There are few sagas that are more synonymous with Japanese RPG than Final Fantasy. The saga created by Hironobu Sakaguchi has been Square’s flagship both from its initial moments under the Squaresoft name and after its merger with Enix. Final Fantasy already owns 15 numbered deliveries under their backs and a number of spin offs of different genres and settings.
The case of the title that we are analyzing today is delicate, although the idea of an action game set in the saga, and from the hand of authentic veterans like Ninja Theory sounds like potential for a dream game, perhaps many of you already suspect that the execution At the very least, it leaves a lot to be desired. So, without waiting any longer, here we leave you our Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin review.
Confusion, disorder.
The premise of Stranger of Paradise story it’s curious We find ourselves with a kind of remake of the original Final Fantasy, following on tiptoe the legend of the 4 warriors of light and several of the key script points of the 1987 game. The question is, like so many things in this title, in his bizarre execution. Here, the 4 warriors of light have bizarre personalities and modern designs completely incoherent with the setting of the world itself, led by a man with a Bruce Willis air under the name of Jack Garland.
The story itself is difficult to follow and follows rising levels of absurdity throughout the entire journey, coupled with dialogues that we would have difficulty believing were not written for parody. This in itself would not be a bad thing, as other action games have followed a similar style to cradle a fun and light-hearted style, such as the popular Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The problem here is that, unlike Platinum Games’ game, cutscenes interrupt the action repeatedlyhave an excessive duration and the characters are totally stoic, being mostly slow and boring aside from the bizarreness of the situations that appear before the player’s eyes.
Amorphous and indefinite state that is supposed to be prior to the ordering of the cosmos.
On a playable level, the game presents a very careful and fun combat system, and it is without a doubt the decisive point when deciding if you will like Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin or not. Picking up several of the ideas that Team Ninja introduced in Nioh (and consequently, of the soulslike genre), this title offers us tactical combat, with a great focus on counterattacks and dodge. Even at normal difficulty level, the game is a challenge that will lead us to take advantage of all the tools it provides us and to act carefully.
Probably the biggest innovation, and what sets it apart from other titles, is the different jobsa mechanic taken from the games of final-fantasy classic and that, in this case, will allow us to change our character’s statistics, equipment and skills on the fly. In this way, we can make Jack in a moment a swordsman who charges against enemies in a wide area, and with the press of a button, turn him into a magician with whom he can exploit elemental weaknesses. The variety of jobs is wide and each of them has its own development tree, greatly opening up the possibilities for strategy and experimentation.
In relation to this, the MP bar, which will be depleted when using magic and skills, plays a very important role. To recharge it, we must execute our enemies and perform contrarians, counterattacks that we must synchronize with the enemy blows. It is an element of risk / reward that can lead us to take damage, but if used correctly it will allow us to deal a strong blow to enemies and recover a good pinch of our MP bar, being widely satisfactory when we start to be able to execute them consistently. .
Combat is fun and satisfying, and offers a multitude of elements to be perfected that lovers of complex action games will love. However, this section also has its flaws, to begin with, some animations are crude and hinder combat, and on the other, we will not fight alone, and unfortunately, the artificial intelligence of our companions will not make things easier for us. We would have missed them having better AI to make them feel more useful and meaningful in combat.
Apparently erratic and unpredictable behavior of some deterministic dynamical systems with high sensitivity to initial conditions.
The soundtrack is one of the highlights of Stranger of Paradise. The music contains truly bombastic themes, which accompany the marvelous action of the title. Even its use in cinematic scenes is remarkable, leaving us with some of the most memorable moments of the title. This is not surprising, considering that its main composer, Naoshi Mizuta, has worked on other incredible soundtracks for Square-Enix, such as Final Fantasy XIII-2 or Final Fantasy XIV.
To end, we want to talk about the technical section. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is without a doubt the game with the worst image quality that we have played to date on Xbox Series X. Without being a graphic display in terms of models, textures or any other aspect, the The game presents a very low resolution at all times, both in performance mode and in quality, sometimes even showing off —and we know that it may sound like an exaggeration, but we assure you that it is not— below HD resolution. Stranger of Paradise also often uses pre-rendered cutscenes, which also look like something out of an Xbox 360-era game, with massive compression and extremely low resolution. A positive point is that, at least, it is capable of maintaining a totally stable rate of 60 fps, an aspect of vital importance in an action game.
Analysis of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
Roughly, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin feels like a game anchored two generations back. Although this can often be seen as a positive aspect, it is not so much when it represents really poor graphics and an empty story that hinders more than it contributes. Still, the combat system offers a fun and fresh experience that will satisfy fans of action games. The question of whether Stranger of Paradise is the game for you rests entirely on whether you can forgive all the glitches and half measures it throws at you in favor of its fun gameplay.