Originally hearing about STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN, I was very intrigued that Square Enix teamed up with developer Team Ninja to put their own spin on a Dark Souls style of game. With their previous and amazing work on the Nioh franchise, this was ultimately very exciting news, on top of the fact that this would be essentially a rough retelling of the very first Final Fantasy game. It’s cool to see a reimagining of a world that was originally created in 8-bit form back in the 80s. The downside is very offbeat tone throughout, this is one of those games where you will accept and enjoy its inherent goofiness or the complete opposite.
The game was released a few weeks ago, apologies this review is a little late, but since then, word of mouth has spread to almost a meme level degree about how silly Stranger of Paradise can be. You play as the lead, Jack, and you’re accompanied by two companions right off the bat, with a couple more to chose from later on. Jack is a very serious individual who has one objective in mind at all times, that’s right, “killing chaos!” “My mission is to kill Chaos. That’s all I know.” Jack makes it nauseatingly clear throughout the game about how much he hates chaos and wants to destroy it. A similar phrase will be said pretty much every hour of playtime. Aside from the constant cringe dialogue, there are also many seriously questionable tone choices in the cut scenes. Very early on, just before the tutorials start, there is a scene of Jack walking in a field with Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way” playing. While that’s a great song, sure, but for a Final Fantasy game? It’s a bold take, I’ll give you that. Not only that though, but how the song is edited into the game is extremely bizarre. They literally cut away just before the big build of the song! What the hell? Who approved this idea?
Let’s skip to some good, where this game fails in almost every other way, it totally kicks ass in the actual gameplay. It is indeed a very fast paced version of a Souls game, similar to what Team Ninja does best, but is also constantly rewarding you and can be very forgiving when dying as well. The gameplay is very addictive and there are tons of different classes to level up, with you being able to have two skill trees at one time there is a constant sense of experimentation to evolve the gameplay to your preferred way of playing. There are five different difficulties to chose from and a very easy way to have random online players drop into your game and play alongside you. Most of this review will come off really negative, but the score it earned is solely on how strong and addictive the actual gameplay is.
Unfortunately, this is probably where my compliments end, whereas I have some more issues I noticed. For instance, the collectable items. Enemies drop an obscene amount of gear; the loot mechanics are completely out of control. While that sounds like a great problem to have, I found myself constantly in the menus to change my gear to something better. They did implement a “Auto Upgrade” button that automatically equips the best gear on you, but it often times doesn’t work to the advantage of the specific class I’m playing as, not all gear works best for specific classes. There’s a crafting feature that I don’t even know if it’s really worth using, because with the amount of time it takes to select items to craft, it’s very possible if you just keep playing for a few more minutes, you may just find better gear than what you have just crafted.
I found it disappointing that there wasn’t much of a world to really explore. Final Fantasy games tend to have vast overworld maps. With this one, there is just a map that is more like a level select to your next dungeon crawling experience. Once you finish one dungeon you may get a little cut scene and then you’re quickly onto the next dungeon. The developers really chose the “all meat and no fat” approach when making Stranger of Paradise. For many games, that would be a strategy to its advantage, but this was a severe misstep in my opinion for this IP. There isn’t a memorable character in this entire game. While the overall mystery and story was intriguing, it was mixed in with people I didn’t care about and dialogue that often-felt cringe to say the least. The graphics themselves weren’t anything to write home about either, so do yourself a favor and if you decide to play this game (which, I still suggest you do) be sure to play on the performance mode setting, the 60 FPS is so much better.
There is one more thing I need to point out, this is the first game I’ve noticed that has a cross-gen save feature where you can upload/download your save and switch playing from a PS4 to a PS5 and vice versa whenever you want. The norm has been just uploading a PS4 save to play it on the PS5, but never being able to bring that save back to the PS4. So, if you are a Final Fantasy fan, this is still a game worth checking out, there are a ton of fun Easter eggs littered through as well as fun remixes of very familiar tunes from previous installments. This isn’t a perfect game by any means, but a big experimental swing, and that is something that’s always appreciated.
7/10
For more information or to play the demo, visit: https://square-enix-games.com/sopffo/en-us/
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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