Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is the best dumb game I’ve played in years

polygon.com:

The first 15 minutes ofStranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin swerve from a cutscene in which a monstrous armored figure murders knights and kidnaps a princess to a six-headed dragon on a spaceship. And it’s only getting warmed up.

The protagonist, Jack, then walks through a dreamy field of golden wheat as Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” plays. After that, the scene cuts to Jack (Jack, not the Chairman of the Board) meeting two other dude-bros in a medieval town, and the three decide to go adventuring together — because they all have the same kind of rock in their possession.

It’s a fever dream of a beginning, and the fact that this all is packaged within an intense and, at times, fiercely difficult action RPG makes it feel all the more delirious. From the very start, Stranger of Paradise had me reeling.

Team Ninja, the Koei Tecmo subsidiary responsible for the Nioh series, teams up unexpectedly with Square Enix as one of the creative forces behind this Final Fantasy spinoff. Stranger of Paradise doesn’t use the turn-based combat for which the Final Fantasy series is known, nor is it even semi-turn-based like Final Fantasy 7 Remake. This is a full-on souls-like, with tough-as-nails bosses that you have to take down with old-fashioned melee strikes.

Stranger of Paradise’s gory, dark, and difficult aesthetic had me battling my way through labyrinthian levels seething with monsters. As a Final Fantasy fan, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for this. But despite Team Ninja’s dense action-gameplay loop, I still found the combat approachable. Paired with its scattered story and absurd character moments, its velocity was more than enough to make me hoot and howl throughout my rollicking playthrough.

The combat will make you feel as