Octopath Traveler (2018)

If this game had been released 20 years ago it might have been considered a mild classic next to other Square games. It has an interesting combat system based on pairing characters with sub-jobs, and finding and exploiting weaknesses for enemies.

The challenge of the game is inconsistent. Most of the game past chapter 2 is too easy. Some of the end-bosses make up for it though by being quite difficult. Also like most JRPGs, the dialogue is overlong, mawkish, and reads like it was written for 12 year-olds. I almost have to deduct a star just for the endless bloviating filled with after-school special moralizing. The characters in this game just won't shut up, and take every opportunity to pontificate with trite dialog.

All-in-all, Octopath Traveler successfully recreates the gameplay of nostalgic titles such as Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, but doesn't capture the story-telling that made those games truly great.

I played about 15hrs of this game (4 Chapter 1's - 12%) and then put it down for 10 months. I figured at this point I would never pick it up again because I "got the gist" and there are so many quirks about the game I don't think I could get past.

Well, a few weeks ago I decided to pick it back up again and now I'm close to 100hrs. I'm still annoyed with a lot of quirks in this game. I don't like the random battles, the story is just okay, the voice acting is inconsistent (and repetitive), the text is slow, and this game is grindy in points, to name a few things. So... why am I still playing it?

Well for one, I really like the battle system. It's really interesting and I like the combination of jobs, weaknesses, and BP points. It feels more complex than just "attack, attack, attack" even when you're grinding. And you're going to spending a lot of time in battles, so hopefully you DO like the battle system. This was the reason I put Paper Mario down - I couldn't deal with the ring system, which is a shame because I WAS enjoying that story.

In everyone's Chapter 2 and beyond, the boss battles get soooooo long. Like, they take an hour to complete. I don't remember boss battles being quite this long in other games. Or maybe I'm just not very good. But I made the mistake of "oh I'll just tackle this boss real quick before bed" and I won't be making that mistake again.

So at this point I have completed 2 of the 8 Chapter 4's. I'm slowly making my way to the end, but I put it down for a little bit just to give myself a break. I found out there is even MORE post-game content so even when you're done you're not really done. Damn, this game never ends, does it?

So I finally started this and I got my 4 characters.. but now I’m trying to decide what to do. Some parts of the internet say keep your 4 and play thru all their stories. Others say get the other 4 so you have 8 and just swap them out and make sure they are all leveled properly (which sounds like a pain). IDK.

Also I’m annoyed this game uses random battles but doesn’t let you control how often they happen like Bravely Default does.

Octopath Traveler has a lot of great concepts that just fall short of being a grand and satisfying adventure.

An engaging combat and the job system is one of it's greatest strengths, these are however fairly restricted compared to those of it's kindred Bravely Default games which simply offer more options and content.

The storylines for each individual character are mostly underwhelming and the chapter system makes the game far too formulaic. The party also unfortunately lacks strong interactions with any party dialogue being limited to short, shallow tavern conversations.

The out of battle abilities of each character are also interesting, but feel under developed.

Ultimately, the world of Octopath Traveler is too bland to be compelling, with the engaging boss battles and party customization options being a nice highlight in an otherwise relatively dull experience.

Four stars, because the star of this game is its exceptional soundtrack (the best I've heard since Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Vagrant Story). This game also has some really beautiful modern environmental effects blended with some 16-bit pixel art modeling. As for the story(lines) and characters...mostly meh. Combat is a little more interesting, and has a complexity that's not present in JRPGs from the 16-bit era (or most JRPGs, really).

Currently playing this game on Steam. On the 4th chapter for every character.

Shoutout to my fellow gamers from Austin TX. Sup!

I grew up on the SNES age of JRPGS, so this game hit the sweet spot for me. I poured 60+ hours in with pleasure. However, I think there are a few clear flaws that prevent this game from being a classic with a wider appeal.

Pros:

• Wonderful music
• Nostalgic and well-done art style. Would love to see Square Enix release another game with this engine.
• Voice acting in general surprisingly good.
• Japanese voice track available.
• Tons of content. Easy to spend 45+ hours on this game even without getting into side quests.
• Turn-based battle system is deep enough for strategy but not overwhelming.
• Secondary job system adds a nice element to building your characters.
• Early on you can get an equip a skill "Evasive Maneuvers" that will limit random encounters significantly.
• Broken out into chapters that you have a lot of freedom in how you progress.

Cons:

• Difficulty is all over the place. Each chapter has a recommended level. Go in under-leveled, the game feels impossible. Over-leveled, it's a breeze. With the game's chapter structure, you'll probably end up one way or the other most of the time.
• Stories aren't bad, but not riveting either. Primrose was a bright spot, but there will probably be a few that you don't care for. Sorry, Alfyn.
• Really no realistic rationale for these 8 to travel together.
• Random plot holes. Therion works alone, but randomly invites your party to sneak into a mansion with him.
• There's a "real" end boss, they are hidden behind a convoluted series of side quests that are easy to miss.
• Very repetitive. Dungeons all have a similar layout, and chapters have the same pattern (plot in town + short dungeon).

Conclusion: This scratched my itch for a big RPG on the Switch, but there's plenty of justified criticism to go around. Demo if you can. If you like the first few hours, be aware the rest of the game is a lot more of the same!

If you couldn't tell by the title, in Octopath Traveler you play as 8 adventurers who are traveling the world on 8 different journeys. At the beginning of the game, you simply pick one character to start with (this character will also be your main), and then you're set loose in the world.

Its not as open as it sounds though. The difficulty increases sharply as the game progresses, so you'll probably want to go ahead and do the intro level for all 8 characters right away. Unless you don't mind grinding, in which case you really can do whatever you want.

