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Review – Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

As the hype for innovative games continues to grow, fans of Final Fantasy are anxiously awaiting any news on new installments. While there is no solid release date yet, it seems that Square Enix has been busy with something else: The Stranger of Paradise mobile game.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a game that has been released on Steam. This review will discuss the pros and cons of the game. Read more in detail here: stranger of paradise final fantasy origin steam.

Review - Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

Back during Square Enix’s E3 2021 presentation, the first Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin announcement video… boy oh boy, it was something. Many folks shivered. Who could blame them if they were perplexed? The concept of an ultra-violent Final Fantasy spinoff portraying Eminem’s long-lost sibling enraged some. On the other side, I was ecstatic. I’m not sure why, but something about it struck a chord with me immediately away. It seemed to be either entirely insane in a good manner, or something so utterly foolish, so freaking ridiculous, that I’d find myself laughing at it while playing.

That demo, which was made accessible not long after the game’s announcement, did much to convince the public that Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is worth your time, at least in terms of gameplay. The game’s demo revealed that it was essentially what would happen if Nioh and Final Fantasy had a child. A extremely fast-paced Soulslike focused on looting and task completion while firing classical Final Fantasy-esque spells and improving your character’s skill tree dependent on the vintage career you picked. Square Enix and Team Ninja were working on something unique. That was my hunch. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the finished product, and now it’s finally here. It’s time to put an end to Chaos and have some fun with Jack and his obnoxious brothers.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Jack

The Real Slim Shady has just taken a step forward.

First and first, I’d want to discuss the gameplay, although I understand that this is just a tiny portion of your worries with Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. You don’t have to be concerned; everything is OK. As previously said, Team Ninja created this game, and it plays similarly to Nioh, with the same mission-based approach to the Dark Souls paradigm. As predicted, several more aspects have been added to the controls to set it apart from Team Ninja’s other samurai games. The first is a secondary defensive mode that enables you to absorb enemy spells and learn how to cast them for a short time.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Chaos

Sorry, Jack, but I didn’t understand it. Who do you want to murder next?

The job mechanism, which seems like a blend of Final Fantasy V and Tactics, is the major pull of the fighting system, and arguably the game as a whole. You start with a few basic career possibilities, but the longer you play with each one, the more experience points you’ll earn to spend on the skill tree of that position. When you reach the bottom of the tree, you’ll be able to unlock a whole new (and more powerful) career. You may be required to finish more than one skill tree in order to access a more sophisticated profession, which may necessitate redoing some prior stages, but the game has several cool aspects that make retracing enjoyable.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Griffin

No way, it’s a piece of cake.

Backtracking to previous missions not only allows you to swiftly gain experience and treasure, but it also allows you to revisit them with alternate goals and even fully revamped area exploration patterns and opponent placements, similar to the Master Quest dungeons in Ocarina of Time. These side tasks are also ridiculously generous with their completion benefits; you’ll almost always be awarded with Anima Shards, which you may spend to fast level up your character.

You may pick between two occupations at any moment and switch between them with a single button push while on a mission. You may also customize your character’s clothing and armament for each profession, allowing him to totally alter his appearance throughout a combat. In terms of reality, it makes little sense, but it allows for a lot of experimenting. One of your employment slots may be dedicated to becoming a physically demanding Swordsman, while the other can be dedicated to being a Mage.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Ronin

The katana he wields is as large as his hate for Chaos.

Final Fantasy: Stranger in Paradise You should go aggro on practically every adversary in front of you, but keep in mind that they all have two bars: one for health and the other for poise. If you’re wondering, yes, it functions in the same way as Sekiro does. If you empty your opponent’s poise bar, you may kill them with a Doom-style finishing move, replete with over-the-top death animations and a lot of edge, which also restores a portion of your MP meter and even extends it for a brief while. The major “punishment” for dying in the game is that your MP meter will revert to its original small size.

The fact that Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has several difficulty levels is something I’m sure a lot of people and publications will laud it for, particularly after the extensive (and frankly, meaningless) social media farce surrounding Elden Ring and its degree of difficulty. Furthermore, anytime you reach a checkpoint during a mission, you may reduce them. I didn’t believe this game was as difficult as any Dark Souls game, Nioh, or even The Surge 2, but if you want to follow the plot (more on that later), you can do it without grinding for hours on end. It really makes boss fights ridiculously easy, but well, to each his own.

Spells

When holding a summoning club, hold down R2 and then choose the element you wish to utilize. The stronger the spell becomes the longer you hold it.

