Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

2024-12-08
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, a game that if nothing else should have gotten the Most Obnoxious Title award for 2022, is to my taste a classic rough gem. On the one hand you have a really nice crunchy combat system from Team Ninja, a bazillion classes, with a bazillion pieces of loot, a ton of beautifully designed enemies and bosses, in a game that looks gorgeous on the PS5. But on the other hand you have a bazillion classes with a bazillion skill tree points that don't seem to make a big difference, you have WAY too much loot that causes you to spend too much time in menus trying to compare things with very little difference (the auto-equip-best-stuff doesn't work great)--AND there's a fucking inventory limit so you have to spend MORE time once you hit the cap in the late game--, a story that is incoherent and underwhelming at best and another chore at worst.

I had a great time cheesing the game with the Ronin's broken ass Unsheathe ability but I'm miffed that the final package didn't really deliver on all the cool ideas presented at the start.

2023-04-01

What an odd game. And what a difficult one to write a review for. On the one hand you have a really nice crunchy combat system from the creators of Nioh over at Team Ninja, a bazillion classes, with a bazillion pieces of loot, a ton of beautifully designed enemies and bosses, in a game that looks gorgeous on the PS5. But on the other hand you have a bazillion classes with a bazillion skill tree points that don't seem to make a big difference, you have WAY too much loot that causes you to spend too much time in menus trying to compare things with very little difference (the auto-equip-best-stuff doesn't work great)-- AND there's a fucking inventory limit so you have to spend MORE time once you hit the cap in the late game--, a story that is incoherent and underwhelming at best and another chore at worst, and the difficulty spikes late game (likely because I don't understand how the hell you're supposed to build characters) forcing me to put it on Easy, effectively neutralizing the fun of the game.

In short it's a rough gem. I think there's the seeds of something really great here with the way you unlock different classes by maxing out others. But they need to make each class really importantly different. And the later classes need to be meaningfully stronger. By the end of the game I still just wanted to play the low level Ronin class or whatever because their Unsheathe attack was fucking broken. I unlocked every single class but the later ones didn't even seem good. And as I moved through the skill tree the new abilities felt like they weren't better or stronger. Nothing is explained well. Remove a ton of the loot. Cut out or refine the story.

In short it's a game that seems amazing for the first 5 hours before it reveals all its flaws. I'll still cherish those first few hours when I was amazed at the way the different classes played, at how a mage regenerated MP by hitting things then they could charge and cast spells.