Sometimes a game comes up that you have basically no expectations for, but they end up being very impressive. Stranger of Paradise is one of these. The first trailer was wacky as fuck, made kinda no sense, wasn’t a good explanation of what the game would be like, and all that people really seemed to get out of it was “CHAOS” and the slew of memes that came from that. Unfortunately for this game, this ended up not being a good thing because that’s all people think of it, and they think it’s bad because of that meme or something. It’s really weird, you mention this is a good game and people think you’re trolling. But it is good.

I actually avoided all gameplay videos and trailers for this game after the announcement because that announcement completely convinced me to buy it, because it was so weird and stupid.

So let’s go and talk about what is one of the best games this year so far! Yeah.

Developer: Team Ninja
Publisher: Square Enix
Release date: March 15th, 2022
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S (PC version played)
Genre: Action RPG

PC Performance

Since I’m gonna be super positive about this game, I need to start with the bad. And boy is this PC port fucking shit. Like… wow. The 1.02 patch that came out before I wrote this review claims to have improved performance… it didn’t.

People complained about Elden Ring getting occasional 5-10fps drops from its capped 60fps performance and otherwise being fine… I’d say they have been complaining for nothing, compared to this. Stranger of Paradise has a higher locked FPS at a max of 120. But let’s just say those drops aren’t just 5-15fps down from that. Despite the game having nothing my PC shouldn’t be able to easily run, it would pretty much never get to 120fps unless I was in a menu, or in a small room like an elevator. Most gameplay would be in the 80 range which is already a big drop from 120, but then it further randomly drops to the 40-60 range, and sometimes it just fucks out completely, the lowest I’ve seen is ~15fps. This tends to happen when there are several effects on screen like enemies exploding. This isn’t just a framerate issue, of course, the game just straight up slows down when enemies explode which really doesn’t help the framerate (and the slow-down effect can stack because fuck you I guess).

I actually had an issue not just with framerate, but also graphics at first. To be clear, technically this game is ass (though I will quickly mention that design-wise it’s great, no problem with the monster design and the areas you travel through, those are good-to-great), there’s no anti-aliasing even if you set it in the options, but there’s also an option to keep FPS up by downscaling resolution as needed… It works okay-ish as far as framerate (it’s still ass but a bit better), but the game runs at like 240p or less. It’s not a good option to have on because it looks so awful, the game becomes a jumble of pixels. So choose your poison: either the framerate drops constantly for no reason, or have the game look like pre-youtube internet videos.

There’s some other weirdness, like the game sometimes detecting the start and select buttons incorrectly, or not being able to change graphical settings during a mission (you have to wait until you’re back on the world map or in the title screen to do this, weird.

Very poor PC port, very unfortunate just because of the constant grumbling about it slowing down.

Review

You play as Jack. He wants to kill Chaos. He has buddies. They also want to kill Chaos. He meets other people. They, too, want to kill Chaos. But this is all surface level, and it’s what we saw in the original trailer. So I won’t beat around the bush here. Game stories, especially nowadays, tend to suck major balls. This game? Hell no. This game has a great story. A great story that is told a bit awkwardly, but I’d say around the halfway point I was extremely immersed and couldn’t wait to see where this was all leading. The game does a lot of setup, even up to near the end, but when it starts taking all those weird, seemingly random pieces, they all fit.

Jack leads the Warriors of Light… maybe they’re the Warriors of Light? Who knows! Your characters don’t have bright crystals, their crystals are dark. Despite Jack’s unending desire to kill Chaos, it becomes quickly unclear whether Chaos even exists, and whether the Warriors of Light are even a thing. This being related to the very first Final Fantasy, it at least starts with some of the same elements. Princess Sarah is around (but not getting kidnapped, despite what is shown at the very start of the game in a cutscene). The first boss you fight is a dude in big badass armor. Bikke is there and you fight his pirates. You try to find the elemental crystals to suck the darkness out of them, but they’re each protected by a Fiend. And you even meet Astos… though he has a very different role here, as someone who helps guide you to the crystals. I don’t actually want to go much further about spoilers because it’s really interesting and this is a story you should experience yourself, so time to be vague!

