Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin - dark fantasy reimagining of FF1 from Team Ninja

[Duraframe300]

Looks like 2000's edge kino is back on the menu boys!

That's Final Fantasy: Moebius though.

 

[Silentstorm]

Game is now a bit more fun, have seen more monsters and they attack more often, having more options and better jobs helps as well, though this game has quite a few jobs to grind for.

There are still things i would like to see, like a jump button rather than an ability, maybe a smoother way of doing magic rather than sitting still and hoping the enemy doesn't do anything and a better loot system, the game throws so much stuff at you i have no patience and just let the game auto-equip, and each mission gives rare and higher leveled weapons so i also don't feel like upgrading them either, i also don't think there are set bonuses or anything fun like that which you would see in Diablo.

This is assuming they will make one more spin-off game like this, there are things to improve upon.

Also, everyone just has little personality and one that is bland aside from Jack wanting to kill Chaos, strangely enough, part of the plot seems to imply this is done on purpose and the lack of personality is a plot point.

 

[Silentstorm]

Seriously about the jump button though, for those who haven't played it yet, you can't jump and you betcha there are many small fences or obstacles that you have to go around and it's annoying, particularly since I, who am not exactly an olympic level athlete, could just...lift my feet a bit higher and go over many of the obstacles, or jump over them, it's even weirder when the main characters are supposed to be superhuman.

It's just a really big pet peeve of mine, worse than invisible walls to me, i swear, according to this game, the best way for Chaos to escape is to run to a rural field, lock every fence and put a bunch of rocks around him, maybe just one decently sized rock above another, and Jack and the others will be unable to get to him.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

So they show Garland crystalizing people and Jack can crystallize people so the twist is Jack is chaos.

 

[Jinn]

I know the above is a joke, but anyone who played Final Fantasy 1 to completion knows that Jack is Chaos. He is obsessed with killing himself in Stranger of Paradise, and I'm sure there's some thematic element of that which is going over most people's heads. Not saying it was executed well, but it definitely shows who the "fans" of Final Fantasy are.

I look forward to finding out for myself when I am finally able to play Stranger of Paradise. Speaking of, how's the difficulty been feeling for people so far? If it's on the easier side, I might just ditch the party members on my playthrough.

 

[Silentstorm]

Game is decently hard on hard difficulty, you take quite a bit of damage and enemies can be fast, normal is better about this but at most maybe bosses will stop you once or twice.

As for Chaos:

Spoiler

Jack is Garland and indeed Chaos, but he doesn't know it yet and that was a previous part of a plan, he and the others have been trapped in a time loop for years and years and at the end they decide to go evil and see if some changes finally break the loop, so the four fiends are your party members and Jack is Chaos after thousands of years of being trapped in a loop remembering and forgetting things.

This is even implied right at the start of the game, with even NPC's having memories of people or stuff that didn't happen and Jack and the others having feelings of Deja Vu, for example, Princess Sarah remembers meeting a knight named Garland but in this time loop, Jack was never a knight in Cornelia so no one else knows about Garland, by the end they get a better way of remembering stuff but i hear the ending implies it still takes thousands of years for the final loop.

The final loop being the only one where the four warriors of light from FF1 actually appear and somehow manage to break the time loop and kill the previously heroic Jack and friends, i already got spoiled and it seems that while we only briefly see the FF1 party, one looks like the guy from Dissidia...so yeah, turns out becoming Chaos and evil was the right choice for Jack and the others, it's what eventually creates a loop that forces four people to actually go out and save the world and stop the time loop.

 

[Viata]

That doesn't look so bad, tbh. May it's just a problem with the way it's being executed.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

What's funny to me is I was just complaining that Elden Ring doesn't have a class or weapon proficiency system, then boom along comes this game with a class and weapon proficiency system.

Idk why but when a game has multiple leveling systems and skills that can all go up in tandem it's pretty much crack to me.

 

[Jinn]

That doesn't look so bad, tbh. May it's just a problem with the way it's being executed.

