Fans of Final Fantasy have an exciting year ahead of them. DLC, re-released online games, new merch of various sorts, and the coup de grace, an all-new spinoff. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, described officially as a “bold new vision for Final Fantasy,” is a collaboration between Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo Games, who you may know from the Dynasty/Hyrule Warriors titles. Basically, if you’ve ever found yourself mashing one button repeatedly to clear out hoardes of paper-weak mooks, those guys probably were responsible. Now, as someone whose primary exposure to these legendary Square RPGs has largely been the Kingdom Hearts series and its bat-guano crazy matchups (Donald Duck, meet Sephiroth), I’m perhaps not best disposed to discuss this, but take it from my colleague Anthony: it sounds flippin’ cool.
What is Stranger of Paradise?
Stranger of Paradise was announced during E3 2021, to tumultuous reaction. It’s due out for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC (via the Epic Games Store), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X on March 18, and now, as Polygon reports, a demo’s available for fans who want to sample the new offerings a week in advance. Catch is, it’s only out on Sony’s systems; not that users of other platforms haven’t had a chance to try out Stranger of Paradise yet, though.
Trial versions of the game have been rolled out a couple times already, but this demo, announced during Sony’s State of Play broadcast on Wednesday, marks the first mainstream ‘official’ preview version. Hence, players can assume that whatever we get in the demo will be fairly representative of the final product. Good, or garbage? You decide. As do easily-swayed game journalists. That’ll be five rounds of Maccies, Square.
Check out the game’s State of Play trailer below:
Have you had a chance to have a go at the demo? Are you a Final Fantasy fan? Let us know!
Via, Polygon.
