This review is weird to write. There are a lot of technical improvements over the first game, so objectively it probably should get 5 stars since I gave the first one 4. However, I had a lot of problems with the story. This one leans a lot into darker stories and a lot of stories felt too similar as almost everyone seemed obsessed with revenge or taking down someone who wronged them.

Let me start with the improvements. There's a day and night system which allows for different field actions so there's not as much frantic party switching when I'm exploring towns. Battles felt faster-paced, but equally rewarding and strategic. There are also latent powers which helped characters stand out from their class and sub-class. Also, the boat was a great way to open up exploration without feeling overwhelming. We also get Crossed Paths where two party members get to interact together, and in the epilogue, all 8 characters actually talk to each other outside of banter skits and that was fantastic. Also, finally, as long as you have up to 3 licenses, multiple party members can have the same sub-class. Thank god.

Now, the negatives. As mentioned before, I think this entry leans way too far into trying to be dark and edgy. The villains feel completely uninspired. They are either mustache-twirly and have poor motivations, or even worse, there are supporting characters that just outright change alignments in the last 2 hours of the game. I think it was supposed to be a plot twist, but it ended up just feeling like an influx of poor villain design for the sake of shock value. Some villains just straight up come out of nowhere. Throne's Chapter 4 boss was baffling how stupid it was, despite her Chapters 1 and 3 being simply incredible. Agnea's villain is another example of a twist villain, and that character goes from wanting a village to starve to death to just abandoning their job at the end for no reason.

Despite my criticisms of the plot, I think the main characters are well done. I wanted them to succeed, but I wish their antagonists were even a fraction as compelling as they were. The post-game introduced more lore, but it felt sloppy and gave us more "twist villains" which just made two characters' journeys feel completely pointless. But I have to give it props for not having 10 bosses in a row with no save points like OT1 did. The final boss also used all 8 party members at once which was insane, but I actually liked it (those who didn't level up anyone else, so sorry).

Overall, I did enjoy it and I think the gameplay is far superior to OT1, while the plot is inferior. If you liked the first game, there's no reason you won't also like this one.

Octopath Traveler 1 was a deeply flawed game. Despite a great aesthetic, very solid combat system and polished presentation, the game was bogged down by extremely poor dialogue, story and characters. It was really tough to overlook considering how much of the game revolved around listening to the eight characters talk... and talk... and talk.

So the question at the time was: Was this a flaw of design? Or implementation? Would it be improved the sequel?

The unfortunate answer is no. Octopath Traveler II is clearly just an iteration on the existing formula that feels almost exactly the same in the way the characters and story are unbearable while the rest of the game is excellent. A number of chapters don't even involve ANY combat and expect you to sit and listen to Agnea and Partitio slog through terrible conversations and story beats that make absolutely no logical sense. If you salivate at the idea of playing a modern Final Fantasy Mystic Quest or you really enjoyed the first OT, you will love OT2. However, if you are expecting characters and a story with more depth than a kids book, stay away.

5 stars for mechanics, the combat system, the aesthetic, graphics, music etc.

1 star for every single thing you have to read and listen to.

Played on PS5

OT2 is a game that continues to do what the 1st game did, with some improvements. There's still 8 characters with 8 stories to play through, but down the line you also get some 'cross-path' stories now, more on that below.

Story quality On those 8 stories, they're, like in the first game, divided into chapters again. While the general storytelling is a lot better than in game 1, it's still hit and miss; Some characters have an amazing storyline while other characters still have a story that seems to have been written by a child. The cross-path stories don't really add much, they're mostly fluff. They really could have done a lot more with this feature in particular.

Path actions There's a new day/night system in the 2nd game which combines with path actions based on if it's day or night, you can freely switch between the two. While this sounds cool in theory, it does not add much in practice, because it just ends up with a lot of overlapping abilities on different characters.

The emphasis seems to be to make you use said actions a lot more, which ends up being frustrating and unfun; A lot of the game's good items are hidden on npc's in towns, either directly or behind some info you can learn, and going through entire towns of npc's to use different path actions on them is just not fun, especially because you get a small dialog every single time you use one of the actions, i eneded up just not using them alltogether anymore.