Agreed. I was wondering what they were going to do to introduce the actual Final Fantasy 1 plot into this, and I can't say I'm disappointed with how they managed to. It's kind of cool, actually. Maybe should have just cooled it with stuff like Jack whipping out his smart phone with shitty music and swearing all the time. I guess that could be a message in itself though? The toll of repetition sapping the nuance out of a person?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

At the beginning I thought the crystalizing thing could be a red herring since it's too obvious, but you could tell what the twist was going to be the instant Neon opened her mouth in the "bullshit" scene.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

As for Chaos:

Spoiler

Jack is Garland and indeed Chaos, but he doesn't know it yet and that was a previous part of a plan, he and the others have been trapped in a time loop for years and years and at the end they decide to go evil and see if some changes finally break the loop, so the four fiends are your party members and Jack is Chaos after thousands of years of being trapped in a loop remembering and forgetting things.

This is even implied right at the start of the game, with even NPC's having memories of people or stuff that didn't happen and Jack and the others having feelings of Deja Vu, for example, Princess Sarah remembers meeting a knight named Garland but in this time loop, Jack was never a knight in Cornelia so no one else knows about Garland, by the end they get a better way of remembering stuff but i hear the ending implies it still takes thousands of years for the final loop.

The final loop being the only one where the four warriors of light from FF1 actually appear and somehow manage to break the time loop and kill the previously heroic Jack and friends, i already got spoiled and it seems that while we only briefly see the FF1 party, one looks like the guy from Dissidia...so yeah, turns out becoming Chaos and evil was the right choice for Jack and the others, it's what eventually creates a loop that forces four people to actually go out and save the world and stop the time loop.

Bullshit.

 

[Suicidal]

So I'm still on the fence if I should buy this. Was planning on watching different people stream it to help me decide but apparently Square Enix made the genius marketing decision of placing a bunch of restrictions on streaming the game, like you can't show certain cutscenes, and now almost nobody is streaming it, even the people who said they wanted to.

Question to the people that did buy the game:

How's the combat compared to Nioh?
How's the enemy variety and placement? Better or worse than in Nioh?
How does it run? Heard performance was kind of ass.
How's the KBM controls?

 

[Silentstorm]

About the time loop:

Spoiler

I think the Lunarians, the super advanced civilization that vanished, are behind it somehow, i do find documents about experiments and they were looking into the multiverse and acting like Gods, even literally shaping the world, the reason areas resembles ones from other Final Fantasy games is that they were ripping off other universes, like saying they stole a lava area from Dimension 8, or how Dimension 13 was inspiring for the architecture of some place.

I guess it's all just an experiment gone wrong?

 

[Dishonoredbr]

About the story

Spoiler

Jack and the others created a plan to break the cycle that Lufenians created to mantain their ascended status. They, the Lufenians, throw darkness in Cornelia and the rest of the world , send Strangers to collect the Darkness and then reset their memories. They do all this because if Darkness comes together with Too much negative emotions , it creates Chaos. They fear Chaos.
Also while they do this they observer , experiment and do their shenanigans with others dimensions. They're playing God.

Jack and the others however begin to keep some of their memories and start to grow attatched to Cornelia (after like 3 Loops), so Jack creates a plan to become Chaos by making Astos giving them hints so Ash , Jed, Sophia and Neon can recover their memories then later make Jack recover his memories and THEN they would make Jack into Chaos. The End of the Game Jacks becomes Chaos, aka Garland of Final Fantasy 1., the World Reset of one final time but this time around it's Final Fantasy 1 Timeline where The Warriors of Light actually exist and defeat Chaos and Free the land , thus breaking the cycle of the Lufenians.

 

[Mr. Pink]

My theory is that not being able to jump in this game is one of those design choices that happen when the code monkeys don't want to deal with the headache-inducing problem of AI companion pathfinding. Nioh 1 & 2 didn't have jumping either. On the bright side, there is no platforming in this game as far as I can tell.

Question to the people that did buy the game:

How's the combat compared to Nioh?

