Much ado about Chaos
Memes aside, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is an aggressively ridiculous action-RPG with surprisingly deep combat and subpar performance.
The Final Fantasy series has endured many ups and downs over its storied, 35-year history, delivering some of gaming’s most beloved stories, iconic tunes, and angsty protagonists. Although the series is responsible for some of gaming’s greatest games, it’s also responsible for the $59.99 Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin—an action-RPG spin-off that made waves last summer when it debuted its incredibly generic main character, Jack, and his obsession with defeating Chaos. Featuring character designs plucked from Japanese action games from the Xbox 360 era, aggressively cringeworthy dialogue, and Nioh-like gameplay, Stranger of Paradise enraptured audiences with a perfect storm of meme magic.
The unintentional goofiness could be forgiven if Strange of Paradise managed to be a fun PC game. It is, for the most part. Stranger of Paradise has satisfying, hard-hitting combat, and the story, as dumb as it may be, leads to hilarious interactions. However, that story also works to the game’s detriment, and the repetition of Jack’s 20-hour journey sets in fast.
The first thing you’ll notice about Stranger of Paradise is its in-your-face aggressiveness. You play as Jack, an amnesiac, would-be Warrior of Light whose main mission in life is to defeat Chaos. Following the hum of a dark crystal he inexplicably has on his person, Jack’s quickly joined by two other party members who have similar crystals and memory loss. The group finds itself in the kingdom of Cornelia, at the service of Princess Sarah, as it searches for Chaos—and answers.
At first, the game seems very anti-story, with almost zero exposition from characters. Jack is a walking cut scene skip, literally stopping characters from explaining what they’re doing or even introducing themselves. This leads to some of the game’s funniest moments, where Jack reacts to information in brazen and ridiculous fashion.
No party member is safe from Jack’s brevity and lack of prudence. However, they’re all on board for it. Thankfully, the cut scenes are brief, as most are just a series of grunts, fist bumps, and short exclamations about memories, crystals, or Chaos.
Cornelia is a clash of styles that features the older Final Fantasy games’ high-fantasy elements playing against a cast of characters that looks like it raided an H&M store, circa 2010. In fact, much of this game looks like it would’ve been at home on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, a time during the late aughts when Japanese developers were vying for the attention of western audiences. It’s a double-edged sword, as its ugly environments, simple animations, and liberal use of bloom add to the game’s charm, giving it a nostalgic afterglow.
Gameplay-wise, Stranger of Paradise fares much better that its other elements. Modeled after Nioh and other Souls-like action-RPGs, Stranger of Paradise follows the simple gameplay loop of moving from point A to point B, and slaughtering everything that stands in your way. Jack has a couple of fun tools at his disposal, including the Soul Burst, a finishing move that recovers and extends MP, and the ability to steal certain moves from your enemies to use against them.
Most interestingly, you can customize Jack and company with various Job classes that span the Final Fantasy games. These include staples like the spellcasting Black Mage, pole-wielding Dragoon, and fisticuffing Monk. The Jobs are separated into three categories: Basic, Advanced, and Expert.
Using Job Points, you level up the characters’ Jobs to unlock combos and command abilities. You can equip two Jobs at any time, and swap between them with a button press. You’ll also come across equipment that further augments your skills. Even better, your armor is visible during cut scenes, so make sure to optimize your gear to ensure that Jack and company look as ridiculous as possible for added hilarity.
Stranger of Paradise delivers a decent challenge. I especially enjoyed the multiple difficulty modes, including a Story difficulty (the equivalent of an easy mode) and a Casual difficulty (for people not accustomed to these types of games). The multiplayer component helps ease you into the harder difficulties, as it lets up to three people beat down enemies.
Multiplayer aside, difficulty can be swapped mid-dungeon, as well, in case you get stuck on bosses or other chokepoints. These small additions make Stranger of Paradise one of the most accessible Souls-like games out there. Running through a dungeon on casual difficulty is sometimes just as cathartic as defeating a boss on a harder difficulty.