What they did do right with the day/night system is the monster variety you encounter; not only are there different and more monsters at night, you can also setup your party to use all kinds of buffs and bonuses automatically when it's nighttime.

Bosses This is my main gripe with the game. 99% of the game's bosses are super easy in essence, but what they did to make them artificially hard is giving the bosses way too many turns in a row. Each of your partymembers gets one go in a full turn, but bosses sometimes magically get 6-7 goes inside the same turn. So what ends up is you either watch the boss doing aoe after aoe after aoe without you being able to do anything about it, or, like i ended up doing, you make your party so strong that you kill each boss in 1-2 turns and it becomes incredibly boring. Then, the other 1%. The last boss is suddenly a hug step up in difficulty, but does actually feel like a well designed boss. The 2 secret bosses, however, are so horribly overtuned that the only viable tactic to defeat them is using a cheese tactic that kills each of them before they can do anything at all.

If there is to be a 3rd game, boss design is general is an aspect of the game where they can still improve a lot.

Variety of areas The biggest improvement on the first game to me, seems to be the huge vaqriation in areas you can go to. Each town really feels unique, as does each zone. The side dungeons are mostly short but well crafted and the game looks beautiful in general.

OST Like the first game, the music is outstanding and there's some really memorable tunes during the game, no complaints here at all!

Length of the game Another big issue. You play all characters on chapter 1, which is frankly some sort of tutorial for each character in a way. Then each character has either 4 or 5 chapters (some of them have multiple paths per chapter), on top of that there are the crosspath stories, which are not that fun to play through. After all that, there's now an entire 'after the chapters' chapter, which did have a slightly ok story but was mostly just a repeat of things that happened earlier in the game. When that's finished, there is an epilogue that, in my mind could've been skipped alltogether because it adds zero value at all.

All of this, combined with the abundance of side dungeons, the close to 70 side quests (which are mostly pretty good, but do get tedious because there are so so many), does make the game overstay it's welcome, and from about 60% into the game i felt myself starting to rush things and skip dialogues to get it over with. The game could really do with a bit of a trim in a future 3rd version, i think 2 or 3 really good (storywise) chapters per character would be much more enjoyable than the current 4-5, where half of the chapters is of mediocre writing.

I'm happy to say this is one of the best JRPGs from the last few years. Initially, I was a bit skeptical of how much marketing they kept placing on assuring everyone that the characters interacted. I didn't want to play 80 hours of a game just to see characters chiming in for every event because every other JRPG does it so poorly already... While the game does include new two-person chapters for some interaction, they are usually just extended party banter with little to no combat and only a few chapters. They have also added a final chapter to tie in all the solo and partner chapters, while also giving you a proper final boss and a nice little epilogue. What a final boss it was too, the mechanic was very unique and I wish more games attempted it. Sadly it was a bit too easy and died quickly. Of course, there is still a super boss to attempt, and I'm glad to say it's still doable with little to no grinding if you prepped well.

The new additions to Octopath 2 greatly improved some of the frustrating parts of the original. Gone is every story consisting of 1-4 chapters done in the exact same order with the almost formulaic "get to town, press path action, do dungeon, beat boss." Now, depending on the story, you can have multiple routes to tackle in any order, some having optional routes and others just varying in length compared to the strict 4 chapters. Some don't even have a dungeon or boss fight, adding some needed variety. Dungeons in general are similar to the previous game, but the number of them appears to have been reduced. Chests are also hidden a bit more both inside and outside dungeons, which I appreciated because there are still barely any puzzles. The overworld exploration is even better here, with a lot more odd places that end up hiding secrets. I played the game as 4 and 4 and got my boat (also new to the series) on the second playthrough, making that party even more enjoyable because there were so many new areas for me to explore.

Each character's story quality seems to have gone up as well, as I don't remember caring for half of them in the previous game. With the exception of Castti's, I was immediately engrossed in all of the stories here. My favourites have to be Partitio's easily and Osvald. The sleeper hit has to go to Agnea, who I initially thought would be the worst one. Speaking of the worst character, we lost Ye Olde English and in return got a Catgirl. Her story is nice, but I just can't stand the character at all. Just as before, each story does tie together at the end, with some of them being very obvious in their chapters.

