Back in June 2021, Square Enix announced a new vision for the first Final Fantasy story with Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. Now, the origin story is out and it trades all the heart, character, and charm of the Final Fantasy series for ruthless aggression. This is our review.
A Disjointed Story That Tries Way Too Hard
Growing up, one of the first games I remember playing was Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo. I think I was around seven years old and my older brother had borrowed the game from one of his friends from school. When I inevitably got my turn to play the game on the console, I’ll never forget how it made me feel. The opening sequence hooked me from the start and found myself attached to the memorable characters and the incredible journey they were on. I never wanted the journey to end.
That feeling continued with the games that followed in the series with VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, XIII, and XV. Each of those games, including Final Fantasy XIV (which I haven’t played), contained an immersive story that took players along on a heartfelt journey of hope, magic, and rising above the darkness of the world. Each one also had deeper themes and meanings behind each game more than just liberating those oppressed by the forces of evil. Upon completion, they always had me sit back and reflect on the journey I had just been on.
That’s not really how it is in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. It’s a very direct game where really what you see is what you get. While it tries to provide players with a clever twist toward the end, the reality is the overall story of Stranger of Paradise is a heartless mess; an outlier to the games sporting the Final Fantasy brand.
As you’ve likely seen from the trailers, Stranger of Paradise features an aggro, rage-fueled character named Jack Garland who is obsessed with killing the nameless, faceless villain known as Chaos. In his journey, he’s joined by Ash, Jed, Neon, and Sophia. Together they form the Warriors of Light, intent on recovering their erased memories, defeating Chaos, and restoring the elemental crystals of Cornelia.
It sounds neat, but the story for Stranger of Paradise is riddled with plot holes, ridiculous scenes, unnatural dialogue, and loads of inconsistencies.
One such way that is the case is how the team is formed. When Jack arrives at Cornelia, crystal-in-hand, without memory, but with a drive to kill Chaos, Jed and Ash just show up and agree to join him. There isn’t much convincing, no real back and forth; just looking at each other’s crystals and having a Stepbrothers moment “Did we just become best friends?” “Yep!”.
When Neon is introduced, she gives a whole spiel regarding her backstory only to get cut off, insulted, and then just told she can join the team no problem. In fact, getting cut off, insulted, and moving on to the next task is actually a common theme in this game. It happens often, without any warrant, and you’re just forced to accept it.
I feel as if the main goal of this game was to portray Jack as this overall badass character who inevitably becomes an iconic villain in the larger series. Yet, he just comes off as a toxic narcissist and the others just endure it, follow him to the ends of the Earth, and praise him every step of the way. It’s maddening and insufferable.
The story goes into Jack’s backstory a little bit as a way of softening up the character and making his motives and actions more understandable, more relatable. The problem, however, is he’s such a badly developed character that I couldn’t ever get behind him or his motives. Even in the game’s climax when he is going through one of the most traumatic moments I’ve ever experienced in a game, I found myself blasé towards a character who treated his friends like shit 90% of the game.
Stranger of Paradise’s story just tries so hard that it’s exhausting. It tries hard to make Jack a badass, by doing things like randomly interrupting a newly-introduced main boss by saying “I don’t give a fuck who you are!” and blowing off his “friends” by ignoring any concerns or heart-to-hearts they yearn for. It tries hard to make all the characters likable, which none of them really are. It tries hard to provide a twist to somehow give some complexity to Final Fantasy I, but the whole approach felt unneeded.
In the past, Final Fantasy games have been trailblazers in terms of gameplay, graphics, and storytelling. Stranger of Paradise does nothing to advance the needle and falls short in a lot of ways, especially in the storytelling category.
Fun, But Simplistic Combat Mechanics
A bright spot of Stranger of Paradise is the combat. As this game was developed by Team Ninja, in conjunction with Koei Tecmo and Square Enix, it uses similar combat mechanics to that of the Nioh series in that a lot of the combat revolves around the stamina bar to enact different actions. The only difference is when you die, you only lose a few blocks off of your magic meter, which is grown by defeating enemies.
Using this combat system made the mechanics in Stranger of Paradise feel smooth, fast-paced, and fun. Furthermore, the metric ton of jobs available to you like Swordfighter, Pugilist, Monk, Knight, Void Knight, Black Mage, Red Mage, White Mage, Samurai, Breaker, Sage, and so on were all very unique and fun to play. Although, once I unlocked Sage, the job did feel somewhat broken as it made both White Magic and Black Magic stronger and easily accessible. Collecting jobs and using different ones was the most addicting part of Stranger of Paradise.
