Final Fantasy XIII - a role-playing game released by Square Enix in 2009 - revolves around the struggles of a group of humans over a predestined fate. The game's two sequels, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, build on the first game's story and mythos. In video game publications and among the staff at Square Enix, the three games have come to be referred to as the "Lightning Saga",[1][2][3] and the core concepts they contain are drawn from the mythos of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. The visuals of the original characters were designed by Tetsuya Nomura and Nao Ikeda, while many later characters were created by other designers, including Hideo Minaba, Yusuke Naora and Toshiyuki Itahana. Their original stories were created by Motomu Toriyama and written up by Daisuke Watanabe.
The series' central characters are Lightning, a former soldier and the core character in all three games; Serah Farron, Lightning's sister; Snow Villiers, an optimistic young man engaged to Serah; Hope Estheim, a young man who develops a strong bond with Lightning; Sazh Katzroy, a former airship pilot; Oerba Dia Vanille and Oerba Yun Fang, two women who inadvertently set the first game's events in motion. Three further characters appear in XIII-2: Noel Kreiss, a hunter who sets out to change his bleak future; Caius Ballad, a man from Noel's past who wishes to bring about a predestined apocalypse; and Paddra Nsu-Yeul, a seeress who has reincarnated through history. Lightning Returns introduces two characters: Lumina, a doppelganger of Serah; and Bhunivelze, the main deity of the Final Fantasy XIII universe.
The characters in the games have been the basis of several pieces of merchandise produced by Square Enix, such as statues, action figures, apparel, and jewelry. They have been subject to mostly positive reviews; most observers favorably compared the characters to those in the previous games and praised the voice acting, but some critics have stated that the plot line of the characters have been confusing when first introduced. In XIII-2, the shift to new or secondary characters and the change in importance and story role of the previous game's main cast grated with some reviewers, while others applauded the new characters' development and interactions. In Lightning Returns, the characters' stories were often criticized for being underdeveloped or included for the sake of ending their stories.
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