As promised during Square Enix’s E3 2021 presentation, the playable demo for action game spin-off Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin has been available for download on the PlayStation 5 since yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, the demo has been corrupt and completely unplayable the whole time. Square Enix is aware of the issue and working on a fix. Update: Two days later, it works.
Players eager to shout “Chaos!” at the top of their lungs while wearing the sort of clothing you could pick up at a T.J. Max have been disappointed by constant warnings of data corruption and suggestions that they delete and reinstall the demo from the PlayStation Store—an action that in my experience always leads right back to the same “data is corrupted” screen. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled five times since the demo became available to no avail.
Shortly after the corrupt demo went live yesterday, the official Twitter account for Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin tweeted that the developers were aware that users were running into the corruption issue, and that a fix was being worked on. As of this writing, we’re still waiting.
It’s an unfortunate kickoff for a game that looks like an interesting hack-and-slash take on established Final Fantasy lore. The game stars aging Abercrombie model Jack, who teams up with friends Ash and Jed and embarks on a mission to end Chaos, and possibly realize his destiny as one of the fabled Warriors of Light. The game is developed by the action masters at Tecmo Koei’s Team Ninja, with creative production duties handled by long-time Final Fantasy designer Tetsuya Nomura.
When will the Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin demo be ready to play?
Unfortunately, there’s no current ETA for a fix that will make the demo playable. It’s my hope that by posting this article the laws of irony will kick in and Square Enix will post an updated version of the demo moments after it goes live. Fingers crossed.
Update 6/15: Square Enix has issued a patch for the demo that should fix the data corruption issue.