Oh, you thought Final Fantasy I wasn't convoluted?
Well, the story... is a story. It's a prequel to the original Final Fantasy, which recontextualizes the time-loop, the fiends, Garland and the Lufenians. Necessary? Not in the slightest. I'll be frank, the five Heroes of Light are a bit shallow, and the way the story is told is a bit of a mess. Just like Final Fantasy VIII, it deals with Amnesia. On the same token, if you find an outside source to explain the story... it's not half bad. Some things, the whys, the hows, don't really make much sense, but it has a few interesting concepts... that aren't well conveyed, neither in cutscenes nor through optional text-logs. Sometimes, I don't understand why Final Fantasy just can't tell a story straight anymore. Oh, and there's blood. A lot of blood, your party will end up soaked in it after fighting living monsters.
Thankfully, I found the game to be quite fun. It's a sort of Diablo meets Dark Souls kind of thing. You play as a party of three, although you can only take control of Jack, as you go through dungeons, earning and obtaining an obscene amount of loot. No, really, you'll end up with about 40 different pieces of equipment per dungeon run, and you've five characters to outfit with it. Jack is the only character that can equip any weapon, any armor and any job, while CPU allies are limited to fewer choices. As Jack you can also have two jobs equipped at the same time, swapping them with the triangle button. Oh, and, by the by, equipment changes how every character looks, which is awesome.
Combat is quite simple: Weak attacks and Strong attacks that consume MP. Strong attacks can be customized, as different jobs unlock different attacks per weapon that you can the slot on different combo-routes(Such as R1 R2, R1 R1 R2, Hold R1 - R2). There are quite a large amount of Strong attacks per weapon, and every weapon type plays quite differently, which was pretty neat. MP starts capped off at two stocks every time you enter a dungeon, but defeating enemies with SOUL BURSTs, by bringing down their Stun Meter, will increase your maximum amount to a total of six. Some spells actually bring down this cap, and dying also lowers it. For defense, you can roll and guard, or use the Soul Shield, which can 'steal' some spells from enemies, which you can then use. The Soul Shield can block pretty much anything, but will sap meter from your own Stun gauge, making it risky unless you use it to parry attacks.
You can tell that combat takes after the Souls series, there's even a healing item that replenishes on savespots... which also respawns every enemy nearby. Thankfully, it's got a 'Story' difficulty setting that takes it down a notch, and you can even turn on Casual mode to play it in full Journalist Mode. It's what I did after I got stuck on a boss on Normal and I didn't care about 'gitting gud'. The AI is adequate for the story mode, but if you plan on tackling the CHAOS difficulty, which is the only way to get your Job levels beyond 30, you'll start noticing just how dumb they are. Still, as far as the main game is concerned, they get the job done.
I had fun with the combat system. It's pretty fast paced, and looks and sounds vicious. Battling traditional Final Fantasy enemies in real time was exciting, and it helps just how badass you characters end up looking as you get them better armor and weapons. The Soul Burst mechanic was a cool addition, as Jack's finishers are brutal and feel SO good to pull off, so you are constantly trying to work towards them, to increase your maximum MP AND to style on your enemies.
The game plays pretty smoothly. PS4 can be played in either performance or graphics mode, I went for performance, and while supposedly it strives for 60fps... it barely reaches it. I few times it even felt as if I was playing underwater for a couple of seconds. That said, it's perfectly playable, however, the game looks quite blurry, at least in Resolution Mode. I didn't care too much, I'm used to playing on the Switch, but it's something to keep in mind. It also crashed twice on me, but considering I spent a ton of hours in it, even getting the Platinum Trophy, I'd say that's acceptable. Going back to the difficulty, I felt that the post-game content was a bit unfair, as it becomes quite hard to get good equipment. Even with end-game level 300 weapons I was doing scrap damage to a few enemies, enemies that could cream me in a few hits. Thankfully, it was entirely optional.
The game itself has 15 major dungeons, each dungeon themed after a numbered Final Fantasy game, although you'd barely be able to tell that one dungeon is themed after FFVII's Mako reactor and another one after FF VIII's Ifrit's cavern. This theming was tied into the game's lore too, and I don't know what to make of that, because if you delve deeper into the ramifications... it ties into Dissidia. Which means Dissidia's whacky story is can be cannon. Oh god, no. There are also side-missions, taking place in the same dungeons. There's no overworld, instead, you pick locations from a map. You pick side-missions by pressing R1 or L1 on a location. They are not too involved, kill X amount of an enemy, kill an enemy or find something. They are alright.
I really liked Strangers of Paradise. I really don't understand why the game got such a lukewarm reception. The looting kept me hooked from start to finish, as comparing numbers to number never got old, and, thankfully, the combat never stopped being engaging, as brutalizing enemies AND getting rewarded for it was very satisfying. The story is a mess, really, but I don't feel as if that was ever a selling point.
9.0
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