Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Reviews
The Trials of the Dragon King DLC for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is lazy and locks its content behind punishing difficulty.
Trials of the Dragon King gave a great boost in difficulty that will challenge the end game players, but as a whole, it felt empty and seeing how the DLC can not be bought separately, it did feel like a bit of a letdown for the story driver players as they would’ve bought the season pass to find that the new content is locked behind a massive grind before they can even start it. I personally don’t mind a grind in games but the lack of new bosses and areas is a big letdown in my opinion, but hey, at least we got a summoner job, so there has been some hope from this for all players to enjoy.
Answering our title question, if Strangers of Paradise deserves to have Final Fantasy in the title, our answer is adamant: it does not. There was no relevant care in several factors to even be a game that can be enjoyed. The story doesn't have a logical plot, the game-play becomes repetitive and especially the graphic aspect is a blunt (sorry for the repetition of the term)... Chaos. We sincerely hope that Final Fantasy XVI will erase this spinoff from memory, with the certainty that until then the name of Square Enix does not bring us the joy it once did.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
All in all, for players who desperately want more from Stranger of Paradise it is not a horrible DLC, but it certainly does not respect the player’s time with its drip feed of content to keep the player going through an extremely long and boring grind of already cleared content.
It would be better if instead of this Team Ninja made another Dark Souls clone, which they do great.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin isn't the strongest outing from Team Ninja, but players will likely enjoy the compelling job system and engaging combat... when performance issues aren't hampering them, that is.
There's a half-decent time to be had bashing your way around Stranger of Paradise's dungeons, but routine level design, rough edges and messy narrative delivery stop the experience evolving into a compelling adventure. Despite its efforts to create ordered systems, chaos has the final word.
The finale of the campaign is undoubtedly one of the high points. A couple of near-end frantic and action packed segments reveal more twists and revelations than a rerun of a Jerry Springer episode. After the credits roll in Stranger of Paradise, you are treated to a fun endgame that has the potential to be entertaining, and even better, the game’s co-op feature allows you to buddy up with 2 of your pals for some friendly monster slaying. The problem is though, that getting to the finale may well prove too difficult for some. Not because of the game’s actual difficulty, but because of the string of huge issues that litter the game. The graphics, the characters, the dialogue, the inconsistency amongst levels and boss design. You could literally spin a roulette wheel with all of these things on it, and whichever one the needle lands on has the potential to make this game very tough to play through. Given the pedigree of both Final Fantasy and Team Ninja as developers, it is incredibly disappointing that this game fell so short of expectations. The combat is super fun throughout, and the story concludes very cleverly, but these things are dwarfed in comparison to all of the issues Stranger of Paradise presents us with.
If you're a Final Fantasy fan, are more into the series's lore, and are looking for a Souls-like game where you fight to the death, I recommend this title. However, if you are a non-Final Fantasy gamer who wants to try something similar to Dark Souls, I cannot recommend this title.
Review in Czech | Read full review
I won’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed by Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. It had the potential to tell a fantastic story, and it absolutely failed to tell it well. The game itself still managed to charm and entertain me however, even if it meant accepting that it would never coalesce into the great game I thought it could be.
Strangers of Paradise is a game that feels a lot like an experiment, and it wasn’t exactly a failure. If I could give the production team at Square Enix some advice, it would be that their storytellers should return to their roots, and their gameplay developers should keep the new ideas coming.
Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin offers a counterintuitive experience that has terrible presentation and an unintentionally hilarious narrative. It’s slightly saved by a fairly enjoyable combat and job system. Take both of those away, and this game will feel more like a parody of the legendary franchise.
You could do worse than with Square Enix's brave new venture into Soulslike territory that's roughly 20 hours or less depending on your skill level. I personally would love to see Team Ninja continue on with this take on Final Fantasy, but with better level design and a less banal plot thread that's a bit more accessible to non-fans.
There’s not much by the way of emotional connection to this game. It’s old-fashioned, cliched in its storytelling and I found myself constantly hitting the skip button to get to the actual fighting.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has a very good combat system, but it suffers from a variety of problems.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Memes aside, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is an aggressively ridiculous action-RPG with surprisingly deep combat and subpar performance.
All in all, I don’t think I can recommend Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Maybe if you have a dedicated gaming PC and don’t care about lackluster narrative presentation, you’ll enjoy it. As it is, I can only shake my head and go back to Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion.
With little additional story and gameplay content, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin - Wanderer of the Rift is yet another endgame expansion that doesn't introduce enough new features to make most players return to the Strangers' world worthwhile. Only hardcore players who want to explore the maximum potential of the game's mechanics will find some value in an expansion that feels even more disappointing than the one that came before it.
We expected nothing and we are still disappointed. With a studio with a rather nice track record and such a strong license, full of opportunities, how is it possible to have such a classic game, not surprising, with a messy history and simply outdated?
Review in French | Read full review
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin thinks that it's Daniel Craig's James Bond but it's actually Austin Powers. There's barely a moment in the game that isn't stretching credulity, be it the absurd writing, bewildering story, or inane characters. There's a host of technical issues, too. But somehow, despite everything, it manages to fail upwards and be a pretty good time. Maybe we've lost the plot but we liked it.