Okay maybe I was wrong about this game.
When Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was announced at E3 2021, I and many others thought it looked like ass. The protagonist was visually indistinct, colors were muted, it’s developed by Team Ninja, Tetsuya Nomura had creative control, everything about it just screamed mediocrity. But then we saw game footage, learned about its features, and suddenly it was starting to sound really good.
But not me. I deliberately waited until the game’s price dropped before giving it a try, because I knew this was exactly the kind of game that would see one. I was cynical all the way up to finally playing it.
Last year I wrote a mini review of this and suffice to say it wasn’t positive. It was almost positive, I was enjoying myself up until I wasn’t, but the things that bugged me were so prominent that I couldn’t help but bring points down because of it.
Turns out I was partially wrong about those points. So let’s give this game a second look. You can re-read the old review here, but I’m gonna repeat all the information from there so this page can act as a proper replacement.
Final Fantasouls
Stranger of Paradise is built on the same engine used to develop Nioh. If you’ve played Nioh, you can tell immediately. You have a basic attack, customizable special attacks, a regular block, a dodge, and a special block that functions as a counter. You also have MP for those customizable special attacks, which is restored by doing normal attacks or using the special block.
You & the enemies have a break gauge. By attacking, or being attacked, you can reduce the gauge & stun enemies for a finisher; or be stunned yourself, which reduces your max MP. The only way to bring the max back up is, again, that special block. There’s pretty much no reason to use the regular block, apart from it quickly draining your break gauge.
Honestly, I’m not a fan of the break gauge. I like breaking enemies, and seeing it go down when you block makes sense, but what I don’t like is it’ll go down if you get hit in any way. Whether you block successfully, counter, or take damage, that break gauge goes down; not even at a reduced rate. The only way to avoid it going down is to dodge. I’m not a fan of this, since it feels like the game punishing you for not being 100% perfect. Taking damage is already punishing enough, and it feels redundant to add punishment on top of that.
Fortunately, Stranger of Paradise also features a job system. This is a staple feature of Final Fantasy games, but what makes this one special is you can equip two jobs at once; switching between them freely during fights & even mid-combo. But more importantly, both jobs have separate break gauges; so if one gets low, you can switch to the other. I didn’t swap that often my first time, and that’s a pretty good incentive to do so.
More than that, the unlock progression is excellent. You have a set of starter jobs you unlock just doing the main story, but the end of these basic jobs have full or partial unlocks of advanced jobs; and those have full/partial unlocks of expert jobs. It’s an incredibly satisfying daisy chain of unlocks. Each job caps at 30 for its skill tree, but after beating the game you can increase their level cap for fully customizable stat boosts. You don’t even need to have jobs equipped to level them, since you can use a consumable to level them off-hand, and equipment gives you affinity on certain jobs to increase their levels as well.
…okay maybe we should talk about the equipment.
Final Fantiablo
Just like Nioh, Stranger of Paradise uses a Diablo-style loot drop system. The entire gameplay loop is to kill stuff, get gear, boost your stats, and kill stronger stuff for better gear & better stats, etc. There are definitely bad implementations of this system, but Stranger of Paradise does it pretty well. I want to write a whole article about this someday, but here’s my short version:
An important aspect of loot drops is to have consistency. That doesn’t mean everything should always drop the same piece of armor every time, but what it does mean is if two identical pieces of gear drop with the same level tied to them, they should have the same stats. And if the stats are random, there should be an obvious logic to explain why they’re random.
A good example of this is Borderlands. Every gun in Borderlands has a level, a weapon type, and has an associated manufacturer. Each of those traits are randomized, but if you get two level 5 snipers made by Jakobs, they’ll be exactly the same. The likelihood of that happening lies within what’s essentially a slot machine, but the point is you can immediately understand why a gun has the stats that it does.
Stranger of Paradise does this, and takes it a step further: All trash loot can be dismantled for crafting materials, and all equipment can be manually leveled & upgraded. So if you get one really good piece of gear, or are struggling against RNG for a better piece of gear to drop, you can upgrade your equipment to have at least one guaranteed way to stay at appropriate levels… almost.
Unfortunately, despite consistent stats & a trash recycling system, you do still have two traits of gear that are random. The first is the aforementioned affinity system. Each job has a meter called affinity, measured by a percentage. The higher it is (up to 400%), the more passive abilities that job obtains. The passives vary between jobs, but something cool (in theory) is you can gain passives regardless of the job you’re playing, assuming you have the affinity. But again, affinity on gear is random. So you have to grind for the right piece of gear to drop.
The second random thing is on weapons. There are ten distinct weapon types, and which types each job can use varies. But something cool (in practice) is if you unlock a new weapon skill in one job tree, any other job can use that skill if they can use the weapon. However, some weapon drops also have skills tied to them; and if you want to keep using that skill, you have to hold onto the weapon. Being able to upgrade weapons helps to mitigate this, but it’s still a bit obnoxious.
Final Fantastic
In my previous article, my only other negative point was the difficulty. But honestly I should’ve just kept playing before turning it down, because it gets a lot easier after the first few missions. If anything there’s a noticeable falloff, and I considered turning the difficulty up a few times. I probably should’ve, since beating the game unlocks an even harder difficulty (two if you have the DLC) and I was probably unprepared for it, but another thing I noticed is I’m pretty sure difficulty simply changes the level of enemies you encounter; rather than any arbitrary number changes that most game difficulties employ.
Despite all of that though, Stranger of Paradise is wonderful. Attacks are meaty & hit good, the amount of side content & post-game is staggering, you have a ton of playstyle options, and there’s a co-op mode if you want to bring your friends along. I’m still not big on the break system, and honestly even post-game gets pretty obnoxious, but this is absolutely a game worth playing if it’s something you have interest in. It’s almost good enough to be a mainline Final Fantasy title.
