Jack Garland for Tekken 8

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is definitely a fun game to play even if it has some flaws. It plays very much like a Team Ninja game should, crossed with Final Fantasy, so you'll dodge, parry, block and slash your way through. You can equip and unlock several different jobs with their own job trees and abilities, and switch between two jobs seamlessly in combat. Many of these are FF staples, such as Ninja, Dark Knight, Paladin or Black Mage. Reminiscent of FF are the different areas too that you will visit in your quest to help Jack and Friends defeat Chaos once and for all, most of which have been heavily inspired by or outright taken from different games throughout the series, so you will see many familiar areas and monsters.

That being said, the game does have a few flaws. The port is awful - without installing Special K and changing some settings in it, the game was a stuttering mess, but it ran fine after. The HDR implementation isn't the greatest either, making some areas brighter than the sun and others too dark, to the point where I almost think it is better to turn it off entirely. I played through the entire game on Hard, which is the hardest difficulty available up until you beat the game, and while it's mostly well balanced, there are a few bosses that can bring even the best build to it's knees due to some hard-to-read attacks and patterns. Luckily, some classes (and weapons) are much better than others at destroying break bars, so I mostly felt it was a fair challenge with very few exceptions.

The story is also not bad, but a bit confusingly told and it feels like a small cliffhanger (which, I heard, is somewhat resolved in one of the DLCs, but I won't play those anytime soon, so I can't comment on that). The voice acting is solid and the music is great, though the latter is often mixed way too low compared to the sound effects even after adjusting some settings, and often interrupted by the battle theme.

Most of this is nitpicking though. I felt SOP was a very solid game with quite a bit of depth, and if you want more, there is an extra difficulty after finishing the game which can help you hunt for more item levels and equipment. I heard you need to grind A LOT to even access the DLC, which will definitely get boring and repetitive, but personally I felt the main game was a good length and I am satisfied. Bad port, but a solid game that is definitely worth checking out if you like fast-paced action games.

Ws: Jack, the combat, soul shield, parries, the soundtrack, the job system, planning builds with job affinities, the bosses (for the most part), and playing caster jobs are all solid Ws. Auto-dismantle is a sizeable W. Being able to fuse equipment (and getting to choose the skills, instead of having inheritable skills like in Nioh) and replicate gear are considerable Ws. The existence of manakin materials that can replace any and all crafting materials and that you get in droves is a massive W. The biggest W of all, though, is having every VA who was in the Dissidia games reprise their roles in the main game and DLC. That is peak.

Ls: Imo, it takes the longest out of the Nioh-likes to truly start going (in terms of customization), and then there's more stuff you unlock with the postgame. Certain bosses are some janky nonsense (Elemental core, Zombie Dragon and the fat Marlboro). Upgrading gear when changing difficulties can be a challenge, I find that going from one difficulty to the next is harder than it is in the other Team Ninja games, but there does exist an Extra mode to act as a crutch. Levels look great but design-wise are a noticeable step-down, being linear areas with barely any collectibles like Kodamas or potion upgrades as in the Niohs or Wo Long. The biggest L of all is the port though, I'm talking D for barely passing.

Pretty dang good game