Finished
FF Origin - Stranger in Paradise aka Jack & Chaos buddy game. Took about 22 hours on normal with about half the sidequests done along the way.
Despite the jokes, this was a damn good technical character action game. The stages are fun and there's a lot of build variety like Dark Souls, there's a good # of stages and each has a boss fight and almost all of the bosses are real good and a really technical dance of parrying, dodging, blocking and getting hits in.
This is a game where if you get over-eager, you get dead. It plays
a lot like DMC's Royal Guard and Sekiro boss combat. Very technical reacting to boss moves. One reason is that unlike a lot of character action games you can't parry/dodge instantly out of an attack animation. Once you attack you're committed and boss moves (and even normal enemies) come out FAST. So doing a 3 hit combo is likely to have the boss do a move by the 3rd hit and murder you for 75% of your HP and maybe guard crush to finish the one-shot. Better to get a couple hits in unless you know it's safe.
On the offense you get like 30 different playing jobs with their unique abilities, like 6-8 weapon types with their own combo enders you can set. And a whole ton of instant abilities that you can fire off if you have MP (which you gain from hits or successful parries). The job types & instant ability (called command abilities) shuffling is basically the meat & potatoes of creating your own style for dungeons/bosses while reacting defensively.
On normal, the game is pretty hard. It was definitely the hardest action game I've played since Sekiro. Bosses took me about 15-30 mins on average with the final boss taking about an hour to get down. It's really just learning patterns and figuring out good offensive strats. Real satisfying stuff.
Dungeons are a lot of fun for experimentation of different jobs. I used all the jobs by the end and some clicked and some didn't click at all. Lotta fun useful jobs in there. There's some quality dungeon designs in there too like the FF12 stage.
The story was fine. Like if you compare it to similar games in the genre (DMCs, Bayonettas, NGs, etc...) it's got a better story than most of those
It's not a lengthy story filled with tons of cutscenes, but it's a story and there are cutscenes and Jack basically smacks down jrpg tropes for a lot of it. Jack isn't Dante or Bayonetta, but he's a solid lead character. Ending is good.
Oh and the story is crazy like KH style Nojima twists and turns plot.
The graphics are fine, feels like playing a PS3 From Soft game, maybe PS4. Runs mostly 60fps on PS5 but drops all around but doesn't really effect the gameplay much. Sometimes it feels cheap like input lag kills you but it's usually just you were committed to an attack animation and that's why you died. Being unable to break out of attacks defensively makes the game a lot tougher than most character action games, but it also just makes it a more technical combat of being defensively aware of what's going on and not mashing.
Music was ok. You get to go through stages from every FF game in existence, but you barely recognize any of the tunes because they only use a few chimes and it's mostly original music.
English dub VA is great. I always play Japanese games in Japanese audio, but English just fits Jack better here.
Honestly, as an action game I'm real satisfied. I think this is a better character action game than Bayonetta 2 and MGR and is about on par with DMCV and less good than like the old school greats of DMC3/NG:B/Bayonetta 1. The one difference is it's not combo heavy and instead focuses more on weaknesses with all the FF elements and enemies having elemental weakpoints.
As an FF spinoff, it's probably one of the better ones and it's not Dirge of Cerebus crappy game. This one actually plays well and the story is fine. But it's also not super FF fanservice-y like World of FF or Chocobo Racing or Theaterhythm. Yeah the jobs and enemies are from FF, but it feels 75% like an original action game, 25% like FF fanservice dressing.
I'd actually say the game isn't super recommendable to people who just like FF, but it's highly recommendable to people that like technical action games even if they couldn't give a shit about the FF franchise. It has some Souls stuff, but the Souls DNA is a very small part like Sekiro so I wouldn't say it's necessarily for Souls fans. A lot of people coming from Elden Ring were having trouble with it in the Era thread because it's more a technical character action game which is a pretty different genre.
I love technical character action games though, so this is one of the best games I've played so far in 2022 and best action game since Sekiro. Very much was worth full price and I'll pick up the DLCs when they come out for more bosses and whatever crazy alternative ending stories they tell.
4 random geared goofy parties out of 5
Better game than Horizon 2.