That said, no part of the game felt all that difficult. I tried the game on multiple difficulties, including the endgame-unlocked difficulty Chaos (New Game +), and it still didn’t feel all that hard. It could be in part because I just finished playing Elden Ring, but all of the enemies felt easy and predictable.
Stranger of Paradise has a job level cap of 30 and then the rest of the “leveling” is through the gear and equipment you pick up along the way; of which there is a metric ton. When you start a mission there is a level difficulty indicator, but you can easily ignore that. The reason being that when you start the mission, you can quickly level up from leveled-up loot the enemies drop. From there, the game goes from somewhat challenging to easy by the time you get out of the first room, especially if you’re spamming magic and utilizing your team’s special abilities. In fact, the game gets pretty easy throughout the dungeon that the bosses are effortless once you figure out their pattern, which even that isn’t very hard to figure out. I only had trouble with three bosses in the entire game: Garland, Tiamat, and the final boss (but even that only took maybe five tries to overcome.
My biggest gripes with the combat in Stranger of Paradise have to do with Party settings and the limited inventory. With Party Settings, for starters you are playing as the “Four Warriors of Light” with FIVE characters and yet only THREE can participate in combat. Seems rather contradictory. On top of that, you are limited in the jobs you can select them for. This becomes annoying, as you never really get a healer.
Then, with inventory, I mentioned that there is a metric ton of loot in this game. Literally every enemy drops loot that helps level up your characters, although there are even more that are lower level. However, you can’t hold all the loot. You can really only hold 500 pieces of equipment and you can easily hit 500 in a single mission. After that, you’re unable to hold anything else in your inventory, requiring you to go through the laborious process of dismantling all of your collected loot in the World Map section that’s only accessible outside of missions. I say that it’s only accessible in the World Map, but what I mean by that is it’s the only way to get anything out of your dismantled loot.
If you dismantle loot in a mission, you get nothing. However, if you dismantle loot in the World Map through the Smithy, which requires some digging to find, you can collect crafting ingredients to level up attributes for certain weapons and gear. Even that crafting is only available in the World Map. If that all wasn’t annoying enough, dismantling loot requires selecting EVERY. PIECE. OF. LOOT. INDIVIDUALLY. and then selecting to dismantle it. It makes the game more tedious than fun.
A World Without Depth
I beat Stranger of Paradise in under 20 hours. Between simplistic level design and an almost complete lack of exploration, it was a short affair. The Final Fantasy series is rooted in exploration and ornate, unique levels. Even the game that this game is based on, Final Fantasy I, is rich with exploration. Yet, Stranger of Paradise has none.
Stranger of Paradise relies on having players select missions on a World Map. Only then can they traverse the landscape. It’s odd, though. This World Map is available from the start of the game, but becomes a plot device once you defeat Tiamat. Seemed like a weird choice. Then again, having 0 world exploration outside of missions seemed like an even weirder choice.
However, that landscape you traverse in missions is usually repetitive and limited. While the art style is beautiful in its own gothic way, every level just seems lacking. There aren’t even really any side quests, outside of replaying key parts of the story to unlock jobs for specific team members. It’s very much about the story, and less about learning the intricacies of this world or the NPCs that live within it.
That’s what is so disappointing about Stranger of Paradise. The NPCs are lazily designed and written. As if they built a few models then went full cut-and-paste mode. Final Fantasy I had mermaids, dwarves, dragons, mages, and loads of other NPCs to interact with and help. Stranger of Paradise has none of these and with the lack of exploration, Cornelia just feels like a barren wasteland not worthy of saving.
Should You Play It?
As a massive Final Fantasy fan, I was thrilled to play Stranger of Paradise. Yet, I was deeply disappointed by it. The story and its characters are some of the weakest of the entire series. Jack is a character that is so far behind the times that he’s virtually impossible to root for. There is no exploration. No real magic of discovery. The combat is excellent, but it’s not very challenging.
So, all in all, no. I can’t recommend Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. The twist at the end is cool, but only if you’ve played Final Fantasy I. Outside of that, there isn’t much benefit to playing this game. It’s a 90s action game pretending to be a Final Fantasy game and it just doesn’t work. All the heart, magic, and charm that Final Fantasy games have is crystallized and stomped on in the same way Jack kills his enemies in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. I’m all for nuance and trying new things but this “new vision for Final Fantasy” cannot become the norm, because then it’s Final Fantasy in name only and not in spirit.
