History YMMV / StrangerOfParadiseFinalFantasyOrigin

* MemeticBadass: Jack's single-minded goal of killing Chaos, [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown his incredibly vicious fighting style]], him [[HandshakeSubstitute fist-bumping his friends]], [[HeroicBuild his generally manly appearance]], [[SirSwearsALot his foul mouth]] (including being the first ''Final Fantasy'' character to [[PrecisionFStrike drop an F-bomb]]), and his habit of [[YouTalkTooMuch interrupting]] [[TalkToTheFist monologues]] have earned him this status. In the eyes of his fans, he is [[RatedMForManly an absolute chad]], the epitome of the sigma grindset and the most badass protagonist in ''Final Fantasy'', who skips cutscenes and ignores the story so he can focus on killing things. The typical [[SelfImposedChallenge challenge]] of the genre to go around wearing no armor and beating enemies up with your bare hands only adds to the effect.

** Sage is also extremely powerful because it combines the buffs from White Mage, they themselves minor gamebreakers, and the elemental magic of Black Mage. Sure it lacks Holy, Flare, and Meteor but the job's unique magic, Ultima, more than makes up for it basically being a screen nuke that can instantly stagger most enemies.

* MemeticLoser: [[spoiler:The Warriors of Light]] quickly got this reputation when the ''Trials of the Dragon King'' DLC released, as three of them are [[spoiler:thrown back and either knocked out or killed in one wave of darkness from Jack and he faces the iconic Warrior one-on-one]]. This quickly had fans labeling them as {{Jobber}}s who only exist to fill out the team's ranks.

* PortingDisaster: The PC port of the game has some big problems. Firstly, it only supports a handful of resolutions, potentially forcing you to play at a much lower quality if your monitor resolution happens to not be supported. It is also very poorly optimized, using up disproportionate amounts of power from the graphics card and CPU for a game that shouldn't be nearly that intensive. And worst of all, for many people it struggles to keep a smooth framerate and dips noticeably in many situations even with powerful PC hardware, especially during crystal attacks. Modders investigating the issue found that one major source of these problems comes from non-optimised hair and fur, and turning such models bald or removing their fur coats completely solves the frame issues for those specific characters.

* ThatOneBoss: The first fiend Tiamat is considered by many to be one of the hardest bosses in the game. It is very aggressive, with many different attacks that come out quickly, cover a wide area and force you to either soul shield or disengage, and its second phase functions as a very harsh DPS check where it will heal to full if you don't deplete its break gauge in time, also restoring a significant amount of said break gauge. Without a good ability loadout and good use of soul shield to constantly use abilities, it can make the fight drag for a long time, making it much more likely you will die.

* HarsherInHindsight: The game ends with Jack [[spoiler:defying the Lufenians and freeing the world from them]]. Connect this game to Garland in ''Dissidia'', and it turns out Jack [[spoiler:ended up agreeing to help another Lufenian trap another world in another cycle of endless conflict, and he eventually abandoned all hope of freedom and immersed himself in his BloodKnight philosophy.]] Mitigated by WordOfGod saying Jack is from an AlternateUniverse, and is possibly not the same Jack Garland who ends up participating in ''Dissidia''.

* HarsherInHindsight: The game ends with Jack [[spoiler:defying the Lufenians and freeing the world from them]]. Connect this game to Garland in ''Dissidia'', and it turns out Jack [[spoiler:ended up agreeing to help another Lufenian trap another world in another cycle of endless conflict, and he eventually abandoned all hope of freedom and immersed himself in his BloodKnight philosophy.]]

* SlowPacedBeginning: The game doesn't start off too slow, but the opening several hours are a bit slow story wise, and the play only gets a few classes to play as. By the third mission though, the player will start getting classes with more unique mechanics, the story starts offering more than just seemingly like an edgy remake of the first game, and gradually the characters really open up outside of the basic personality traits they seem to have. A common positive players have mentioned is how much better it gets after the first few levels.

