(logo beeps) - [Falcon] We're back with another episode of Before You Buy, the show where we give you
some straight-up gameplay and our first impressions of
the latest games releasing. Hi folks, it's Falcon. And they sent me in to do the dirty work of Stranger of Paradise
Final Fantasy Origins. You know, the game with the guy
who says "chaos" a lot. - Chaos. - [Falcon] This is a
game that a lot of people were skeptical about online. And it also had a demo that really wasn't
particularly impressive, but we still wanted to go into
this one with an open mind, because it was developed by Team Ninja, and they made one of the
best "Souls-like" games ever, really both Nioh games. So we did. We went into it with an open mind, and I wanted to like this game, but I'm sorry to say, I came way disappointed. Really everybody here did. I mean, it's not a total train wreck like the trailers made it out to be, but that would've been at least funnier. What we actually got at
its core Stranger Paradise kind of feels like a bare
bone version of Nioh, with all of the flaws and
actually few of its strengths. And we're starting off a
little hot in this one, but believe me, there's a lot to get into, let's say. So if you don't know, the game's pretty much exactly like Nioh. It has a few additions, but mostly subtractions. And if you've played that game, a lot of this is going to feel similar. How the game's structured, is that you select a
mission from the world map, you travel through a mostly
linear collection of corridors while fighting various enemies in a Soul style type of combat. You collect a ton of
random loot along the way, then you fight a boss
at the end of the level. This format's not really deviated from, except for a few missions that are kind of cut scenes in disguise, which doesn't sound so bad, really, that would be a good
formula if the game was great, but there are a lot of problems here. But first we will talk
about what is positive. The combat system, it's great. It feels good to control. It's got satisfying power in every action. Also the job system's a highlight as well. It really smartly combines elements of the weapon system from Nioh with like a classic
Final Fantasy job system. Everything you'd expect
is here and accounted for. You can be a warrior,
a thief, a berserker, a black mage, a dragoon... Like it's all here, and it
actually works surprisingly well in an action format. You can tell they put a lot of work into trying to get that right. On top of the normal jobs, you can eventually start
to unlock advanced jobs and expert jobs, which come to be available
after filling out skill trees of multiple jobs before them, which encourages you to experiment with different play styles as you're attempting to unlock everything. It's a satisfying system, and with the feel of the combat, it's one of my favorite
things about this game. That stuff works. Another great thing about the game, is that it has all these
classic remixed tracks from old Final Fantasy games. Like, the music is mostly fantastic. Yeah. I mean, you'd expect that from a Square Enix joint
with one notable exception, and this is a really unfortunate one. The standard combat music, it can't be overstated how annoying it actually gets after a while. It's one song, and it plays constantly. Like pretty much all you do in this game is engage in combat. So it ends up drowning out what is usually really
great level specific music. So if you want to hear that stuff, you basically have to
stop what you're doing and just listen to the music, which is annoying, because, while there's
a lot of awesome music, you're not really gonna hear it unless you go out of your way, or just kind of stop and
smell the roses and think, "Ah, let's hear that soundtrack.", which I don't know, I've done in other Final Fantasy games. I've certainly parked plenty
of them on the world map and listen to the beautiful
theme that was composed for it. But this is not that, this is you being stuck
on one theme, basically. One more positive I wanna mention, it's kinda more for, like
big, Final Fantasy fans, particularly ones that
have roots that go way back in the series, like I played the original
Final Fantasy I, for instance, but it's kind of a thrill to see some of the classic monsters animated and moving around in an action game. Like pretty much every enemy is based off something from a Final Fantasy game. So you see a Tonberry from Marlboro, you see them move around, they fight you in an action setting. It's cool. It might just be a me thing, but I have a feeling it's not... Unfortunately, that's kind
of where the positives end. It's not totally terrible
from here on out, but I'll warn you, it's not great. Let's just get this out of the way. The story is very
stupid, like very stupid. Right from the start, It seems like the developers kind of want to disorient
you as much as possible with a random jumble of nearly incoherent scenes and sequences, including this laughable needle drop of Frank Sinatra's "My Way." It was in the trailers,
