Strangers in Paradise Final Fantasy Origins: Wonderful, especially regrets

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Although everyone regards the Final Fantasy series as one of the most classic masterpieces of the JRPG series. But for developer Square Enix, they obviously don't want this golden sign to be limited to one category, after so many years of accumulation, FF has a strategic simulation type of "Final Fantasy Strategy Edition", arcade fighting type of "Final Fantasy Strife", "Music Game Genre" "Final Fantasy Rhythm Theater", racing type of "Chocobo Racing"... A while ago, the chicken-eating game "Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier", although it looked a bit awkward, still attracted many players to download the game to find out.

Looking at these derivative works, there are successes and failures, but without exception, these works are all proof of se's emphasis on the FF series. Coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the series this year, it is a bit unrealistic to launch a massive canon, so SE has launched two spin-offs to support the scene, one is the racing genre chocobo GP, and the other is the action game co-developed with Glorious Tkumo, "Strangers in Paradise Final Fantasy Origins" (hereinafter referred to as SOFFO).

When it comes to SOFFO's work, it has made me feel a little delicate since it was announced: from the development level, Tetsuya Nomura came up with the idea, and Fumihiko Yasuda wielded the combat system. "FF+ Renwang" sounds a little strange, but there is always an urge to make people can't help but taste it. The development team is not stingy, the game has not yet been released to directly throw out three demo versions, a variety of questionnaires and various feedback, full of sincerity. Judging from the word-of-mouth evaluation of these three beta versions, although there is still debate about the game graphics and art effects, the game system has still received a lot of affirmation.

Thanks to the invitation of glorious Tkumo, I have gotten the official version of SOPFOO a few days ago, and after about twenty hours of bursting liver, I will bring you a review of the game with the progress of the weekly clearance. I hope to provide some references for players who love action genres or fans of the FF series.

Note: The game version is PS5.

In general --

The advantages and disadvantages of SOPFFO can be said to be like two extremes, so extreme that you can come up with any point you can say: at the moment when the PS5 function has improved so much, SOPFFO's graphic performance is still a bit tedious; the narrative "Nomura Flavor" (the creative director of this game is Tetsuya Nomura, and the script is written by Nojima Kazunari) is enough to make people not know what the game is about until the middle of the game; but the rich combination of classes and weapons has formed a deep gameplay The refreshing and solid combat brings a full sense of operation to the game at different difficulties.

Because it has such obvious advantages and disadvantages, it is difficult for me to amway from my personal point of view - even with the essence of Team Ninja's most proud ACT game, the rough appearance that does not match it at first glance will dissuade many players at first glance.

This made me suddenly realize when writing this review that although "fun" is the soul of a game, if only "fun" is left, it is a bit unconvincing.

Overall, I would only recommend it to die-hard fans of the FF series and fans of action games who are familiar with Team Ninja and prefer the higher difficulty – it is perfect for both types of players. If you're not interested in either of these things, then I don't think it's a suitable stepping stone that gives you a taste of FF's charm.

The most "heterochromatic" work in the Final Fantasy series

SOPFFO is really different from the previous FF - in the past, FF, which even cut people and was reluctant to bleed, had the "bloodiest opening animation in history" in SOFFO, which made me a little stunned when I first entered the game. Even if many "red crystals" are used to avoid over-performance in order to avoid over-performance, the blood is mixed with a suffocating black fog, which indicates that the game will "subvert the impression of FF you left in the past".

This is also true during the gaming experience. The protagonist Jack's various "brutal" execution techniques, while creating a variety of adrenaline-pumping scenes, will certainly make the old players of the series feel a little confused - the performance of dismantling arms and legs, or punching and punching enemies is not a minority in the game. If you're expecting this to be an ARPG about the light defeating evil, maybe sopho will make you feel a little hard to accept.

Speaking of the protagonist, I have never seen how the protagonist in the FF series can have such a "neurotic" character, and even the lack of character of FF8 Scool has become inferior in front of the protagonist Jack of this game. Remember when the game was first announced, he was full of "Chaos" and became a popular Meme on the Internet at that time, I thought that this might be deliberately for publicity, but I never expected that Jack in the game was still three sentences away from "Chaos".