* PlayTheGameSkipTheStory: The opinion expressed by many reviews. The dialogue is corny, the characters are underdeveloped, the plot is very convoluted, and the ways in which it expands the setting of the first ''Final Fantasy'' are controversial. If you can't get into [[SoBadItsGood the mindset necessary to enjoy the story]], it won't have much to offer you. On the other hand, [[Creator/KoeiTecmo Team Ninja's]] ''VideoGame/{{Nioh}}''-esque gameplay is still fun enough to make the game worth playing (and is [[JustHereForGodzilla the reason]] that some people otherwise uninterested in the ''Final Fantasy'' IP picked it up at all).

* CompleteMonster: [[MeaningfulName Nil]], a high-ranking and truly vile Lufenian, is Jack Garland's ArchEnemy. Complicit in Lufenia's attempts to control Cornelia and the rest of the world, when that is foiled by Jack becoming Chaos Nil takes drastic action. Using [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV Gilgamesh]] for the Death Machine--driving him to painful madness--Nil tries to use said machine to assassinate Jack and his allies, threatening to destabilise and destroy multiple dimensions in the process. In a final attempt at purging Chaos, Nil summons an army of [[VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy Manikins]] that slaughter all the other Lufenians, [[NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist intending to destroy Chaos and erase the entire dimension, creating it anew as a utopia free from "corrupting elements"]].

* IKnewIt: [[spoiler:Of course, with previews giving away that Jack's surname was Garland, most fans rightly speculated that he would turn out to be ''the'' Garland and also Chaos. It was also possible to guess that his companions would become the Fiends of Chaos based on the fact that there were four of them and two were male (like Lich and Kraken) and two female (like Tiamat and Marilith)]].

** The main party declares themselves the Warriors of Light, but as any ''Final Fantasy'' fan knows, there are '''four''' Warriors of Light in [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI the original game]], yet the first trailer and demo had just Jack, Ash, and Jed. This prompted much speculation if there would be a fourth Warrior of Light after all and what role they could play in the story. There was also the matter of ''who'' they might be; an original character like the others was held up as plausible, but it was also theorized that it could be Garland, the ''VideoGame/{{Dissidia|FinalFantasy}}'' Warrior of Light, or another character like Princess Sarah. The TGS 2021 trailer managed to both {{Joss|ed}} and confirm this -- the fourth Warrior of Light is a young woman named Neon, but [[spoiler:Jack's full name is Jack ''Garland'', and it is heavily implied that he is/will become '''the''' Garland]]. Then came the announcement a few months later in December that another character, a woman named Sophia, would be joining the group, leading to the entry below.
** Another theory holds that the other four warriors [[spoiler:will become the Four Fiends. Specifically that Ash will become Lich, Neon becomes Marilith, Jed becomes Kraken, and Sophia becomes Tiamat. [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAm7WJIWEAQ4-JP?format=jpg&name=large This piece of artwork]] added some fuel to this theory as each of those four characters are associated with the color that corresponds to the respective Fiend]]. Come the official release of the game, [[spoiler:[[IKnewIt this theory ended up being correct]]]].

** "The real Chaos was the friends we made along the way." [[labelnote:Explanation (Spoilers!)]]It turns out that Jack's four comrades become the Four Fiends, and they were in on the plan to turn Jack into Chaos. Thus, the old "real <X> was the friends we made along the way" meme is a totally accurate way to summarize TheReveal. To be even more on-the-nose, some phrase it "the real Chaos was the Fiends we met along the way".[[/labelnote]]

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: [[spoiler:Does the game's ending {{Retcon}} that Garland and the Four Fiends were GoodAllAlong? Or, after living through countless time loops over thousands and thousands of years during which they immersed themselves in the power of darkness (not to mention the deaths and memory wipes they've already endured), did they experience a LossOfIdentity by the time the final cycle came around and [[BecomingTheMask became genuinely evil]]?]]

