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Stranger in Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, my final review, part three

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I have more to say about Stranger in Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (Team NINJA), soulslikes in general, and my thoughts about From games in general. We’ll see how much of that I actually get to. I’m guessing probably the first. Then me winding down several other paths before abruptly ending the post. because that’s how I roll! Here is my prior post on this subject and on my review of the game.

Part of my problem is that I keep thinking I should like Team NINJA games. It’s well-known that the Niohs are considered two of the best soulslikes–at least until Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), and I have tried and tried and tried to like them. As I have mentioned, I’ve played several Team NINJA games and have not been able to finish a single one. The Niohs are too hard for me, and I just lost all interence in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty after a particularly shitty level.

When I’m playing a From game, there are times when I’m frustrated. I have many bad moments against bosses. I curse constantly, and sometimes, I put the controller down and walk away. I’m really bad at the games and sometimes, I wish I did not like them. It’s not fun to be into games that are not into me (which is pretty much the story of my life, really), and I’m not always happy that I played Dark Souls all those many years ago.

Ian and I have argued about this back and forth for many years. He thinks From games are aimed at people like me. The mere peonz who struggle with every boss, but eventually overcome. I argue that it’s for the superfans who can parry every enemy to death without breaking a sweat.

It’s similar to the argument we have over what is Miyazaki’s aim with the games. Or rather, the argument people in community have over Miyazaki’s intent with the games (Ian and I agree on this). Some fans believe that Miyazaki loves the players and want to break them in order to make them better. Others believe that Miyazaki hates the players and just want to thoroughly crush their spirits. I don’t think either of these are right. I believe that Miyazaki does not care about the players. He’s interested in creating these horrific and heartbreaking worlds, as intricate and elaborate as possible. Whether the players fit into those worlds are not off any interest to him. We are incidental, which is an interesting feeling in these kinds of games. Usually, action adventure games are very heavy on you being the protag and eventually ruling the  world/being the hero/saving the world.


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Stranger in Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin my (maybe) final review, part two

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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.


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Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin–my (maybe) final review

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I’ve reached the third real area of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (Team NINJA). I am suddenly fed up with it after doing the first chunk of it, and I think I’m done. I have talked in previous posts as to my frustrations with Team NINJA games, and this has the same issues writ large. Here’s my last post about my issues with soulslikes in general, of which this game is one.

A few positives. The bosses and NPCs are campy as fuck. I love that nothing is taken seriously (or taken too seriously), which makes the story ludicrous. It’s a juicy telenovella, which is right up my alley. I mean, it’s one of the reasons I like musicals. Lavish extravaganzas with flashy showtunes. The latter is not found in this game, but the former most definitely is.

I also like that there are plenty of jobs (basically classes) that you can switch fairly easily at the bonfires. Look . That’s what they are. No, they aren’t called them in this game, but that’s what they are. Orb something or the other? No. They are called cubes, apparently.

By the way, the demo video I have included below from GameSpot informs me that the Jobs thing has been in past Final Fantasy games, too, so it’s not something that Team NINJA came up with. Oh, and something that irritated me…let me put it this way. There is a White Mage, a Black Mage, and a Red Mage (three different mage jobs). I have unlocked White Mage and Black Mage, but not the Red Mage yet. White Mage is a healing mage and Black Mage is a damage mage. I like being a healer, but it’s not necessary when I’m playing by myself. So I’ve been mostly playing Black Mage, but I’ve been wishing that I could have some of the White Mage healing abilities.

Can I reiterate how frustrating it is that they don’t explain what spells each mage can cast. Plus, some of the spells are made up words/in a different language. I could discern what some of them were by their proximity to English words, but not all of them. I found out from the video below that Red Mage combines different spells from the White Mage and the Red Mage, so I have to try to unlock that–which means doing regular mage I think until I get the points needed to unlock Red Mage.

Or maybe not.

As I said, I’m pretty done with the game.


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Stranger of Paradise; Final Fantasy Origin–A Quick Look, part four

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Alright. It’s a bit disingenuous to keep calling this a quick look since I’m on post four, but I’m going to stubbornly sticking to that because I can. It’s also amusing because I have played an hour or so of the game (maybe two), which is not very much playing time in comparison to how much I’ve written about it. The reason why, though, is because it’s more about the developer and my feelings about them rather than this game itself. Here’s post three in which I outlaid some of my frustrations with this dev. I’ll be continuing down that path and maybe get back to this game in particular.

The combat is just too much for me. Not only are their hordes rushing me at all times, but there are several different systems that you have to interact with at any given time. In addition, my reflexes are shit, and there are three deflects in this game. Different deflects, I mean. LB for the basic deflect. B for the soul deflect (I think?) and RT for another kind of deflect that blocks the next hit. Or something? I’m not sure at all. Oh, and the buttons do different things in different situations so the RT thing is only with…a certain kind of weapon? A certain job? I don’t remember. Way too much shit thrown at me.

