Surprise surprise, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin’s PC port kinda sucks
Name a more iconic duo than Square Enix and crappy PC ports.
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PC players have been getting their hands on the verifiable cringefestStranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Originover the last few days, and unfortunately it appears to be another cursed Square Enix port.
Players have been taking to the game’s subreddit to voice the numerous issues that are plaguing the PC port. The biggest issue right now is the intense slowdown that seems to be happening when performing Soul Bursts, a theatrical finishing move that crystalises the enemy before shattering them. It puts the entire game into slow-motion, which feels pretty jarring when you’re trying to maintain a good flow in combat.
The issue appears to be even worse if you try and run the game at 120 fps, as I was having issues even when trying to run around. It was like Jack was fighting chaos in a sea of invisible mud. Unless he’s spinning, and then he gets a small case of the zoomies. Knocking the framerate down to 60 fps alleviates the issue somewhat, but Soul Bursts still cause major disruption to the game’s speed.
Complaints have also been made around Stranger of Paradise’s visuals. The game seems to flit between looking acceptable and looking like you’re playing something from 2009. One Reddit post called the port “horrendous,” saying “the game is ugly as hell with awful render distance, tons of pop-in, jagged visuals, aliasing everywhere, and really blurry and washed out image.“Anothercomplained about the game looking pixelated, while issues around the game’s brightness are also being pointed out. One of my major issues with thegame’s first demowas that it was a little too “The Long Night” from Game of Thrones and unfortunately, it looks like someone at Square Enix forgot to crank the brightness up once again.
OneReddit postfrom a user who claims to be a VFX artist goes into a little more detail around the performance issues. It recommends keeping the game capped to 60 fps for now, as well as tinkering with the 3D rendering resolution scaling and screen space reflections in graphics settings. They’re the two settings that appear to be the biggest culprit around slowdown right now. It won’t negate the issue entirely but should do a bit to make the game more playable.
It’s a shame that the game is having a hard time running on PC, especially considering itsmodest system requirements. I’m running the whole thing on a pretty respectable setup and I’m still experiencing a decent amount of issues. I’m still not sure if they’re worth persisting with in the pursuit of Chaos killing. Square Enix is yet to acknowledge the PC port issues. If games likeNier Automataand theFinal Fantasy 7 Remakeare anything to go by, it’s unlikely we’ll hear anything for a while.
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Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she’s not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.
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