Note: The pre-release trailers and even the first few hours of this game are loaded down with spoilers, though the finer details, exact sequence of events, and time some of them actually occur are the real twists of the game. As a result, especially for the moral section, I shall thus include the "obvious" spoilers where needed to explain things, while not spoiling the "real" spoilers. There is a multiplayer option I did not test because I did not have anyone I wished to cooperate with during play.


Sometimes game developers want to take a thinly written game and expand on it, hence they make a prequel or sequel that does just that. However, to avoid being a total retread of prior writing, that sequel or prequel does some weird things to make the original story make sense in a new light. Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin tries to do this to the original Final Fantasy, with some interesting if mixed results.

First, some background. The original Final Fantasy (FF1) game was a desperate last attempt to get a game off the ground by the company Squaresoft. It wound up being popular enough to spawn a franchise. That said, it's really a very thinly disguised nigh-ripoff of the first edition of the tabletop game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It was only due to some key changes to some elements they dodged a lawsuit. Outside of this, the plot was soup thin and the game had a lot of elements that begged for some expansion. Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, having been written after some side story games and material did just this, is an attempt to pencil in some of the potential blanks that led up to the original FF1.

The story of Strangers of Paradise begins when a mysterious man named Jack winds up in front of the king of Cornelia and seeks to take down the threat to the world named Chaos. Despite his mysterious reasons, the request is granted. Joining three other warriors, Jack sets out on what should be a straightforward quest to remove a great evil from the world but quickly becomes something much more complicated than it appears.

Unlike the original FF1, Strangers of Paradise is an action RPG. Specifically, it's an action RPG in the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online RPG) style, with branching skills trees, a constant need to upgrade equipment, and the ability to play solo or team up with other players. The story progresses by picking areas on a world map to proceed to and continuing to reach the end of the story. The core gameplay loop involves a LOT of dungeon crawling, interspersed with some boss fights and cutscenes to further the plot.

As an action RPG, it does have a few unique ideas. Jack has access to a technique called Soul Burst that not only lets him parry enemy moves, he can also use it to copy those moves and use them against his foes. Another thing specific to Jack is his ability to destroy his foes, generally in an over-the-top "fatality" style kill animation, which is key to earning more points to unlocking further skills and bonus rewards. Otherwise, it follows the classic pattern of running around, using various forms of attack (which can be hot-keyed to various buttons) to overcome foes to beat levels.

To add some more notes, this game, once you get past the cool visuals, has a very tedious sense of progression. You will need to upgrade equipment constantly and you practically need a spreadsheet program to optimize your characters every two minutes of play given the sheer amount of equipment drops and how the game loop is married to keeping this up to par with leveling. Given you will spend the mass majority of levels doing this sort of equipment maintenance, it really sucks a lot of fun from playing it.

Graphically, this game has a "schizo-tech" appearance, with modern clothing, characters, and other set pieces existing alongside a lot of high fantasy ones. To a degree, this was true of the original FF1, which even featured an outright orbital space station as a dungeon (though this was retconned in later ports as a castle in the skies), but the sheer clash in contrasts tends to work in favor of the setting where that is justified to some degree by certain plot details. It also fits the bizarre mood the game goes for, especially the main protagonist Jack, a man who ping pongs from using swords and spells to playing an MP3 player with modern music as an in-universe victory tune.

The music and sounds also have a schizophrenic feel, with a lot of high fantasy tracks remixed from the Final Fantasy series mixed with a lot of techno synth, gothic choir, and other modernish beats. It sets the mood and definitely fits the action RPG concept the game works with, though not too many tracks were overly memorable, at least to me. There are voiceovers in English and Japanese, though it oddly defaulted to the Japanese dub and I had to switch to English. Both dubs are quite competent, though there is a bit of cheesiness to the dialogue. Given the sheer edgelord factor the game goes for, this lends an amusingly dissonant comedy vibe to the overly serious scenes at times, though this game does have some genuinely emotional moments that have appropriate gravity as well.

This title can be played with a keyboard and mouse or any Steam-supported controller. I found an Xbox-style controller works well enough, though the keyboard and mouse are also perfectly viable options. The control scheme is a tad complicated, so I recommend finding which control style works best and sticking with it. There is key remapping, but the stock setup is learnable thanks to some in-game tutorials, and I'd avoid the hassle of relearning this all over again if possible.

The port of this game to PC is considered poor, especially due to the fact that if you cannot meet the recommended specs comfortably, you will have to turn down effects to avoid a few annoying slowdowns at odd intervals (mostly during certain graphical effects that were not optimized during the port for PC). It's going to otherwise run generally well on Windows. It can run on Linux but will require a LOT of tweaks via Steam Proton. The Steam Deck is unsupported and is likely to run poorly even if you do somehow get it to run.

The multiplayer aspect of this title is basically allowing other players to join in to help you thrash particularly difficult opponents, though this remains optional as the player can easily do so by themselves if they choose. I never bothered with this feature personally, but on the harder difficulties, it can be useful to chip down certain bosses, at least according to the information I gathered. If you do decide to go multiplayer, you'll want to have some friends you know on Steam to join in for reliable support.

Some final notes on how "canonical" this game is. Officially, it is an "alternate universe" to the original Final Fantasy. That said, in broad strokes (though not all the finer details), it works just as well as a prequel to the original FF1. In some ways, it's also parallel canon to FF1 and several other Final Fantasy games due to its story having a rather flexible and fluid relationship with time and space-warping, so it will tie into several other related games in the franchise.

Morally, this game has some issues.

Violence is going to be rather graphic. There are frequent displays of blood, though the gore is semi-censored in a stylistic fashion, with it looking like red crystalline material. This does little to hide the brutality of a lot of the violence though, especially because the violence is clearly inflicted in all sorts of ways with all sorts of weapons that leave little doubt the death was messy. For reasons relevant to the plot, the good guys must "turn evil" at some point to serve a greater good, and there is a scene where one of them is clearly murdering soldiers trying to prevent a kidnapping that leaves no doubt they are committing an evil act. For the most part, though, they spend the majority of the story turning their blades on actual evil foes.

Language is going to be very rough. The M rating means all profanity including the word f*** will be in profusion. Given the weirdly modern dialogue and mostly medieval setting save for a few parts of the game, this is going to have some weird dissonance with the writing and tone.

Sexuality is rather muted, which is odd for a game co-developed by Team Ninja, though some monsters do appear topless, albeit Barbie Doll style. Otherwise, the clothing of most female characters is rather conservative for the most part.

This is a high fantasy environment with a weird schizo-tech mix, where sorcery and high-tech (though game revelations reveal most of the former has a base in the latter) are crossed together, and there are some uses of necromantic and occult-style powers by all parties concerned. Even the protagonist cast is forced to dabble in such to serve a "greater good" at some points, so it's worth bearing this in mind.

Morally and ethically, this starts out like a generally ethical heroic story, though events in the story force the heroes to have to "turn evil" to actually allow for true heroism to take place as events will reveal. As such, it's unavoidable they will defy laws and authority figures to accomplish this goal. There are some mentions of racism against races not deemed human (which plot events reveal was unfairly engineered), though generally of the fantastical sort as well.

Overall, this is a game with some fun concepts and a decent story, albeit tethered to a hideously repetitive gameplay loop. Technically, it's generally sound and runs well provided you are above minimum specs, else it will run slowly. Morally, this is going to be pretty checkered and has a lot of mature audiences-only material. In short, if you are a die-hard Final Fantasy fan, it's interesting for the take it has on the canon of the first game, but only get it on sale, and if you can stand a gameplay loop that is super grindy.