Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin fans unhappy with Trials of the Dragon King DLC’s difficulty and grinding

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin’s first major DLC addition is here. Trials of the Dragon King, named for the legendary dragon Bahamut, adds new jobs like the summoner, evoker, and pilgrim. It’s also garnering some complaints from the community about the way it’s structured.

ResetEra member PolskiGamer17 brought some issues to the attention of the popular gaming forum, pointing out that Trials of the Dragon King’s content is “locked behind the hardest difficulty in the game” in their thread. That “hardest difficulty” level is Chaos, which is only unlocked upon finishing the game and seeing the ending. From the get-go, Final Fantasy Origin players will have to beat the game before they can even start Trials of the Dragon King.

This leads to the second major gripe. The main task of the DLC involves acquiring special dragon armor that only drops on an even higher difficulty tier, named Bahamut after the dragon king itself. This is eliciting further complaints about having to grind through preexisting missions to complete the new content. “This DLC is ‘earn a new type of currency by running through old levels again and maybe something will happen,'” says fellow forum member Valcrist, condensing their complaints into one sentence.

Other replies try to put a helpful spin on the situation. Lemony1984 points out that the first mission of Trials of the Dragon King cannot be failed and supplies the player with high-level gear upon completion; that at least helps prep for the Bahamut difficulty-level challenges to come. Others point out that grinding isn’t as tedious in Stranger of Paradise as it can be in other Final Fantasy games and RPGs. That doesn’t change the fact that you have to grind to complete the DLC, but it is helpful nonetheless.

We’ll have to see how the remaining DLC fares. There are three missions included in the game’s season pass. Wanderer of the Rift and Different Future will follow Trials of the Dragon King.