• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin |OT| Warriors of Light with Dark Souls...

Y0ssarian

Banned
Only thing I dont like since completing, is they really gatekeeped the CHAOS Difficulty endgame to extend its life
How do you get higher level gear if you've beaten the story? Apparently it goes up to 300?

Pre-launch the story got dumped on constantly. People were projecting things into it. but it turned out great and one of the best plot wise. "chaos" obsession is part of the story. though needed more of the usual FF deep character exploration
I liked it. I thought the obsession was a bit over the top in the last mission but overall the story was great. Garland is probably my favourite FF character now
 

Mr.ODST

Member
How do you get higher level gear if you've beaten the story? Apparently it goes up to 300?

So to unlock CHAOS missions you need Anima Crystals, which you get for completing them, on average you get 2 - 3 crystals per mission and a iLevel 300 mission is 400 anima crystals, luckily someone figured how to farm them quicker but will take a good 6 hour grind to get 400 crystals.
 

Y0ssarian

Banned
So to unlock CHAOS missions you need Anima Crystals, which you get for completing them, on average you get 2 - 3 crystals per mission and a iLevel 300 mission is 400 anima crystals, luckily someone figured how to farm them quicker but will take a good 6 hour grind to get 400 crystals.
Thank you
 

fatmarco

Member
Why the hell is the demo do big lol? I've put 5 hours into it so far. Amazed how much I've enjoyed this game.

Also, is there a time limit on the save transfer to the full game? I saw the demo ends on April the 19th or something?
 

wtftad

Member
Isn't the demo just the full game? I had read (either here or reddit) that if you purchase the game only downloads around 20 meg and puts a new title icon on your dash.

No time frame on transfer that I know of.

JOIN US...the CHAOS is great!

Final Fantasy Fist Bump GIF by Xbox
 

Yamisan

Member
Just ordered the game from Amazon using the buy 2 games get 1 free. Does anyone know if my save from the demo will unlock trophies that would have been earned or is it better off to just start a new save like a lot of past sony games?
 

Clear

Member
Can't understand what went through Sony's head when they decided to money hat Babylon Fall instead of this.

Would not be surprising if they've not got the main Team Ninja staff's next project locked down like they did with Nioh/Nioh2.
Don't forget that Nioh 2 shipped in March 2020 and its DLC cycle wasn't completed until ~9 months later, and then of course
there are the remasters of both it and the first Nioh for PS5 after that.

Same studio, but unlikely to be the same staff unless SoP was turned round in about a year, highly unlikely under normal
circumstances, but under Covid... no way.

As to Babylon's Fall, they probably signed it up shortly after Nier Automata's breakout success.
 

stn

Member
Just ordered the game from Amazon using the buy 2 games get 1 free. Does anyone know if my save from the demo will unlock trophies that would have been earned or is it better off to just start a new save like a lot of past sony games?
Yup. I unlocked 5-6 trophies immediately when I started the retail version.
 

Mister Wolf

Member
I really want to buy this but not at full price. They don't deserve full price with its shoddy PC performance and even lack of DLSS to make up for it.
 

Y0ssarian

Banned
I really want to buy this but not at full price. They don't deserve full price with its shoddy PC performance and even lack of DLSS to make up for it.
They just released a new patch today for ps5. Does that mean they would have done something for pc as well?
 

TheCed

Member
Why the hell is the demo do big lol? I've put 5 hours into it so far. Amazed how much I've enjoyed this game.

Also, is there a time limit on the save transfer to the full game? I saw the demo ends on April the 19th or something?

It was the same thing for DQXI.
I love the way Square does Demos.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


The Final Fantasy series is known for crafting new mechanics and iterating on those from game to game and despite being a spinoff, Stranger of Paradise continues that tradition by putting that Team Ninja action game spin on the series' iconic Job System allowing you to take on the hordes of enemies Chaos throws in your way.

You'll want to make full use of the Soul Break, intensive job system, side quests, smithy, and more if you want to make it out alive.


00:00 - Intro
00:56 - Soul Break Is Vital
02:01 - A Job For Every Season
03:15 - Starting Jobs
04:17 - Don't Neglect Side Quests
05:10 - The Smithy
 

ACESHIGH

Banned
I keep hearing good things about this game. Hopefully it's patched up on PC. Is this a JRPG for folks that have a hard time getting into the genre?

