I was not expecting to like this game as much as I did. Me and a friend got it because we thought it would just be funny bad it was honestly super enjoyable. Yeah the story was laughably bad until like the final chapter, but it was good bad if that made sense? Like it made no sense but it also was enjoyable and kept me entertained. The gameplay however was genuinely amazing, I could not put the game down once I understood the job system, its addicting. Music was great too, and when I actually understood the setting, the world was at the very least diverse and gorgeous. Highly recommend playing with a friend, makes the bad moments funny moments and the gameplay even better. I have got to defeat Chaos.

A prequel/reimagining of FF1 starring a grouchy guy named Jack, yelling about killing chaos could have been terrible. But, it's probably the best FF spinoff game I've ever played. The story did not need to go that hard, you WILL know why Jack is so pissed off. Combat was especially fun, smashing classic FF monsters with Jack's fists never gets old. Only downsides are that the repetitive level design made some of the areas hard to navigate, and just like Team Ninja's other ARPGs, it just dumps too much trash loot. At least the latter is solved by auto-equip.

há algum tempo, uma leva de videogames reimaginados para uma suposta sensibilidade contemporânea vem ocupando espaço: anunciasse o novo remake daquele videogame já injogável, e o reboot daquele outro já ultrapassado—os famosos envelheceram mal—e qualquer outro adjetivo que não transfigure ou ressignifique muito além dessa tentativa de criar algo novo, diga-se modernizado, em cima dessas imagens já consolidadas. uma ideia que, infelizmente, quase sempre acaba caindo na revisão pragmática, no normativismo, numa nova verdade: o corrigir os erros e quality of life (o mais engraçado e normalmente dito no inglês), dentre outros mantras já assimilados dentro dessa demografia. como se cada decisão ali já estivesse fadada ao fim, ao envelhecimento eminente, a reforma, só no aguardo duma próxima boa decisão de level design que vá ditar qual a suposta nova e aprimorada forma de se fazer/pensar/jogar videogame. e, no fim, o que resta? o que faz daquilo mais que um esqueleto sujeito a norma, ao avanço?

enquanto jogava a prequela do primeiro título da (talvez) mais basilar franquia dentro desse gênero, vinha-me à memória fragmentos daqueles espaços que havia visitado em minha jornada. um potencial imaginativo que aqueles reinos, ruínas, colinas, mares e figuras abstraídas e compridas em poucos píxeis evocavam. imagens sempre reconhecíveis, imortais, que se mantém mesmo após milhares de crias da franquia saindo a cada dia. um que legado que não pode ser morto, nem pela sua ressignificação mais direta, nem por todas as outras; uma sequência ou retorno que só é viável dentro duma simulação dessa realidade, um simulacro do reino de cornelia sendo o único espaço em que os pós-mais de 30 anos de legado e o pós-todas as outras coisas possam ser comportados. esse simulacro é stranger of paradise: final fantasy origin.

O que me segurou nesse foi o combate. A história é simplesmente horrível, mas ela beira tanto a ruindade que passa a ser engraçada meio que no estilo filme B de terror. O Jack é simplesmente um dos personagens mais anti-carismáticos que eu já vi/joguei. Gordon Freeman e Isaac Clarke fizeram mais sem falar uma palavra e esse cabrunco me solta um literal "I don't give a fuck who you are!" do NADA e com zero emoção ou sequer uma motivação por trás.

Agora sobre o combate e a gameplay em geral não há muito o que elaborar. É um jogo bem simples de ação ao melhor estilo Diablo/PoE, com muitas possibilidades de builds e drops infinitos dos mesmos itens com um % de dano de Kiwi ácido maior que anterior. Inesperadamente, esse mar infinito de possibilidades exaure a paciência bem rápido e tudo parece repetitivo mais cedo do que deveria.

P.S.: Terminar com "My Way" do Frank Sinatra foi um dos poucos acertos.

Played for the memes, stayed because it is legit fun AF to play.

The story is obviously so bad it almost feels like a parody, still, the gameplay is so good i couldn't stop playing.

It plays like a soulslike, but you have way more ways to interact and build your character with the job system. Overall i would say it was one of the most fun games i played in 2022.

Presentation wise nothing really stands out, outside from our protagonist listening to Limp Bizkit, making so the band is cannon on the first Final Fantasy universe.

an enigma of a game. with most video games that put me off, i'm able to, in some capacity, contort myself into going "well here was the intention and here was the demographic". i truly cannot do that with this game, because who on earth at square enix played dark souls and went "we should add a terrible loot system and necessitate grinding"? it's a damn shame too, because this game has such great catharsis when it works. jack's violent animations just feel good to get, the level design is usually pretty engaging, and boss fights have a nice spectacle to them that fit in with the final fantasy aesthetic while still creating this new, obscene and violent performance.

but i cannot stress enough how shitty the game gets by endgame when it turns out that you basically have to grind your eyeballs out just to get armor that will stop you from dying in two hits, or get equipment with job affinities you want. it's shitty! it sucks! why did they add this! it's another example of square enix getting in their own way with a genuinely great game concept. you could argue that this was always in team ninja's design doc, but i heavily doubt it and more expect the shitty aspects of this game were direct demands from square as a publisher. regardless of how it happened, it just sucks outrageously that this got bogged down with mechanics that actively made the experience worse and turned this unexpected hit into a turbo-mid product.

Good combat, good fun. Silly plot, and became very easy towards the end - I wasn't overlevelled, but it felt like it. Would have liked to see even more classic FF enemies too.

If you are a big FF fan, you'll enjoy this. If you're a Souls fan you'll probably enjoy this - not the best of the genre, not the worst.

Story is gloriously silly before becoming genuinely good in the last couple of hours.