What I like is what it does with the story of FF1 and plays with it. Because, yes, this is NOT the story of FF1, it’s something different. FF1 is a game that is known for its weird-ass story that includes weird technological leaps (mostly medieval but SUDDENLY SPACESHIP) and, most importantly, a weird time loop that never felt like it fit perfectly. Now? It does. Everything makes sense now. I fully acknowledge Stranger of Paradise as a CANON entry in the FF1 saga. This doesn’t only include FF1 elements, but elements from, I think, every mainline FF. Namely, some areas are re-imagined and, instead, are actually dimensional copies of places from other FF games (here named “Dimensions”). One of the levels is literally the Floating Continent from FF6 for example (and lore text does say it comes from “Dimension 6”). I would want to have a bit more explanation for the dimensional stuff, but I think it’s mostly fine. So to finish talking about the story… It’s really well done, Jack ends up being a much more interesting character than you may expect, and the overall storyline is just really interesting and ties up most of the loose ends (and those that don’t… I think could be explained with pretty simple throwaway lines at most). The most unfortunate thing story-wise is that characters other than Jack, Astos, and Sarah… basically just exist to.. be there. This story is MUCH better than you may expect.

So the story’s great, but a game is only good if the gameplay is good. Always. So is it good? Yeah. It won’t blow your mind, but it’s very well done and way better than I was expecting based on that original trailer. I think it’s pretty great.

The core of the game is the combat. You only play as Jack, with 2 of the other 4 characters being AI support. So I’ll start with one of my bigger gameplay complaints, and that’s the class system. Most of how it works is actually fine but I’ll explain the one big glaring flaw with it later. Killing stuff and using anima crystals gives you EXP for not only your job but also jobs you have affinity with (based on equipment, more on that later). A job getting a level gives you a skill point, which you can spend in that job’s skill tree. Each node can be different things, from new special attacks for a weapon type to stat boost to an affinity power up to enhancements for skills in certain slots, to command skills… and some classes have some more unique things, like some magic-based classes being able to unlock more spells. Getting far enough in the skill tree for basic and advanced classes unlocks more classes (or are part of unlocks for better classes). Expert classes require 2 unlocks from advanced classes, for example. This all works great, this isn’t what sucks about the class system.

What doesn’t work great is that, basically, classes have very little uniqueness to them. What IS unique, instead, is weapons. If you have 2 Katana-focused classes, they’ll play pretty much the same. The only difference is the attack that comes out when you press/hold R2. For a more concrete example… Say both a Berserker and a Breaker use the same axe, the Berserker’s R2 skill will get his attack stat power-up that prevents him from healing, while the Breaker’s will have that badass overpowered slash attack… And that’s the only important difference between the classes, alongside minor stat differences… Yeah so just take the Breaker class if you want to do Axes, you know? At least the magic classes have access to different magic… though, against there’s no reason to not just use the Sage in that case, because it’s just a combination of the White and Black mages, and the Red mage just sucks. The class system is SO close to being great, but considering most of the combat relies on the weapon you have equipped more than anything, it feels less interesting than it could be. I will note now that the max level for classes starts at 30, but in the post-game that goes up to 99 because the game keeps on going with extra missions.

I will note classes are different for everyone other than Jack, at first the characters have just one class and as you progress through the story or do side-missions they can unlock more.

So combat! You have different attacks based on weapon types with R1, while R2 is used for active skills in different ways. Pressing it alone just does your class’ skill,  Pressing it after normal attacks will instead launch the special attack you have assigned to that part of the combo. So if you do R1 then R2 you get one attack, but if you do R1 twice before R2 you can get a different one. This is customizable, so you can set I  think up to 8 special attacks based on different inputs, so you can have pretty varied combat. Other combat options obviously includes dodge rolling, alongside 2 types of blocking. First type is just normal blocking, second is the Soul Shield. Blocking an attack with Soul Shield takes more of your break bar, but also stuns enemies a bit more and enables for counterattacks. Also, Soul Shield will absorb attacks that the enemies have with purple names when they cast them, which allows you to use the attack a few times yourself. This does cost a good amount of break bar though. Your AI allies help a bit, but you can press left and right on the D-pad (after some cooldown) to tell them to use more skills, which will increase their damage output for a bit. And Jack has the superpower of on-the-fly class change, you can basically give him 2 movesets at once and switch between them when you want. I like having one melee class and one magic class at once.

The Break meter is a big element of this game. Attacking enemies not only deals HP damage but also Break damage. Some attacks may deal more break damage, as does dealing damage to weaknesses. Getting to 0 break causes the enemy (or you if you get to 0) to get stunned for several seconds. A downed enemy can get insta-killed, which earns you max MP. This also causes a small shockwave that causes some pushback and damage, as well as killing other downed enemies. Also, some attacks will actually insta-burst enemies if their break meter gets to 0 from that attack. Fun! The only issue with this system is that the game decides to slow down during some of these insta-kill animations and I don’t know why. The game is entirely focused on these, they probably should’ve made them not awful when it comes to gameplay speed. That said, this is how you get more MP, which allows you to use more skills and magic, so you MUST focus on this. Especially considering some skills use up max MP so you need to replenish sometimes. And I will note the kill animation on bosses are fucking glorious.

