companions are too often begging to be replaced with real-life co-op partners, magic often feels less satisfying than melee, and some of the hit detection in this game is straight-up bad. Mind you, I’m not saying that the game’s combat is perfect. Some are ultimately better than others, but even repeated finishing blows almost always feel like the perfect way to end yet another intense fight. It also must be said that Stranger of Paradise’s Mortal Kombat-like finishing moves are almost always satisfying to witness. While it’s a little disappointing that Stranger of Paradise‘s loot system often boils down to you hitting the “optimize” button and moving on with your life, I do think that the game does enough elsewhere to encourage you to constantly consider a variety of playstyles and builds. Yes, you can ultimately pick your favorite Job, weapon, and strategy and rely on them for much of the game, but the fact that you almost always feel the need to experiment with everything available to you without the game outright forcing you to do so is a true accomplishment. I was shocked by how often I found myself swapping between the game’s 27 (!) available Job classes as well as the various spells, items, and A.I. This game offers you a ton of tools to use during combat sequences, and you’re almost certainly making things harder on yourself if you don’t at least experiment with all of them. Ultimately, though, it’s the variety of Stranger of Paradise‘s combat that makes it so special. There’s a rhythm to the whole thing that you don’t usually find outside of…well, rhythm games. That system makes every attack feel significant and ensures that you’re constantly engaged in even the simplest combat sequences. A well-timed block or Soul Shield activation will allow you to negate, deflect, or even absorb quite a lot of damage in this game, which means that you quickly need to become comfortable with reading a combat situation on the fly and learning to react appropriately. What makes that approach work as well as it does here are the ways that the game encourages you to play defensively without actually slowing down. It’s certainly not as fast as the combat in a Devil May Cry game, but you will still often find yourself looking for ways to stay on offense. While you’ll occasionally find yourself relying on the classic Soulsborne tactic of strafing around/blocking an enemy while you study their attack patterns and look for an opening, Stranger of Paradise generally encourages a more aggressive style of play. People have compared Stranger of Paradise’s combat to Dark Souls ever since the game was little more than a rumor, but that comparison falls apart pretty quickly once you actually play the game. Ultimately, though, it’s a kind of “so bad, it’s good” game that we’ve never really seen before and may not see again for quite some time. In many other ways, it’s an unspeakably bad game. In some ways, it’s a legitimately good game. That’s what makes Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin so special. Games that fall so far into “bad” that they somehow end up landing closer to “good” are rare. Games like Deadly Premonition, Metal Wolf Chaos, and Harvest all arguably belong in that category, but most bad games are just fundamentally unenjoyable experiences that are fun to mock. When it comes to gaming, though, it’s always been tougher to find proper “so bad, they’re good” titles. As that designation suggests, they’re movies that make it genuinely hard to answer the seemingly simple question “Is it good?” From canonical classics like Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Room to deeply flawed gems like Miami Connection and Samurai Cop, the best “so bad, they’re good” movies are more than simple guilty pleasures.
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