I myself don't even know how I suddenly got into this game, played it for 80+ hours and finished it, something I rarely do these days, I still play it sometimes because it's easy to pick up and play every once in a while.
All that said, I really enjoy this game, something about its combat and the way it works is just addictive, all the different jobs and moves, tons of different enemies and bosses keep things fresh all the time.
Specially the Soul Bursts, one of the main things I play it for, they look really good and feel satisfying.
Once you find your favorite job and get a good build going, it gets really fun, like really really fun, you're Soul Bursting enemies one after another and it becomes a power fantasy at that point.
There are many moves to unlock and like 9 weapon types I think, and as you progress further some moves are tied to some weapons.
In terms of visuals and level design, all the levels are cool, some more than others, the outdoor levels look absolutely awful in terms of visual quality, early PS3 level, but the indoor ones look really good, PS5 level, weird but the difference between the indoor and outdoor levels is two console generations.
The level design is good enough, keeps them from being linear combat arenas.
While the story is cool, it's told in a very, very bad way, it's totally possible to not be interested in it at all, or losing your interest halfway through, because it takes a long while to get going, by the end it gets really interesting and the ending is cool though.
Some negative things about it I'd say would be:
Team Ninja style loot, every enemy you kill drops at least three pieces of loot, high rarities even, and it makes sorting them a pain in the butt, but at least they've added some mechanics via updates like auto-dismantle and not picking up certain rarities.
Boss fights get progressively harder, because each time you die to them, you lose all the MP that you've acquired in the mission, while it remains where you died like souls in Dark Souls, it gets smaller and smaller, and sometimes it just won't remain, so dying to boss fights actually makes them harder and harder, which doesn't make sense to me.
Overall, I recommend Stranger of Paradise to people who like action games, and have no problem with the slow pace of the story, or tons of loot and can suffer through them to find their favorite jobs and get a good build going, it gets really enjoyable, and the ending of the story is pretty good.
Also the performance is a serious problem, on consoles it's better optimized but you're gonna need a powerful PC to play it without problems.
All that said, I really enjoy this game, something about its combat and the way it works is just addictive, all the different jobs and moves, tons of different enemies and bosses keep things fresh all the time.
Specially the Soul Bursts, one of the main things I play it for, they look really good and feel satisfying.
Once you find your favorite job and get a good build going, it gets really fun, like really really fun, you're Soul Bursting enemies one after another and it becomes a power fantasy at that point.
There are many moves to unlock and like 9 weapon types I think, and as you progress further some moves are tied to some weapons.
In terms of visuals and level design, all the levels are cool, some more than others, the outdoor levels look absolutely awful in terms of visual quality, early PS3 level, but the indoor ones look really good, PS5 level, weird but the difference between the indoor and outdoor levels is two console generations.
The level design is good enough, keeps them from being linear combat arenas.
While the story is cool, it's told in a very, very bad way, it's totally possible to not be interested in it at all, or losing your interest halfway through, because it takes a long while to get going, by the end it gets really interesting and the ending is cool though.
Some negative things about it I'd say would be:
Team Ninja style loot, every enemy you kill drops at least three pieces of loot, high rarities even, and it makes sorting them a pain in the butt, but at least they've added some mechanics via updates like auto-dismantle and not picking up certain rarities.
Boss fights get progressively harder, because each time you die to them, you lose all the MP that you've acquired in the mission, while it remains where you died like souls in Dark Souls, it gets smaller and smaller, and sometimes it just won't remain, so dying to boss fights actually makes them harder and harder, which doesn't make sense to me.
Overall, I recommend Stranger of Paradise to people who like action games, and have no problem with the slow pace of the story, or tons of loot and can suffer through them to find their favorite jobs and get a good build going, it gets really enjoyable, and the ending of the story is pretty good.
Also the performance is a serious problem, on consoles it's better optimized but you're gonna need a powerful PC to play it without problems.