I have to say that I am still struggling with this game. This game being Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (Team NINJA). I had said in my previous post that I had unlocked Red Mage and wanted to try it out–along with going to the smithy to dismantle the items I didn’t want. I did the former first and got rid of several of my weapons. An important thing to know is that if you want to do a certain job, you need to have a weapon that can be used for that job. This makes sense, obviously.
I mention this because while I had unlocked Red Mage, I could not click on it as my job. I was very confused and took a closer look at the description. I did not realize that for hybrid jobs, you have to work your way down TWO job trees–not just one.
*SPOILERS*
In this case, it was the swordfighter. I think? There’s a swordfighter and a swordsman. I just Googled it. Yep, there are the two. I didn’t bother to level up swordfighter beacuse that’s what Neon is. She’s the first main boss who becomes a member of your party. The swordsfighter is sword and board wherceas the swordsman two-hands a greatsword.
I decided to do side missions and level up swordfighter as quickly as possible. Except, see, I had sold off all the broadswords except the one Neon uses. Therefore, I could not do the job. I quickly looked at the old missions and found out that one of the side missions gives you a broadsword as a reward. So I ran that side mission and got the broadsword in order to level up that job class until I reached Red Mage. That took a few hours of doing one side mission over and over again, and I was finally able to unlock Red Mage. Much to my dismay, the spells for Red Mage were Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder from Black Mage and Regen, Shell, Protect, and Haste from White Mage. The three from BLack Mage were ifne, though I would have preferred Flare to Fire., but the ones for White Mage…I would much prefer Cure to Regen and Raise to Haste. Or even Dia instead of either Shell or Protect. Though, come to think of it, both Shell and Protect (increase defense for magic and physical, respectively) are fine.
I was pretty disappointed to find out those were the spells. And I have yet to be able to actually cast them because I don’t have enough mana. No idea why. I have unlocked Monk, which means I can unlock Dragoon. Wait. No. Is that the right path? Not sure, but I can unlock Dragoon if I want.
Here’s my issue with the jobs–you don’t know what you can unlock until you get there if you don’t read up on all the jobs ahead of time. As I noted, I did not realize you needed to reach the end of one branch of the swordfighter tree in order to be a Red Mage.
Before that, I was playiing as a marauder and a black mage. I will say I appreciate how easy it is to level up a job in the early game. I got through the tree I needed in the swordfighter job in two hours or so. Did I resent I had to do it? Yes. Am I unhappy that I’ll have to do it again in other jobs? Yes. I’m also restraining the impulse to look up all the other jobs so I know exactly how to get to what I think I want as my final job–sage. I know this is an advanced job (or at least a job) from looking up other things I had questions on. So, of course, I want to know what I need to get there. So far, I have resisted the temptation to look it up, but I don’t know if I will continue to do that.
Funnily enough, in the video I included above, the reviewer mentions that she rocked sage and dragoon until the end. She also played on hard and got through the whole game in 30 hours, including side missions. It just shows how much I suck at the games, but also, I have done a certain side quest over and over again so I can do the Red Mage job.
I think this is a game that would be more fun with human allies rather than the AI ones. You can push one of your allies forward or the other one, but you can’t spec them out, really. I mean, you can give them better gear and weapons, but at least at this point, they are the job they started with. Whereas you can have two jobs at the same time and switch effortlessly back and forth through them.
The reviewer (IGN) also mentioned that the loot sorting system is weak. So true. There is no easy way to go through the hundreds of items, and it reaches the point where I just don’t care. I said in the last post that I only look at the color of the new loot, but it’s also the level. I can feel my brain shut down when I try to analyze how a new item comparse to the one I’m using/have on.
I’m surprised this reviewer gave it an 8, honestly. They said that the ending made everything worth it, but I don’t know if I can make it to that point. They also said that it was a treat as a Final Fantasy fan to see all the nods to other FF games. As I have never played a Final Fantasy game, I am unmoved by the references.
I just had a thought. I would love it if FromSoft would do a game like this. What I mean is if they did a game that incorporated all their previous games and find a way to make the world cohesive. It would be fairly easy if it were just the Souls games (including Demon’s Souls) and Elden Ring, but folding in Bloodborne and Sekiro would be more difficult, especially the latter.
I keep thinking that this should be my thing–which is what I think of every Team NINJA game. I know there’s something wrong with me that I can’t appreciate the games, but my brain just doesn’t work that way. We’ll see how much more I’ll play. I’m on normal mode which is not exceedingly hard, but I’m not in the mood for something difficult. I just want a bit of smash-y fun, which I thought this game was going to be. It isn’t even that, though, so it may be time to move on.