“I'm here to kill Chaos.” In the history of Final Fantasy’s numerous spin-off titles, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is certainly one of the strangest conceptually. Set before the events of the original Final Fantasy, Stranger of Paradise is a prequel nearly 35 years later with entirely different gameplay to boot. Helmed by the ever-ambitious Tetsuya Nomura and series veteran Kazushige Nojima along with a beautiful score by Naoshi Mizuta, Stranger of Paradise’s development by Team Ninja might’ve come as a surprise for many but after finishing the game, I’m glad to say their style is more than welcome. It only makes sense that Nomura’s “story of an angry man” has the gameplay intensity to match it and given Team Ninja’s work with the Ninja Gaiden series and more recently, the Nioh series, it feels like a perfect fit.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is experimental, unrelenting, and chaotic to say the least. But more than that, Stranger is ambitious in its attempts to connect itself to the world of Final Fantasy and while disjointed in the presentation of its story, somehow manages to wrap it all up in a way that’s unlike anything I’ve witnessed in the series
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