After testing and completing the demo available on PS5, we can say that Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is not as bad a game as it seems from its trailer, but it does present many playable and above all technical aspects that need to improve a lot if you want to attract your potential audience.

If it is true that I like to say that E3 is memes and megatons, one of those that falls into the first category and leaves us with this edition has been the trailer for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin . So much so that even Square-Enix itself has been forced to jump on the parody bandwagon and post an energetic CHAOS on its social media, in what is one of the least elegant and most repetitive trailers I can remember in a long time.

But here is the script “twist”: the game is not bad. The fact that the demo was added to the CHAOS because it did not work at its launch did not leave us with any impressions of it. Now that it’s been published and I’ve had a good time, defeating what seems like a first form of Garland trying to become CHAOS, I can say that the soulslike mechanics proposed by Team Ninja are interesting and manages to blend them well with the Final universe. Fantasy.

First of all, you can see the DNA of Team Ninja. I don’t know if it will be the same team that Yasuda and Hayashi led, but anyone who has played Nioh will be able to spot certain systems that work the same way: from the quirky dodge to the deep, albeit somewhat demanding inventory management with a lot of equipment that we collect from enemies. It works because it is still a combat that forces us to read enemy patterns and attack accordingly. If I had to sum it up, it would be a game similar to Nioh with Sekiro’s stance barand the Final Fantasy job system. Still, there is a lot to polish. Anyone who has put tens or hundreds of hours on the Nioh will spot recycled animations and the game seems obsessed with trying too many mechanics rather than perfecting the most interesting ones.

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The job system has been implemented really well and it does not fail to answer one of the questions that I have asked myself the most lately in the Souls and Soulslike: why choose only one class? Why not be all? In Final Fantasy Origin (forgive me for using this name more than Stranger of Paradise, which still sounds very strange to me) we can create different builds, wizard, warrior, dark wizard, spearman or dragon, for example, and select two in a quick shortcut to change instantly .

These classes not only allow us to alter our style of play, but to enhance the opponent’s weaknesses.The classic Fire Bom from the Final Fantasy series will not do much damage with swordsmanship, but if you switch the mage and use your elemental mace as well as water spells, you can make it stiff in a matter of seconds. In addition, the stability bar is there for those who want to take advantage of this strategic component of weaknesses because, when we exhaust the opponent’s, we can use the circle button to execute a final blow (the one that turns them into crystals) and finish it with a stroke of the pen . Of course, here comes another of the problems that we hope will improve for the final game, and that is that sometimes the control is not the best. Enemies are difficult to face at times, while parry works well with normal attacks, but is too difficult to execute against elementals.

Of course, as in Sekiro, we also have our own stability bar and when it breaks we will be completely sold, although with a possibility of recovering. This will be taught by CHAOS more than any other rival: the final boss of the demo is a before and after in terms of the difficulty of this test. While the rest of the way is quite affordable, Garland will give us a good chop until we learn all the mechanics that the game ravages for trying to teach us.

I’ve learned to play Final Fantasy Origin the hard wayCome on, I’ve learned to play Final Fantasy Origin the hard way: the tutorial teaches us through the game how simple and through paragraphs how complicated, and this means that you do not finish mastering techniques that will be very useful against CHAOS. The most essential of all is that quick guard that acts as a parry. In the first phase of combat is when you realize how well measured this confrontation is, allowing you to make the right attacks so that you end up covering yourself at the last moment, nail the parry and continue attacking; in a combat that, when everything goes well, is practically a rhythmic game. Of course, all this if you decide to fight in melee, since with a CHAOS magician it can be as easy as playing Demon’s Souls with spells, but above having two invocations that distract the boss.

The second phase is another song and CHAOS goes crazy. I still do not know how I managed to pass it, because it is, worth the redundancy thanks to the trailer, a bit chaotic. Garland launches attacks from all elements and some still don’t know how they stop. But here comes the matter: this game has a difficulty selector.Something that both the From and Soulslike games seemed to deny. I have had a normal time and even so I think they have had a little time with the boss, but it is also true that Team Ninja always makes very punishing alphas and betas (I still remember the Nue from the alpha of NiOh). This will probably open up the debate (again) on whether or not these games should have difficulty modes. In addition, we will not go alone, but we will walk this path of revenge with two colleagues who, although they are there a bit to harass and distract, the truth is that they do not have the best artificial intelligence that we have seen.

So far things have gone more or less well. With its glitches that could be polishing, Final Fantasy Origin could end up being an interesting game. What happens is that, honestly, I don’t know if they will have time. Because they have the role of improving what is, with all the letters, a pretty ugly game.In the generation of PlayStation 3 it would not even have been one of those that offered a normal graphic invoice. The scenes are very little detailed and have such dark areas that even raising the range you will be able to see absolutely nothing. Everything, of course, with those gray filters of the time that sometimes make it an almost monochrome game. Even played on PS5, the game behaves uneven both in resolution, as it looks somewhat blurry, and in an unstable frame rate. Something that yes, can be understood more by its alpha state.

Final Fantasy Origin is going to be one of those case studiesThe thing is, Final Fantasy Origin is going to be one of those case studies. First, because its poor presentation and that stumble in the publication of the demo have resonated more than its playable qualities. The story, both in the trailer and in the conversations of the game, is quite deficient: monothematic until saying enough and with no apparent intention of telling you anything more than a supposed and very heartfelt revenge against guess who. Even so, I think he also has to outline something of his response to command, but there is so much, so much, so much to tweak in the graphic that they would have to urgently review the entire technical section. Because yes, a minimum of graphic elegance matters, and it will be key to attracting players more than wearing Final Fantasy in the title. And without those minimums,It is possible that people can get to lose what is a game that, for the moment and in its mechanics and work systems and inventory, do not look bad. Hopefully they fix it, because I’m looking forward to killing CHAOS.