Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Review 

►► Thanks for watching the review everyone! I know I haven't done a "new game review" in some time. How do you feel about these? Are they still worth seeing on the channel, or do you prefer the usual comedic 'ProJared' stuff? ► It would mean SO MUCH to me if you subscribed to my Second Channel!! --> bit.ly/3DbtqU9 ►► In case you missed it, I also discussed the Pixel Remaster games!! --> bit.ly/3tF8EsW ► Again, thank you for being here. It means a lot.

“Jack’s personality can be described as the kind of guy who rips his shirt off when he takes a shit” Nice

Jack is unironically the most Chad FF protagonist we've ever had.

This is one of the few games where I switched back to English voices. It's not like I had an issue with the Japanese audio track -- albeit, the subtitles don't match with the audio since the subs are geared to the English audio -- but the English track just had that meme quality that I wanted from the story/dialog in the game.

"The kind of guy who rips his shirt off when he takes a shit." Wtf Jack Garlond sounds like a badass.

AI partners are extremely useful, especially on hard. There have been multiple times due to my MP and health situation where it was much more beneficial to just hang back and let them take care of enemies, and they do a pretty solid job of it most time. Especially Ash, who becomes nigh unstoppable in terms of break damage later in the game. You can set it so that you don't auto pick up loot, and also so that you don't pick up loot that's not above a certain rarity level. You did yourself a disservice not playing on Hard mode in singleplayer.

Completed the game and currently going through Chaos mode rn. Gotta say I agree with Jared's take. I will say though that as far as story goes, at least for the last bit, regardless of how cheesy it is it still hit pretty hard.

This is a pretty fair review imo. A gear "glamour" system would have been greatly appreciated. FF jobs have such iconic looks and while those looks are there (from what I've seen so far), most of the way through you're likely going to be wearing some random assortment of gear cobbled together.

Love the oldstyle ProJared reviews returning!

Basically, really fun combat everything else is so wack. I personally do love how campy the story and delivery is. The hallways get really repetitive after the first time. but really the boss fights are really engaging and the combat is really fun

For those having issues with enemy AI, do not let Sophia leave your party and set her as a black mage and then sage when she has access to it, she will automatically cast the most recent spells you did and heals you, plus she will sometimes cast ultima which deletes bosses. She damn near soloed the zombie dragon for me lol

This game's tone is everything i love,every single cutscene with jack in it was a joy

You don’t have to micromanage the inventory. There’s a setting for auto-dismantling equipment below a certain level, which I would just update periodically. That, along with the button that just automatically equips all of your guys with the best equipment you own, takes away the need for micromanaging your equipment

Depending on the weapon a perfect guard is better than the soul perry mainly because the negation of all damage while at the same time following up with an immediate attack that does damage and break gauge damage

This game turned out much better than I had imagined.

That last "Are you Chaos?" killed me, lmao 🤣

I enjoyed watching you and your friends play. The over-the-shoulder footage in this video during your summary monologue was a nice touch!

Thanks for making this! The amount of detail you go into is much appreciated.

Haven't played this game yet, so I really wonder what twist is there for our friend Jack Garland. Anyway, whatever it is, I'm sure he'll knock it down. EDIT: People, I think we all know what the plot twist is from just the premise alone. You don't need to actually discuss it.

The touch where each level is taken from another FF was nice; the first dungeon, I went "Huh... this looks a lot like Sastasha from FFXIV" ... then another had music I swore was from FFX with the weather mechanic. I started to recognize the tunes first then the levels dawned on me. As for the loot game, I wish the gear was more "FF styled" ... I can't help but feel that most of the gear, especially armor, is just stuff repurposed from Nioh. Never once did I feel like playing a Paladin or a Dragoon would have a working, matching set of armor along with it. Combat-wise though, I feel the game is a tad too fast in the wrong way. Where you're supposed to react to enemy attacks, named attacks aren't much of a problem but regular attacks are very hard to read and you can often end up getting hit by one enemy then stun-locked by another that goes through a regular attack. Bosses aside, I think most of my deaths / KOs were from regular attacks. And like you, I played co-op through most of it since the NPCs are braindead stupid and in singleplayer, if you go down, you have to redo a whole section of the level since the last "cubes" instead of having access to either revival by ally or Phoenix Downs ... which is a mechanic that works in Souls game and Nioh but feels oddly out of place here.

