When Strange of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin was first revealed it felt like Square Enix and Team Ninja were pulling a joke on us. The trailer was so cringe, so nonsensical, and so needlessly edgy that so many of us thought that some cabal of weeaboos had found the Final Fantasy licence under a bin outside the office and decided to run with it.
Now it’s finally here I take it all back. Jack Garland’s pilgrimage to destroy chaos is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the original Final Fantasy and a love letter to the entire series. Stages are littered with clever enemy designs and obscure references, while the orchestral score feels like a clever combination of classic musical motifs. While the end product is definitely ridiculous, there’s a charming care put into its creation that won me over.
Final Fantasy is an unusual beast. It’s the most illustrious feather in Square Enix’s cap, yet is seldom treated with the reverence it deserves. Of course, we have blockbusters like Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 16, marquee titles that are expected to sell millions of copies and entrance an entire generation of players. The latter is being presented as one of this year’s biggest PS5 exclusives, so it’s clear how much pull the name alone has.
But then you’ve got the poorly treated pixel remasters or Chocobo GP, side projects that feel like they were cobbled together and fail to understand the appeal of the franchise. You can throw in as many playable characters and easter eggs as you like, but if they aren’t executed correctly then we’ll notice. Fan service is all well and good, but it needs to be presented in a way that doesn’t treat the player like a fool, expecting them to be drawn in by familiar faces and nothing more. We’re smart enough to know better, but Square Enix doesn’t see that.
Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin feels like an admittance of fault, a game that leans so far into the absurd while recognising the reasons why the series is so iconic. When you break down the anime melodrama and poignant themes of each game, it is just a bunch of anime boys and girls embarking on epic quests that never really make much sense. The goal of Jack Garland and his homies is to destroy Chaos. While the narrative thus far does hint at something deeper, your motivation is so crystal clear that it hardly matters. You’re an angry man with angry powers going to punch angry things until you find an angry boss to kill.
It’s also one of the first times we’ve seen Final Fantasy so clearly influenced by another Japanese developer – FromSoftware. Whether you like to admit it or not, Stranger of Paradise is a Soulslike. It builds upon the gameplay engine and flow of Nioh, which itself builds upon the foundations introduced and popularised by Demon’s Souls. You don’t lose experience when you die (thank goodness) but you do enter relatively tight arenas with a number of foes to contend with, each of which operate on exact parameters you’ll need to memorise in order to beat them. It isn’t nearly as challenging, but the homage is there.
When the project was first rumoured many of us were hoping for an original tale, one that would depict an entirely new world with characters we’d not seen before much like a main entry would. It kinda did that, but with a reverence for the past that none of us could have expected. It is utterly batshit, yet somehow it works because Team Ninja feels like it is at least 50 percent in on the joke. At least I hope they are, because if this game was created with no irony whatsoever it is easily Square Enix’s crowning achievement.
One of the opening scenes has Jack walking towards a generic fantasy town before a glowing rock in his hand begins to vibrate. He lifts it into frame, only to turn around and see two random dudes staring back at him with similar eggs in hands. They don’t even exchange many words, just a selection of random phrases and nods before deciding they are now all best friends forever. It’s like that scene in Step Brothers when Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are like “Did we just become best friends?!” except it is somehow even less cool.
Two weeks past and our gang of emotionally despondent himbos are meeting with the crown and tasked with destroying Chaos for the umpteenth time. They nod, say something angry, and head to the nearest dungeon. It is so stupid, yet executed sodeliberately that I couldn’t help but smile and lose myself in it all. I’m only a handful of hours into the game right now, and have no idea what awaits me around the next corner or what fun little reference will be worked into the coming dungeons.
Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin isn’t the game I wanted it to be, nor is it one I ever expected to see in my lifetime, but it understands the positives and negatives that define Final Fantasy and turns them into something entirely unique. Some people will hate it, some people will love it, but I’m just glad it exists in the first place.
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