When it comes to Role Playing Games that are made in Japan there is usually one name that pops up, Final Fantasy, considered the original JRPG, it has long been a favourite of gamers around the world, but not this one. The series never really appealed to me when I was in my youth and when it went to PlayStation and I didn’t, it fell even more out of my sphere of gaming series to play. Over the years though, I have started to play more and more of these games, sometimes for review but sometimes for fun and I have enjoyed, for the most part, what I have played. The question I had going into Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, was would this more action orientated game be the one to connect me to the series?

The story of Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, here out just being called Stranger, is weird, as it is played out in flashbacks, flashforwards and regular cutscenes and trying to work out what is going on, won’t happen until the very end. It has to be noted that yes, this is a prequel to the original Final Fantasy, from the NES, so how the story ends, does tie in somewhat to that game, but it is its own thing for the most part. All across the world, the darkness is growing and where it gets to much, it becomes chaos and that is impacting the world, fire doesn’t burn as hot, the wind barely blows and the seas are calm. In order to restore the world to how it was, people are always going out in attempts to fight the chaos, but most never return, enter Jack, Ash and Jed. These three, after completing a number of quests for the King, are rewarded with the chance to visit the Chaos Shrine and fight the big bag that is there, however things don’t work out as they expect.

The problem is that I can’t explain what happens, without spoiling some of the story and as the story is one of the key reasons to play the game, I am going to avoid doing that. Over the course of the 20 or so hours it took me to complete the story, there were a few moments where things became predictable, but there were also a number of times when events took turns that I have not anticipated. Sadly though, that is not a good thing, because the reason why I couldn’t predict events is that the story is dependent on events that take place in the final moments of the game, to put additional context around cutscenes from the first few hours of the game. Honestly, while you do get a sense of an ending by the time the credits roll, until then you will be lost, its like reading a handful of pages from a chapter in a book and then doing it the entire time, only at the very end of the book, do the missing pages get added back in.

None of this would be a great pain, if the characters were interesting in the slightest, sadly as has become a trend, they have some very standard roles they fill. Jed who looks the youngest of the trio is the eager one and always willing to make a comment, Ash is the large fellow, so he is the stoic supporter, but Jack is the biggest issue by far. It is fitting that his name is Jack, because from the moment you meet him, until the very end, he is nothing but a massive jackass and not in the tv series way, but as in he has no time or interest for anything other than his own mission. Throughout the tale, others try to talk with him and he either grunts a response or he just shuts them down, when they question if he is ok, he either ignores or tells them to shut up. By the end, I really got annoyed each time he spoke, because it was never to provide any sort of progression to the story or growth to the character, he was an arse at the start and got worse as it went on.

Thankfully, most of the game is saved by the insanely rich combat system that Koei Tecmo have proven themselves to be masters of, over the past few years. You can run in and just hack at enemies with your weapon of choice, but you will be a lot more successful, if you start to pay attention to the mechanics on offer. There are three aspects that need to be considered, in order to balance the gameplay, to something that suits your playstyle, the first is that there are a number of jobs, from swordman to mage and beyond. As you level up, you will unlock countless more jobs, some are specialities from there, like the Red Mage or White Mage jobs and some are all new, levelling up those jobs is critical, if you want to make good use of the skills they provide. In order to level them up, you just need to fight with that job selected, pretty simple stuff, the more you fight, the more it levels and the more points for it you earn, which can be redeemed to learn new skills or job types. You can’ take points earned from a mage role and apply them to a Pugilist role, only within that same role type, so it does require you to keep your eye on how you want to grow.

The second gameplay mechanic is with counters, there are two ways of countering attacks, the first has you raise your weapon up and take some damage, but not as much as you might have otherwise. This is a simple way of taking less damage, but if the attack is magical in nature, or an area of effect attack, you can still get owned in a massive way. The other option is to sacrifice some of your break gauge and catch the magical attack that was thrown at you, you can then stockpile a few of that same attack and throw them back at the enemies, you can even store them for a later fight. The catch with this option, pun intended, is that if you hold the button down to early, you can deplete your break gauge quite quickly, which leaves you open to being stunned, or as is more likely the case, you get hit from somewhere else, because you are locked into place. The break gauge is one the more challenging aspects to understand, because there are some attacks that can hit you and you lose it all at once and some barely touch it, thankfully though the same works against the enemies as well. Break the gauge of an enemy and they will stagger, which gives you the chance to run up and take them down with Jack’s signature crystalise move, even if their health is near max, they will go down and take any other enemies close by, with them.