Now for the main reason these games are sick, the combat is just amazing. There have been tweaks to each job, while some of the characters are way more enjoyable to use throughout your journey. For example, H'aanit was pretty annoying to use in the first game due to your captures having limited uses. You ended up needing to constantly catch your favourites or just stockpile them. In Octopath 2, your captures are permanent, and you can enable auto capture, which gives you a 25% chance of capturing the monster every time you kill it with Ochette. This really reduced a lot of the tedium for me and made me actually want to use her. A lot of other jobs have been changed too, like thief, hunter, and scholar. In addition, each character now has a couple of EX skills that are unique to them. Half of these are scattered around the world as shrines to find, whereas in the first game, these shrines were what gave you access to subjobs. Subjobs in Octopath 2 are instead learned by finding their respective guilds and meeting certain requirements if you want multiple characters to use the same job. They have also added a new latent gauge to each character which pretty much functions like a limit break with some insane synergies. Each character now has an additional path action depending on the time of day, giving you a lot more variety in how you choose to build your teams. My favourite part has to be the new buffed talents, such as warrior and rogue. Hikari is great for warriors in particular because you can now learn skills based on who you challenge & defeat, giving you even more freedom in teambuilding, though I do wish there was a bit of QOL in being able to remember old skills. It feels like they really went above and beyond to ensure each character is unique rather than just being able to use any character with a subjob for minimal difference.

The gameplay is largely the same as the first game, with you leveling up throughout the journey at a nice pace. Even playing through with the reduced random encounters, you will easily stay on level. I'm not sure how grinding complaints ever arose when you have to work really hard to stay under-leveled, and even then, levels don't really matter. I could see needing to grind if you truly fucked up your skill selections for random sub jobs. I was able to get nearly every possible skill in every job with every character here due to secret job changes. Random encounters this time do feel a bit easier, but I think that's mostly because you can get the secret job way earlier than in the first game. This is because the four secret jobs now aren't just boss fights like before, which does make me a bit sad because we miss out on a music track that was one of the best in the original. I did appreciate the variety in how you acquired the secret jobs, but I still felt like they should have added 1 or 2 more bosses for them.

The only criticism I have is that they have yet to address the only issue with the first game. Your first character is still locked to your party until you complete their story. I really wish this wasn't the case because it leads to over-leveling, as in the first game, or resorting to 4 and 4, as I did here.

I'm so delighted this ended up being everything I wanted and more. Team Asano is quickly becoming my favourite JRPG developers just for their consistent level of quality, and the amount of freedom they allow for combat. I'm even more excited to play Triangle Strategy, as I heard it has a good amount of challenge for the entire playthrough and I enjoyed the demo. I might even give Various Daylife a shot on the offchance it is good. I cannot wait for the next game made by this team.

It's easy to see what the buzz was all about when this release as it really does the kind of stuff you want to see in a sequel, building off everything in the first title and adding more while attempting to address issues and shortcomings of the previous game. In this regard I think Octopath Traveler II mostly succeeds: two path actions per character based around a day/night cycle you can toggle, unique abilities and "latent powers" per character to help make them unique, license system to assign multiple party members to the same secondary job, quality of life improvements across the board, more involved stories, extra bonus chapters focused on two party members showcasing greater party synergy, and so on.

This second entry really does build off the first game in a lot of great ways while maintaining solid music, even better pixel art, and a fun and interesting battle system that made the first entry enjoyable. I do think it doesn't quite do enough to shore up the weaknesses of the first title however, and that's where the bulk of my grievances are:

-Character stories are generally a lot more involved and interesting this time around than the generic story beats of the first game. They are however still a pretty hit and miss. For each surprising and offbeat chapter that engaged me, there would always be another that felt simple and by the numbers.

-The party definitely gets more screentime and engagement as a party this time around but you'll still have awkward moments of joining up, or scenarios that just pretend the rest of your party isn't there and so on that can put a damper on things.

-The side quests can be quite obtuse and frustrating at times if you avoid any guides like I did, and it is obnoxious when your clever alternate solutions seem feasible but isn't viable even though some quests clearly did have multiple solutions.

-While many boss fights were quite fun with creative and unique mechanics at work, there were many that were just too easy even when taking them on several levels under what is recommended. A hard mode would have likely done wonders for this.