** "Bullshit." [[labelnote:Explanation]]The second demo features a scene where Jack says this before abruptly walking away while listening to a Music/LimpBizkit soundalike on a cell phone. The scene quickly became a meme for all the reasons you'd expect, with people either associating the scene with "sigma male grindset" memes or replacing the music in edits.[[/labelnote]]

** "The real Chaos was the friends we made along the way." [[labelnote:Explanation (Spoilers!)]]It turns out that Jack's four comrades become the Four Fiends, and they were in on the plan to turn Jack into Chaos. Thus, the old "real <X> was the friends we made along the way" meme is a totally accurate way to summarize TheReveal.[[/labelnote]]

* MemeticBadass: Jack's single-minded goal of killing Chaos, [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown his incredibly vicious fighting style]], him [[HandshakeSubstitute fist-bumping his friends]], [[HeroicBuild his generally manly appearance]], [[SirSwearsALot his foul mouth]] (including being the first ''Final Fantasy'' character to [[PrecisionFStrike drop an F-bomb]]), and his habit of [[YouTalkTooMuch interrupting]] [[TalkToTheFist monologues]] have earned him this status. In the eyes of his fans, he is [[RatedMForManly an absolute chad]], the epitome of the sigma grindset and the most badass protagonist in ''Final Fantasy'' who skips cutscenes so he can get to the part where he gets to kill things. The typical [[SelfImposedChallenge challenge]] of the genre to go around wearing no armor and beating enemies up with your bare hands only adds to the effect.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments: The intro scene, where Garland single-handedly slaughters his way through the knights of Cornelia to abduct Princess Sarah, with darkness roiling off of him all the while as he leaves a trail of blood, bodies, and crimson crystals behind him. With Sarah slung over one shoulder, he still kills anyone that comes at him with one swing -- or in the case of one poor sap, Garland just grabs their helmet and flings them into the ceiling, crushing them and leaving their blood to drip onto him. By the time he's at the castle entrance and the few stragglers are there waiting for him, they see what he did on the way in and don't even ''try'' to fight him, so terrified that they just step back and let him pass. The scene makes it clear that when the characters in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' talk of Garland as a OneManArmy who none but the Warriors of Light could hope to stand against, they weren't exaggerating.

** The main party declares themselves the Warriors of Light, but as any ''Final Fantasy'' fan knows, there are '''four''' Warriors of Light in [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI the original game]], yet the first trailer and demo had just Jack, Ash, and Jed. This prompted much speculation if there would be a fourth Warrior of Light after all and what role they could play in the story. There was also the matter of ''who'' they might be; an original character like the others was held up as plausible, but it was also theorized that it could be Garland, the ''VideoGame/{{Dissidia|FinalFantasy}}'' Warrior of Light, or another character like Princess Sarah. The TGS 2021 trailer managed to both [[{{Jossed}} Joss]] and confirm this -- the fourth Warrior of Light is a young woman named Neon, but [[spoiler:Jack's full name is Jack ''Garland'', and it is heavily implied that he is/will become '''the''' Garland]]. Then came the announcement a few months later in December that another character, a woman named Sophia, would be joining the group, leading to the entry below.

** "Bullshit." [[labelnote:Explanation]]The second demo features a scene where Jack says this before abruptly walking away while listening to a Music/LimpBizkit soundalike on a cell phone. The scene quickly became a meme for all the reasons you’d expect, with people either associating the scene with "sigma male grindset" memes or replacing the music in edits.[[/labelnote]]

* SelfImposedChallenge: The "Naked Run" challenge requires you to strip Jack of all armor, leaving him in just his underwear, while fighting on [[NintendoHard Hard]].

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:

** Speaking of [[spoiler:the Warrior of Light]], while the ''Trials of the Dragon King'' DLC follows up on [[spoiler:[=WoL=] and his group's fated arrival at the Chaos Shrine]], nothing of particular import is done with their characters. [[spoiler:[[TheWorfEffect Jack takes three of them out of action with a single wave of darkness]], and while [=WoL=] has lines for his attacks (as well as his TurnsRed phase in the rematch), he is otherwise completely silent in the manner of a NoNonsenseNemesis and the battle -- which ends with the Warrior's death at Jack's hands -- is devoid of any true BossBanter.]] Considering the pains the main game went through to flesh out the rather minimalistic plot of ''FFI'', the lack of characterization here can feel like a step back.