The first time I saw Octopath Traveler, I fell in love instantly.
It’s visual style, melding 2D sprites with a 3D world, was so striking that I just had
to play the game.
And that was fortunate as a demo was released at the same time, providing a hint of what
I could expect once the full game was released.
Well, that day has finally come.
And while Octopath Traveler makes a wonderful first impression, is it good enough to hold
your interest for more than a few hours?
Octopath Traveler takes place on the continent of Orsterra where players are given the choice
of eight different characters, each with their own stories and goals.
And it’s completely open with how you start.
You could choose Primrose and her story of seeking revenge, Tressa and her journey to
become a successful merchant, Cyrus and his hunt for a lost tome, H’aanit and her search
for her lost master, or any of the other four.
Each one has their own characters, stakes, and even tone to experience making the game
more akin to a collection of short stories rather than one grand epic like in most RPGs.
The only thing that really matters when it comes to choosing your first character is
that they’re the one that has to be in your party for the entire game.
But that leads into the other aspect of this story.
You don’t start eight different times with each character.
Instead, you simply have to travel to the next area where their story is told and choose
to pick up from there.
It’s simple to keep track of them all as the World Map helpfully points where to go
next in each characters’ case.
This decision to keep each characters’ story separate is not without its issues though.
In my 45 hours playing the game, I’ve only completed 2 full stories while reaching at
least the halfway point with the others.
And in that entire time, the characters don’t really interact with each other or affect
the outcome of their stories in any real way.
They’ll eventually chime in to comment about the happenings in a characters’ story, but
it takes a while to feel any kind of real friendship.
It’s just not the focus.
And while I can’t confirm it, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of final chapter either
where they all come together.
As I said before, these are self-contained tales rather than an interwoven series of
events.
And despite the wonderful first impression that Octopath Traveler provides, it’s actually
the beginning that’s the weakest, at least the way I played it.
I wanted to experience every character right away, and the game encourages this, or pushes
it enough for you to get a full party of four.
The second chapter of a character is almost always on the opposite side of the map, which
basically ensures that a player will check out all the other characters along the way.
This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that the opening chapters are extremely repetitive.
The characters might all have their own unique goal, but every opening chapter features some
backstory, a problem, a dungeon, and a boss until you move onto the next character and
repeat the process.
It’s not so bad on paper but doing it eight times in a row dragged the game down considerably.
Granted, I had the option to just move on to a second chapter at any time.
Octopath Traveler scales the levels of enemies based on the amount of progress you’ve made.
It really does open things up.
But because I was determined to meet all the characters and had to play in a short time,
I ended up bogged down.
However, once those opening chapters were complete, the game really took off for me.
Enemies had more advanced strategies, the locations were even more vibrant and interesting,
and the stories just kept getting better.
And that’s the key thing for me.
Each of the eight stories is fantastic with well written characters that I couldn’t
wait to see more of.
You’ll obviously have your favorites and some of the plots can be a tad formulaic,
but seeing them come together over time felt worth it.
I want to see the endings of the other six characters.
It just became that compelling over time.
And this gets down to how it feels Octopath Traveler wants to be played.
Every chapter can be completed within an hour or two.
This makes it perfect to pick up and play in short bursts while still feeling like you’re
making progress.
However, this also means that the formula really starts to show if you play more than
a chapter or two in a day.
But that’s just the story and characters, what about the gameplay?
Well, I’d best describe it as simple with just enough twists to keep it interesting.
The key features of combat are the bonus points and enemy weaknesses.
Every turn, characters will earn a bonus point allowing them to take an extra action.
Up to four of these can be used at once for a variety of options.
At their most basic, they allow a character to strike an enemy that number of times.
This is useful when it comes to enemy weaknesses as every enemy has a certain amount of armor.
If that enemy is struck that number of times with their weakness, they’re left in a dazed
state where their attacks are interrupted and yours do more damage.
Without them being put in this state, battles can take quite a while as most characters
can only manage half of their potential damage, if that.
The enemy weaknesses are a mystery until the proper weapon or spell is used and most enemies
have a variety of them to allow your party to whittle the armor down together.
This system, in conjunction with the bonus points, leads to a fair amount of strategy.
Do you expend your bonus actions right away to prevent the monsters from damaging you
at all?
Or do you slowly bring down the armor while building up your bonus actions in order to
really lay down the hurt once they’re open?
Like the story, this battle system is interesting at first then falls into a feeling of repetition
as few other strategies are necessary early on.
But as I reached later chapters, the difficulty increased and I had to think about how I would
quickly and efficiently take down armor while keeping the damage I took to a minimum.
And bosses from Chapter 3 and beyond really drive these strategies home.
Oftentimes they’ll be protected by smaller enemies that have to be defeated in order
to open up their weaknesses or they could actually shift their weaknesses to force you
to change strategies within your chosen party.
