I need you to confide me for a moment. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is perfect.
I can put it between quotes, if you want (it is “perfect”) or use some unexpected cursive that gives an interesting inflection to the phrase, a seductive or mysterious air (Stranger of Paradise Es Interesting), but I do not want to divert too much about my goal Main, which is to show that Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is, in fact, perfect. Maybe my own words contradict this statement, or that the note that goes at the end of this analysis (a cowardly 7, a discreet 7 and who does not want to bother anyone; a 7 neither pa me nor because he just wants to go unnoticed and Leave room to other more important things) I suggest otherwise. But all this should not distract us from the last fact that this text tries to convince: of the perfection that Team Ninja has taken the happy format that premiered and polished with NiOh and Nioh 2, respectively, adding to the recipe a generous dose of what That can only be described using a reaction gif, probably the only reasonable measurement unit with which you can talk about Stranger of Paradise:
(I’m going to try not to use more of these in the analysis, let’s continue with this before we are ballted.)
For decades, Final Fantasy no has started with my Way by Frank Sinatra; It is a fact in which maybe – with no reason, “you had not thought so far, and also one of the first fire tests that you must overcome at Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin . After a confusing but more or less traditional introduction, the eternal Sinatra Voice sings for a few seconds, just enough to do not get to the best-known verses of the song, and just then take the control of Jack, the unlikely protagonist of the new Final Fantasy. (It’s a spin-off, of course, “okay if it is! -, but after all it is un Final Fantasy, I would not want that detail to be overlooked.)
It is a frankly strange introduction but that gives clues about the origin of all this. Far from the most ceremonious rhythms of the main fantasy final, Stranger of Paradise is presented as a direct RPG_ and on the simple paper, in which we move through a series of levels with a principle and a final in the form of final Boss; shortcuts, interconnections and minilacherintos separately (the welcome influence of the Souls that Team Ninja already rehearsed, as it said before, in the NIOH), is an action game almost of all life, in which the ability matters more and The reflections that nothing else. The combat system is about to be redundant for anyone who has played NiOh 2, but I think it gets rid of the autoplagio for the intelligence with which it absorbs traditional ideas from Final Fantasy and gives them the frantic and immediate mark of the brand of the House of the creators of Ninja Gaiden; it is not unleashed to think that there is some lesson learned from the musous of Omega Force: After all, Team Ninja Codesarrolló the Warriors of Zelda and Fire Emblem, two good examples of how to bring to other Sagas territories that have nothing to do with the action.
But Stranger of Paradise is not a crushing machines; Nothing is further from reality. Despite his spindice approach to the clashes, the dangers faced by Jack and company are not from those who are overcoming giving the buttons without thinking. That is one of the keys of the combat system, of course: the commitment to transform the works, a classic Final Fantasy, in the spine of the game. Each job of which Jack can have (also the rest of the characters, although in a simpler version of managing and practically automatic) has a series of peculiarities and features that make it more or less appropriate for certain types of enemies or combat styles ; In general, they focus on a type of weapon, but there are also combined them, which allow different types. What is lost in specialization is earned in versatility, gaining access to a greater number of skills: skills that can be assigned to each combo and consume magic points (PM, onwards). Each type of weapon has its moveset and its possibilities, here more than in NiOH, which also worked in a similar way: not only there are swords, spears or katans, but the magic have a prominent role and that significantly alters the way In which the fighting must be raised. The temptation to go as a headless chicken, advancing machetzos by some skill trees that trust more than the account in the interest of the player by the percentages (an increase of 1.3% no sound attractive, I’m afraid!), There and it would be naive to deny it; that the game can not avoid getting into the type of gardens that they force to include a button with which to self-essential to your characters – an essential measure to avoid the most extreme analysis-paralysis that has been seen in an RPG of this type since, from NEW, NIOH 2- Nor does it help.
But if you dedicate a little time to each class, the thing changes. Wow if it changes! The difference between two weapons with a difference of 0.2% in one of its attributes remains genuinely pathetic, but the percentages happen to have another importance, to occupy another space in your head: the fundamental thing happens to be the minute a minute of Each weapon, the rhythms and the temper that they ask you to get the most out. It is easy to see the difference in the Cestus or the clubs, but a better example is the swords, each a different world: it is not the same a spadon that a katana, and not only for his stats or his combos but for his tempos so Different, because of the music that is formed when you hit them well. Stranger of Paradise, like all of the Team Ninja, is not always very explicit when it comes to explaining how he wants you to play, but yes to make it clear that you are doing well: nails the rhythms and combats happen fluently and Elegance, chaining basic blows and skills, which consume PM, with auctions and perfect blocks, absorbing magic and returning them to destroy the posture of your rivals and recover PM that allows you to restart the cycle by launching new skills. There are other nuances with whom you are learning to deal little by little, but the basic dynamics is that, and in most cases it works well; Very well, in a few, and absolutely brilliantly in other few; There is some stumbling, too, but it is hard for me not to give up before a combat system like this, which manages to sound NiOh without falling into the autoplagium.
Stranger of Paradise is a good game, then, but that is not what makes it perfect. Help, but it is not enough with that. There are many good games. Stranger of Paradise is made of another pasta.