Sort of a dudebro JRPG? That would be right up my alley.
 

Y0ssarian

Banned
I keep hearing good things about this game. Hopefully it's patched up on PC. Is this a JRPG for folks that have a hard time getting into the genre?

Sort of a dudebro JRPG? That would be right up my alley.
It's more an action rpg. It is dude bro but it gets more complex than that in the later few chapters when everything is revealed. The story is actually really good. It's mostly about the journey, and then in the last few chapters the story really takes off. It'll hit you in the feels. Probably the best new game (of 2022) I'll play this year. This game is unique
 
I really want to buy this but not at full price. They don't deserve full price with its shoddy PC performance and even lack of DLSS to make up for it.
Same. Also I just got a ps5 , and picked up Demons Souls, Returnal and have Elden Ring on PC. I don't need more souls/nioh in my life yet, and not for full price.
Will pick up a few months from now when it is marked down $20-40 less.

Seems like a fun game, from what I played of the demo, but its not in anyway a next gen game. Also Don't like how you can't switch characters.
Really could of been fleshed out there and other places.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa

Azurro

Member
Soooooo, I take it the game is good? I want to support Square games and buy them at release if they are actually good. I've been hesitant with this one though.
 
I cannot get to grips with the fire fiend boss. She's so fast...
This game has strange difficulty pacing. The game will feel easy, almost mindless, then a certain boss will just be a brick wall.

I got tired of it and just treated it more like a Diablo-style game, where I constantly lowered and raised the difficulty based on what felt semi-challenging without being annoying. Once I beat a level on one difficulty, I'd raise it to a harder one later in hopes of better loot, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa

wvnative

Member
This game has strange difficulty pacing. The game will feel easy, almost mindless, then a certain boss will just be a brick wall.

I got tired of it and just treated it more like a Diablo-style game, where I constantly lowered and raised the difficulty based on what felt semi-challenging without being annoying. Once I beat a level on one difficulty, I'd raise it to a harder one later in hopes of better loot, etc.

I beat her but you seem to be right. It seems all over the place.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa

Amiga

Member
Soooooo, I take it the game is good? I want to support Square games and buy them at release if they are actually good. I've been hesitant with this one though.
Other than the obviously bad graphics the game is great. addictive gameplay loop that keeps me coming back for post-ending loot runs. I have other great games in my backlog but I still have the urge to stay in this game. the story is also great with a few pacing problems. the things people joked about in the mems will make sense.
 
I checked out the demo today. Was looking forward to this game, but I don’t understand what anyone has said about the game so far. It did not have a good first impression. Nonsense story/characters aside, the gameplay hasn’t won me over. First off, it just puts you right into battle and throws shitty Monster Hunter tutorial windows at you. Look at these bars, do the thing, press the button - good? Great now go kill Chaos.



Maybe it’s just me, but this is not like a souls game at all. I can barely tell what the hell is going on. There is very little on boarding and it’s not clear what I should be doing in combat aside from spamming hack and slash style moves in between enemy attack patterns. The game makes you want to break enemy stances but you are given almost no MP to actually do it. I usually end up killing enemies like bombs and skeletons well before their guard is broken. If your guard is broken or you die, your MP is reduced which makes it even harder to keep the pressure. Apparently there is also job switching in combat, but it’s not really clear why you would bother aside from switching to spells here and there. There’s obviously some kind of intent with all of this junk, but it just gives me the same impression Doom Eternal did: a list a million lines long saying when X happens, do Y to counter it.


I just beat Chaos Advent after a dozen tries on Action (because why name a game’s difficulty in a straightforward way when you can confuse them!). Phase 1 had a fun rhythm where dodges and parries could work, but phase 2 just seemed broken. No way to dodge the AOE effects and parrying all the hits gets your guard broken and doesn’t restore nearly enough MP to make use of your abilities. My team did most of the work in the end.


Worst of all is the loot and job system. It’s all incomprehensible nonsense. The equipment bonuses seem so insignificant and yet they drop a metric shit ton on you constantly. Same parts but with different levels, sometimes different effects or bonuses. Why?? I just auto-optimize every time because it’s way too much and almost all of its trash.


