Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin | Critical Consensus
Danielle Partis
News Editor
Tuesday 15th March 2022
When Square Enix and developer Team Ninja showed a first look at Stranges of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin last year, it received a mixed response from fans and onlookers, and a similar sentiment is reflected in the range of scores for this new action RPG, released today.
Stranger of Paradise is not a prequel to any of the mainline Final Fantasy games, it's more of a spin-off set in the same world that serves as an explanation to the series' recurring time travel theme, featuring some familiar characters.
The game follows a new group led by main protagonist Jack, better known as Garland, the original boss of the first Final Fantasy. The plot follows Jack's mission to kill Chaos, also an early enemy of the series.
As of writing, Stranger of Paradise has a Metacritic score of 72, made up of an eclectic mix of reviews from critics spanning the top and bottom of the scales.
One of the higher scores came from Jada Griffin at IGN, who, in an 8/10 review, called the game "a love letter to its own source material, filled with references and homages' to the series' history that seem designed to give fans of any Final Fantasy something to enjoy."
A more middling review came from Gamesradar; in a 2.5/5 review, Jon Bailes said that "Stranger of Paradise is not entirely awful but, like Jack, it's alarmingly rough and unrefined."
On the lower end, Oisin Kuhnke at NME wrote in their 1/5 review that "a grand ode to Final Fantasy it is not, and it fails to appeal to the JRPG lover in me on most counts."
It's Jack's job to kill Chaos. It's the player's job to find out what Chaos is.
While opinions were varied, one aspect of Stranger of Paradise that resonated for the better was its combat.
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