Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is nearing its launch, and the game’s mechanics are being made clearer week after week. What started as the ridiculous climax of a maligned Square Enix E3 conference has been building up momentum and now has a fair number of people looking forward to it. Final Fantasy Origin is intended to be the series’ leading 35th anniversary game, and sets out to bring in familiar locales, spells, and jobs from throughout the series together in a melodramatic retelling of Final Fantasy 1. Players take control of Jack, an amnesiac who seems at odds with FFO’s world, but may have some deeper connection to it.
As it has been outsourced to Team Ninja, Final Fantasy Origin plays out like a spiritual sequel to the Nioh franchise. Players proceed through large levels, fighting enemies along the way with sped-up Souls-like combat. Players will constantly be finding new gear to equip their characters, and can freely switch between two jobs with their own loadouts in the middle of the action. The action will only get more intense as players unlock more job abilities and advanced jobs. Many jobs have been revealed, and one of the latest is the strangely familiar Void Knight.
What Void Knight Does in Final Fantasy Origin
Void Knight is advertised as an “expert job,” something obtained after upgrading certain other jobs. Many of these exist, and tend to be oriented toward very specific styles of play. Dark Knights and Berserkers sacrifice some survivability for an enormous increase in damage, Ninjas apply buffs and debuffs, and Red Mages use chained spell to deal major damage while reducing elemental resistances. The Samurai job is all about generating MP, and the Void Knight shares that trait with a twist of its own.
The Void Knight is all about catching an enemy’s magical attacks and converting them into power. This has some similarities to the Samurai’s ability to generate MP through both attacks and parries, and the universal mechanic of catching enemy spells to return them later. Where Void Knight’s differences begin to appear are its methods; by using the unique action “runic,” a Void Knight can deploy a magic circle while blocking. This sigil negates incoming magical attacks and absorbs their power. The player has the choice to either replenish their MP or unleash accumulated power in a powerful slash. The job appears to reward experienced players for reading their opponents’ moves and allocating resources properly.
Void Knight’s History in Final Fantasy
Within the confines of Final Fantasy, there has never been another game featuring the Void Knight class. Yet its signature ability, Runic, has appeared in a few other games. Most notably, it is the signature ability of Final Fantasy 6’s Celes Chere. It nullifies most, if not all, magic-based attacks and allows the user to restore MP equal to the cost of the spell. It is a fairly powerful ability, but can backfire if an ally is the next person to cast a spell. It also inverts elemental effectiveness, so nullifying a spell Celes is weak to will give her double MP, while an element that Celes would otherwise absorb will drain her MP.
The Runic ability, and its corresponding Rune Knight class, have made limited appearances elsewhere in the franchise. The only other notable Rune Knight is Final Fantasy Tactics’ Dycedarg Beoulve, yet this Rune Knight job is exclusive to NPCs in Tactics, and the class doesn’t know Runic. Magic Thwart, Attune Blade, and Absorb Magic have appeared as similar abilities, but they were all for different jobs in various games. Absorb Magic also belongs to the Dark Knight job from Bravely Default. While the names aren’t quite the same, Final Fantasy Origin has brought the Rune Knight and Runic back together under the Void Knight banner. For a Final Fantasy anniversary game, that feels appropriate.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin launches March 18 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
