Many sensations crossed our minds when we saw Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin at the end of the Square Enix conference during E3 2021. It was the final bombshell of the night, the icing on the cake that had begun to be built with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. It wasn’t Final Fantasy XVI, it was a unique and completely revolutionary vision for a legendary franchise.
Team Ninja taking over a saga of this caliber and endowing it with the typical schemes of the developer was something that had never crossed our minds. The Internet has been filled these two days with memes and jokes about various aspects of the game, such as the appearance of its characters or the graphic quality of the work . That the demo for PS5 has been damaged has not served to clean the image of a title that does not even have a release date.
Finally, the team has hit the key and put an end to the problems. We’ve already gotten a taste of what Jack and his friends can do, like ending Chaos and its evil plans .
Away with fantasy, welcome with aggressiveness
A yellow field that extends beyond what our eyes can reach is the first reception we have. A small arena in which to begin to adapt to the controls, to become familiar with some mechanics that spread like roots. We are facing an archetype of what was seen in the Nioh games, which already allows us to quickly get to grips with the situation.
We play Jack, a Warrior of Light who is accompanied by Ash and Jed , who make up the trio of the prophecy that some young people will arrive to save the world from darkness. Originally, there were four, so there is a missing member who is not mentioned in any way. Either way, we are in the throes of rescuing Princess Sara from the Temple of Chaos , the domain of the mighty Garland.
Greatsword. This is the first work tool that we will receive and as such, it must be mastered. The tutorial gives us these previous tips, such as the possibility of parrying by pressing the circle button or the effort that we must show when exhausting the enemy’s Break bar. This movement can be carried out maintained in time, at the cost of exhausting our own Break bar. Whoever runs out of power in the first place will be left defenseless against rival attacks.
It is at that moment when we can perform the Rompeanima, a brutal attack with which to end the opponent with a single blow . It is a special action in which even the camera uses showy shots to show the aggressiveness of the execution. Goblins, bats or classic Booms of the brand will die in a violent reddish explosion .
To get to this point it is necessary to exhaust them with fast or charged attacks. It will be the latter with which we will have to be very attentive, since they quickly exhaust our PM bar, which is essential to perform them. On the other hand, the customization is really extensive. We only control Jack and, although we cannot modify his face, we can equip him with the different outfits, cloaks, skirts or gloves that the enemies throw or we find in the chests scattered around the corridors.
A really interesting aspect is the agility with which we can quickly change jobs. We can well be a knight, a sorcerer, a spearman or a warrior, which gives us several sets to fight . All of them can be configured to our liking, using a halberd or a staff to cast magic such as Aero, Aqua or Electro . To all this we must add skills and techniques, a series of skills that we can unlock through their corresponding tree. Amen that we will gain affinity with each armor as we use it.
Intriguing presentation for a familiar dish
With all the cards on the table, it is difficult to bet on Stranger of Paradise . Yes, its main attraction is to take Final Fantasy by the front and turn it completely around, but mechanically we do not find an experience that surpasses any of its competitors. Both Ash and Jed accompany us during the journey, but we cannot instruct them to perform actions of any kind.
They are not annoying, far from it, but their role is reduced to serving as an occasional distraction during the combats while we recover and to release the answer or observation of turn to what has just happened. For these reasons I have refused to provide you with one of my potions in order to revive you during battle.
This demo is about an hour long, which gives you time to make that nod to Hidetaka Miyazaki’s classic shortcuts through a staircase that connects to the beginning of the Temple. The tour is summarized in our task of ending the sources of darkness present in many of the rooms. When we finish them, they will stop expelling enemies and allow us to open steps at other times.
Everything is crowned with the confrontation with the Latent Chaos, Garland. A final boss that is up to the task and can give some trouble than another during the second phase of his combat. Once we put an end to their attacks, the demo will end, leaving us not only with honey on our lips, but with the need for a cinematic that gives a timely closure to this demonstration.
One last disappointment is the aforementioned graphic section. Obviously we are facing a game created in the year 2021, but the final result, with the flat textures and the tremendously dark set gives us that feeling that it is far from being minimally cutting edge .
What leaves us with the intrigue is the general context of what happens. Tetsuya Nomura is the great thinking head behind the latest Square Enix projects and it is under his responsibility to shape this reinterpretation of the events of the first Final Fantasy . The work released in 1987 was an old-school RPG, which used the concepts of light and chaos to build its fantasy plot.
The clothes and appearance of the trio allow us to doubt their belonging to that universe and perhaps we are talking about an Isekai, a Japanese genre in which people from our world are transported to another to live an adventure. If this is the case, the cutscenes and the dialogues between the group do not reveal it to us. The mystery around what the exact difference is with the 34-year-old argument seems to go on for a while.