But this is a very interesting entry point for SOFFIO - as an action game that focuses on darkness and brutality in itself, the protagonist naturally has a bit of "evil atmosphere" that is completely different from the protagonists of previous series. Although in order to avoid spoilers and not being able to tell you the story flow of this work in detail, this work does change the narrative style of the "king's way" in the past, and instead depicts a story line that continues to decline until it is doomed.

And Jack's three sentences of "Chaos" also involve a very important core setting in the game - if you have played FF1, then you will experience many elements in this game that make you understand. But in addition, you can also see many scenes from the past FF that make you very familiar in the game: the crystal tower from FF3, the Cave of Fire in FF8, the labyrinth of earth in FF12, the emmanuel water town of FF13, the royal city of FF15... Although the game subtly describes these classic works as "X space-time", the discerning person knows at a glance that this work is simply a "Final Fantasy theme park".

Although the story only shows that because "Chaos" connects these elements in time and space, when I look up the relevant text descriptions in the story, I always smell some subtle flavors conceived by Tetsuya Nomura to connect the entire FF series. But to be honest, the whole story is still very "village-like" in terms of description - everyone wants to talk and stop talking, many words are riddles, and in the first few hours it is difficult to even figure out what you are doing in this game, until the last few tasks are revealed. It's very slow and hot to play, and it occasionally makes me feel very uncomfortable.

So overall, SOPFFO obviously looks like a "sequel" work set by borrowing the FF1 worldview, but it seems to hide some foreshadowing for subsequent works, which makes it look so "different"--from the story to the battle, the special temperament emitted by the game makes people need some courage while wanting to get close.

The IP is good but the picture is bad

The reason I fell into the pit FF is precisely because I saw the title of FF8 that I still remember to this day. For a long time, when FF was mentioned, "exquisite game screen" was the first reaction of many players.

SOPFFO's positioning is a commemorative work of the 35th anniversary, and at the same time borrows the world view setting of FF1, so there is no reason for the production team to be careless. However, due to the fact that the setting of the worldview is too heterogeneous, the debate between players has been endless since the production team began to announce the game screen.

In the three demo versions, SOPFFO's graphics performance is indeed not satisfactory. In the official version, the development team still has a certain enhancement of the details of the picture, and from some close-up animations, the texture and resolution have been significantly improved compared with the past. The picture is no longer as gloomy as before, but has been brightened. In addition to the cutscenes, the footage in the battle scene still has a lot of detail and satisfactory lighting performance. However, in order to implement the "dark" story direction of this work, some scenes still seem a little too dark, especially after turning on HDR, the contrast is high, and it is quite tiring after a long time.

But even with the adjustments, SOPFFO's performance in the official version still has big problems: in the cutscenes of the real-time calculus, you can see very clearly the very blurry buildings in the background, in stark contrast to the clear foreground characters, and some of the distant object modeling also has obvious dog teeth, not at all like the 2022 release work.

To exaggerate, SOPFFO is really unique in that it can enjoy the three generations of PS3, PS4 and PS5 on the PS5 at the same time.

The PS5 version provides two modes of FPS priority and picture quality priority, as the name suggests, the picture priority is to ensure 30FPS while allowing the picture quality to reach 4Ks, but the game uses the board 4K mode, so it will still not feel very clear when experiencing on the 4K TV, and in the battle with more enemies, the FPS will have obvious instability.

FPS priority is very strange: this mode is not to maintain 60FPS throughout the process, but to maintain 60FPS in combat, and some cutscenes are 30FPS. From the actual game experience, the frame rate of the game can be called stable in battle, but in the cutscenes, there are also cases below 30FPS.

From the perspective of screen optimization alone, SOPFOO is really not excellent, and such performance is indeed difficult to leave a good "first impression" on players.

Solid combat system wins back one point

Although the first impression is not too good, after all, it is Team Ninja who made "Ren Wang", which makes SOFFO have an interesting and solid system.

