Stranger of Paradise es un caso curioso, hace bien la parte más importante, el combate (aunque podría ser mejor), pero descuida prácticamente todo lo demás que termina siendo mediocre como mínimo (exceptuando la banda sonora y alguna que otra cosa). Una lástima, siento que esta idea daba para muchísimo más, pero nosé si está hecho a las apuradas o que pasó. Desaprovecharon un buen protagonista y lo que podría haber sido una buena historia. Igualmente, lo recomiendo porque es muy divertido, aunque al final se pone medio pesadito.

I spent a lot of time trying to write a long and smart intro to this kind of tying things into the current state of corporate IP crossover stuff but Final Fantasy is more of an anthology series crossing over with itself constantly so it doesn't totally work. I wanted to do a bit where I call Multiversus a knockoff of Eirgeiz: God Bless the Ring. So I'm putting that there because really that was the main reason I wanted to write it.

Seriously though, there are so many 'all the finals fantasy mashed up' games. They remade a bunch of them on GBA and added crossovers. They did Dissidia and then Theathrythm as a spinoff of Dissidia. They made FF4 the After Years and gave it like a whole plot that tries to put all of the mainline games into a shared universe. I haven't even gotten to Kingdom Hearts.

Stranger of Paradise is so many things. It's the Dark Souls ripoff Final Fantasy game. It's another attempt at putting all the mainline games in a shared universe. It's the unofficial sequel to Brave Fencer Musashi. For as svelte as the game is, there's a ton of just, SHIT in here. Ideas. You've got turning enemy attacks back at them, and hitting the button to power up your pals, and the fake devil trigger, the job system, command abilities, setting up your combo enders like mini God Hand, all kinds of stuff. I was always forgetting two or three basic mechanics and having a hard time, and I'm sure the couple of actually hard parts could have been easier if I knew something about one of the systems I didn't care to engage much with. The loot, in particular, is like come on. Fuck off with that shit I'm just hitting the auto-equip button periodically.

But other than that! Other than the loot numbers, SoP feels like a throwback to the lost days of B games. It's even in the little things, like everybody saying "Hey look, cubes" whenever you see save cubes. Or the fact that the characters seem to decide if they thought you did well or poorly in a fight based on a die roll. Or the many, many cutscenes that end with everyone walking off only to fade back into another cutscene in a slightly different location where they all resume talking about the same thing. It's so good. We should never have given them budgets to do more than this.

I basically haven't said a thing about the actual game or story or anything yet, and that's all fine. It lets you keep everything when you die so it's breezier than real Dark Souls. There's a ton of jobs to level which is always fun because I like unlocking a new one and finding out it has Runic or whatever as its ability. I was pretty firmly in team Sage by the end but there's plenty of customization even within that framework. The plot is not particularly profound but the cast is charismatic and enjoyable, with Jack fully deserving his meme status. There are scenes and bits I'm going to fondly remember for a long time to come. I'd say two bosses were a giant difficulty spike for me but that's fine. They were pretty fun. There's a bunch of DLC I have but you can only access on mega super duper secret CHAOS difficulty which is so absurdly evil I kind of respect it. So maybe I'll try it and maybe I won't I dunno. They put a Frank Sinatra song in the game for some reason.

I haven't played FF16 but I bet this is better. I bet it'll piss me off when I do play it because the FF14 people wrote it. I'm all in on Team Jack and that's that. Raises paw to the fistbump position

This game is a Nioh 2.5. It gathers all the good mechanics of Nioh 1 and 2 but it lacks that unbalanced difficulty (thanks god).

The story is interesting, a little bit confusing in a few moments that's not a big problem.

Very solid game, it got overlooked back when it came out because it was released 1 month after the GOAT of Soul Likes (Elden Ring) and in fact this game doesn't match elden ring in quality, but it's very good and I had fun playing it

this game really made a big turn in my opinion, while the combat is always outstandingly fun i can't say there was a boring moment in this game i think all the gameplay elements are amazing and my only gripe is the first 70% of the story being lackluster and not making sense but after that was surpassed i would say the twists and events that were partaken in the story were excellent writing choices. im still yet to delve into the chaos difficulty but i will be getting 100% completion for this game and im excited to take part in the big grind ahead, good work team ninja and square enix. in conclusion i recommend this game to souls like enjoyers as the combat is not too dissimilar and i recommend it to hack and slash rpg fans as well as final fantasy fans looking for an interesting spin off with mechanics unlike the other games ,7/10

I genuinely have no words to describe the absolute peak that this game is. Probably my favorite version of the FF job system, a story that, while short and simple, really lends itself to its gameplay and characters, and most importantly, is an amazing love story to the entire mainline FF franchise (up until this point at least).