Stranger of Paradise has fun and fast-paced gameplay loops, but they quickly become repetitive. It’s not helped by the winding dungeons. Based on other Final Fantasy games, the dungeons contain lush forests, fluorescent caves, or dull, brown temples. Dungeons are sometimes too dark, and with no map, you’ll quickly get lost in levels that feel like an endless corridor maze.
The graphics don’t do the game much justice, either. Character models look mostly fine, though you’ll occasionally come across an in-game cut scene between characters that look noticeably washed out with jagged edges. Performance (which I’ll get to in a moment) is also bad in spots, particularly during cinematics. The music, one of the strongest aspects of the Final Fantasy franchise, is disappointingly forgettable and repetitious.
I was somewhat surprised by the lack of Final Fantasy fan service. Developer Koei Tecmo is no stranger to action-based spinoffs of popular franchises (see Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity), so I hoped that Stranger of Paradise would be a love letter to the series. Unfortunately, outside of some themed dungeons and a few recognizable enemies, Stranger of Paradise sticks to its cast of original, one-dimensional characters, and their tenuous connections to the first Final Fantasy.
The aforementioned story, which starts out as silly and simple, quickly descends into the nonsensical and convoluted, wrapping with a conclusion that was as surprising as it was confusing. It will surely split fans. Its needless edginess is both off-putting and endearing, and your enjoyment might depend on your appreciation (or tolerance) of a B-tier action movie.
Stranger of Paradise is far from the prettiest game of 2022, and doesn’t really employ any special tricks outside of an FPS Priority Mode that adjusts the graphic settings to maintain a solid frame rate.
The minimum requirements are also pretty modest, requiring either an AMD Ryzen 5 1400 or Intel Core i7-6700 CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 470 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU (with 6GB of VRAM), 8GB of RAM, 80GB of storage space, and the Windows 10 operating system. It also requires an Epic Games Account, as it’s currently an Epic Games Store exclusive.
Despite my rig sporting gear well above the maximum requirement, there were numerous frame rate issues throughout my play sessions, notably during cut scenes and Soul Burst finishing moves. In my 20 hours of game time, I saw frame rate numbers that were all over the place—from light drops to the mid-50s to massive drops to the mid-30s. Matters got even worse when I pushed the frame rate cap beyond 60fps in the options menu. The rollercoaster frame rate highlighted the game’s lack of polish.
Capping the frame rate to 60fps, and turning off Screen Space Reflections, alleviates some problems, but the underlying issue seems to be poor optimization on Square Enix’s end. Stranger of Paradise is just the latest sloppy PC port from Square Enix, as both Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade and Nier Automata also launched with numerous issues that weren’t immediately addressed by the publisher.
The game supports achievements, as well as gamepads. At the moment, there’s no word on a Steam version.
Playing Stranger of Paradise is like finding a time capsule that was buried ten years ago. Warts and all, Stranger of Paradise is an enjoyable, aggressively dumb action game based on Final Fantasy. The game’s quality cuts back and forth between good and awful at the drop of a hat, but it’s an accessible action title that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Final Fantasy fans, on the other hand, might be disappointed by the game’s nonsensical story, even if it does tie itself back into a mainline Final Fantasy in its final hours. Still, if you feel the draw of Chaos, you might be better off playing the game’s console versions, as the PC performance leaves a lot to be desired.
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Memes aside, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is an aggressively ridiculous action-RPG with surprisingly deep combat and subpar performance.
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Zackery Cuevas is a Junior Analyst at PCMag, focused on reviewing laptops and computer accessories. A gaming and tech enthusiast whose work has appeared on iMore, Windows Central, Android Central, and TWICE, Zackery also has a diverse portfolio of editing work under his belt, from his time spent at Scholastic and Oxford University Press. As an author, he’s contributed to the sci-fi anthology Under New Suns and has even written a Peppa Pig book. In his spare time, Zackery likes to write about games, talk about games, and complain about games. (When time allows, he occasionally plays them, too.)
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