Everything works because Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin plays smoothly, far better than any of the game’s pre-release trials. It also loads ridiculously quickly, due to the PS5’s SSD drive’s power. That isn’t to say that the game is technically perfect. For starters, its framerate might be good for the most part (certainly better than Elden Ring), but there are constant drops. The action will slow down for a few seconds if you face a large horde of bosses or when a large number of particles flood the screen. While one might become used to the hiccups, they never failed to irritate me.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin likewise looks a little choppy, while containing some amazing graphical design (Nomura’s at it again). This game may look great at times, particularly during cutscenes, but the graphics aren’t perfect. Its resolution is still a little poor, especially when compared to what you’d expect from a PS5 game, and the lighting effects are just plain bad. I don’t believe I’ve ever played a game on my PS5 when I wasn’t fiddling with the HDR settings because I couldn’t get it to appear like I’d turned up the saturation and brightness on my TV to eleven.

Cactuar

In Final Fantasy history, this is the most brutal death of a Cactuar.

Let’s go on to the show’s main attraction. You’ve come to find out whether Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a piece of nonsense. You want to know whether it makes you cringe. Yes, that is my response. This is one of the dumbest games I’ve played in years, which is a VERY strong selling point in its favor. Seriously. This game reminds me of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in that you never know whether the absurdity is intended as a satire of Square Enix’s own complicated narratives, or if it’s simply so stupid that it ends up seeming like a parody. I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out the solution to this puzzle, but that doesn’t bother me. I was in the correct frame of mind to appreciate this edgelord spectacle, and I did.

Without a doubt, the plot is corny, the characters are ridiculous, the language would make Tommy Wiseau blush, and the protagonist… wow. Jack, or The Real Real Slim Shady, as I like to refer to him, is the finest. Or the worst-case scenario. Who you ask is the determining factor. Something amazing is shouted whenever this Disturbed and Korn fan opens his lips. He’ll almost always bring up Chaos; he has a vendetta against it, much as Timmy’s father from The Fairly OddParents does against Dinkleberg. He is dead set on assassinating Chaos. Upon starting the game for the first time, he mentions his desire to kill Chaos after just a few minutes. Simply watch a ridiculous sequence with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” first. No, really.

Visuals

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has notable difficulties with resolution, brightness, and saturation.

The trick is that everything seems entirely out of place and overly edgy, yet it also feels… honest. Almost innocent, to the point of being endearing. There are a few moments where the conversation exchange is completely absurd, on the level of “Padmé and Anakin conversing to each other.” The voice performers, on the other hand, never deliver their lines badly. Even though the lines are ridiculous, they deliver them like experts. With the exception of The Real Real Slim Shady’s voice actor. I didn’t care since every single sentence he said was horrible, but it also fell into the “so bad it’s good” category, so I didn’t mind.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Black Knight

“That isn’t blood, kids!” He’s, um, strawberry candy-coated! That’s all there is to it!”

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is this generation’s DmC: Devil May Cry, in that its edgy appeal is equal parts cringeworthy and borderline adorable, but what really matters is that beneath the JNCO jeans, Hot Topic merch, and Papa Roach CDs lies a fantastic slashing experience that blends elements from various games and genres to create something unique. This might have easily been one of, if not the finest, Final Fantasy spinoffs of all time if it weren’t for its admittedly mediocre aesthetics and the sometimes weird framerate. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin’s lyrics may be as stupid as Limp Bizkit’s, but dammit if its riffs aren’t as entertaining as Wes Borland’s.

 

Despite having an extremely great graphic design and powerful cutscenes, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin seems a little rough for next-gen standards.

The fighting mechanics and controls are based on Nioh, with some Final Fantasy-style elements like jobs, skill trees, and spells thrown in for good measure. It works a lot better than you may think. The only thing that detracts from the whole experience is the framerate’s inconsistency.

Even if the fully arranged music is wonderful, it’s difficult to focus on it because of the deliciously cringeworthy speech spouted by every single character every two seconds. It’s terrible, but it’s delightfully terrible.

First and foremost, this is an excellent Soulslike that successfully combines Nioh’s gameplay with several influences from the whole Final Fantasy genre. Furthermore, the strange tone of this game is difficult to resist. I adore how corny this ridiculous edgelord narrative is, whether it was done on purpose or not.

Final Score: 8.5

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is currently available on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox One S/X, and PC.

PS5 was used for this review.

The publisher donated a copy of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.

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The “stranger of paradise final fantasy origin rating” is a review for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. The game has been rated 8.3/10 by IGN and GameSpot.

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