STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN Reviews

CHAOS!!! Jokes aside, highly recommend the game including the DLC. The DLC basically gives you god mode (dopamine rush) for all content except Rift floor 22 onwards, so anyone can complete it. This is one of my favourite under-rated games. So unfortunate it released close to Elden Ring, and that the trailers made the game look like a meme. This is like Nioh 2.5 and if you liked Nioh, you would like this for sure. If you're a fan of Final Fantasy, it also has lots of references/callbacks to nearly all FF's up to XV. I like that they don't rely on the references to make the game and the references are just enough to feel like they are unique to this game. Recreation vs. inspiration. It has great boss designs and the job system is fun too. Story is actually good, but the way it's executed is bad that makes it funny/good imo. Music is ok, I enjoyed the remixes of the original songs used here, when I recognised them. The amount of build options available is staggering. If you like finding and making OP builds, this is a game for you. PC performance is decent I guess... slows down a lot when bursting enemies (but I heard that's because your FPS needs to be capped to 60). The game's native HDR mode isn't that good, I prefer SpecialK's HDR or SDR. Anti-aliasing and upscaling options aren't great either, it only has DLSS2 and FSR1.0. You can use Optiscaler to get XeSS (if you have an Intel Arc GPU) or FSR3.x for AMD. Using FSR3.x with an upscaling ratio close to native (native gives a black screen) makes the game look a lot better/stable. For those on linux proton 10 is not working, use proton 9. Hope this gets a sequel

Came for the memes Some of the worst dialogues ever written Story is Dumb af Main character is a gorilla with clothes Combat is somewhat good Recycled linear areas all the time Extremely repetative

The Best Gane I've Played In About Mmm 3 Years Prolly Paying Anything Less Than $80 For This Should Be Punishable By 14 Months In The Box Bro NGL

Amazing combat and character progression, one of my favorite games in recent years!

Very fun game, if you enjoy games like Nioh, this'll probably be up your alley. It's nice that you can unlock any class any time you want, so long as you're willing to put the time in, it doesn't unlock through story missions, it's almost immediate that you can go for whatever play style you want. Also your character is a highly aggressive fighter, even the white mage class will have your character smashing enemies over the head before stamping them into red shards, so if that's your kinda thing, you won't be disappointed.

tl;dr: how do i buy the hidden mixed recommendation microtransaction? game's probably only worth playing while it is on sale. season pass/DLCs transform the game radically, don't buy it unless you really want more. deluxe edition is a scam, the artbooks and soundtracks are available online. if you're familiar with nioh, you know what you're getting into irt the DLCs - the game shifts from action game to degenerate instakill builds the more you engage with the itemization. the full story is locked behind the DLCs, so FF fans will be shelling out for it regardless. if you like nioh style combat, you may like this, for it is very similar, but there are demons in the details that make the combat in FFO a downgrade compared to nioh 2. i don't want to type up all the gameplay nuances, so for nioh fans: here's a list of what i consider significant gameplay changes, and their consequences, that i've noticed between n2 and FFO: - you get up to 2 companions per mission from the very start of basically every mission, including coop partners. - no phantoms of any kind. - no gold/amrita currencies. - no gear affix rerolling. you unlock the ability to buy affixes. - the great trap disarmer, the guns, are effectively gone. - no horn breaks, but there are still weak spots that you'll end up ignoring shortly after learning about them. - Break (Ki): FFO has no break cost for standard attacks. break is consumed exclusively for blocking, soul shielding and taking damage. - direct damage heavily influences break damage. i don't believe this is the same in nioh 2. - most enemies are vulnerable to stagger. most enemies in the game can be mashed to death with very little effort. - Soul Bursting (Grappling) an enemy instantly sets their current health bar's health remaining to 0, killing basically every enemy in the game that isn't a boss. - no death blows. - FFO has no stance system, but you can treat each job equipped as a stance. RE: stancing and the implications for fluxing, you can cancel the combo attacks in FFO with a job switch input during it to do a Chain Cancel, which can trigger gear effects and grants you a quick dash if you're holding a movement input. Each job/stance also has its own independent break gauge. - you can also equip up to 4 job-agnostic abilities on your dpad to compensate for the loss of actions from the third stance being gone. - MP (Amrita): the amrita gauge has an extremely low cap. only by soul shielding attacks or soul bursting can you regain maximum MP. this provides an incentive to build break damage as it gives you MP and self-loops. - Item Level: the further below an enemy's level your total average gear is, a stacking break damage malus is applied to all of your damage, which effectively kills a source of MP gain if you don't obey item levels. applies in steps of 10 levels, so being 9 below enemies is the same as being as 1 below. this compounds with enemy stagger mechanics, making most enemies in the game absolutely boring to fight if they take more than a couple of seconds to kill since you're just mashing attack and have no incentive to do break damage since you can deal so little. upgrade your gear if you want to engage with the game, otherwise spam aeroga + attacks for your free win against anything that can be staggered. - Soul Shield: you get a second block button. this block can block some forms of magic, rapidly decreases break while it is held and also consumes break on a successful block while increasing current and maximum MP. it can be used to absorb some enemy abilities and allows you to temporarily use it, which is a cool nod to blue mage. it cannot perfect block. the consequence of this is that you have two block buttons and you only, very generally speaking, meaningfully inflict ki damage when you use an ability, so you will be soul shielding a lot and perfect blocking when you reach the point where you can't soul shield anymore, or have no reason to soul shield (which is almost never). if you fail the perfect block, you are probably dead - or you can dodge instead, if the attack that you're blocking allows it. it makes blocking a generally undesirable option and you get the option to basically entirely never block again later on, with abilities that have guard points in their attacks or other ways to circumvent being in danger. - Lightbringer (Yokai Shift): YS is super nerfed. now, it only costs 2 pips of MP (amrita) instead of having an entire separate gauge to activate, lowers your maximum MP by 2 pips, inflicts knockback on all nearby enemies, grants you invuln on the cast and grants you infinite break for its duration with increased break damage dealt. it can be built to be extremely overpowered, similar to critical YS builds. unlike YS, it has no cutscene and flows into the combat much better. this also means you can hold down soul shield for as long as you want. break economy is very tight and lightbringer is an arguably centralizing mechanic throughout the entirety of the game. you can't even unequip it as an ability, unlike the other 3 ability slots you get. team ninja really wants you to use this. ignoring this allows you to mostly ignore soul shields, because the primary reason to ss is to get maximum MP that you would lose from using LB. scarce few other attacks also consume max MP. - there's a lot of reused animations from nioh 2 in this game. hell, fists even get izuna drop. i get gaki flashbacks whenever i see a goblin throw a rock at me. - the DLC endgame of both games is still inventory hell and it's arguably way worse and way grindier in this one. - the underworld equivalent doesn't suck. i think the rift is quite decent. i hunger for total kodama annihilation. - it is significantly faster to difficulty climb in this game than n2. you just do a couple of story missions and you unlock the next difficulty, after beating NG. for those who read that wall of text, here is my complaint dump: - soul shield relationship to break is dumb. - in regards to coop, the game does not have full coop for first time playthrough. there are several missions where you'll have to play solo, so build accordingly. enemy position desync over netplay is still present as well. - the game is not clear with some of its descriptions (looking at you, samurai 600), making testing builds needlessly annoying and incentivizing use of a third party aggregate to make things in the game borderline comprehendable. fextralife's ffo wiki is abandoned as well, thank god. use soda's spreadsheet instead. - some fundamental build concepts are not made obvious to the player (e.g. things purchased on the job tree are exclusive to that job, there is no inheritance whatsoever, but command abilities can be used regardless of job). - there are several gameplay bugs with build crafting (e.g. some evoker effects activate on conditions that they shouldn't, some things stack with each other and others don't). - buildcrafting remains nebulous (e.g. some things stack additively, others stack multiplicatively, blessing %s work differently than job %s and the game doesn't bother explaining it). - you can straight up accidentally not choose to unlock the final rarity tier of gear in the third DLC. - extra mode was a bandaid to get people into DLC3. same with that BS heavily overleveled and overtuned season pass armor that is granted upon NG completion. people whine about defender armor in modern monster hunter games, this is that on steroids. the progression curve should have been adjusted instead.