Happy Chaos: Whoa, hold on... am I in the wrong game? Jack: There's Chaos! Get him!

The way you descrived the plot and writing is exactly what i was hoping for. Schlock. Glorious glorious schlock

AI companions do a lot of carrying in solo hard/chaos mode. You just gotta gear them right/activate them at an optimal timing.

Great review jared! I've loved the content you've posted these past 3 weeks, keep it up!

The inventory management would have been soooo much easier if there was just an option to sort by job affinity. Not affinity level but per job. I had also hoped you would have touched on how loot works in multi-player. Is it a shared pool, or does every player get their own loot?

I still love it when the chaos aspect fight close to the beginning of the game because the chills down the spine I get when I hear the chaos aspect shout “know when you’re beaten!”

"No matter how much I *P U N C H C H A O S* , I can never escape the pain" -Jack Garland

It's been a long time since I've seen a new game review from you, Jared. You're in fine form; keep these coming!

Every time you come out with a new video I get really excited. You're the only youtuber that covers FF. Thanks!

Worth mentioning that you can sort loot by rarity at least so you can massively truncate the amount of loot you get.

As a long time fan of FF and probably one of the very few who actually really like Garland. I was so surprised when they announced a spin-off focused on him. All I'm going to say, I really REALLY like how they portrayed him here as well as his design. It's the best. As a FFI fan, story was as expected lackluster but gameplay is honestly a lot of fun. Not the best spin-off let alone best FF game by any means, but some things I really enjoyed.

Please keep making review videos like this, I miss this style of content so much.

Now all I need is another one minute review and I can finally die happy.

I am playing it now, I loved nioh, the gameplay is where it’s at. The story is stupid fun and great.

I gotta disagree with the ai not being helpful. I’ve had many situations where they took the heat off me when I was close to death and where they’ve helped deal some serious damage to bosses when I really needed it.

really love your reviews

One of the best spin offs I've ever played

please keep doing reviews. Even your 1 minute reviews would be great :D

Weird, I actually felt that the ai was TOO useful. My run was on hard, and I've had several times where they would either finish an engagement for me or end up doing tons of damage to a boss while I was healing.

nice to see you doin more videos on your main channel again.

Did not know how well the flow is but will have to check it out if I know anyone else playing. Really enjoy the playthroughs and these reviews. Nicely done indeed! Cheers!

I love the game. My only gripe is the 4 second stunlock mechanic. In later levels I'd be hit once from some attacks and it would knock me down for like 4 seconds and id be vulnerable. I had to lower the difficulty and that seems to have helped. I stopped worrying about changing my gear too often until the level is over and that doesn't seem to have put me at a disadvantage.

Nioh and Final Fantasy are two of my favorite franchises and I'm loving this game so far. I hope they give it the Nioh treatment and give it tons of great DLC.

Awesome review! I really loved the tv in the background while you spoke, it reminded me of the tvs with infinite ads in a gamestop that sometimes had something cool XD

I see a lot of people criticizing the story, but I honestly really liked it. I thought it was an interesting story about how someone decided to change the system even though the system was designed specifically so that he wouldn't be able to change it. It also did a good job of turning Jack from a goofy one note meme to a character that you actually would root for, and (in my case) sympathize with. I have never played FF 1( I've never actually beat any FF game), but after completing this, I'm planning to buy the pixel remaster.

It would be awesome to see you do a top 10 Final Fantasy spin offs as I'd love to hear what you think about some of the others :)

you know, i might be alone in this, but man do i miss his old style of outro's... "That's why my final rating is a training wheel out of ten." Final Fantasy Mystic Quest quote. yes i realize this is a serious review, but i miss those silly endings. literally the quote above is why i subscribed to ProJared in the first place.

I honestly just end up redoing the side missions that are boss fights. It is hella fun to play around with different jobs and learn the patterns, going from "OH GOD HOW DO I GET TO PHASE 2?!" to no damage styling on a massive beast with almost DMC levels of flashiness.