Difficulty-wise it’s not too bad. Bosses WILL kick your ass until you learn how to deal with their attacks, but other than having to deal with replenishing max MP in some cases, there’s not much punishment for losing. Just go back, fight a few enemies to get your MP back, then go back in because all bosses have a save point right in front of their room. Yeah, you’ll probably die a bit, but it’s fine.

One thing I’m mostly fine with is the enemy selection. It mostly re-uses enemies and their designs from FF1, with some exceptions. Not everything, pretty sure I didn’t see a T-Rex or Warmech. For example, I’m pretty sure there are no Harpies in FF1. But it does also pick some things from other games, which makes sense considering the trans-dimensional thing. They do take a few liberties, I think Flans are there instead of Scums, Marlboros come in instead of Eyes, and every main level has a semi-hidden Cactuar and Tonberry. The Cactuar has a cool skill to Soul Shield steal, but the Tonberry pretty much just exists to make your life miserable. Those tend to give good EXP and equipment. I think it’s cool that it uses the FF1 stuff pretty well.

So I guess I should talk about game flow. Basically, you have one new mission that unlocks whenever you finish the current main mission. How you level up isn’t just the job levels. Rather, basically every enemy you kill will drop a couple pieces of equipment. How equipment works is that whatever you have at the start of a mission? It SUCKS compared to whatever you’ll get during the mission. This isn’t as much of a thing early in the game, but eventually, it’s not even worth upgrading equipment because you’ll just get better shit. At first, I was meticulously changing equipment piece-by-piece whenever I found enough new pieces… eventually, fuck it. The “Optimize equipment” button just straight up replaces everything and seems to do a decent job stat-wise, so that works for me (unless I wanted to change weapon types). Equipment doesn’t just increase stats, but also affinity to certain classes, which provide their own bonuses based on the percentage of affinity. When you finish a mission, you unlock the next one, and usually, you also unlock side-missions on the old maps. That’s generally what you do to get new equipment for the next main mission. Also exploring every level is useful because you may find a thing that unlocks extra side missions. Some of these unlockable side missions are nice because you may unlock new classes for your AI partners. Also, there’s a blacksmith… you can sacrifice your old useless equipment to him to get materials, which you can then use to power up other equipment… Which I find kinda useless because you keep getting new equipment, but it can help. One thing I will note is that the levels get substantially better as you progress, they just get more interesting, more secrets, more exploration, more varied enemy selections.

So that’s the game. Do missions. Get equipment. Do side-missions. Unlock classes. Enjoy a fantastic story. It’s a very fun game that doesn’t try too hard but somehow manages to go above and beyond.

Overall

This game certainly has issues, namely with its awful PC port, and some minor things as far as how classes work… But man this is a fun game. One of the funnest I’ve played in a bit. It seems like a bit much, but sometimes it doesn’t take much to achieve greatness. And this game? It’s greatness.

The gameplay is very solid, even with the class system not being ideal (mostly because weapons do a lot more for your moveset than whatever class you’re using). Combat is fun with a lot of options, the leveling is a bit weird but it works, and once you’re done with the game you’re pretty much just halfway through the content, if you’re a completionist there’s a bunch of shit to do still.

And I pretty much never outright praise a game’s story, but boy I enjoyed this one. It starts out really weird and kinda stupid, and there’s a few minor things that I don’t particularly care for (like, it’s cool that there are dungeons that are based on areas from other FF games and that it pretty much presents all of FF as a semi-connected multiverse… but it doesn’t do much WITH that idea), but I’m actually pretty okay with considering this canon to the first FF game, it all fits. Jack is a fun character that improves over time, and everything that is set up or seems strange ends up being satisfyingly explained. As far as using FF1 as its base, it does so well too, even if it dips into a few other games (such as including Tonberries and Cactuars, which obviously weren’t in FF1). It takes one of the funner FF plots and builds onto it in a way that’s respectful of the original and is actually interesting. How often does it happen in modern days that a reboot/sequel/reimagining of a good classic thing is actually decent? This is less than a rarity, it’s a fucking miracle.

Buy this game. Please.