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Thursday 14th March 2024
Final Fantasy Origin. Square finest remake of the original first game.
A whole new adventure with magnificent visuals
There's always something that scratches the absolute weirdness and no one sees until is obvious AF.
I'm talking about a lot of pop culture that won't cut it for whatever reason but is there when someone asks for it.
-"hey, we need a remake of.. -You name the movie/game/music-"
-"What do you mean? We already have it."
Is like the awful Robocop remake, the unlimited amount of scifi that nobody registers as Phillip K. Dick tales and/or novels adapted to the screen, music inspired by books, movies or even another song.
The same goes for game remakes and adaptations. A lot of games -ubisoft..- frame the storyline on certain cultures or times with transcendent historical value to tell a story.
I guess that some are obvious cases and another one not obvious or even explicit about the original idea.
I find some example from time to time but in this case, let's talk about a franchise making a game with a truly great straight remake adapted in full to nowadays games from a NES game.
Final Fantasy have a lot of installments. In spite of being famous as a franchise for certain installments I had the opportunity to play most of them on emulators.
A recent installment -The most recent one- "Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin" surprised me. How could fail on that? Is a remake of the first game!
My first google search throw a lot of questions such as:
"Is this game canon?"
"What does it have to do with the Final Fantasy series?"
And a lot more. But only a few noticed that is a remake of the first game that saw the light on the 80's in home computers like the MSX first and later on NES.
Damn. Even the music on the town is the same. The plot spins over the same with a few changes to be able to use today's visual power to tell a story. But as a whole, is the first installment of the entire saga.
It feels like "Devil May Fantasy: Wild Hunt" because it looks like a hack'n slash more than the usual RPG. I found that refreshing. Otherwise every fight chops the game in pieces and happens every time you have to fight a small enemy -Like the Final Fantasy XIII boredom fest fights-
The gameplay makes me think that at some point Square Enix -finally- let you choose if you want a hard as hell cast iron RPG game or a relaxed game experience to enjoy the storyline. That's relatively new on this genre and an awesome feature. To be fair, I can't afford the time -Hundreds hours playing- and allows me to balance how much time can it take to end the game.
It's that first story about four heroes with crystals on their hands there to save the day! I like that dynamic. May be primitive and again look like a hack'n slash because of the battle system but works at many levels.
The PS5 graphics and sound works. I mean without bugs. I found a nasty bug with dialog and sound as a whole in FFVII Remake that turns a great game on a barely playable experience considering that 40% of it are dialog with other characters and cut scenes that also, stutter as hell.
On this case the PC port works flawless for me. Nowadays ports sucks badly but this is not one of those cases. As a matter of fact I'm playing both at the same time and I found that Stranger From Paradise is more like that Diablo like experience: Addictive real time battle system yet using all what an RPG can offer.
You'll play the very first game with a few twists on the plot. Each and every change is a need to develop a next gen game based on an 8 Bit ancient title.
Worth the money and time if you like a rogue-like RPG more than a turn based fight with every monster that you find on the map.
If you are in doubt, go for it. If you enjoyed FFXII and XIII maybe the battle system can look like god of war but one gets used to it fast.
I'd recommend for several reasons but I'll give you my number one: Just like other franchises -resident evil?- Square is doing it from scratch and worth to have the entire storyline with great graphics and today's visual experience.
The Square Enix strategy is easy to see. Long play RPG games like FFX or FFXII are not the promise land anymore. Is a damn long playtime fighting with random monsters to get level upgrades but each and every time secondary missions and the main ones as well turn -IMHO- 11 hours per level or zone if you play it the hard way.
After to remastered versions it was pretty obvious that a Capcom style remake was around the corner. FFVII was an obvious choice. The most popular and remembered among all since it came up in 1997. There's little to none you can do with the oldest installments and this looks like plans. If you want to start fresh you have half a franchise to "remake" one way or the other and every title will work as they did before.
So ladies and gentlemen, this is one example of non-crap content from a remake.
I can say that so far only Capcom managed to do so.
Let us hope that we have more remakes like this one and FFVII. This franchise could use a revival of memorable characters that most people -Including me- Don't know because we are talking about NES and SNES games.
A curiosity: A game with the same name that this Final Fantasy origin was released for PSX containing the first three installments of the saga and that would be the first remake. Consider this one the new millenium super realistic remake of the same.
According to PC gamer, a fiasco. Well, I don't call myself an "authority on PC gaming" as they do. But I'm clever enough to understand why both the game play and the battle mode are not the same than in FFVII Remake. Still similar but if you want half of the game made of cut scenes then is not for you. You should avoid it if you are one of those toxic fans that will claim for blood if the game is not "faithful" to the spirit of the saga. After all, the same people told you that FFXIII was nearly a waste when is an awesome game.
Usually, giving it a chance. In the refund era is not the end of the world, guys that talk like someone who spend his wage on games living on mamma's garage made a circus show from gaming with useless critiques more than once.
Hope you like the reading. Cheers and good vives!