When it was first unveiled back in June of last year, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, got a less-than-warm welcome. However, in spite of that, character designer Tetsuya Nomura gave an explanation of how developer Team Ninja is changing up the formula for a new age, such as tone. As Nomura stated in the Play Magazine Australia:
“For SOPFFO, because we were showing everything from the point of view of Garland, we were able to take on the challenge of depicting things in a darker way–which you can’t really do in a Final Fantasy game–even though the details remain the same as the classic narrative.”
Protagonist Jack Garland immediately gained meme status when the game was unveiled for his deep voice and his Warhammer-level hatred of Chaos, but looking past surface appearances, the game has a great deal of the depth to it thanks to a wide variety of jobs and mechanics (even combining jobs), as explained by Nomura.
“I believe having depth in the combination of character builds and changing jobs in real-time has led us to create a game that feels like Final Fantasy, and which is a new style of game compared to games like Nioh.”
Team Ninja is best known for its Ninja Gaiden series, a punishingly difficult series of action games that have only found a new home in the Nioh series. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin feels like another such game for them, but using its mechanics to overcome the difficult bosses feels more like classic Final Fantasy, according to Fumihiko Yasuda, the game’s co-producer.
“You may not believe me, but our goal as Team Ninja isn’t to make games difficult. We just want players to feel a sense of achievement when they complete the game.”
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin isn’t geared to be difficult by default, either. There are multiple different difficulties you can pick to play the game how you want (even a casual mode!), and there’s even multiplayer, so you and a group of friends can all tackle Chaos or any other boss together.
But you’ll be able to see just how different the game is from the original Final Fantasy when this game launches on March 18, exclusively for the Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.