The Strangers of Paradise DLC is a lesson in how not to design DLC for your game

How do you design a DLC for a game? With Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, it feels like this should have been an easy task; some additional stories, some new levels inspired by other Final Fantasy games of the past (maybe some spinoffs, this time?), alongside a few new boss fights and a new class or two. On paper, DLC #1 for the game – Trials of the Dragon King – provides these ideas, which is why it’s amazing how the whole experience feels so off the beaten path when playing through.

In particular, one of the highlights of Stranger of Paradise’s release was the inclusion of multiple difficulty modes, ensuring that anyone, regardless of skill level, can eventually beat the game. This also meant that players who wanted to challenge themselves could still do so, especially after completing the game’s campaign and unlocking the additional Mayhem difficulty.

While I quite enjoyed the gameplay of Stranger of Paradise, I have to say that I was even more in love with the story that is at the heart of it all. Jack’s story certainly didn’t resonate with everyone who played the game, but it absolutely hit the mark for me – and I wasn’t the only one who found the story endearing. When the trailer for Trials of the Dragon King hyped up the story content after the game ended, I was beyond excited.

Even before the DLC was released, Square Enix stated that the DLC would have an additional difficulty mode over Mayhem, but most players assumed that this would just be another option for players to tinker with – especially given the Fact that Team Ninja’s other recent releases use a lot of the same framework, Nioh and Nioh 2 did something very similar with their DLC releases. Instead, the way things are going with Stranger of Paradise is pretty weird. Simply put, the new Bahamut difficulty is not just an option, but a requirement to access the DLC’s new story content. Regardless of whether you came to the DLC for the story, after playing the original game on the easiest difficulty, you are forced to engage with the game at its most difficult in order to get to the content that is so prominent in the marketing were presented.

Now, I don’t mind difficult games, but it’s hard to grapple with the idea of ​​a company adding additional content to a game that was never really about its difficulty, only putting it behind a new, incredibly hard difficulty modifier to include . It’s not even that you have to be playing on this difficulty to unlock the new content – which of course you do – it’s also that to unlock the new content players have to repeat base game missions, maybe with some modifiers attached in order to grind a random currency to unlock scrappy dialogue that eventually dish out the content you essentially paid for.

Almost like a bad joke, it feels as if the developers themselves realized that the current system was a bad idea and did it in a way that minimized gearing overhead if at any point a player wasn’t into the Chaos -Difficulty let in start of games; The first mission of the DLC makes Jack completely immortal and will never drop dead no matter how much damage he takes. Upon completion, players will receive almost a complete level 200 gear set to blast them to the item level that Bahamut difficulty is balanced for. This doesn’t change job levels, which would require you to mine upgrades through specific Mayhem difficulty missions – but it’s still a clear sign that the developers understood that many of their players might not have felt like getting into the endgame, and just wanted to see the new content included in the DLC.

At the other end of the spectrum is “Extra Mode”, which massively boosts Jack’s power level and grants him infinite MP. In this mode, you can’t earn the “Dragon Treasures” that you can spend on certain upgrades, but you’ll still be logged as having earned them, allowing you to advance the little story included in the DLC. While this “fixes” the main issue with the DLC, I’d argue that its existence feels more like a band-aid; There should rightly have been a middle ground where players at the difficulty level they were already used to could keep the game engaged without having to chew everything in their path.

Assuming players choose to try the DLC “on the level,” the spike in difficulty that Bahamut brings is more than a little ridiculous. Even with a group of players that were all 50~ levels above the recommended item level for a mission on Bahamut difficulty, we still got regular one-shots from a boss’ attacks – and the amount of HP felt massive to boot. I’m sure there are many builds that would help you get through this DLC, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the main story content should never have been locked behind such a requirement in the first place.

On the plus side, Stranger of Paradise has seen a number of optimization patches on console since launch, and the game as it stands now looks and runs significantly better than when it launched. That’s all well and good; It hurts to have to talk about how much the DLC ended up disappointing me considering how much I loved the base game at launch. If you haven’t played the game yet, I can’t recommend it enough – maybe just skip the Season Pass until we find out what the rest of the DLC will be like. As it stands now, I can only recommend it for the most dedicated endgame grinders.