Lightning Returns continues to annoy me, but I am going to see it to the end.

At some point. I’m not quite sure when that point will be right now, but I will see it to the end.

I suppose one of the biggest annoyances about games like this is that I like to explore and find things on my own time, and having the perpetual annoyance of a literal “Doomsday Clock” there reminding me that I only have so long to complete certain tasks (unless I want to fail the game and have to start all the way over) is literally rushing me around, and at that, forcing me to rely on a walkthrough when I mean, I could have just moseyed on around at my heart’s content… at least until, or unless, I needed one. There’s the fact that I want to see this whole storyline to the end, having liked both Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2 as much as I did, even though I liked both of those games for different reasons. But one of the biggest annoyances to me, if not the biggest annoyance, in a game is being forced to do something on someone else’s time, even though Chronostasis does make it a bit easier to… stall things, by literally stalling things (by literally stopping time for relatively short increments, even though you have to “earn” that by killing so many enemies that you have enough EP to stall time, which can be a bit difficult to do at certain points in the game, is this just me?).

Timed missions, I can tolerate. Where nearly the entire game, or the entire game, is timed, not so much.

Maybe I should have mentally prepared myself for this by mentally preparing myself for this.

For the multiple reasons that I have written about, I do intend on finishing this at least once, but I think that is honestly all I am going to give this game. This will probably actually be my least favorite Final Fantasy game for that one reason, and that one reason alone: the Doomsday Clock forcing me to practically rush through the game so as not to mosey on through so slowly that I actually got a Game Over and had to start the entire thing over again because damn it, that is what I like to do in games when you give me the chance, I do like to explore if you let me. And clearly this entire game is structured around not letting you explore because you have a clock constantly reminding you that the world as you know it is going to end in how many days?