life out of planet and destroys it.” Or how about FF7, the previously-undisputed King of Convoluted plots (but actually fun!), which would probably be “washed-out soldier discovers corporation sucking life from planet, recovers from PTSD, defeats bad guy and saves the world”.

Let me try this again.

The story revolves around a female named Lightning “Worst Birthday Ever” Farron, who lives in a futuristic floating paradise. She’s your “strong-willed” heroine, which in SquelchEnix terms just means really grouchy. When the game starts, Lightning pretends to be a “L’cie” (basically someone who can use magic that’s also being hunted down and “purged” by the government) to find her sister, a girl who is an honest-to-goodness L’cie. Unfortunately for both parties, Lightning gets to her sister only to watch her turn to crystal, a consequence of being a L’cie. Basically, if you’re a L’cie, you have something called a focus – a task from the gods that you have to accomplish. If you succeed, your reward is to be turned into a human crystal. If you fail, well…you turn into a zombie.

So once you turn into a L’cie, you’re pretty much screwed.

You might guess here that your motley cast of characters all turn into L’cie.

In other words, the rest of the game involves you trying to undo your predicament. But wait! There’s more! It also turns out that the emperor is actually a major Bad Guy named “Barthandelus” masquerading as a normal human. He’s basically a god who sometimes decides to help your group escape and sometimes decides to attack you at prime intervals throughout the game. He is also, in his non-human form, a giant rectangular head. I can’t respect any boss that is just a giant head. Anyway, it seems that one of his goals is to “strengthen” your party, so you can defeat one of the godlike beings that keeps the floating world afloat. If this being, Orphan, is defeated, mankind is doomed, and the Maker will swoop in and recreate the world. Or something.

So what happens? Your party goes through the entire game doing a whole lot of nothing except fighting monsters and moving onward. You get to Orphan, who’s locked in some funky-looking cyberworld, and have a big final fight with Barthandelus. And then you have a big final fight with Orphan. I don’t know why. And then the futuristic floating paradise collapses. And then two people in your party execute some sort of ice attack that prevents the paradise from crashing into the planet, and everyone who previously lived in the floating paradise falls down onto what I suppose is now their new home. Have a nice day!