All Three Final Fantasy XIII Games Are Coming to PC

The Final Fantasy XIII games are better than you’ve heard. They can be quirky, arcane and spasmodic, pacing-wise, and when it comes to storytelling and dialogue-writing, they’re cripplingly un-self-aware.

But they’re also exemplars of what Square Enix does best: obsessively upending the series’ (and JRPGs in general) gameplay formulae. Sometimes that culminates in messy, mechanical fiascos and tedious game segments, but would that most games tried as hard.

And now the trilogy’s coming to PC via Steam and Square Enix’s digital storefront, starting with Final Fantasy XIII on October 9. The first game’s price seems a steal compared to the original $60 for Xbox or PS3: just $16. If you buy the game through Steam (as opposed to Square Enix), you’ll get a slight 10% discount that knocks the price down to just over $14.

But it seems a strange move. I’m not sure Western PC gamers are going to care. How many JRPGs have you played on Steam? How many actually live there? Factor in all the Final Fantasy XIII sequence’s unorthodoxies and deceptively simplistic systems, and…well, maybe that’s exactly what’ll be appealing about them: PC gamers are some of the most idiosyncratic gamers, given the spectrum of game genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres they’re able to access.

On the other hand, these aren’t the first Final Fantasy games to grace Valve’s online store. The PC versions of Final Fantasy VII and VIII have been available on Steam for a year, and Square Enix’s massively multiplayer forays, Final Fantasy XI and XIV, live there as well. I had no idea the reimagined 3D version of Final Fantasy IV was on Steam, but when I checked this morning, there it was, released two days ago.

Another upside to playing on PC, assuming Square Enix supports it (and I don’t see why the company wouldn’t): playing at higher-than-720p resolutions. The Final Fantasy XIII series was visually unparalleled on the PS3 and Xbox 360 at 720p (or thereabouts). Square Enix hasn’t said whether it’ll update the game’s textures, but I’m not sure it’d have to. Just to see the game running at 1920 by 1080 or 2560 by 1600 as-is would be a wonder, and I’d like to think Square Enix supporting those higher resolutions might mean we’ll see the trilogy eventually reemerge on PS4 and Xbox One.

Square Enix says the remaining two games, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, should be out by next spring.