Interesting but in a different way. This is has plenty of dodging and weaving but it's more of a numbers and stats game. Knowing elemental weaknesses is just as important as attack patterns, like your typical Final Fantasy. There's a very in depth combo customization mechanic that allows you to use custom strong attacks (uses mana) depending on where in the combo chain you are but mana is easy to regain. I haven't tried all the weapon classes yet but they are all very different from each other in gameplay. Enemies are rather spongey if you aren't using the right weapon and you shouldn't expect to beat the game using only two jobs. Switching jobs on the fly is pretty quick though.

I like the mechanic of constantly stealing enemy moves and using them later. Obviously, elemental attacks are no good against the elementals that use them, but it's fun to have to think about how to take advantage of them in situations where there are multiple mob types of different elements. Grab the water attack from the water enemy, use it on the fire enemy, grab the fire attack from the fire enemy, use it on the wind enemy, ect ect.

How's the enemy variety and placement? Better or worse than in Nioh?

Definitely not as varied as Nioh. Still a treat to see 3d interpretations of classic NES enemies though, if you like Final Fantasy. Levels tend to be a linear chain of arenas with not much exploration going on.

How does it run? Heard performance was kind of ass.

Runs adequately on a 1070ti with medium graphics, but slowdowns are common and the entire game clock is tied to framerate (WHY TEAM NINJA????? WHY???) so slowing down doesn't just make you drop frames, but makes the whole game slow too

How's the KBM controls?

Borderline unplayable


I still like this game though because the core of combat is fun and the cutscenes are amazing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

About the time loop:

Spoiler

I think the Lunarians, the super advanced civilization that vanished, are behind it somehow, i do find documents about experiments and they were looking into the multiverse and acting like Gods, even literally shaping the world, the reason areas resembles ones from other Final Fantasy games is that they were ripping off other universes, like saying they stole a lava area from Dimension 8, or how Dimension 13 was inspiring for the architecture of some place.

I guess it's all just an experiment gone wrong?

About the story

Spoiler

Jack and the others created a plan to break the cycle that Lufenians created to mantain their ascended status. They throw darkness in Cornelia and the rest of the world , send Strangers to collect the Darkness and then reset their memories. They do all this because if Darkness comes together with Too much negative emotions , it creates Chaos.

Jack and the others however begin to keep some of their memories and start to grow attatched to Cornelia (after like 3 Loops), so they Jack creates a plan to become Chaos by making Astos giving them hints so Ash , Jed, Sophia and Neon can recover their memories then later make Jack recover his memories and THEN they would make Jack into Chaos. The End of the Game Jacks becomes Chaos, aka Garland of Final Fantasy 1. Then the World Reset of one final time but this time around it's Final Fantasy 1 Timeline where The Warriors of Light actually exist and defeat Chaos and Free the land , thus breaking the cycle of the Lufenians.

 

[Suicidal]

...

Thanks for the detailed write up.

Sad to hear that the KBM controls are shit considering that after they added PC key prompts to Nioh 2 playing that game with KBM was very comfortable for me. Would you say that they are worse here than in Nioh 2. If so, what exactly makes them worse?

 

[Mr. Pink]

...

Thanks for the detailed write up.

Sad to hear that the KBM controls are shit considering that after they added PC key prompts to Nioh 2 playing that game with KBM was very comfortable for me. Would you say that they are worse here than in Nioh 2. If so, what exactly makes them worse?

The UI is controller based and has no keyboard prompts so you have no idea what button you're supposed to press, The controls in the menu UI make no sense at all. In some menus, right clicking will exit out, while other menus, nothing happens. The combat requires a fair amount of simultaneous button presses that are unergonomic in standard bindings. The mouse camera sucks.

This is not a kb/m game.

 

[Mauman]

This is not a kb/m game.

Sounds like standard fare for a Square game.

Maybe some good soul will fix it like the fans did for Nier.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So I'm still on the fence if I should buy this. Was planning on watching different people stream it to help me decide but apparently Square Enix made the genius marketing decision of placing a bunch of restrictions on streaming the game, like you can't show certain cutscenes, and now almost nobody is streaming it, even the people who said they wanted to.