I think this is a great idea of a game and I want to love it badly, can someone address any of these points and explain to me why I’m getting the wrong impression? I have played countless souls and action games, this seems to be something entirely different and I just am not understanding.
 
Maybe it’s just me, but this is not like a souls game at all.
You're right there, it's not. It's more like old school God of War mixed with Diablo, but it also has the Nioh pedigree obviously.

Sadly, it doesn't excel as well as any of those three games. But, yeah, don't go in expecting a Souls-style game. That's a narrative fans put on it after initial impressions and it's not what the game is or is trying to be. It's an action/loot game.

As for plot, the game doesn't take itself seriously, so you shouldn't either. It's a modern take on an NES game where plots were an afterthought.

The overall story is actually pretty interesting, but really only near the end of the game (just like FF1 on NES). The characters are laughably bad. So laugh. It's the closest thing we will get to a modern Resident Evil 1. /sticks out fist for a team fist bump
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Isa

Amiga

Member
The game makes you want to break enemy stances but you are given almost no MP to actually do it.

You missed the most important mechanic. Soul Burst and Soul Shield. They are the main means of MP restoration.
Break is a stat. some combos have increased break. staggering tactic is important to keep up the break stack. enemy weakness and criticals also influence break. it's important to get the hang of it because it is the only practical way to defeat advanced bosses.

This is where the RPG part of the game comes in. you make a build best suited for the mission and boss. look for armor stats and affinity bonuses and combos that target weakness and increase break.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa
You missed the most important mechanic. Soul Burst and Soul Shield. They are the main means of MP restoration.
Break is a stat. some combos have increased break. staggering tactic is important to keep up the break stack. enemy weakness and criticals also influence break. it's important to get the hang of it because it is the only practical way to defeat advanced bosses.

This is where the RPG part of the game comes in. you make a build best suited for the mission and boss. look for armor stats and affinity bonuses and combos that target weakness and increase break.

Maybe it’s because I was sticking with the great sword, any crits end up killing the enemies before breaking them. Unless I use my MP for spinning slash, but that chugs it. I have been using soul shield a ton but the payoff has been very minimal aside from blocking purple attacks.


I got further and beat the pirate boss, he was a lot easier despite his lackey duo. Still feels like a mess of gameplay mechanics all thrown in together - is that normal?
 

Amiga

Member
I got further and beat the pirate boss, he was a lot easier despite his lackey duo. Still feels like a mess of gameplay mechanics all thrown in together - is that normal?

don't try to mix up everything, just use some of the tools for the mission at hand.
the sophisticated mechanics are needed for the higher difficulties. for Action difficulty you may not need much of them.
 

Arthimura

Member
I started playing the game yesterday. It's a shame that people thought the character designs were something akin to 2009, I don't have any problem with edgy characters and I thought it was funny Jack listening to Limp Bizkit clone on his earpods.

About the gameplay, I'm 7 hours in, on main mission 5 and doing the side-missions. Definitely easier than Soulsborne and NiOh, but that's not a bad thing, it's being a chill experience for me and not every FF fan is a Soulsborne player.

Graphics and environment interaction are pretty simple, something that could easily have been made on seventh generation consoles, but at least we can have better resolution and better framerate nowadays.

I'm not a huge FF fan, I played some games in the franchise here and there through the years, I'm sure I'm missing some references about the franchise, I'm enjoying mostly for the action RPG gameplay.
 

Arthimura

Member
I'm finding Berserker OP.

I'm playing on Action difficulty, literally just killed the Dragon Zombie boss in seconds. I used Blood Weapon + Cyclone Rush, it's break gauge is over in seconds.
 
Somebody remind the handsy perverts at Team Ninja that they promised to add DLSS to the PC release please. I want to play this game and I already bought it a few weeks back, I love Nioh and Team Ninja games in general but I don't hate myself enough to play a blurry version of it
 
Last edited:
Finally beat the game. Holy hell man, this is without question one of the best games of the year, and literally one of the best action games I've ever played in my life.

