“From this day forward, you are the Warriors of Light…”
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is an “Experience”. You know the kind, where you use air quotes to flavor its meaning. It doesn't mean it’s necessarily bad or good, but that it is something that can often be unique in some way, sort of how we often love really bad movies. It's also the type of game where if one person came to me and said they hated it while another thought it was the best thing ever, I could agree with both of them. Despite what it is, Stranger of Paradise certainly struggles in some areas but remains a constant trip through its aesthetically themed environments pulled from the past of the extended franchise and a combat system that is constantly engaging. While its story is incredibly nonsensical, and largely remains so, you'll likely get attached to its cast for the wrong reasons, and you'll either give in to this game’s charm or have it push you away.
Stranger of Paradise is in some ways a retelling of the original Final Fantasy, and your knowledge of that game and its story will certainly play into what to expect and how much of the story you will see coming. While it’s not a one-for-one remake, you'll encounter a wealth of returning characters, places, and several plot beats that are directly lifted, including reveals that SquareEnix themselves even put into its marketing once fans guessed correctly on a certain reveal. While I'll leave a few things out so as to not spoil just exactly what it is, it is beyond common knowledge at this point about who a certain character is and how this game is tied to the very first Final Fantasy.
The game is built around a team of warriors venturing out to defeat Chaos. Initially, they are not sure who or what Chaos is but simply have an overwhelming and obsessive need to destroy it. The game has an awkwardly paced start, a “so bad it's good” introduction to its main cast, and we start to get an understanding as to who Jack, our main protagonist is, at his core. Jack's single-minded mission is to defeat Chaos and he will be joined by four others to do just that, even if the legend surrounding Chaos's fall is known to solely come from a team of four warriors of light, not five, something that again, is already known to you if you have a history with the first game. I also liked that the game points this out, and does so in a very interesting way.
Jack will be initially joined by Jed, and Ash, the former of which can't seem to deliver his lines without bending over slightly, seriously, just watch a few cutscenes to notice this behavior. Their laughably bad introduction to one another with showing each other their crystals and then concluding their introductions with a fist bump served meme culture on the internet well. I know a few people actually purchased the game solely around, hoping it maintained that same level of cringe, and for the most part, it does. The game wastes little time placing the team on their first mission, wearing nothing but casual t-shirts and jeans. While you'll eventually outfit them in a wild variety of different options, it's hilariously wild to see a Final Fantasy game, albeit a spin-off, have their protagonists dressed as a trio of dude-bros. It’s also weird seeing such fantasy elements present when the lead character pulls out a cellphone and earbuds and then walks away listening to rock music.
Despite the Kingdom being a focus to set our heroes on their path, and a place you’ll return to a few times through the roughly 20-25 hours it should take you to reach credits, it acts merely as a conversation backdrop that has zero personality or anything to make you even care about it or its copy and pasted townsfolk. There are menu-driven conversations to have, but their purpose remains that of a mystery as their dry and boring narratives drove me away from interacting with them after the first few, especially due to the repeated character models that stand out like a sore thumb. There are elements elsewhere in this game that almost make it come off as if Stranger of Paradise had a remarkably small budget, and this is one aspect of the game that makes me think that is the case.
Stranger of Paradise suffers from a lot of this repeated use, not just in some character models, but in using each level multiple times for side quests, placing you at one end of a level and a target on the other. This wouldn't be too much of an issue if the levels themselves were well designed. Often, you are traversing the same-looking hallways, paths, or formats again and again. With no mini-map, or map of any sort, you'll get lost trying to find your way through some locations, some so dark that I only knew enemies were there because of their health bar floating above their head. I enjoy the look of most locations, pulling from various entries such as the Mako Refinery from Final Fantasy VII, or Castle Palamecia from Final Fantasy II, but a lot of that love fades when you have key cards to track down, paths consistently blocked and thus eliminating the fast pace nature of the game’s combat so that you're investing time backtracking when you could be kicking ass. You'll also encounter numerous areas that you feel Jack, in all his glory, could simply jump over, but no, even the slightest rubble will be an obstacle you are meant to find your way around, despite it being less than a foot high.
Stranger of Paradise is made by Team Ninja, and this comes fresh off their previous game Nioh 2, where there is a lot of overlap as both are weapon class action games. Honestly, Nioh 2 is simply better in every capacity, especially visually. There are some nice aesthetics here, but the whole game has this blurry and muddy quality to everything. Character models who are not the main heroes suffer greatly, except for maybe Princess Sarah, but considering how often they use her, she might as well be considered part of the main cast. Still, Stranger of Paradise is visually bland, muddy, and feels like a poorly remastered 360 game, and while some of those can be good, this just isn't one of them. I mentioned that the game’s budget for these issues might be the case because Nioh 2 is often gorgeous and leagues above what Team Ninja is doing here, so it’s not as if they can’t make a good-looking game.
While the nonsensical story aside may entertain those looking for something from it, it is the combat Stranger of Paradise offers that is easily its best feature. While you can set your companion’s jobs and armor, or simply press a single button to optimize everything automatically, something I'll return to, you'll only actively play as Jack throughout the campaign, unless you are playing co-op. Stranger of Paradise gives you a wealth of melee options such as swords, axes, or your fists, to magical spells across a variety of mage classes, even I found the game to not be as well suited to them as it is to the more melee structure.