Combat can be enhanced by the gear that you equip, from the weapons to the shoes, everything can have an impact to your battles. There is so much gear that you earn, from killing enemies to break open chests and of course, completing the current objective, I honestly spent so much time sifting through it, to ensure that my team had the best of the best. There are some items that can bolster your skills in a job, have the right sword and you might be able to do more damage with a special attack, or if a hat can improve your magic point reserve, you don it, no matter how silly it looks. As you can have two jobs at any one time, swapping between them, even in the middle of combat, you do have to keep on top of both sets, something I didn’t do for a while, so it can catch you out if you are not on top of it. Plus, there is the entire sub-set that you can do, save presets of combinations, to boost one aspect over another, if you know you are going into a fight or such.

Sadly though, we now need to address the massive flaws that the game has and there are a few, the first is that you can’t jump, you can run and dodge, but no jump. This may not sound like an issue, but it does remove the potential for some epic attacks, but more than that, it means for any object that is on the ground and is any taller than your shin, you can’t walk over it. There were countless times that I would try to walk to a door, or around a corner, only to have to take a set path around the slivers over things on the ground. That also highlights another issue, the world is beyond linear, if you think of all other Final Fantasy games over the years, they had open worlds, at least as much as the NES could do, then went to corridors and now back to open worlds, but this takes you back to the corridor design. The game just keeps funnelling you forward, on paths that you can’t ignore, there are some alcoves here and there, that you can explore to gain even more gear, but that is about it. Also, about the gear, the management system is a real pain to deal with, it isn’t an issue when you have a dozen or so swords or axes, but when you have 50 or more items from a single category, finding the right item or even worse, attempting to move or discard the useless stuff, is a real nightmare. One final thing to highlight, though its more of an annoyance than anything, the fact that hitting start, which brings up the menu, doesn’t actually pause the game, you then have to press another button to do that. I can’t think of any other game where it takes two individual button prompts to pause the game.

Taking a look at the games presentation, there are a few things going on first is that the character design, while great in profile, isn’t really that special. Jack looks like a generic military type person, Ash looks large, even the King, who sends you out on the quest, doesn’t look anything different from other Kings. It is really the enemy design and the world design, where things shine, starting with the enemies, there are plenty of variants of each, so they look similar, but have different attributes. This helps keep them separate, so you can’t mix up a fire creature with a water one, but it also helps them stand out from the background, some of the time. The locations that you visit are also beautiful, there were times when I would see sites that were just impressive, in terms of scale and detail. The game is also clearly aware of this, as it is constantly letting you press a button to show off that view, so be prepared for some beautiful vistas. While the locations themselves are not that unique, a forest, a mountain, a mechanical base and such, they still manage to evoke a certain level of charm from them.

The sound though is where I had a lot more fun, the voice acting is solid and while I dislike Jack as a character, there is no denying that the actor who voiced him, did a solid job, it can’t have been easy turning in a thousand different grunts. Most of the rest of the cast is solid as well, but a few of them have voices that don’t really suit the character they are playing, it isn’t bad per say, just when you see them on screen and then hear them, it just doesn’t quite match up. Thankfully one area where the games audial presentation shines is in the music, there are sound grand orchestral pieces, which suits the Final Fantasy brand, but there were times when the music would shift into a genre that really didn’t feel right, but still felt right. I am not saying that it broke out into country and western randomly, but there were some pieces that just didn’t feel like they were something you would associate with the series. That being said, whoever it was that thought randomly slotting in Frank Sinatra’s My Way, in the early hours of the game, needs to have their head examined, because it raised more questions than it solved and even now, I still can’t understand its inclusion there.

Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin is an odd game, there are layers to it that scream Final Fantasy, but the combat, which is the heart of the game, is totally nothing like the series has had before. The story makes almost no sense for 98% of the game and will confuse players so easily and when combined with a main character that makes a boulder look like a paragon of the perfect emotional range, it is hard to recommend. Those who have any connection to the original game will like where this ends up, but the journey to that point is confusing and is only saved by the combat offerings.