The soundtrack though, man...the SOUNDTRACK 🔥

This game was extremely fun. Over the top characters, setting, gameplay, and some extremely memorable dialogue for the wrong reasons. And then the last act tied everything together into a surprisingly well done story, I definitely connected with the characters at the end. It’s not a great game, but it was fun from beginning to end

The story does feel very disjointed for the most part because it relies on you also collecting two different sets of data logs to fill in The gaps. With that in mind, I won’t say it’s the best story but it kept me interested and I really liked seeing Jack go from “KILL CHAOS” to “what am I fighting for” yeah the story is predictable but it’s a prequel we all knew how it would end. I will say the final few levels and boss fights really hit me. Best classes are sage, breaker, and ninja

I always look forward to your reviews. Especially for rpgs.

You are awsome, ProJared! I love your reviews! 😊👍❤️💕💕

I don't know why most players I've found didn't use chain cancel.

“Strangers of Paradise” sounds like a Metal Gear Rising Revengeance song.

5:41 that got an audible laugh out of me. What an image lol

Great video!! What television are you playing that on?

Unironically one of my favorite Final Fantasy spinoffs Jack is a total maniac and I love him for it

"Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins earns a 7 out of 10" An actual number. As a long time fan, this hurts the soul a bit. RIP goofy ratings

Thanks for the review, I've been thinking about buy this, I am a sucker for fan service but I'll probably wait to see what they deliver for DLC

The AI companions are legit extremely useful. If you press right and left on the d-pad every cooldown, they will pretty much wreck stuff for you. It seems people who complain about the AI in SoP just needed to manually used them more because they really are game changing. I'll notice that if I'm struggling on a boss it's because I'm not activating them enough and when I enter battles with keeping them constantly activated in mind, the fight usually go much easier.

"Jack is the type of guy that rips his shirt of when he takes a shit" LMFAO that line is worth the video alone.

I had a feeling I was going through levels quickly. Between this and Ghostwire Tokyo, this game got the most replay value. For both short games.

Oh thank God I couldn't wait for your take on this.

Reeeally fair review. As a fan of the game, i really like your take on this! Nice work

Even with all its flaws, I greatly enjoyed my time with SoP And the story got pretty good on the last act imo

Great review as always, Jared.

Excellent Video Jared.

Solid review as always I played it single player just kinda dull after you get over the combat but i can see this being alot of fun multiplayer with close friends

I actually really liked the story and characters. The ending was also fantastic!

"The kind of guy who rips his shirt off when he takes a shit" I have never heard that one. But I know exactly what you mean.

I haven't heard a word about this game since it was revealed and the demo came out, looking forward to the review

When talking about the overwhelming loot, I don't understand why people don't mention all the filtering and quick removal options. I never get to the maximum limit because I filter out from even picking up most of the trash stuff. Past a certain level, if it's not green or purple, it doesn't even go into my inventory. Furthermore, when then sifting through what's left, there are good filtering options and select all to help me quickly desynth them at the smithy. Still not perfect, but it's an issue I feel can be mitigated at least. Otherwise, fair review. Coop is a blast!

"The kind of guy that rips his shirt off when he's taking a shit" I felt that

Even though I've never been jnto Final Fantasy in general, I genuinely enjoy your videos, and I hope you get 1,000,000 subs one day!

4:40 I recall that being a complaint about Nioh as well, so much equipment is picked up in those games as well.

I'd argue that its easier to soul shield/parry and harder to use the Guard to perfect Parry for passive buffs. The former helps gaining mp back, extending the mp gauge especially after getting yours broken, negating magical damage and being a pseudo blue mage and stealing magic. The latter can easily negate non magic damage, leaves a healthier break gauge and provides buffs depending on the job. One can even mix it all up by changing jobs to for a "fresher" break gauge since its job dependent as well.

i mean what you expect from nomura and nojima at writing.. chaos

My thoughts on this game fall in line with this review pretty accurately, not a bad game, and some great gameplay, but not quite what the game itself thought it was.

Jared could you make a video showing how to unlock the dlc or the season pass.