The execution of combat has a lot of different options and weapon variety that will have you constantly pulling off various weapon abilities, combo attacks, and weapon-specific traits like holding down RB for a more powerful attack. These action abilities require MP to use, and each weapon can see combo attacks structured around the RB and RT buttons to pull off a variety of weapon specific attacks, each consuming some form of MP. Jack can also equip Command Abilities as well, which are a collective of skills that aid Jack in battle such as MP regen, increasing damage, or boosting defense. There are a wealth of combat attacks and command abilities to learn as you swap jobs, upgrade them, and tinker with how effective certain combinations can be.
Breaking enemies by depleting their break gauge is called a soul burst and is displayed via a red crystal flavored execution. This act of breaking them apart violently is how you’ll recover MP and raise your max MP as well. Enemies crystallized with soul burst or lightbringer can be be shattered to unleash a massive shockwave, which will reduce the break gauges of nearby threats. You can also deplete your break gauge and adopt the soul shield stance, blocking attacks that will then restore MP and increase it as well. If you press RB after a well-timed block, you’ll lunge forward and unleash a normal attack. While you have a lot of options for Jack, you can also prompt your teammates to pull off more aggressive usage of their abilities called Resonance.
Apart from the more detailed elements of combat, you'll have blocking, dodging, and parrying skills to master, with a tutorial that teaches you the core fundamentals that'll save your ass should you invest in the harsher difficulties. You can also absorb attacks with the soul shield and these bite-size abilities don’t require MP to use, but have a limit on how many of those attacks you have in reserve. While the soul burst attack is visually cool, it does lose its charm after you’ve seen the same one a few dozen times. It's a shame that executions were not based on the weapon you were using as well as the enemy, thus creating more variety than what is here as Jack will only use his bare hands on every single animation. Again, these can look awesome, but after seeing the same one a hundred times, it becomes less so.
Now, that aside, combat is actually very well designed with a ton of weapon variety, and 28 total jobs to unlock and upgrade. Some jobs will unlock as you play, with other requiring investment in others, sometimes multiple, in order to unlock them. These range from pugilist, which is a favorite of mine, to dragoon, assassin, black mage, monk, lancer, tyrant, and more. Each job is paired alongside certain weapons, and there are UI elements to indicate which weapons pertain to each job, making it super easy to figure out if you're going to get down with it. You'll also have a variety of gear items that not only boost critical stats, but specialize towards job classes, making them more effective. This makes gear even more important than just looking cool.
Loot is the backbone of any good gear-based hack and slash game. Loot is everywhere as you'll find it in chests, on nearly every enemy you defeat and more. You'll have so much loot that you'll consistently reach capacity and have to dismantle it for core materials for upgrading it, but honestly, you'll get gear so quickly that upgrading it can often feel pointless unless you are truly invest in a look. I eventually got tired of constantly swapping my gear every five minutes, min-maxing to squeeze that last possible increase out of my team and opted for just pressing the optimization button for at least 70% of the game, and rarely looked back. I will say that despite being drenched in options, almost everything you can wear or wield looks solid, which makes for some interesting looks when the game showcases everything in a cutscene that either looks cool as hell or drastically bizarre during conversations between the group when everyone is wearing masks and matching fedoras.
Co-op is available for players to join their friends as they push through the game together, and honestly, if that is the way you are going about it, then it will serve you better than joining friends who are already done the game or vastly ahead of you, or vice versa. Co-op sees the joining players take on one of the NPC’s that will tour alongside that player’s Jack. Each mission grants you three Phoenix Downs for revives, however, you can simply use potions as well to revive your fallen comrades. You’ll earn Anima shards as you complete missions which will grant you boosts to your overall job experience. When it comes to picking up loot, I am not too crazy on everyone needing to be present at a chest instead of one player unlocking it for everyone. It’s a small gripe, but one I had.
As for progression, again, playing along with friends who are at the same level as you is fun if you are all at the same point, but joining a low level player will limit your access to what they have unlocked at the time. So, if you really like your Dragoon in your game, as well as the armor and abilities you had and you join a fresh new player, that job, and all that sweet bling will not be available to you until they unlock it. I get that it is to stop players from likely power leveling their friends, or burning through the game with ease, but it does lessen the appeal of playing with new players when you don’t have access to all the cool stuff you have in your game.
Pushing through to credits will unlock some post game content for you. You’ll unlock Chaos Difficulty, which increases the challenge and rewards you with much better gear and the ability to raise your job level above its level cap of 30. You’ll also gain Anima Crystals that boost the difficulty of the missions, making them even harder. As you push higher than the level cap of 30 for each job, each gained level will earn you Master Points that allow you make your character stronger by altering stats and customize your character even further. You’ll also unlock a whole new job, but due to spoilers, I won’t detail anything else about it, other than it is really cool. I like the idea of the Endgame and all the new features, but it is somewhat light on new experiences other than grinding places we have already been to, to a point anyway.
Stranger of Paradise borders on the “so bad it's good” appeal more often than I would have liked. I had a good time with it for sure, but it can often be for the wrong reasons. I do see the game trying to do what it can within its possibly small budget, given the amount of reuse this game gets from its assets and how it doesn't even come close to measuring up to what the team has done before. Combat and its job systems are solid and do entertain, I just wish that a franchise that is known for solid storytelling and character work was more present here, and while Jack can be hilarious in what he does, that only gets a game in this franchise so far.
Developer - Team Ninja, SquareEnix. Publisher - SquareEnix. Released - March 10th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PS4, PS5, Windows. Rated - (M)Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was purchased by the reviewer.