It's a good, fun soulslike. Probably the most fun final fantasy-esque game that I have played in a while.

A decent game that is overblown by the memes surrounding it. It is a showcase of some of the finest action combat Team Ninja have put out, despite being a little repetitive. There's a deep character customization system that really lets you tailor your character build; a job system that lets you switch class freely at any time, backed by Diablo-style loot drop system. If there's any gripe I have, it's that the different classes are not distinctive enough. Once you unlock all the available movesets, the only thing that really changes when you switch class is the class-exclusive ability, and they're more gimmicky than practical. Still, the amount of moves and abilities you can do is nothing to scoff at. Enemies hit hard and fast, but it's not the kind of game that you'd play defensively. Many features of the game very much incentivize playing in a very hyper-aggressive manner: chain-cancelling, soul guard, etc... Parrying with soul guard recovers MP (which is used for many abilities), chain-cancelling allows for instantaneous parries or continuous attack chains; it's easy to see how high the learning curve is with the tools available, and once mastered, the combat becomes immensely satisfying. Did I mention that there's an ability called Lightbringer which you lets parry with almost no consequence, practically making you invincible, for a short amount of time? I had a few laughs due to the absurdity of the dialogue, but as soon as the game tries to justify its story, this is where the game falters hard. Poorly written dialogue that leaves you guessing more often than not. Making heads or tails out of the story is an excruciating endeavor; the developers went to great lengths to create all the background details and world-building, but the story is way too thin for what it tries to get across. When the story finally does say something, it is full of nonsensical, cryptic exposition-filled dialogue that does not get to the point. It doesn't help that some scenes are just... bad, in a "no, that's not how real human beings act" kind of way. It's tough because I do enjoy the hammy characterization, but I don't know if it wants to be a parody of itself, or a totally serious thing, as such, the narrative is not as satisfying as it should be. Narratively speaking, I get the sense that the developers were trying to "subvert expectations" (a term that I despise because being obvious is somehow considered a bad thing) of long-time Final Fantasy fans, but the result is a huge frustrating mess to get through. The combat at least pushes this game from middling to decent quality. 7/10

This game sums up Square Enix for the last decade. They created a winning formula and generally tweaked things. Then bam, a hack and slash or a linear game or one completely lacking content. This one, linear. Don't expect much exploring. Don't expect open areas. This is a dungeon crawler. I can just about recommend this game.

Hm. I HAVE TO KILL CHAOS! Hm. Did you ask for Final Fantasy 1 to be remade as a sudo Dark Souls game? no? well you got it anyways. Hm. These guys grunt a lot. They basically only grunt and mention Chaos. Hm. I am enjoying this game so far. Hm. Once again, I HAVE TO KILL CHAOS!