We’re up to post three of my ‘quick look’ at Stranger of Paradise; Final Fantasy Origin (Team Ninja). Which, by the way, I always want to write as Strangers of Paradise because it’s about a team of people, not one person, but maybe that’s not the meaning of the name.
In the last post, I touched on the combat and how I didn’t like that you had to finish a mission or you had to restart it when you went back to it. This is not just this game, by the way–and, come to think of it, I’m not sure it is in this one. I mean, it was in the tutorial, but I have not quit out of a mission yet. I assume it’ll be that way in this game because everything else is pretty much mappable one-on-one to the past games. This is not shade because other devs do something similar. I mean, From has iterated on Demon’s Souls for six games, adding new things to each. Some of those additives were significant; some were trivial. You could argue that Sekiro was not in the same family, but it was at least a cousin.
If you were playing a From game, you knew to expect brutal combat, hordes of enemies, jumpscares that are totally not fair, shitty platforming, and exquisite level design. You would also expect hard and elaborate bosses–
By the way. I have a bone to pick with FromSoft that is applicable to this game as well. Or rather, it’s FromSoft’s fault that one of my biggest irritations in the genre has exploded. No, it’s not the deflect (though that is an issue. I do not need three ways to deflect, thankyewverymuch); it’s the fucking multi-phase boss fights. I swear I wrote about this in one of the past two posts, but I can’t find it. Anyway, it’s the fact that every boss has at least two phases now, if not more. It used to be a two-phase boss (actual two phases, not just changing form mid-bar) was fairly rare. Not any longer.
I remember playing Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ) demo in which there were three bosses. All of them were one-bar bosses; each had two different phases. The third boss was ridiculous for it, by the way. The second phase, I mean. I swear they nerfed it for the actual game because it took me maybe twenty tries in the demo and only two in the real game. The second boss was more a mini-boss, really. Anyway, in the game proper, it became obvious that after the demo, all the bosses were going to have two discrete boss bars. Somehow, I sailed through the third (real) boss which gave lots of people trouble, and then it was pure hell from then on.
Here’s the thing with every boss having two discrete phases (which From is guilty of now as well). It means that the first phase doesn’t matter. And instead of being thrilled to beat the health bar, it’s a sigh of resignation that there’s another to come.
Side note: This is one thing I hated about Sekiro, by the way. The first red dot (deathblow) did not matter at all. Since you could just stealth and do it in one blow, why even have it? It really irritated me, and it still irritates me now.
*SPOILERS*
Back to this game. I saw the first boss in the tutorial, so I knew that it had two phases. And I knew it was supposed to be CHAOS, but I also knew it wasn’t Chaos. There were two phases, though, which made me sigh heavily. It’s going to be like that, is it?
I have accepted that some of the tropes in From games are here to stay. Apparently, the deflect is the new meta, which, ugh. The multi-phase boss fights, also ugh. There has to be a poison swamp, too. Oh my god! So many poisons swamps in Lies of P. I haven’t seen any poison in this game yet, but it’s going to be there, I’m sure. Oh, poison–that reminds me, status effects. I know they’re not new, but they have become so prevalent. This is also on From. They have never met a status effect they didn’t love. In this game, so far, there have been the four elements (fire, water, wind, earth), which I can use as well.
Here’s my issue with the combat. It’s just too much. There are so many different systems, my brain refuses to compute. This is also the same as in the past games. There were stances, which were different for the different weapons. And different combo moves. And different finishers. And consumables were on the arrow buttons, of which you could have two sets that you switched with…Y I want to say. Ranged weapons had different buttons than melee. You also could regain your ki if you hit a button at a certain time.
It’s the same in this game. I did all the tutorials and could not get the combos. I have to say, though, that this was apparently a thing. I found several comments about it on the Reddits. People confirmed that the controls were finicky, and I gave up on one for a bit. RB then RB then RB then RT! Bah. If I continue, I’ll just keep doing what I always do–hitting RB repeatedly until I get frustrated.
Weirdly, I really got into Monster Hunter World which is also very combo heavy. Their tutorial was even worse and did not teach me anything. I used the Switch Axe, and I knew the basic combos. That was all I did. Someone in the Discord was astonished that I beat the game without mastering my weapon. I said that a shit-ton of buffs and really heavy armor did the trick for me. I was able to make it to the Tempered Elder Dragons with very little problem, but then I hit a brick wall. I had to do multi for several of those, and I was completely over my head with the DLC. I played about an hour of it before quitting.
Back to this game. It’s as camp AF, yes, but it’s just not fun. I am frustrated most of the time because I have no idea where I’m going, bored with the excess items, and the combat is too much for me. Will I give it a bit longer? Maybe. But I don’t think I’m going to enjoy it, sadly. I will write another post if I decide to go back to it.