There are other tricks that I won’t spoil, but both of the final bosses I faced in the
character stories that I finished were some of the longest and trickiest enemies in the
game.
I just had to reach a certain point for these advanced techniques to be necessary.
You see, while bonus points can be used to hit an enemy multiple times with a chosen
weapon, it doesn’t do this with spells.
Instead, it increases how potent that spell is.
In the case of damaging spells, they’ll be far powerful than usual but still only
count as one hit to the armor, making them potentially better suited for when the enemy
is weakened.
Healing spells work the same way, recovering more hit points than they would normally.
But for buffs and debuffs, these are extended to last longer.
Normally, raising your own defense would only last two turns, but if you use the maximum
bonus points, it could last eight turns.
It’s in this way that you have to keep your bonus actions in mind at all times though
it never becomes overwhelming.
Otherwise, each character has their own class that comes with special abilities, spells,
and specific weapons which dictates how they have to handle certain enemies.
Each character feels unique although some do fall into the common tropes of warrior,
thief, black mage, and white mage.
As you battle, you’ll earn Job Points alongside your experience and these can spent to expand
your Job’s Skills.
Any of these abilities can be chosen at any time, but as you choose, the price for each
one increases making you consider your playstyle in order to optimize it quickly.
But as you unlock more skills, passive bonuses are unlocked as well encouraging you to spend
these points immediately.
This becomes even more important once Secondary Jobs are introduced.
Around the world are special shrines to find that will grant one of the characters’ Jobs.
Only one character can equip any extra Job at a time, so you can’t have an entire party
equipped with Warrior as the second Job for example.
And these can be quite helpful as they can potentially increase the variety of weapons
available at that character’s disposal.
However, this extra Job still uses the same pool of Job Points, forcing you to choose
which Skill you want more.
While you won’t have access to the Abilities of the Secondary Job when its unequipped,
you can still assign the passive bonuses and potentially cover any weaknesses your primary
Job has.
It’s an uncomplicated yet fun system that provides something for players to work toward.
There’s also special Jobs that can be found but these are guarded by some extremely tough
bosses, making them more of a late game consideration.
Otherwise, each character has a Passive Action that can be used with NPCs.
This allows them to steal or barter with them, glean information, challenge, and even recruit
NPCs to your side.
It’s a great way to flesh them out and potentially earn some extra items.
These Passive Actions also tie into the sidequests and are usually necessary to complete them.
Sidequests don’t provide a ton of bonuses, but they are a good way to earn money and
extra items.
Even better, some can be completed in multiple ways making for a good way to break up the
chapters.
The world of Octopath Traveler is open yet linear.
Any character’s story can be done at any time yet the paths in-between towns are mostly
straightforward with only a few sideroads leading to chests.
There are some extra dungeons to explore as well with a miniboss to face at the end before
a chest with a good item.
But not even the dungeons are that complex.
That said there is a mini-map that helps point players toward towns, save points, or even
these extra dungeons and shrines.
It helps make things a bit easier to find though it can be turned off if you’d prefer
exploring without any direction.
Even though there might not be a lot to explore in any one path, the vistas in Octopath Traveler
are breathtaking.
It might be reminiscent of a 2D artstyle, but the way trees blow in the wind or the
snow sparkles from the light is incredible to behold.
Each location really stands out from the rest and never feels like a retread.
The only issue I ever had was that sometimes the world felt a little dark and didn’t
allow me to appreciate the sights as much as I wanted.
But as time went on, I noticed it less though it was still an issue.
The character sprites are a great throwback to the 16-bit era with the same kind of expressiveness
as Final Fantasy 6.
The amount of emotion that can be wrung out of certain scenes with just this simple sprite
style is awesome to see and sells many of the big moments.
But these scenes are also helped by the wonderful voice acting and soundtrack.
Every character is sold by their actor with some side characters even stealing the show
at points.
While not every line is voiced, the big moments are, punctuating what they mean to the story.
And the music is just incredible.
Haunting melodies, emotional crescendos, light and fluffy beats; it all comes together in
a way that made me just want to sit back and listen.
It really is a standout soundtrack.
Really the entire presentation is topnotch.
Octopath Traveler is different kind of RPG.
In focusing on individual stories rather than a grand tale, the developers made something
a little more personal.
But because of the structure, this could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the
player.
When I played through all eight of the first chapters in a row, I was left disappointed.
Things felt too repetitious and samey without any of the depth I was craving.
But when I reached Chapter 2 and beyond, I started to appreciate the way the game was
structured.
This really is the player’s story to tell, but I recommend experiencing a later chapter
if things start to feel bland.
It’s there that the game stands out.
Despite a rocky start, by the end, I liked it a lot.
Repetition is the game’s greatest enemy but the way Octopath Traveler allows for short
play sessions while still accomplishing larger goals helps this issue.
I love the characters, the combat is simple yet layered, and there’s just enough exploration
to keep me satisfied.
Now I just need to see how the rest of these stories end.
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