Being a fan of the final fantasy series. I wanted to at least give each game its fair share to see what exactly they all have that special to them. Which is why it's funny enough that I am starting with one of the newer titles that is a prequel to the original game.

In concept Stranger of Paradise is an interesting attempt to give a story to the character Jack Garland who spoiler alert, is the first boss of final fantasy one. So there's not a lot you can try to come up with there. But to their credit Square Enix and Team Ninja tried to at least do something.

The problem is it's very hard to get attached to a character that in the original game exists and gets defeated by 4 level 5 characters. Throughout the entire time with the story, I found it very hard to believe that this guy is the same person that I had to fight in the chaos shrine within the first maybe half an hour of final fantasy one.

I played through the whole game with a friend and tried to keep an open mind to the story and to try and let it all get into my head. So I could have my own opinions and see how good this story could possibly be. The only words I can say before I come back to it is anyone who says that Jack Garland is the best protagonist we have ever had in final fantasy is a liar. The story felt like it was beating me over the head for even trying to understand it and really only became good within the final hour maybe.

Combat wise the game is incredibly fun. Setting up classes however you want. Each having different abilities that make them viable and combing abilities from some classes makes the experience even more fun. For example, I played Dark Knight which allowed you to use your health to deal more damage so a risk vs reward. I would then add in abilities from other classes to recover HP so I wouldn't lose as much.

Graphically the game looks great. Each location is based off a location from all the past final fantasies up to that point so from 1 to 15, each places has a location tied to it. It was a love letter in the sense. Each location also used a motif from the original games so you could have part of the original song included in and it sounded so good. My favorite was 15's rep.

Now the actual story. The entire time you're getting these moments that are supposed to make Jack and his comrades seem as though they know each other very well but we never get to see them actually do anything together, and all these are just weird moments that make no sense until the very end. And even then it's still done poorly to the point that you still don't understand.

The game ends how you expect if you've played Final Fantasy. Jack has to become Chaos. However, the way in which they do was interesting, but feel flat for me. You find out that basically the world of Final Fantasy is being reset by another race of people to keep trying to balance light and dark within it to help with their own world??? It was kinda vague even then. And Jack has been sent in multiple times to keep the balance. By the time you take control of him, he has secretly set in motion the means to stop this reset and to have the world act in its own way and can't be controlled anymore.

The plan of course being, become Chaos. But due to the world being reset, they keep losing their memories. So Jack gets someone on the inside and basically says, "Hey, lead me and I will make sure this doesn't happen again." The rest of the party slowly gets their memories back but it takes Jack the longest to get it back so for the entire game you're as in the dark as he is. The second to last mission has the party remember what to do and fight Jack so he can kill them and regain more memories and corrupt himself to become chaos as you are now forced to kill your comrades which maybe would've made someone emotional but because of how it is handled you're kinda meh about it.

The final mission itself has you go and blast your way through the chaos shrine to go and take the fight back to the lufenians to take the world of FF1 back. You invade and fight Darkness Manifest which is Amano's art of Chaos turned into a 3D model and it looks fantastic. The game ends with Jack taking up the mantle of Chaos, his "friends" becoming the 4 fiends, and them saying we'll train the warriors of light ourselves as the game fades to black and begins the timeloop before cutting ahead the beginning of FF1 with Jack, officially in the Garland armor sitting on the throne in the chaos shrine as the Warrior of Light and his party enter. You see them wrapped in light before.... and I'm not joking... fucking Frank Sinatra's My Way starts playing and credits role.

The moment the credits hit, the bits I was starting to enjoy and even looking forward to immediately turned sour. I felt angry, annoyed, and felt like I was played for even trying to enjoy the story.

All in all. Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origins is great with combat, cool outfits, but horribly captured characters that have no reasons for you to care about them till it's to late and a story that beats you up for trying to understand it.

I can not in good faith recommend this game unless you just want to ignore the story and beat the shit out of stuff.

While there is DLC for it I'm not sure when I'll get to it after how the story made me feel. But when I do this review will be updated.