Question to the people that did buy the game:

How's the combat compared to Nioh?
How's the enemy variety and placement? Better or worse than in Nioh?
How does it run? Heard performance was kind of ass.
How's the KBM controls?

nobody knows, didn't release for PC yet

 

[Nifft Batuff]

This is not a kb/m game.

Sounds like standard fare for a Square game.

Maybe some good soul will fix it like the fans did for Nier.

Ffvii remake had good kb/m support.

 

[Viata]

About the story

Spoiler

Jack and the others created a plan to break the cycle that Lufenians created to mantain their ascended status. They, the Lufenians, throw darkness in Cornelia and the rest of the world , send Strangers to collect the Darkness and then reset their memories. They do all this because if Darkness comes together with Too much negative emotions , it creates Chaos. They fear Chaos.
Also while they do this they observer , experiment and do their shenanigans with others dimensions. They're playing God.

Jack and the others however begin to keep some of their memories and start to grow attatched to Cornelia (after like 3 Loops), so Jack creates a plan to become Chaos by making Astos giving them hints so Ash , Jed, Sophia and Neon can recover their memories then later make Jack recover his memories and THEN they would make Jack into Chaos. The End of the Game Jacks becomes Chaos, aka Garland of Final Fantasy 1., the World Reset of one final time but this time around it's Final Fantasy 1 Timeline where The Warriors of Light actually exist and defeat Chaos and Free the land , thus breaking the cycle of the Lufenians.

Now this is shit.

 

[Suicidal]

...

Thanks for the detailed write up.

Sad to hear that the KBM controls are shit considering that after they added PC key prompts to Nioh 2 playing that game with KBM was very comfortable for me. Would you say that they are worse here than in Nioh 2. If so, what exactly makes them worse?

The UI is controller based and has no keyboard prompts so you have no idea what button you're supposed to press, The controls in the menu UI make no sense at all. In some menus, right clicking will exit out, while other menus, nothing happens. The combat requires a fair amount of simultaneous button presses that are unergonomic in standard bindings. The mouse camera sucks.

This is not a kb/m game.

Sounds like Nioh 1 levels of KBM support rather than Nioh 2, a shame.

Did a different team handle this game or something? It's strange that they went back to the same mistakes from 5~ years ago after the Nioh 2 port showed clear improvements.

 

[Duraframe300]

About the story

Spoiler

Jack and the others created a plan to break the cycle that Lufenians created to mantain their ascended status. They, the Lufenians, throw darkness in Cornelia and the rest of the world , send Strangers to collect the Darkness and then reset their memories. They do all this because if Darkness comes together with Too much negative emotions , it creates Chaos. They fear Chaos.
Also while they do this they observer , experiment and do their shenanigans with others dimensions. They're playing God.

Jack and the others however begin to keep some of their memories and start to grow attatched to Cornelia (after like 3 Loops), so Jack creates a plan to become Chaos by making Astos giving them hints so Ash , Jed, Sophia and Neon can recover their memories then later make Jack recover his memories and THEN they would make Jack into Chaos. The End of the Game Jacks becomes Chaos, aka Garland of Final Fantasy 1., the World Reset of one final time but this time around it's Final Fantasy 1 Timeline where The Warriors of Light actually exist and defeat Chaos and Free the land , thus breaking the cycle of the Lufenians.

In short: Don't care about the story, its the usual random FF Multiverse mambo jambo they have done before. I... guess I can live with that? Easy enough to ignore.

And to think there was a time where any attempt at a FF multiverse was just Gilgamesh trolling.

 

[Silentstorm]

Just want to say, Hard really goes for the damage bloat, not so much HP unless you count bosses, man, Cray Crawl kills you with a combo if you get hit once in that difficulty mode, guy isn't slow either, not that it really matters since you can still block...one or two moves but the way Jack dies so easily just reminds me that, yeah, if people want to play on Hard, expect to dodge a lot, particularly during bosses.