The action gameplay here is so good and the job system is so much fun to mess around with that the rest of the game could take place in a vacant Unreal Engine demo cube and I'd still give it high marks.

Stranger of Paradise definitely stumbles at times - the pacing is kind of bad, a lot of the level design is rough, and there's sections where it's so eye searingly rough to look at that I had to take breaks. All that being said, man oh man do I love the combat, aesthetic, and tone of this thing.

Hope that some patches can polish some of the rough edges, but regardless I'll be coming back to get another hit of dopamine from chaining together a bunch of glory kills after throwing an Aeroga down a hallway.