In SOFFO, there is no longer a "selection command" in the series, but instead a solid action element - players need to make real-time judgments on the enemy's attacks, look for counterattack opportunities in the tense fast-paced battle, use the "attack + skill" continuous segment combination to empty the enemy's Break slot, and kill the enemy with a handsome finishing skill. Because of this, the understanding and reflection of the enemy's attack routine has become an important learning content in this work.

In the game, the character has three resources, the amount of health determines the player's survival, the magic determines the use of skills, and the other "Break" is very special: it is not the endurance slot of traditional action games that will be consumed by avoidance, but it is closely related to the character's defense ability.

Because unlike other action games, SOPFFO has two defense mechanisms, one is a normal defense, and the other is called "Soul Shield". Defense can reduce or completely resist damage by consuming fewer Break slots, but it cannot defend against some special skills, which constitute a traditional defense system with evasion; the positioning of the Soul Shield is very special, it can perfectly defend against enemy attacks and restore our mana, it can also cause flaws to enemies, and provide gaps for quick pursuit, at the cost of quickly consuming Break slots. This move also absorbs some of the enemy's magic and uses it for itself, making the battle more variable.

Whether it is defense or soul shield, when the Break slot is completely consumed, we will enter a huge hard straight range, causing a very dangerous situation. So from a tactical point of view, the soul shield seems to be a "master-oriented" skill.

In fact, soPFFO's core combat experience is reflected in the design of the "Soul Shield". The game system encourages players to use soul shields to defend against powerful enemy attacks, and normal defenses and evasion to defend against enemy normal attacks. Generally speaking, in ACT-type games, fighting with the enemy is actually a game of offensive strategy, while sopho's game risk is reflected through defense.

Whether it is defensive avoidance or the use of soul shields, we do not bear the risk of being counterattacked because of the attack, but instead observe and familiarize ourselves with the enemy's offensive routines in a relatively safe position.

Paying attention to defense does not make the battle boring, and the development team adjusts the enemy's desire to attack to a very high degree, so that the player cannot blindly shrink the defense. Most enemies in SOPFFO don't have long enough skill shakes (except for a few enemies' slow sword techniques), but they do give players plenty of time to judge, and the gaps left by enemies after using the corresponding defenses are exactly the time for players to grasp.

In SOFFIO, the gameplay of counterattacking by grabbing gaps is very refreshing. The game contains weapons and skills that allow characters to either deal high-value damage or flicker between enemies. What is more ornamental and fun is that the game also provides a design that cancels the hard straight by directly switching classes in the continuous section, for players who have mastered the game system, through the mutual switching of the two classes, they can play a very fancy combat experience: use a move of the tai knife to pick the air, followed by switching the big sword to a jump split, the game art did not bring the fashion value, the original hidden here.

FF1 is a very representative JRPG, and SOPFOO, which borrows a worldview, is not easy to incorporate ACT elements into it. Therefore, the characters in this game do not have the concept of the character level of the traditional RPG, but instead use the "profession" as an element of growth, with the combination of weapons, so that the character has more operation experience.

In the game, players can freely choose the classic classes such as the Great Swordsman, Knight, and Double Swordsman inherited from the previous games in the series, and use their unique abilities through many weapons such as large knives, axes, spears, and tai knives that are matched with the class. At first, players will be dazzled by the large and complex class choices, but in fact, in the course of the game, players will only feel the difference between weapons and specific skills, and will not have the problem of changing a new class and needing to get used to it again.

However, the unique skills brought by different classes can bring more interesting gameplay experiences to the game. The classes in the game are divided into three parts: basic, superior, and super-advanced, and through the mutual influence of the talent tree between different classes, players can unlock more advanced class content. The higher the class level, the more complex it is.

For example, the most advanced class "Destroyer" has the most powerful and classic skill in the game, "Chopping Iron Sword" (no wonder there is no summoning beast system in this game...). For mobs, it is basically a one-hit kill, but the price is that it takes a long time to charge up, and it requires certain operating skills to be flexible; and the Dark Knight's "Dark" skill, in addition to greatly increasing the damage, will consume a lot of their own health, and in addition to highlighting the characteristics of the class, it adds a lot of challenges.

