Stranger of Paradise Review

What does killing Chaos actually entail anyway

Stranger of Paradise is a bizarre little final fantasy spinoff. Taking heavily as I'm told from Nioh's gameplay in order to make an experience akin to Diablo or any other ARPG. With classes, skills, buffs, builds, scaling content and endless replayability. But... It never really markets itself as such until you hit the 2nd DLCs worth of content.

It's a little hard to describe SoP's moment to moment gameplay. As much like any good loot em up the actual gameplay loop will vary based on your build. However, for the most part, it plays like a fast-paced Soulslike. With dodges, blocks, parries, heavy attacks, stagger, elemental effects and buffs and debuffs all bouncing around in the midst of relatively hectic combat encounters.

However, as my friend Dagda would put it, the real meat and potatos of an ARPG isn't the gameplay. It's combining a specific subset of skills, gear, and buffs to create a pure unstoppable killing machine. In my own case, I gravitated toward the Paladin class. Which gave me a HP restoring attack at the cost of mana drain, with buffs to my damage output at max HP. Unlocking the Ultima variant of the class added universal bonus damage while near death. Ostensibly to up HP gain and aid survivability Instead, I equipped gear that granted me the Dark Knight buff to have near death effects always active. Which means that the bonus damage at Max HP was ITSELF being buffed by the bonus damage while near death...

All of that is, of course, only scratching the surface. I haven't even gotten into the 99,999 floor infinite dungeon which adds usable items, upgradable buffs, random effects and even more powerful loot that one could easily spend hundreds of hours on. The game feel is insanely solid and it's very easy to play this game all day without getting tired of it. Honestly, I'd recommend it for all that alone. Even if it takes a 20 hour campaign before you start getting the crazy stuff, it does at least give you a chance to get comfortable with the classes and systems.

Lastly, there's the story.... It's utter insanity on par with anything Kingdom Hearts has cooking and apparently has ties to Dissidia's lore? I genuinely have no clue but it's fine standalone so long as you know of Dissidia at the very last. Really, the entire story is carried by Jack, the bullshit limp-bizkit blasting murder hobo that exists as a bit of a meme unto himself. When I started the game, and really didn't understand what was happening yet. I described Jack as a bully who got told Final Fantasy lets him kill Chaos and be a hero, and became the sort of player who skips dialogue and just plays to murder bosses and get stronger. An excellent gag of a character that could carry me through the game.

When all was said and done, the funny thing is that none of what I just described ever stopped being true. Instead it evolved and was elaborated on in a way that felt entirely natural yet intriguing nonetheless. You don't get to the end of the game and go "aww, Jack was a sweetheart after all." You get to the end and go "damn, that bully really did enjoy Final Fantasy once he got into it." He's legitimately one of my favourite protagonists in any FF game, and I think I'm not alone in loving him well beyond any mere memes.

He will beat up Chaos and take his lunch money

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