and it's in the game too. And despite what, you know, sometimes trailers do, once you had the context of the game, it doesn't make more sense. You would think it would, but it doesn't. So once you get past all that nonsense, you quickly see that the story just doesn't have much going on. Like basically you play as Jack, a guy with amnesia, and man, he does not like chaos. He's got a few teammates, that don't do a lot for most the story, and while it is supposedly
a reinterpretation of Final Fantasy I The Story, narratively, it just feels like a remake. Most of the story, it's just teleporting from one dungeon to another, to restore four corrupted crystals. And while in the 1980s, that functioned as a
story for a video game, it's pretty boring now. And you have to get all the
way to the end of the game before the really bonkers
twist start happening. And while they're definitely
unintentionally funny, nothing that happens is crazy enough to really justify the
boring filler before it, and that's the kind of
frustrating thing about this game. It really just feels like filler. Level design is pretty much ugly and uninteresting across the board. Once in a while, there's something maybe a little
more visually interesting, but for the most part, you're running around
narrow and close hallways that connect to larger
rooms with monster fights and that's about it. Some of these places are
straight up ugly to look at, to a step backwards, compared to Team Ninja's previous games. Which is frustrating, because you have the
great jobs/weapon system with great combat, but one of the most important things of a Soul style game, is the level design. Like having an interesting
world to explore is what makes these games work. And this game totally falls flat at that. Like there's not really anything interesting to find. There's some chest you can
find off the beaten path, but the loots randomize and
the level of stuff you gets, depending on which stage you're in. So it doesn't even really feel like a big deal to go get that, and it really becomes
a serious problem fast. The loot, it's bad. Simple as that. It's got the same system as Nioh where you collect a metric ton
of random armor and weapons you can saw it on your character, but now instead of just
having one character to equip, you have five. I tried to engage with
the system at first, but the constant, they lose of stuff, combined with the amount
of characters you have, makes it just way too
tedious to keep up with. I kind of just gave up and started pressing optimize equipment and calling it a day. It wouldn't be so bad if your character wasn't
so dependent on their gear, but they are, like I said,
so dependent their gear. Here's the real problem. Your guys don't level up
in the traditional sense. Instead, you can increase
your job level up to like level 30, but that's it. And pretty much every
improvement you can unlock from the job skill tree, either unlocks moves or improves
your class skills somehow. If you actually want to increase
your damage and defense, the only way to do it, is to
find and equip better armor. The whole system really
brings the game down, because on top of the
constant menu screwing around, the game blatantly pads out length by increasing the recommended armor score for the next main mission by a ton, every single time, like well beyond what
you would manage to get in the previous level. So it basically forces you to play whatever side mission is unlocked after finishing a stage. And, guess what? It's invariably the
same level design again, except for maybe you go
through it backwards. Wow. It feels cheap. At least that was the
problem I was having at first until I realized there's
basically no penalty for dying in this game. And each stage has equipment drops above its recommended level. So you can just skip to the next level, run around to the chest
while avoiding enemies, and you'll quickly get enough to match or exceed the recommendation
for that stage. It's cheesy, but there's also not a lot
going on in these levels. Even though they're
supposed to be based off something from various
Final Fantasy games, but most of the time, you're
not really able to tell. So just to repeat, you can literally just run through, pretty much every level of the game and avoid all the enemies if you want. There's not really anything to stop you. And there's also very
little reason not to do it. The bosses, the thing each
level's leading up to, should be a highlight. That's kind of a thing with
this type of game, good bosses. But in practice, they're annoying. These guys are built for
fighting three people at once, which means they've got a
ton of area of affect attacks that sometimes feel
like they're impossible to effectively avoid. Again, it kind of feels cheap. A lot of boss attacks come out so rapidly, and so suddenly that trying
to do much of anything without taking damage is difficult, and with this being a Souls-like game, that means these guys can