Hey Jared, idk if you’ll read this but I just wanted to request 2 game reviews: final fantasy tactics and star ocean 2 If you did either of these I would be so stoked

Leveling up, and raising gear level is almost every game there is at this point. In some form, or variation. This game won't get the love it deserves, which is a shame, because it has a ton of potential. I suggest supporting this one. We actually have something good here. The story is just a jumping off point. It's about the gameplay and coop experience.

It’s actually a review I finally agree with.

I got to meet the VA for Jed not too long ago at a convention, pretty cool guy.

The gearing makes a lot more sense if you have Nioh experience, basically just mainline highest job affinity within a 3-4 level bracket of your highest level gear, and auto-dismantle anything 6 or so levels below your highest level. Instead of the Nioh thing where you pick Light/Medium/Heavy, in this game all armor is basically the same for all intents and purposes other than augments and affinity/level. HOWEVER, certain augments are assured on specific items, and certain weapons have special combo abilities that you can only otherwise get by hitting 400% Job Affinity on a basic job. If you happen to get a god-roll item with perfect augments but they're all weak, that can be fixed with the smith. Little warning is that it can cost a TON of Anima Shards to get a single piece to scale through the whole game, so it's not really worth it to do that until you have enough Anima Shards that they can become chocolate coins. Levelling is a bit weird, as combo abilities you unlock are actually shared between jobs, as well as boosts to specific weapon's combo actions. This means if you want to use a weapon, it's best to level every job associated with that weapon. From what I can tell, the game's jobs were actually designed like that, starting with the weapons and going "what can we add to each of these weapons", which is a similar design philosophy to Nioh, but they compartmentalized it into different jobs that slowly enhance your abilities with given weapons. Passives however, are job specific, as well as job actions, so when you're deep into the game and have all of the jobs for your weapons of choice leveled, what job you should use is basically down to which passives and job actions you want. This is supposed to resemble Nioh again, because in that game you also have two weapons and you're supposed to level multiple weapon trees, although in that game you're limited by only having the ability to max three scaling stats (at least, on NG+4 where the stat cap rises but the level cap doesn't, and you REALLY need to mix/max), and ideally you use two weapons with different affinities for the same stats, almost like a DS Quality Build. In FF Origin, the lack of core stats actually makes the game way more freeform, as gear and your job can basically carry your entire build once you have the combo skills you need.

I've been waiting to hear your take on it. You're my go-to source for FF related content.

God I love this game. The dialogue is so cheesy and the game play is solid. Stupid and fulfilling in equal measure

3:23 does anyone know the name of the background music playing here?

Anyone looking to get a group going? Just finished wind crystal all on hard up to this point. Would be down to replay any missions to help get caught up.

My AI teammates were soloing their own enemies by end game, get their jobs from doing the 4 fiend refights and they do become a lot better. I do have the same issue with you, once I finished I just lost all desire to play, there's really nothing there anymore.

Would you say this is a “wait for a sale” game or pass alltogether? For reference I consider crises core remake a “wait for sale” game.

For co-op, are we able to just hop into a new game? Or do we need to progress the story to a certain point? Also are we able to play the whole game from start to finish co-op?

I don't care if the story is absolute garbage. Limp Bizkit listening, edgelord, Macy's wearing Chad protagonist sold me on it.

I love this game so much. Been playing it daily with my FFXIV friend and we've been having a blast. I recognise all the flaws it has; the blandness, the hiccups, the awful writing, but despite everything, I love it. I play as Sophia while my friend is Jack, and I like how Sophia reminds me of Rose from Legend of Dragoon, both appearance, voice and attitude-wise. Helps that one of the jobs the AI-Sophia learns in dragoon. :^) Also Jack's the angriest barbie doll and I'm here for it.

I see Jared sporting a David Bowie Hairdo. Thereby cosplaying as half the cast of all of Final Fantasy. Nicely played…

I've beaten it and loved it. It's just dumb fun. Nothing crazy or super impactful but damn did I love it. I agree with everything in this review

This game is fun as shit, and the story is dumb as hell but that's why I like it.

Now I'm really really curious if you're gonna do a Chocobo GP video (even just a brief one)...considering its terrible issues.

Bro, you are the Best reviewer on internet . Srart making this kind of videos more often. Now I'm giving this game a chance.

Beat the game. Platinum earned and all missions at level 300 and cleared baby this game is amazing