Lightning is the primary protagonist of the story; primary because it could be argued that all six characters are protagonists in their own rights, but Lightning is the main character whom we are meant to follow from the start of the game through to the finish. She’s also an integral character to the other Final Fantasy XIII games including Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.

During various chapters of the game she winds up partnered with Sazh, Hope and Fang, in little mini teams. She’s stoic, and somewhat self centered, like many of the protagonists that preceded her (Cloud, Squall and Zidane, just to name a few).

Strengths and Roles

Lightning has a seemingly straightforward role in each of the party combinations that she is a part of, but her strengths in each of these roles is actually quite a bit more complex than it might first appear. She is one of the strongest Commandos and one of the strongest Ravagers in the game. Besides that, she makes for an average Medic and an average Sentinel when placed in either of those roles.

So where does the complexity come in? Her strength and magic stats are very even which presents her with a unique problem. She will often jump between using melee attack abilities, like Froststrike or Flamestrike, to magic spells, throughout the course of expending a single ATB bar.

Why is that a problem? It has to do with the length of animation that occurs when she switches between the two types of attacks; it causes her attack chains to be much slower as result. This means that your best bet is to have her focus solely on either her Strength or her Magic stat so that she doesn’t juggle her attacks between the two.

This means you should go all in on her Strength stat and have her be a Commando (when the story calls for it) or have her switch to her Ravager role and make sure her Magic stat is maxed as high as you can get it. Check out the “Best Party” section below for more tips on how to construct the ideal team:

Character Stats

The table below outlines the maximum level for Lightning’s stats for each chapter of the game. A comparison of these stats to the other characters in the game can be found in the “Best Party” section using the link above.

	HP	Strength	Magic
Chapter 1	200	30	30
Chapter 2 (Pulse Vestige)	300	55	45
Chapter 4 (Vile Peaks)	389	70	60
Chapter 6 (Sunleth Waterscape)	505	101	101
Chapter 7 (Palumpolum)	656	137	137
Chapter 9 (Palamecia)	851	184	184
Chapter 10 (Fifth Ark)	1,104	245	245
Chapter 11 (Archylte Steppe)	1,433	318	318
Chapter 12 (Eden)	4,069	869	869
Chapter 13 (Orphan)	5,281	1,118	1,118
Maxed	7,603	1,560	1,560

Weapons

Lightning uses gunblades as her primary weapon. Use the link below for a full list of her weapons or use the link below that for more information about her best weapons.

Unique Abilities

Each character’s “unique ability” is also sometimes referred to as their “Full ATB” ability because it requires all six ATB Gauge segments to be filled in order to use it in battle.

Each character will gain access to different abilities and spells as they progress through their crystariums, but each character has one “ultimate ability” which serves as their unique ability. Three characters can learn their ultimate ability in their Ravager crystarium with Lightning being one of them (Sazh and Hope being the other two).

Lightning’s unique ability is called Army of One and, like both Sazh and Hope’s unique ability, using it on an enemy will quickly boost the Chain Bonus on a Staggered enemy allowing the party to deal massive amounts of damage.