Therefore, SOFFO not only carefully integrated the elements of FF into the game, but also carefully designed a unique core battle mode. Its depth is indeed worth the time of players to study, and it can also allow players who love to fight to find a "unique" game experience through a solid feel.

There are also some notable parts

However, SOFFO is still a "gear-driven" game, which leads to the inevitable "brush game" in the late stages of the game. The game unlocks a higher level of difficulty after completing the level, and in this difficulty, it can be further improved by consuming certain items for in-game levels, and the higher the difficulty, the higher the equipment level of the reward. Even if it is the same equipment, its additional attributes are random, and it is inevitable to spend a lot of time and energy to brush up on the equipment that really satisfies the player.

Equipment in the game can be disassembled and forged in the blacksmith shop, and the function of replacing attributes can be unlocked in the middle and late stages, but the material consumed also requires a lot of disassembly of useless equipment or level rewards to make up for it. The blacksmith's menu position is hidden in another menu in the screen, and you need to press R1 to switch to find out, feeling that the UI design is not reasonable enough.

Speaking of difficulty, the game defaults to three difficulty levels at the beginning, and according to my observation, the different difficulties differ only in the character's Break recovery speed, the damage of both enemies and enemies, the probability of the drop of the recovery medicine, and the number of fragments dropped for upgrade. In the simplest Story difficulty, the enemy's Break slot basically only needs half a set of consecutive sections to break, very suitable for players who have no experience in ACT games, at the cost of experiencing a deeper level of fun in the game; and in ACTION mode, there are some challenges: some boss big damage moves can knock out more than 70% of the protagonist's health at a time, forcing players to start learning to observe and avoid; and in HARD mode, a flaw on the side is basically equivalent to starting over, Quite exciting.

However, in these three difficulties, except for the "Safty" function in Story mode, the punishment for character death will only reduce the upper limit of mana points, which can be said to be somewhat gentle for other dead games.

I also tried the multiplayer combat section, and when the player enters another player's console, it will appear as the second or third character in the team, and the appearance cannot be changed. Different from the design of the player's death in the single-player mode directly from the recording point, the multiplayer mode comes with three phoenix tails, the player can be directly revived on the spot by consumption, and the recording point can also directly supplement the phoenix tail, which can be said to be much simpler.

Compared to one person swiping a copy, calling one or two friends to play together can really bring a lot of fun to the game. Due to the "equipment crushing" situation in the design of this game, and the equipment is independently dropped, it may also be a good way to find a big guy to bring a high-level book after the game is released.

You may need to pay attention to the details of God

All of the confirmation options in the game are done by pressing the touchpad and need to adapt for a while.

There is no map in the copy, and because the road design in this game is not a "one road", there are some shortcuts, so it is very painful to run.

The class cap is 30 levels, but when the highest difficulty is unlocked, some quests will drop rewards that increase the class cap, and challenging the high difficulty is essential to improve the character to the extreme.

The game can go back to the NPC dialogue in the previous chapters, but the dialogue on the PS5 takes a bit longer to load.

PS5 supports adaptive triggers, and when using some large sword skills, the trigger simulates the sense of gravity when swinging a large sword, which is more tiring, but feels very fresh.

The experience gained from killing enemies in battle is counted on the current class, so you can switch classes that do not have a full level before executing the boss to avoid waste.

Some weapons will come with special skills that can be equipped in the skill slot, but this skill will be invalidated when the weapon is removed, so please keep an eye out for skill combinations.

In multiplayer, shortcut dialogs may block the equipment bar, and you only need to press L3 to close the dialog.

When disassembling equipment, the letter at the front of the equipment represents the person who equipped it. However, one must be kept for each weapon, so when it is impossible to split a weapon, it may be because it is the last weapon of that type. At the same time, the character's initial equipment cannot be disassembled.

epilogue

As an office recognized SE boy, SOPFFO is the most wanted but less daring Amway I've ever played. Taking off the fan filter, it is indeed very interesting to play, but there are some places that still make people feel that it is difficult to say.

It is good to try a new genre and revitalize the old work, and from the perspective of results, this path is also quite right. But if SE and Team Ninja want to continue to extend this path and make everyone more satisfied in the future, they will have to work harder on development.

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