Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (PS5)

At first glance, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin can look a bit like an incongruous clash of aesthetics. On the one hand this game that is based on the original Final Fantasy will have you fighting goblins in a medieval castle using magic, but on the other you have the game start with the main character Jack listening to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” on earbuds, his ally Ash wears colorful sneakers, and they use a map hologram to plot their next course. Advanced technology has actually cropped up even in fairly traditional fantasy settings in this series before, usually explained as something belonging to an advanced yet extinct ancient civilization, but the juxtaposition here is actually a major factor of the plot, a good deal of this action role-playing game’s story working towards the answers on why these elements have become oddly intertwined.

 

The story begins with Jack, Ash, and Jed arriving at the kingdom of Cornelia believing themselves able to help with the encroaching problem of Chaos. Darkness in this world comes with evil creatures who supposedly serve the dark lord known as Chaos, but legend tells of four Warriors of Light who will appear to defeat Chaos one day. Although initially a member short, the crystals this trio wield lead to the kingdom putting their faith in them, but in time the group encounter two women, Neon and Sophia, who also have crystals. While this change from the prophecy is strange, they remain committed to activating four elemental crystals to try and protect this world, although Jack’s single-mindedness does stand in contrast with his companions. Jack is truly the game’s main character, and while his initially gruff demeanor means he tries to fight his way through almost blindly in pursuit of chaos, it becomes clear over time there is much more going on with him than his deliberate attempts to find simple purpose imply. Unfortunately, the rest of the four party members mostly exist in service to his narrative path, and while Neon is introduced with an intriguing connection to Chaos, mostly these four strangers are grappling with fractured memories that are edging them closer to the truth more for Jack’s sake then their own. Jed at least can add some levity to things with his wisecracking nature and Neon eventually shows herself to have some youthful energy as well, but Ash feels underserved by the writing and Sophia maintains a mostly mature demeanor that keeps her too distant from things.

Surprisingly though, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin does do some good work with characters from the first Final Fantasy who were mostly small parts of a simple narrative before. Here, Astos the dark elf is not an obstacle to overcome but a helpful yet mysterious ally who helps guide the party but hides the truth they seek while doing so. Bikke the pirate is able to help embody the social unrest caused by the uncertain state of things in this world, but a surprising amount of the story developments come not from tailored cutscenes or chats with pivotal characters but idle chatter during missions and the discovery of yellowish orbs in the dungeons you delve into. Various “Lufenian Logs” from a mysterious civilization speak on matters that rather early on make clear the incongruity between fantasy and science fiction has a much greater purpose in the plot, and while it gives you some pretty hefty revelations near the start, the characters don’t seem to be learning such information as they require actual cutscenes to start picking up on things you learned long ago. To the game’s credit, you aren’t given so many pieces you can immediately explain what is going on in its totality, the final missions actually able to string together a good series of revelations that were well hinted at and tie things up in a slightly messy but still comprehensible package. Piecing together the information over time adds some intrigue to a story that can still follows the events of the original Final Fantasy somewhat without feeling simplistic, but it feels like there was room to better convey it rather than this sometimes haphazard sprinkling of narrative bits.

 

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin does feel like its greater focus is on the action though, battles consisting of real time skirmishes where you control one party member while the other two provide back-up. You can play alone as Jack or get online and have two other players fill the roles of other party members, and there is a noticeable difference in party competency when you can have human players actively distract monsters or use skills to better deal with foes. Most of the combat will involve you utilizing simple combos to rack up damage, your attack chain able to build up to different ability finishers based on how far into the combo you are and which skills you have unlocked. There are some more advanced techniques if you add delays, charged strikes, or control stick inputs to things, but they seem to provide more of an extra tool rather than being something necessary, the chaining of simple attacks into advantageous skills the main crux of most of your battles. Swords swings can culminate in an ability where you leap up into the air and slam down for heavy damage, swinging a club can lead to the creation of a holy sigil to blast foes back, and smacking someone about with some claws can have you finish things off by pulling the enemy up into the air before corkscrewing back to the ground. Different weapon types fight in unique ways and their abilities can slip into your combos in a variety of manners, but one thing to keep cognizant of is MP.

 

To execute special abilities you’ll need to build up Magic Power, and luckily simply hitting your foe with your weapon will do so, meaning a natural combo string can earn the energy it needs for a more powerful and satisfying finishing move. However, early in a mission you start with a very small maximum amount of MP, but you can increase how much you are able to store by utilizing a crystalization attack. Monsters and bosses both have two meters to consider, their health and their break gauge. You can kill a foe by wearing their health down enough, but if you can shatter their break gauge, they’ll be stunned and vulnerable to an instant kill attack that explodes them into crystal energy that ups your maximum magic power. Certain attacks and skills will do more to reduce a break gauge, but if a foe is tough sometimes you will want to settle for a traditional kill, adding another layer to an already engaging and challenging battle system. The job system only takes things even further, the player able to have two jobs set they can switch to with a single button press in battle to swap between major fighting styles and unique techniques. A white mage will be able to heal or buff themselves and allies, the ninja can utilize special ninjutsu magic that doesn’t draw on MP but can still exploit elemental weaknesses, a thief can steal enemy attacks and throw them back at them which is otherwise only possible with a well-timed use of the universal parry system, and liberators can activate a powerful buff for their teammates as long as they stick close by. There is a wide variety of jobs that you can work towards leveling up through battle, although if one doesn’t click there are alternate means for earning experience for them like equipping gear that has a related affinity or simply spending anima shards you earn for doing missions. Since certain jobs need to reach certain levels to unlock new ones, you gradually get to build up to more capable and intriguing job types and there’s some customization in how it all comes together as you can pick which attack abilities to set, some even accessible by any job so you can put together a battle type that best suits you.