At first I thought that as you played, a common denominator would emerge that linked all the characters together, providing an explanation for why you travel together. But, it never does that. Each character really is on a separate journey, and you pick up the other characters simply for the convenience of having more people in a party.

Each character has 4 chapters to their story. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually too much. I clocked in about 80 hours by the time I beat the game. Yes, I did some side quests, but my time was mostly spent on the story. When the game gets that long, it gets boring. I found that I didn't care about the plot anymore and just wanted to beat the game. This is especially true considering that, with 8 different story lines, not all of them are going to be good (or at least, not equally good). Alfyn and Tressa have particularly uninteresting stories in my opinion, especially when compared to some of the other characters' stories.

That was the biggest negative for me in this game, and is the reason for the 4-star rating. Well that, and the graphics. Don't get me wrong, the style is beautiful and nostalgic of the now-retro games from our childhood, and it mostly works. However, it also makes it difficult sometimes to interact with the environment. You just can't quite see where everything is, and it can get annoying.

Regardless of those features, each character holds up in combat really well. Even characters with jobs that are traditionally... well, bad (like Tressa's merchant job) can hold their own in a fight. I was impressed and relieved that I could switch out party members without it being an automatic screw-over. When you unlock the ability to add secondary jobs, it just makes it that much better. Enemies remain challenging but rarely frustrating. It works very well.

Plus the combat itself is fun. This game features a "boost" system similar to Bravely Default. At the start of a fight, each character has 1 BP (boost point). After each turn, they gain an additional one. You can then boost your character up to 4 times to unleash an extremely powerful attack. With a normal attack, you might simply attack four times. With a job skill, you might deliver four times the damage or inflict a status effect for 4 times as long.

It's better at this than Bravely Default, however. In this game, you can also break enemies, which makes your damage output even higher. Each enemy has a number of shields, which decrease as you attack it with its weakness (a weapon type or elemental type.. or combinations of both). When it hits 0, the enemy breaks. It loses a turn and has defense set to 0 (or extremely reduced at least). You can let loose on them for massive damage.

This combination of those 2 elements in the combat make for some fun bosses, inventive strategies, and really fun game play. All this in a genre that is not known for having the most fun battle systems.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game. It's the best JPRG I've played in a while, and I recommend it to anyone with the time to put into it.

God, I love this game. Octopath Traveler is a JRPG, and that's a lot for me to have completed this game, because, frankly, I've gotten pretty sick of them. My main problem with JRPGs is the length: these games are packed with a LOT of content; problem is, I get tired of games easily, so spending sixty hours doing the same thing is VERY annoying. This game isn't free of that problem, only it's done in a much more clever way. Instead of feeling like a singular long experience, the game gives you eight characters in which each character has 4 chapters to play out to unfold their story, essentially bundling 8 smaller RPGs into one title. That, to me, made things feel a lot more fresh. Never in my playthrough did I feel burnt out or exhausted from playing this game, because it always felt fresh from beginning to end.

The graphics are also absolutely gorgeous. 3D environments meshed with 16-bit glory makes for fantastic visuals that stand out above all other JRPGS.

The best part about this game, by far, is the combat. I've never played an RPG quite like it: enemies have armor that have specific weaknesses that each character can potentially exploit. Once the enemy's shield is broken, the enemy will no longer attack for that turn and the next and is left vulnerable to some pretty massive damage. This calls for some serious strategies involving all four of your party members, and leaves you satisfied after each victory.

I could go on and on about how great this game is for hours, but I should probably mention the problems with it, and why I didn't give it a perfect 5.

The stories for each character could've been a lot more developed. They start out pretty simple, which is fine, but they get very stale from there on. I liked the characters, but I know I certainly won't remember them for their personality or their story arcs, rather than their abilities and combat tactics. There are two exceptions though, and without going into spoilers, I can safely say that Ophilia, Tressa and Primrose's story arcs are absolutely fantastic (with the former making me question life itself at times). Those were always the chapters I was really excited to play, especially by the end. As for the rest of the cast, such as Olberic, Therion, Cyrus, H'aanit, Alfyn, thoses were rather dull and shallow stories. I didn't hate them, but I wasn't as interested as the first three that were mentioned. The stories also never really interconnect. I praised the game for having 8 seperate smaller games jammed into one, but I think it would've been even better if some of the stories intertwined, or at least had some connections to one another. But the only times the characters ever interact with each other are small conversation between a few characters, which is charming, but only a small glimpse into something that could've improved the story by a lot.

The other detriment to this game is pattern. This may be somewhat of a spoiler (not to the story so much as the gameplay itself), so be warned.

The pattern of this game is as follows: Get to town. Talk to a few people. Go to a place directly outside of that town (where you have to fight enemies via random encounter) and then beat boss. That is how almost every single chapter plays out. At first, I thought it was alright. It was the first chapter, after all, an easy way to introduce the characters. And then chapter 2 was the same pattern for every character. And then chapter 3. Chapter 4 is where things finally take a turn, but half the characters still suffer the same pattern. It doesn't sound like too much, but after you've done it 8 times per chapter over 4 chapters, it can get on your nerves a little bit. This could be a deal breaker, but everything else the game does wonderfully really outweighs this (major) flaw.

Another problem I have with this game is the fact that the characters that aren't in your party don't level up with you, and you need them to be in your party in order to play their chapters, causing you to sometimes have a very under-leveled characters weighing down your party, and possibly forcing you to grind. That could've easily been fixed by giving EXP to ALL characters, but this might've just been another tactic by SE to pad the game time.

Overall, Octopath Traveler is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite game on the switch (besides the obvious Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild). I've sunken 59 hours into it and honestly, I could spend a lot more time on this game. There's still a lot to do, such as the side quests and the post-game boss rush, but I think I'll wait on DLC to pick up Octopath again, if Square Enix is kind enough to bless us with at least one.