cut through your health pretty rapidly. Clarity is another major, major issue. I can't count the number of times I die without even realizing it, because a combat can so chaotic and you die from so few hits. It's sometimes hard to tell if something even hit you or not. The real issue lies in
how they tried to combine the Souls combat with an RPG. Now most action RPGs give the
player plentiful health bars because combat is so visually chaotic, but here there's just
as many special moves, constant teammate chatter
and particle effects as a Kingdom Hearts game, but now you die in two or three hits. It throws everything off
and feels very strange. All in all the levels are
mostly, incredibly easy, where you're cutting
through enemies like butter while the bosses are
frustrating roadblocks that are sometimes way more challenging than anything that can before them. Like the bosses can be a strange
difficulty spike at times. And that makes the
balances game feel way off, like to the point of being unfair. Like sometimes the bosses feel impossible and sometimes they're incredibly easy, and there is rarely
anything in between those. To continue complaining, your inventory is ridiculously small. You're pretty much have
to constantly go in and dismantle a ton of stuff, which was annoying in Nioh but like way more annoying here, because the Blacksmith feels
pretty much superfluous. You can upgrade your equipment, but there's basically no reason to when you'll just get better stuff in the next mission anyway. Another bizarre thing is the talk menu. It's pure Sonic 06 nonsense. After every mission, you can go to the menu and select talk, which sends you to a
shockingly long loading screen to get a close up of one
of the weird looking NPCs to say something totally pointless, like, "May the crystals
blessing be with you." Which shows up multiple times. Sometimes in a row. Stuff like that makes this
game look like a rush job. Also, let's say they did
that in a detailed way, in which there were many
different lines of dialogue, it still sounds weird. Like, it feels like there was originally going to be a hub area you could explore and talk to people in, but they cut it and replaced it with a much quicker to develop, but much more pointless menu. Like, I guess they took
the time to make these NPCs so they wanted to show them off, it adds nothing to the game though. And in fact, makes the game look worse. Like it feels kind of embarrassing. I don't get it at all. One last little nitpick
before we wrap up though, why is this game's final size so big? It's one of the uglier
games we've seen this year, and the final size is like
double that of Eldon Ring. It's almost as big as
Horizon Forbidden West, and I just don't know why. The levels are small. There's not a lot of unique elements. There aren't that many characters. The load times aren't short. So seriously, why is this game so large? But when you get to the point where you're complaining about file sizes, it's probably about time to sum up. The frustrating thing
about Stranger of Paradise, is that the potential for a good, or at least fun game is here. Nioh 2 is great, so we know what they can do with it, and the job system has a ton of potential, but pretty much everything
else is disappointing or unimpotrant. The story is just bad. It's unfortunately not funny-bad, because that has a level of
charm that makes it worthwhile. It is not that though, it does not have a level of charm. It is not worthwhile. It's mostly just
characters standing around and telling each other what's going on. Like, there is a truly hilarious twist for lack of a better word, near the end that has to
be seen to be believed, because of how dopey and
out of nowhere it really is. And the way the game tries
to recontextualize the story of the original Final Fantasy is lame, to put it mildly, but for various stretches
of your play time, it's just a bunch of nothing. So yeah. In our opinion, Stranger of
Paradise Final Fantasy Origin is basically just a disappointment and a big step backwards for Team Ninja. It's not all bad, I mean the game's playable, and a lot of the systems work
they put into it is good. There aren't any game
breaking bugs or anything but the boring levels,
tedious loot, blatant padding and all of the corner cutting make this game look less
like a labor of love and more of a contractual obligation. It's just not good. That's pretty much the point. - Bullshit. - [Falcon] That's all for today. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. If you like this video, click Like. If you're not subscribed,
now's a great time to do so. We upload brand new videos
every day of the week. The best way to see see them first is of course a subscription, so click Subscribe. Don't forget to enable all notifications. And as always, we thank you very much
for watching this video. I'm Falcon. You can follow me on
Twitter, @FalconTheHero. We'll see you next time, right here on Gameranx.
