Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin asks and answers the question of what the world of the first Final Fantasy, which came out in 1987, might look like in 2022 if it were reimagined with a modern action combat style. Its overly complex story and one-dimensional NPCs don't pay off until the final hours, but the freedom available in its challenging combat and extensive character customization is consistently rewarding from the start until – and after – the credits roll. It's a love letter to its own source material, filled with references and homages to the series’ history that seem designed to give fans of any Final Fantasy something to enjoy.
Like the show Lost and other stories that revolve around some grand mystery, Stranger of Paradise's plot had me theorizing and scratching my head until the very final moments, when all is revealed in a way that brings everything together. However, where Lost used memorable characters and turning-point moments to carry the story forward prior to the big reveals, Stranger of Paradise misses the mark on its cast and instead solely relies on its solid action gameplay, only offering vague and often indecipherable clues to what’s going on. Its lack of real character development beyond your party of five run-of-the-mill characters making small talk and reiterating their need to find and kill an entity known as Chaos that threatens the world means I won’t be uttering their names in the same breath as Final Fantasy greats like Cloud and Yuna – or even necessarily remembering them a month from now.
And yet, while the early hours of the story did a poor job of keeping me engaged (especially as main character Jack and his starting companions Ash and Jed all revealed varying levels of amnesia and constantly remarked on their deja vu wherever we went) it turned out to be an effective buildup: the tail end did the exact opposite by answering all the questions I had. That said, I took the time to explore and find most of the memento collectibles as I played, which allowed me to connect the dots between the story the main story shows you and the story behind what's really happening in the world. Some filled in smaller gaps, like the origin and importance of the dark crystals that drew our starting party together in the first place, and others helped explain the meaning behind the titular stranger and the paradise they hail from. However, they’re easy to miss, and the ending and its big reveals might not have resonated as strongly for me if I hadn’t had their important context.
While this isn’t a direct remake of the original Final Fantasy, it thoroughly reimagines many of its locations. The main city of Cornelia is where that first adventure began; and places like the Chaos Shrine and the Cavern of Earth dungeon have had new life breathed into them by Koei Tecmo's team, which seems to have found inspiration in similar areas from other Final Fantasy games. It merges in factories reminiscent of Final Fantasy 7 Remake's Mako Reactors, a pirate cove filled with Sahagin (like the Sastasha dungeon in Final Fantasy 14), and even something that strongly resembles Final Fantasy 13's Sunleth Waterscape's weather-changing mechanic makes an appearance in one of the wetlands you'll adventure through. There are plenty of other great locations that I won't spoil for you as it's equal part a treat and a puzzle for fans to discover which game inspired each of the stages in Stranger of Paradise. The fact that nearly every stage has a unique look kept exploring their ins and outs refreshing, and in the background there are new music arrangements from other FF games that are sure to catch the ears of longtime fans.
Graphically, though, even the PlayStation 5’s HDR Quality mode couldn’t make Stranger of Paradise look better than average most of the time. Some cutscenes look great and instantly had me snapping away with the screenshot button, but those were few and far between. In-game it looks fine, with decent character models and textures that resemble Final Fantasy 13, but never good enough to make me wish it had a photo mode. After spending my first playthrough in Quality mode – which didn’t have any noticeable frame rate drops below 30 throughout the entire campaign, I made the switch to Performance mode and never looked back. The jump up to 60 frames per second makes dodging and parrying much easier for my playstyle, and some of the flashier combo abilities were even better because I was able to more reliably cancel out of them by swapping jobs to extend my combo even further.
Stranger of Paradise offers five difficulty modes: casual, story, action, hard, and Chaos (which unlocks after your first playthrough), and the temptation of higher-level item drops led me to play on hard for my first run. It took me just under 30 hours to roll credits, and that included undertaking a good number of side missions I considered essential to raise my gear score, unlocking job roles for allies, replaying missions in up to three-player co-op, doing tons of inventory management, constantly upgrading/customizing my party’s loadouts, and no small amount of dying – especially when testing specific builds and multiclass combinations in boss fights to determine their suitability.
At this setting just about every enemy posed a threat to my survival, from the lowly roundworm that turns into a wheel of purple flames to ever-deadly Tonberrys and their deadly chef’s knives and powerful area-of-effect attacks. There were even times where my own carelessness allowed a group of bats or skeletons to simply overwhelm me, rendering me unable to escape. It’s dangerous out there! You can always adjust the difficulty at any checkpoint, though, so if you find yourself under-leveled you can choose to make any single fight easier if you want – which is certainly preferable to grinding it out.
Despite a lot of obvious Souls influence in its combat style, though, Stranger of Paradise is actually pretty forgiving when it comes to death: you keep all of the experience, materials, armor, weapons, and even additional potions you might have found – and the PS5’s speedy load times put you back in the action almost immediately. It’s not without consequences, though – other than having to run past or fight through the same swathes of enemies – you suffer a temporary decrease to your maximum MP, which nearly every combat ability is centered around. Spells like Cure and Fire, command abilities like Lancet and Lightbringer, and even class-based combo abilities like a Dragoon's Jump and a Warriors War Cry all require MP to function, so there’s an urgent need to recover all six sections as soon as possible. (Limiting the number of mana segments available is also a callback to the original Final Fantasy, where you had a limited number of spells you could cast before needing to rest at an inn or use the cottage/House recovery item to restore your MP.)