Once this game was announced, I went day after day thinking this was a goofy, low quality Final Fantasy Dark Souls from the Nioh team. Man, I was wrong. This thing is great!

Not only do you have lovable edgelord protag Jack AKA Shadow the Hedgehog AKA Dr. House in a Final Fantasy game, and not ONLY does he play 7 seconds of nu-metal on his phone in frustration from not yet having killed Chaos before turning it off again, but this is a really good take on a more accessible/casual Dark Soulsy/Nioh thing.

It’s really easy (on default difficulty) if you’ve played one of these before, but it’s still really fun and well made. Good bosses, a dense campaign that takes maybe 15 hours to run through (20ish with some side stuff), and a strangely told story that sheds new light on the world of Final Fantasy 1. And, for as strange and budget as the storytelling feels, it…completely sold me on its vision for an expanded FF1???? I even bought the DLC to (hopefully if I get to it) see how it wraps up! Jack Garland is DMC Dante but way more lovable. Anytime a character has a monologue, he tells them to shut up before pulling out a weapon. It’s like he’s so earnestly stupid that it wins you over. A real anti-Final Fantasy protagonist.

I also appreciate that it seems to have a looty Diablo-style grind in its endgame, where you run side missions and the DLC for increasingly crazy mission difficulty levels. While I think it's a clever way to add longevity and works well for a game that isn't balanced to From Software levels of design polish, I am a bit annoyed the DLC (which features the end of the base game's story) is balanced for endgame difficulty so if you play the default "Action" difficulty you're going to get your ass beat in the DLC. There are lore friendly options, but it's still pretty annoying IMO.

Still, super cool video game. Strongly recommend checking it out and sticking with it (it gets SO MUCH BETTER after the first couple missions) if you're interested.

A game with very fun combat, a bunch of different class options and a silly storyline. If you can get it on a sale, you'll have a good and fun time which is all you can ask for. All in all, it gave me very Xbox 360 2006-7 vibes in a positive way. I played the whole thing co-op. Well, nearly the whole thing, there are several sections including the final boss which mandate you do it solo. Here's a tip though, for these sections you can usually just run through if you don't feel like fighting. There's a heap of jobs/classes to change into to vary up your playstyle and you can have two ready to go at all times, so you can be fairly versatile to handle the myriad of different enemies coming at you.

If you know anything about the first Final Fantasy, also, you'll get an extra kick from the game. The protagonist, Jack, is absolutely hilarious and even if you aren't paying too much attention to the story, you can't help but follow along with it thanks to how ridiculous and amusing he is. It's so refreshing to have a JRPG character actively resent some of the JRPG tropes and just call them out in real time. It's all explained in universe, for the most part. He's just an angry man and I appreciate him for that. I have no idea if I was meant to take the story seriously and honestly, I don't ever want to know if I was. As a final note, I enjoyed the voice acting - Mocean Melvin who plays the main protag did a genuinely good job despite the goofy lines. Thanks Jack, the best 7/10.

Final Fantasy is my favorite video game franchise of all time, so it sucks to say this but... this game is the worst game I've played in a long time.

I was actually planning a better review for this, but Stranger of Paradise is such a complete clusterfuck of a mess that I just gave up what I was writing.

To get the good out of the way: the combat and the job system. These are the only redeeming qualities of the game, issues and all. The combat grind can be really fun, even on side quests and the jobs, while there certainly are more than it should, are just fun to good through. Aside from that, SOP is riddled with flaws.

It has major balancing issues (especially during endgame boss fights), it is aggressively repetitive, writing and voice acting are laughable, the story feels like it was written by a teenager going hard through puberty, the whole plot makes no effort to make sense, characters are hollow, soundtrack is forgettable, level design is objectively dull, graphics have a weird saturation filter over it and the game is just not fun at all!

They even failed when making loot engaging. The game is BASED on collecting loot, going through the combat grind and improving, but you get MILLIONS of useless items per second and you HAVE to dismantle them to make room for MORE, that way, you literally spend HOURS looking through menus. And even after that, the areas and monsters just keep getting stronger, so you have to get MORE of the SAME loot and repeat the same thing FOREVER! It is POINTLESS! I also absolutely hated how the game handles MP, potions and status effects. Such important elements to the gameplay that become an immense nuisance to manage. Unbearable.

Not even the bosses are good. Some of them a ridiculous button-mashing annoyances, while others are extreme difficult to strategize/avoid damage sponge fiends. Makes no sense.

AND WHY THE HELL DID THEY EVEN BOTHER WITH THE STORY! IT ONLY MADE THINGS WORSE!

I'm not even sure why I finished this horrible Nioh knockoff. Probably because I paid for it.

In case you really want the good "4 warriors of light saving the crystals" experience, go play the original Final Fantasy. There are plenty of remasters and re-releases out there. Just keep away from this hellish beast.

Primeiro devo falar, se tu gosta de Final Fantasy tu precisa jogar esse titulo da franquia, principalmente se você ama o FF Clássico como eu.

O que mais me surpreendeu foi a liberdade que você têm pra escolher o seu estilo de jogo e sinceramente, você não aprender como fazer uma boa build vai te prejudicar e muito. O scaling do jogo é natural e acontece de uma forma que não se torna irritante, o combate é desafiador e sinceramente, tem algumas boss fights que são frustrantes e beiram a insanidade se você não pegar rápido o sistema de parry do jogo.

O final do jogo eu sinceramente acabei me distanciando um pouco do jogo por fases com um level design um pouco questionável, mas felizmente, o final do jogo fez eu esquecer tudo isso com uma sequência de plot twists que meu amigo... Vai explodir a tua mente.

Um ótimo jogo e um ótimo Final Fantasy.