What makes Stranger of Paradise highlights on their peers is their fundamentally deranged nature. You already know the Scenite: Jack, the protagonist of all this, is a guy in all lights from another world and has a single mission: find and kill chaos. Jack does not know exactly why he wants to kill chaos, but the idea consumes and obsesses him radically. All the existence of him revolves around killing chaos; Nothing else cares, and so he lets him know at all times all the characters that cross on his way of him. It is not necessary to go beyond the first mission to find a good example of this obsession; One unbeatable, in fact, and who went around the world as soon as we knew about the existence of him. I mean, of course, at the time bullshit.
The moment bullshit is something like this: after traveling and cleaning evil the first level of the game, we discovered that the great final boss who crowns it is not such but a girl, neon, the first one who joins your group beyond the trio initial. Neon takes his time to release a long monologue in which she explains that chaos is not a creature as such, it is not a villain of meat, but a concept, an idea, that neutralizes the hopes of people, corrupting it; It is something like the origin of evil, an explanation to the eternal question of why people are bad if people are born good. “The one we call chaos is not a man or a beast,” says Neon. “It’s a mere fantasy.” A final fantasy, I add. Neon confesses that she let himself be consumed by chaos, becoming the vile monster that you just defeated, to personally embody all that evil and do something like silence of all the bad thing in the world. Chaos, well, it’s not something you can “kill” booting your head and shitting inside her, as it seems to want Jack, who looks silently Neon for a couple of seconds after the meaning Speech; As a single answer, she says _ «BullShit» _, she turns around and leaves, not without first putting metal on her mobile ph1. She (she listens through wireless headphones.)
It is not the only cut of this kind that Jack gives characters that seem to have important things to say, and in fact an undiely part of the tension that moves the argument leaves there: on one side are the characters that insist on what chaos It is not a sole but a concept, something without legs or arms that you can tear out and then make a skewer with their own cut tips, to which Jack generally responds with grunts; On the other we are the ones who say to know where chaos is, to which Jack ignores even if they usually only lead to traps and more dangers. At one point, Cornelia’s innkeeper asks Jack and his team how everything is going, how the mission, how things have gone at the reception with the king, to which our hero responds with a lonely growled, an indescifrant growl That he does not even transmit anger or disidad, a growl that exists in a total meaningful vacuum that makes it little more than a more or less sfx at random. “I expected you to say that,” says the innkeeper then.
I do not want to suggest that tods dialogues have the same level of nonsense, but the same type of nonsense guides a large part of the exchanges that, both in the kinematics and in the jacket that accompanies action during the levels (the specific From each level and loose phrases that are released by the characters when you approach checkpoints or chests or discover false walls), happen in the game. Stranger of Paradise has an amazing tone, strange but also by purely lisergic. As remake or reinterpretation of the original Fantasy final, published nothing less than 35 years, I can only imagine that it will cause very strong sensations in the same people who were bothered by the unexpected turns that made Final Fantasy VII remakes such a memorable experience; It is difficult to know if the idea of Team Ninja and Square Enix is that, but Stranger of Paradise sometimes seems a junction between The room and twin peaks, both fully aware of their own volunteers and alien to the tremendous impact they cause. It could be, that was going, a much more conservative and “respectful” game, such a 1: 1 translation as I needed from the first Fantasy Final, which otherwise also does not have a particularly convoluted argument; However, he makes the conscious decision to put a distorted character stuck in a world that is not his, a combination actually not so strange in a fantasy finish but that stands out for his circumstances: for being a Spin-off, by the anniversary he celebrates and, of course, by the hand of Team Ninja.
That’s why Stranger of Paradise is a perfect game, of a perfection that only the passage of time will let us see clearly. It is not a pure and immaculate perfection, however: it is a game full of small failures. The design of levels is the most obvious, perhaps: they are simplons but they want to look labyrinth, a fatal combination that can not escape from passillism or when spaces are open. The visual either does not accompany too much, and it is formed by mounting maps by repeating resources to the point of, in the worst cases, to have to be oriented is really difficult. As I have already said one thousand five times, the inheritance of NiOH is again seen in the structure of Mapamundi with levels that you access through a list, each with a recommended level. In the standard difficulty, it is more or less feasible to do the levels with four or five levels less than what is recommended, but below there it can become too uphill; To climb the level and face the main missions with more guarantees, the game is responsible for proposing secondary missions that remix the normal levels with more specific challenges. They are optional missions but that does not go wrong to do: win levels allows to develop more jobs, which in turn unlock new ones that are not developed by making more optional missions, which also give a loot very welcome to have well equipped with all possible Jacks that you can use, from the Samurai with Katana to the red magician with Fedora. The famous and feared grind is an acquired taste; If you can acquire it, the game rewards you with a generous amount of high-level missions and trees of gigantic skills when you finish the main campaign, so that you can be consuming as Jack for the desire to get more and more loot that you can then faster and improve At pleasure, a very little sophisticated _loop, which should be kept at bay but it is always uncomfortable enough for you to be aware of its mechanisms.
There will be someone who says that these failures away Stranger of Paradise of perfection in which I have insisted again and again throughout this text, but for me they complete it, they finish it; A less perfect game would like to be more polite, less uncomfortable, but Stranger of Paradise gives exactly what you think about him. You May Not Like It, But this Is What Peak Performance Looks Like. The brand left Stranger of Paradise in the brain of who dares to play it is indelible. There is a preset moment and a post Stranger of Paradise. It is normal that doubt arises whether it is even legal to make a game like this. There will be anyone who wants to see in the passions that will undoubtedly unleashed Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin An attempt to force the meme, the same drive behind the absurd humor of Shitpost. For those people I only have an answer:
FF Origin Jack Giffrom FF Origin GIFS
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