The combat system is just absolutely nuts, and such a joy to slowly master. I was only on Normal, but the ending stuff really tested my ability to adapt to different enemies, and you have so many options to try and overcome the challenges. You can play a Samurai and enter alternate stances to rushdown enemies, you can play a Knight and cast shockwave on your shield against extremely aggressive enemies so that they take break damage each time they attack. You can pull out a Thief and steal monster abilities. You can pull out White Mage and buff up the party with Regen, Haste, Protect and Shell which can completely change the course of a fight. You can pull out Evoker and get summons for minor crowd control and healing. And all that is on top of a core set of action gameplay that's right up there with Nioh in terms of blocking, attacking, and dodging unblockables. And on top of that, you start to learn when to use the counter parry and absorb MP or monster moves, or switch classes on the fly to replenish your break gauge.

And then the god damn story, from the top rope just dropping elbows on me in that finale. Reminds me of Dragon's Dogma where the first 90% of the game is just action, and then the last 10% is a blowout of totally crazy story beats that shapes your entire opinion of the game. I give it a rating of 9.5/10, and it's honestly going to go down as one of the most underrated action and FF games of all time. When people finally decide to start playing this thing, they're going to be shocked if they make it far enough to master the advanced moves and see the story play out. Absolutely shocked.

Now it looks like I can play a large post-game on Chaos difficulty which is two levels up from where I was, start farming endgame gear and get ready to face the DLC which seems to be a critical component of the story after seeing that ending. This game is fantastic. Jack is probably my favorite Final Fantasy lead ever.

jack-garland.gif


Shoutout also to Naoshi Mizuta from FFXI, FFXIII-2 fame on the soundtrack, which has a few great entries. Shoutout to Nomura who apparently is the guy who created the game concept and core story, because it's a fun and very video-gamey story that we see less and less of these days. Shoutout to Visual Works studio for the awesome CG intro cutscene. Shoutout to Team Ninja for delivering one of the best RPG combat systems I've ever played. People are going to slowly realize how wrong they were about this game in the coming years. Very slowly.
 
Last edited:

Amiga

Member
So, what's the best way to grind XP for jobs? It's pretty slow going.
- the fire bombs in the hall in the 1st mission were the quickest early farming point. copy their fireball attacks and throw them back at them and they will self destruct. save near the door and repeat. you will also get tons of equipment drops.
- remove the party members and do this solo, they will just get in the way otherwise and stop the fire bombs from casting fireballs.
- increase difficulty to boost rewards. the grind loop doesn't get harder so take advantage.

edit: sorry seems like you beat the game already. I don't remember the late game spots.
 
Last edited:
- the fire bombs in the hall in the 1st mission were the quickest early farming point. copy their fireball attacks and throw them back at them and they will self destruct. save near the door and repeat. you will also get tons of equipment drops.
- remove the party members and do this solo, they will just get in the way otherwise and stop the fire bombs from casting fireballs.
- increase difficulty to boost rewards. the grind loop doesn't get harder so take advantage.

edit: sorry seems like you beat the game already. I don't remember the late game spots.
Yeah I'm at gear level 295 now but have a ton of jobs to level up. I might just start going for anima crystals. I did get my gear up at the exact spot you mentioned though!
 
Finally! Gotta give this game another chance. Performance was quite poor on my end, so hopefully this update allows me to finally be able to enjoy this cool game.
I HIGHLY recommend sticking with it. It's kind of like Dragon's Dogma in that all the story is packed at the end.

The combat is fantastic once you get used to it. Took me a while to really pick up on some of the best ways to use class abilitiies because there are quite a few.

My advice is to just get used to using the available tools for sorting all the excess gear. 1) Quickly pick the best stuff for your slots that you want to equip following a mission. 2) Lock stuff you want to keep maybe for later (on the item menu, not equip menu). 3) Hit select all and dismantle all so you're not doing that over and over and over. You can sort gear in about 2-3 minutes this way. It's one of the only downsides is that this part is a little tedious. In the systems setting menu they also added a auto-dismantle option. Up the level minimum on that as you progress and it saves you time.