That’s my gripe with their games in general. There is just way too much of everything. In Wo Long, I liked the system of being able to up your level (basically) in each area by finding certain, ah, things. Look, I don’t remember what they are, ok??? That made enemies easier by raising your level. For the area, not your overall level. That was cool, but finding the flags/statutes/I think they’re flags became tedious because they were put in weird places. I mean, most of them were on the natural path, but there were a few each area that you really need to search for. And  I really needed them for the bosses, I’ll tell you what. The bosses were a fucking pain. Which is common in their games.

For me, they were harder in an artificial way than From bosses. I mean, there are times when From buys their own shit and makes a boss harder than it needs to be, but nothing like the bosses in Team Ninja games. I know it’s me. I know it’s because I can’t fully absorb their systems. I have tried since the first Nioh and have never gotten there. I did the best with Wo Long, which is easier than the Niohs, but  I got so frustrated with the shitty level design.


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Stranger of Paradise; Final Fantasy Origin–A Quick Look, part three

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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.


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Stranger of Paradise; Final Fantasy Origin–A Quick Look, part two

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This is my second post about Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (Team Ninja), what I like and don’t like about it. I found watching the demo campy and enjoyable, so I bought it when it was half off. I have been playeng Elden Ring almost exclusively since the Shadow of the Erdtree drop, so this was my way of branching out. Here is the first post in which I felt I barely scratched the surface.

I was rambling on about how the level design was clearly infuriated to From’s in many ways. The biggest is that, at least for me, there is not the subtle nudging in the direction they want you to go. Every time I went into a new room, I was immediately confused as to how I got there and where I was going. Again, that might just be me, but every door looks the same. Every corridor is the exact same as the one before it. I have been turned around so many times, it’s frustrating. This is how I find all their games, by the way. I mentioned that one of the reason I quit Wo Long halfway through (right as I got to the capital) was because in the area before it, I just could not find my way. It was so fucking frustrating, and I’m finding it so in this game as well.

Also, the loot. So much loot. All the loot. Way too much loot. Seriously, the game could cut it by 70%, and it would not be missed. This is an area in which I don’t think any game gets it right. I mean, none of the games I’ve played (which, admittedly, isn’t many) have gotten it right–including From. They do it better than most, but I will admit that even there I often just ignore the stuff I pick up. Why? Because 75% of it is not going to be anything I can use. I get that’s the way of these games because it would probably be too much work to make the drops specific to the class, but it can be pretty deflating to go through a dozen new items and not want a single one.

This is that weird thing about choice in that the more choice you have, the less you want to choose anything. Or the more worried you are about making the wrong choice. I am someone who can regret every choice I have ever made so I appreciate when I have less choices to make. The problem, though, is more the illusion of choice. Team Ninja throws all these items at you, but it really doesn’t matter which you pick (within a group of things, I mean). As I mentioned in the last post,  I’m not a min-maxer, so I’m not going to fiddle with incremental gains and losses.


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Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin–A Quick Look

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I’ve been playing Elden Ring pretty much nonstop since it came out. I’ve played other games here and there, but I always return to Elden Ring. I watched Eurogamer (Aoife and Ian) play a few hours of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (Team Ninja) (the video is below), and it’s bonkers. The main character is Jack, a glowering, dour, brooding guy who is all about  KILLING CHAOS. He is teamed up with Ash and….other guy in a boy band party of swordfighter (Jack), pugilist (Ash) and duelist (other guy). Jed. His name is Jed, apparently. He is the emo/anime-looking one. Ash is the buffed beefcake, and Jack is the brooding one.

But wait! The prophecy foretold about four warriors, and we are but three! With our crystals vibrating simultaneously (SO funny), we are KILLING CHAOS and taking names for later. Or something. Normally, I would play in Japanese, but the English voice cast is just so campy and funny, I have to have the audio set to English.

I will preface this by saying I have tried several of the Team Ninja games. Nioh, Nioh 2, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and now, Stranger in Paradise; Final Fantasy Origin. I made it about a third of the way through Nioh, two or three bosses into Nioh 2, halfway through Wo Long, and I’ve beaten the tutorial boss (and, *SPOILER* the fourth member of the party. She is the best; I’ll get to her later).

The game is pulpy, unapologetically so. I have no issue with that; in fact, that’s the reason I decided to play it. Also, I saw that the combat was serious, but not soulslike hard–apparently. Nioh and Nioh 2 are really fucking hard, which is one of the reasons I gave up on them. Another is, well, I’ll get into that later as well.

It’s a forty dollar game that was half off. The port seemed to be ok, but not great. The story is ludicrous, but I expected that from a Team Ninja game. Also, janky. In Wo Long, I was at the tutorial boss for three hours. I thought it was just because I was shit at the game, but it wasn’t. I mean, I waws shit at it, but there was a glitch in the PC port, apparently, that did not allow a cut-scene to prock when it should have. I found this out by giving up and Googling it. I don’t remember how the forum told me to fix it, but I managed to do so and beat the boss thereafter.


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