Stranger of Paradise is the latest Final Fantasy spinoff, retelling the events of the very first game with a new modern spin. It’s an equally bizarre and enthralling experience that has divided critics so far.

While it’s certainly possible to kill Chaos on your own, Stranger of Paradise does let you bring along up to two other players to help in your quest. Actually setting things up to play with your friends can be a bit confusing, however, so we’ll go through the basic steps of playing multiplayer, and what some of the benefits are to doing so.

How to Play Co-Op in Stranger of Paradise

In order to play multiplayer in Stranger of Paradise, you’ll need to either create or join a Multiplayer Room. You can create a room from the main menu either on the world map (lets you select a mission) or at any cube save point while you’re on a mission (only selects the mission you’re on). There are a few settings you can change when making a multiplayer room, including setting a password and players only being able to join by invite.

If you aren’t playing with friends you can set the type of playstyle you want to look for with matchmaking, which essentially corresponds to difficulty, as seen below.

• Anyone – Matchmakes with all players
• Bronze – Matchmakes mostly with players on the Story difficulty.
• Mythril – Matchmakes mostly with players on the Action difficulty.
• Adamantite – Matchmakes mostly with players on the Hard or Chaos difficulties.

If you’re looking to join someone else’s game, simply go to the Find Room option on the Online menu. To join a friend’s room you’ll need the Room ID and a password, if they set one. Otherwise, you can simply search for a random room and can set the mission and playstyle you’d like to. The neat thing about multiplayer is that people can drop in and out during the mission, and as long as the host stays the mission won’t stop.

It’s also important to note that Stranger of Paradise does not support crossplay, but does support cross-generation play. This means that players on Xbox and PlayStation can’t play together, but players on PS4 and PS5 can, for example.

What’s different with multiplayer in Stranger of Paradise?

During co-op, other players take the place of your party members. If you join someone else’s game you’ll simply use the jobs and equipment you currently had equipped on Jack. There are a few key differences when playing co-op, the first of which is that all players will need to pick up loot separately. For example, if one player opens a chest that loot only gets collected by them, so the others will need to head over and grab it on their own. By completing a mission in multiplayer you’ll also gain additional Anima Shards, which are used to gain extra job experience.

The other main difference is how revies work in multiplayer, as you won’t simply return to the last save point when you die. Other players can sacrifice one of their own potions to revive you, or you can use a Phoenix Down to get yourself up. For each mission in Stranger of Paradise the team, as a whole, gets three Phoenix Downs to use.