Battles in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin involve a good deal of dodging and defense on top of utilizing your combos and abilities well, but while you’ll be cultivating a web of job growth over the adventure, the more moment-to-moment growth comes from the equipment you earn off fallen foes. Enter a mission that’s tough and you can start picking up gear fairly quickly that can start to even the odds a little, but there are still monsters like the tentacle-faced Piscodaemons, the deceptive little Tonberries, and the whiskered big cats known as Ceourls that can turn the tables if you don’t treat them as threats no matter your power level. Unfortunately, the game does a bit of a poor job conveying when you’ve taken damage, there being no major effects or character reactions so you need to look at your health bar sometimes to even find out you’ve been hit. The small skirmishes still won’t be too demanding so long as your equipment level is sufficient, but there’s enough to the action that it serves as a good complement to the dungeon exploration.

 

Dungeons aren’t just linear progressions from start to finish, many side paths existing that almost always have some purpose even if it’s just a simple treasure chest. However, finding what you need or where you need to go manages to be a bit more involved while not becoming confusing. You might need to engage with a specific area gimmick like altering the weather in a forest to make water dry up or plants grow or there may be traps to avoid like walls that try to push you to a deadly drop, the areas given enough diversity that it’s a surprise that very few optional missions make use of the same spaces. Another nice touch to them though is that they are all meant to line up with dungeons found in previous Final Fantasy games. While their layouts are wholly unique and any definitive identifiers are absent, these dungeons do try to evoke their inspirations in some form. The snowy mountain here for example is based on Mount Gagazet from Final Fantasy X in a way that doesn’t draw attention to itself unless you get the reference, this also arising in things like the Final Fantasy XI dungeon carrying over the magic pot and crystal designs used in that game for its dungeon gimmick. Add in the nice touch of many of these areas having music that contains some recognizable tracks from their source game and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin finds a way to be reverent to the rest of the series without sacrificing of itself to do so.

 

The difficulty level of the game will fluctuate quite a bit based on your own affinity with your job choices and ability to weave around the enemies and bosses, although thankfully most of the bosses are large monsters with attacks that require awareness to accurately avoid attacks and find your brief windows for doing decent damage. Even with a good weapon and skill set, a monster like the Kraken dominates its boss arena so well you need to consider your strategy, plan your use of healing well, and learn not to commit so hard to a combo you’re left helpless when it whips out one of its deadly attacks. The game does reuse a lot of normal enemies across its dungeons though, but if the regular foes start to lack some punch you can bump up an individual mission’s difficulty for better rewards but tougher battles, even some of the bosses who were once pushovers getting noticeable improvements. Your equipment acquisitions won’t undermine it either, but only late in the game will it feel necessary to do anything besides click Optimize Equipment with how quickly they scale in power. This can also make elements like armor enhancement clearly there for activity after the main plot and unless you buy the downloadable expansions then that post-game action is mostly the Chaos difficulty that just make previous missions more difficult, but the main adventure is complete enough despite it being somewhat of a shame that some of the customization elements don’t have much footing during it.

THE VERDICT: An exciting and rich combat system keeps Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin alive even when it’s plot sometimes gets a little messy. There is definitely a degree of intrigue in trying to figure out the why the game’s world seems to slam two aesthetics together, but the compelling action demands more of the attention because of the depth of its job system and combo focused fighting system. Mixing some strong foes with your need to be aggressive to earn MP for your skills makes for engaging fights where you need to understand your enemies well even if they do start to repeat a bit too much for it to stay consistently novel, but strong dungeon designs and some good boss battles make up for it. With some love for the series’s history interwoven cleanly for the series’s 35th anniversary as well, this Final Fantasy game can be reverent while still feeling like its own beast.

 

And so, I give Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin for PlayStation 5…

A GOOD rating. While the plot has fascinating characters like Astos and the mystery of the Lufenians to drive it, it does feel like Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin could have done with a tidier delivery and more love for its supporting cast to push its narrative onto the level of its action. Traveling through unique dungeons and facing fights that manage to maintain some degree of danger keeps the player easily engaged before the smart decisions in the battle system factor in, the need to build up MP rewarding aggression while foes demand some defensive play with their threat level. The break system gives you a way to speed up taking out a monster if you need to handle a pack of foes, but reducing the break gauge often involves utilizing your skills that cost MP. All of this can happen without slowing down the battles too much, and the job system adds a good degree of richness to your considerations throughout the whole adventure. Finding the job and weapon style you like most and working towards its best version involves not only mastering it but other jobs that can feed into it well, and with some abilities usable no matter your set job and having the option to swap between two of them mid-battle adds a new layer of flexibility to how you can approach combat. Cultivating useful abilities and building your job levels up doesn’t have to be a slog thanks to systems like the equipment affinities that feed experience into that class, although there could have been a better spread of healing abilities to further diversify your options, especially with the game conveying damage you’ve taken rather poorly.

 

For the most part though, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin lets its layered combat system take center stage, even the mission system more about selecting the next dungeon from the menu than traveling across a world. Some other elements of the experience may be a bit muddled or not really reach their potential unless you aim to squeeze as much as possible from the game, but the actual battles are snappy yet involved and dungeon exploration can be advanced but not bogged down with too many extra considerations. It still might feel a little weird to be smacking around a harpy while Jack wears a fedora, but the actual action is smooth and inviting with its flexible customization. It is a bit far from where Final Fantasy usually travels with its tone and combat design, but Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin handles the action RPG mechanics well even if the story is a bit shaky.