The game's world is based off the world of Final Fantasy 1, but with two major deviations. The biggest deviation is that our main cast members are not the Warriors of light from FF1, and our protagonist, jack Garland, was the easiest one to notice out of the bunch. Its not really a spoiler, the game never hides his name and pretty much every trailer and developer interview after the first one pretty explicitly said "yeah this is an alternate universe telling an origin story of this world's version of Garland". And it does a great job. For as much as some people found Jack's attitude and nature worthy of joking with, the game directly acknowledges why he is the way he is, explains it, and runs with it. They not only explain who he is, why he and his friends all dress so modern compared to the otherwise fantasy characters in the game, but also his memory problems, thirst for violence against Chaos and most importantly, how he becomes the Big Bad of FF1 when he's the protagonist of this title. And its all done very well despite this not being your traditional FF game. The other major change from FF1 is that every stage in this game is based off a previous Final Fantasy title, called "dimensions" in this game. The Sunken Shrine holding the water crystal is a mako reactor from FF7. The pirates in Pravaoka, instead of being in the town like in FF1, are instead in a nearby cave modelled after Sastasha from FF14, etc.

The gameplay is what you would expect from Team Ninja's action rpgs like Nioh, fast paced and stylish combat with a high skill ceiling, grindy postgame and a lot of build variety, combined with the traditional FF job system. Every job has a unique action that can only be used while playing as that job, like the Thief having the "steal" command that lets you steal an enemy's ability (this is in addition to already being able to steal certain abilities by soul guarding, meaning Thief can be used to create a character built around using enemy skills), or the mage classes being able to use magic. There are also, in addition to the starting jobs, more advanced jobs that you unlock by levelling up the existing jobs, like levelling Lancer to unlock Dragoon, but these advanced jobs aren't just "better" versions of the basic jobs either, as using the previous example, the Dragoon job can use the jump ability, but not the spear throw ability that the lancer has. Dragoon can also use axes, in addition to spears, giving you variety in how to play. You might like to fight with a sword and shield, but as several jobs can use swords and shields, you'll need to pick which job compliments your playstyle the best. This is of course, not even getting into the postgame gear and level grind, or the extra changes made to the combat system with each dlc, (which I will review separately) all of which add to the already expansive buildcrafting that the game has.

There are a few downsides here, some of the sidequests (that can either unlock more sidequests, or crafting options) are hidden within the levels of the game, and while some of them are easy to find, there were two or three that were hidden fairly well, and when the postgame is basically nothing but grinding for better equipment and levelling your jobs to create builds, not having the full crafting system available can seriously affect you. If you don't have the dlc, there's no extra story after you beat the game, you can replay previously completed stages at increasingly difficult difficulties, but that's it. Having some secret bosses or mission modifiers would have made this grind significantly go down better (which the dlc does fix btw, although you'll probably want level 200 gear and nearly maxed out job levels before starting). There's no hub area in the base game, which isn't usually an issue with a game like this, but since the game has optional dialogue with npcs after major story beats, needing to go into a menu to hear it instead of just walking through town is a minor downside. Especially if it would have allowed you to actually see the changes to the world being spoken of.

Without the dlc, this is an AMAZING love letter and tribute to the entire FF series, ending where it all began, with four Warriors of Light setting off to the Chaos Shrine to rescue Princess Sarah from the clutches of the villainous Garland. Closing off the game's story with an amazing conclusion that wraps up jack's storyline and ties it all back in a way that, if they ended it right there, i'm sure nobody would complain.

but WITH the dlc... This might become one of my favorite action games of all time.

Chaos game is good game.

Combat system is fleshed out with the job system and there is a ton to do with it. My favorite was monk, I used it the whole game and there is even more too. On top of the special moves you get, and the ability to steal spells, I struggle to understand how people can call this repetitive. How fun the game is depends on how much you choose to interact with it. I think people on this site just don't like action games that much. They'll complain that this 10-hour game is too repetitive and then talk about a 50-hour jrpg being the best game ever made. I also see a lot of complaints against the Team Ninja games that they have bad level design, and I personally don't see that. All of them kinda hit the same notes that souls games do, with the exception of Nioh 1 that is a game where the developers intentionally try to make to hate it.

This game is also a love letter to the FF franchise. So many levels are modeled off of areas in mainline games. There's an area that's based off the first big FF12 dungeon with walls that push you into pits. Sunleth waterscape, a song from FF13 gets repurposed. There's a FF15 level, and so much more.

The story is fine, I like seeing jack do the chaos things and talk about chaos and being chaos and destroying chaos. It's kind of a big task to make a prequel to a 40-year old game. If you hate it, you probably take stories too seriously. Team Ninja has never done stories well, and I still don't know why people expect some masterpiece from them. A small complaint from me is that I don't like having to choose difficulties. I like having just one and you have to deal with it. But I also understand that this is a Nioh game for babies so it is what it is.

Chaos good, Game good, and now I am CHAOS.

Applies half-learned lessons about level design and class-based customization from the Soulslike genre with junky looting and spammy battle systems from the MMO genre and creates a pretty hysterical mutation out of the two of them. Likely more fun to get a group to laugh at/with but also just on the side of being too easy and silly to feel embarrassed to be playing this in this day and age (even if just because you have a PS+ Extra account for now) to try even random rooms. The type of game where you can discover a wind spell will blow away poison gas, but the arbitrary lava you have to get across isn't affected by spells but instead stopped by destroying the statue it's pouring out of.