Things that are huge in this game that are not in Nioh as much, hitting enemies in the back is a critical hit every time. Huge damage bonus. Exploit elemental weaknesses, and change which combo finishers you're equipped with when certain enemies become common (you can combo finish with an element sometimes). Use your teammates if you're getting bodied, left / right on dpad on PS5. There's little tricks I've found for many of the classes that are extremely fun. My favorite classes so far are White Mage, Pugilist, and Knight, and they play completely differently. Also huge is that your break gauge refills slowly because they want you to switch classes frequently. When you hop to your 2nd class, you get a 2nd break gauge, so if you miss your counter or have to block a lot, switch to get a fresh fatigue bar.

If you're getting smashed on bosses, you have lots of options to rethink strategy: leveling, gearing up, changing combos equipped, changing classes, and bosses also have lots of hidden weaknesses or specific strategies that are effective. I've found that using my brain and trying to rethink strategy suddenly had me doing a lot better when I got stuck.
 
Last edited:

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
I HIGHLY recommend sticking with it. It's kind of like Dragon's Dogma in that all the story is packed at the end.

The combat is fantastic once you get used to it. Took me a while to really pick up on some of the best ways to use class abilitiies because there are quite a few.

My advice is to just get used to using the available tools for sorting all the excess gear. 1) Quickly pick the best stuff for your slots that you want to equip following a mission. 2) Lock stuff you want to keep maybe for later (on the item menu, not equip menu). 3) Hit select all and dismantle all so you're not doing that over and over and over. You can sort gear in about 2-3 minutes this way. It's one of the only downsides is that this part is a little tedious. In the systems setting menu they also added a auto-dismantle option. Up the level minimum on that as you progress and it saves you time.

Things that are huge in this game that are not in Nioh as much, hitting enemies in the back is a critical hit every time. Huge damage bonus. Exploit elemental weaknesses, and change which combo finishers you're equipped with when certain enemies become common (you can combo finish with an element sometimes). Use your teammates if you're getting bodied, left / right on dpad on PS5. There's little tricks I've found for many of the classes that are extremely fun. My favorite classes so far are White Mage, Pugilist, and Knight, and they play completely differently. Also huge is that your break gauge refills slowly because they want you to switch classes frequently. When you hop to your 2nd class, you get a 2nd break gauge, so if you miss your counter or have to block a lot, switch to get a fresh fatigue bar.

If you're getting smashed on bosses, you have lots of options to rethink strategy: leveling, gearing up, changing combos equipped, changing classes, and bosses also have lots of hidden weaknesses or specific strategies that are effective. I've found that using my brain and trying to rethink strategy suddenly had me doing a lot better when I got stuck.
Thanks for all the advice! I really appreciate it. :)

Already played a bit of the game on release, I think up to stage 3 or so, but decided to drop it due to the poor performance. I was liking it a lot up until that point; gameplay, story and music were all very enjoyable.

I was playing on hard mode and, while the normal enemies weren't too difficult most of the time, bosses were giving me a lot of trouble. Wasn't aware of the critical hits when attacking from behind nor about having two break gauges, so yeah... thanks about that! I'm sure I'll do better now.
 
Thanks for all the advice! I really appreciate it. :)

Already played a bit of the game on release, I think up to stage 3 or so, but decided to drop it due to the poor performance. I was liking it a lot up until that point; gameplay, story and music were all very enjoyable.

I was playing on hard mode and, while the normal enemies weren't too difficult most of the time, bosses were giving me a lot of trouble. Wasn't aware of the critical hits when attacking from behind nor about having two break gauges, so yeah... thanks about that! I'm sure I'll do better now.
I played on Normal honestly, and lots of parts got challenging. I was happy with that difficulty level.

The game has a very large endgame for optional grinding and difficulty increases (mostly replaying stuff at much higher levels). After beating the game, all my jobs were capped at 30. Now I'm playing on Chaos difficulty and trying to grind all the jobs up much higher level and get ideal gear. To play the DLC you can only play on a new Bahamut difficulty, which is Hard+3 basically. (Hard, Chaos, Bahamut).

I'd suggest Normal until beating the game, but you can switch it back and forth anytime. You get increased rewards on higher difficulty, and the endgame stuff you can freely jump between difficulty levels on the fly to try and go for higher rewards.

Also enemies have damage type weakness in addition to elemental weakness. The most obvious one is undead / skeletons are weak to both blunt, and holy type damage. Monk / WHM dominate there. Bats are weak to pierce.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom