Octopath Traveler (2018)

At 89 hours, I just finished the last of the 8 quests. Now to wrap up side quests and last boss.

I'm not sure what I think, really. It's boring. I don't love the break mechanic. The stories vary wildly in do-I-give-a-damn-ness, Alfyn's in particular being the most "who gives a fuck?" It's all nice to look at, the music's decent, it's a turn based rpg... I just wish there was more cool stuff going on.

I just picked up Therion, Haanit is next (and last), and I don't know, y'all. I'm going to finish it because that's what I do, but I'm decidedly not feeling it. It feels pretty easy, but this dumb break thing infiltrating every fucking RPG on the market makes a pretty slow paced game SO MUCH SLOWER. I also have mostly negative feelings about the dual path actions. Like why would I ever scrutinize for a CHANCE of success if I can just use Alfyn's chit chat or whatever the hell it is?? Then the issue is I use scrutinizer (forgot his name) in fights because magic is pretty good in this, so I have redundancy on my team. I don't hate the path action mechanic, but I'm not sure it's presented in the best way.

The way swapping your team and items around is a series of the worst, anti-QOL choices I've seen implemented in a long time.

I'm now tempted to grind for a while with Tressa and Therion to get some $$ so I can finally upgrade my weapons a bit and hopefully get through the battle slog faster, and also have a better chance of stealing the rates items from people.

Any input y'all have on the "best team" composition would be appreciated. Oh and for reasons, I can't take Olberic out of my team because I started with him. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

After 16-ish hours, I've finally finished the first chapter for each of the 8 main characters. The beginnings of these stories definitely fall across a spectrum of quality and many are super clichéd.

Of these chapters my favs at this point are probably the ones belonging to Cyrus, Alfyn, Therion, and Tressa in that order. Primrose's has potential but could go either way for me honestly after the opening chapter. H'aanit's, Ophilia's, and Olberic's chapters just came off as really bland. Those three in particular felt like what I would write if I set out specifically to mimic already existing stories focused on the archetypes these characters fit into. Olberic's in particular was disappointing for me because I love a good knight character, but there's very little substance that I care for there at this point in his story.

I have to decide if I'm gonna try to do the second chapters in the same order as I did the first ones now...

After playing the demo I finally settled on ordering a physical copy for switch. I wanted to compare it with the steam version on my steam deck but they didn't port the demo over along with the main game to PC and I don't feel like doing the whole refund business just to test the difference in performance.

I started with Therion in the demo because I'm a fan of the Thief characters I often find in JRPGs (Locke from FFVI is one of my favs from that game) and being able to steal from random people for free early items sounded fun. :P

Ive been eyeing this game for a long time and just noticed physical copies seem a bit cheaper now than they were last I checked. Maybe they got reprinted or something?

Regardless, this makes my decision between a physical copy on switch and digital on steam a lot harder. Steam would be cheaper, since I'd grab it on sale, and probably perform better, but I do love having a physical copy, especially for a large JRPG like this. The switch also just feels right for JRPGs so I'm very split.

If I like it I'll probably pick up the sequel for the same system. Not sure if that changes anything.

This is one of those games that I've wanted to play for a while, but I wasn't suuuuper sure after the demo a few years back (for some reason or other), and it N E V E R goes on sale.

I was asking my friends last week if any of them had a physical copy by chance that I could borrow. They didn't, so I was just gonna wait a while and grab it eventually. It happened to be my birthday, and when my boyfriend came by to see me, he handed me a copy, haha.

I'm honestly really enjoying it so far. I like the combat (which I don't really think I did when I tried the demo? I had played the first Bravely Default so it wasn't entirely new to me) with the Breaks and Boosts.

I started with Cyrus because I like them nerdy boys, and because of his ability to identify enemy weaknesses. Made my way up to Ophilia, backtracked down to Tressa and over to Olberic, and am currently on Primrose's first chapter. I really wanted to get Alfyn after Tressa, but I figured I'd grab the other two on the way.

It's absolutely gorgeous and the music is great. I'm really glad I'm finally getting to this one.

Okay, I thought I was done, but something pulled me back in to 100% this game and see what this epilogue was like. Without a doubt, the epilogue feels like required playing for anyone who was invested enough to finish all 8 stories. It absolutely ties the stories together in a satisfying way.

I both respect and am amazed that they hid the real story behind slightly obscure sidequests after running credits, but it was cool to connect all of the things that felt like unsatisfied hints at a bigger picture throughout the game.

I will admit that for the first time ever, i did look up post-boss credits, because after beating the 8 boss run-up, I died relatively quickly to the final boss. I lost all motivation to fight the final boss again after realizing I had to replay the full 8 battle boss rush every time. The final battle was a good 2-3x harder than any other boss and would have required a lot of playing with builds. I could have looked up strats online, but that would have taken the fun away - so I just watched the final final-cutscene on youtube.

I guess I 99.9%'d the game in about 105hrs of in game ttime.

After a couple years off, I decided to just start from scratch and wipe my 16hr save, since my main draw to JRPGs is the story.

I'm about 30 hrs in now and worried that the game just stays the same for the rest of it. Combat is reasonably compelling, but the "quests" are really lacking in complexity. Overall I like the game, but I think I might like it better as a 40hr story rather than an 80hr one.

I'm worried that the stories never intertwine in a meaningful way.

Note: Traversing the forests is so awful

So I’ve finished 3 Chapter 4’s and I have 5 more Chapter 4’s to go. Of course, there is still post-game content, but I will worry about that later.

I just finished Alfyn’s Chapter 4 and man was it hard! The boss has a super power that slowly takes away your max health every turn I died the first time but the second time I consulted a guide and was able to pull through. Even getting to the boss seemed to take a while. There are lots of divergent paths and treasure chests to collect along the way, more so than the other character’s final paths that I’ve played through. I’ve also beat Tressa and Primrose’s Chapter 4’s. Primrose was especially hard because you think you’re done but NOPE surprise, it’s another boss fight after you just finished it - and no time to heal.

Not sure which Chapter 4 I will tackle next.

These boss battles are quite long. I have to budget at least an hour to go through the story, go through the path to the boss, and then actually beat the boss. And that’s assuming I get it on the first try (which I don’t always do). This is definitely not a pick up and play game.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I’m just meh about the story, at least for some characters. The banter is amusing, though. I wish that was a bigger part of the game.