Absolute meme. I can not believe some of the cutscenes in this game got past the planning stage. The cutscene towards the beginning where Jack starts playing Limp Bizkit after beating a boss is the funniest fucking thing a video game has and ever will do and I have never laughed harder than when I first watched that scene. And scenes like that are actually good for the game because without them it would be so fucking boring because the story actually does suck and not a single character is memorable in this game. I appreciate the complexity of the combo system and how you can customize you combos, but ultimately I do not think the game is good enough that anyone would have really used that feature. I probably would have finished the game were it not for the weird out of place looter shooter style drop system that equipment has. I feel like I spent most of my time organizing and throwing out equipment while playing this game because even the auto trash equipment feature was not fleshed out enough to actually dump the equipment I wanted while keeping the pieces I might want. Part of me does wish that FF16 had this games combat, because the combat is this game is actually really good and if paired alongside other game mechanics and features that were actually good, would put this game much higher up on the list.

Was an interesting game. Probably one of the best combat systems I have seen in a game but I generally felt let down in every other area. The bosses while generally being decently designed felt like they peaked at the first 2 in terms of being interesting fun having a good sized arena and having a fair amount if break gauge to keep the fight interesting but not repetitive. Past that I generally felt the bosses were mediocre and couldve used some much better design. The general missions generally allowed you to run past encounters which I didnt do but still felt like an odd choice with the enemies by the end generally feeling annoying to break gauges for and were easy to get overwhelmed by considering I did a solo run. The parry system I also felt a little undesirable due to the fact perfect parries still affect your gauge and how it generally depletes fast and being caught with a broken one usually lead to death. The story left alot to be desired in terms of the characters being forgetable and one note until a twist at the that by the time I reached didn't care for due to there being no emotional buildup or interest with the characters but still it was a cool ref to ff1. This game is worth playing and I hope it gets a sequel to fix all the issues I have with it because the foundation is genuinely amazing and I feel that the new action based ff games need to use this as a base going forward.

26th of April, 2024: “Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise” is on sale for just 20€. I had heard of the game before, mainly about how utter dogshit the story was, how funny its protagonist was, and how inconsequential its cast. I call a trusty companion, one @Trumai, and with a shared poor financial decision, we end up buying the game with the intent of playing it together.

As we start, we’re dismissive—me and her both. I laugh a few times at Jack’s pure hatred for Chaos and his unrelenting will to “kill” it, and I start to realize that every single criticism thrown at this game is almost entirely correct. The plot is disjointed, always a step ahead of you in classic Nomura (or Nojima?) fashion; the characters are one-note and rather dull; and Jack is every bit as funny as you’d expect him to be.

But that’s where it all started.

We found ourselves enjoying the gameplay so much that we regularly broke into giggles, always in pursuit of more ways to make the game ours, and in that regard, this game is absolutely incredible. There are so many jobs, so many builds to make, and so many fun mechanics. And as time passed, the more I played, the more I fell in love with Jack. I started to joke around, calling things “Jack’s” as soon as I approached them. Like “Jack’s door,"  “Jack’s ladder,"  or “Jack’s chest." I thought it was a silly joke, but I soon realized it was only my subconscious trying to tell me what this game was truly about.

This is Jack’s game. Not Neon’s, not Ash’s, not Sophia’s, and god forbid, it’s Jed’s. This is a game about Jack; this is Jack’s adventure. And you’d be a fool not to make it yours too.

I started to grow bitter of the other characters, of these errands the Lufenians had us run, so much that I began to agree with Jack, I began to tear through hordes of enemies, my desire to reach that final boss, that Chaos fight I so anticipated, it was overpowering me, and my trusty companion kept her dismissive behavior, I began to even detect a hint of annoyance at my, at Jack’s, mission.

I swore to myself, “You will defeat Chaos, Jack. We will do it.”

The doors were no longer just Jack’s; they were mine too. The ladders, the chests. I had become an extension of Jack; I had become his will to defeat Chaos and his unrelenting fury. I had become the belief he doubted.

This is Jack’s review, and you better like it.

CHAOS difficulty is now unlocked.

absolute peak fucking gaming. everything about this game rules.

video games will never be able to top this. it's all downhill from here babey this industry is COOKED

I love the magic system and how monster hunter kind of this is.
And the lore expansion, my god, this is so cool overall and reveals so much of the entire final fantasy universe without sounding too off the tracks.
Before we only had things like Gilgamesh as a unifying point (in fact, I think he is the only one, as in the Dissidia games he's the only one who retains memories and it's due to his capabilities of swapping between realities and universes, while other recurring characters or names like Cid are different on each universe) BUT NOW we have all this shit that explains a bunch of stuff, and on a kind of good game, with coop even. Nice.