General Gaming How's about that Octopath Traveler 2?

[Xbob42]

Whoops, didn't mean for this to get so long. Oh well!

 

I really wasn't a fan of the first game myself. Just nothing about any of the characters grabbed me and the story felt super disjointed and especially once you recruited other party members it felt just... generic, I guess? Like the story itself wasn't constructed around there being 8 different party members, which just always came off like a weird romhack or something to me.

 

Anyway, tried out the demo for 2 on Steam tonight, and played through the entire 3 hour allotment they give you and enjoyed the whole thing. Most of the characters on the selection screen once again didn't stand out to me, except for Osvald, "you've been in prison for killing your wife and child for 1,800 days, you want nothing more than to murder the fuck out of the guy who did this to you" was a much more compelling concept to me than "you're a merchant and your village got sad because no money and now you've made a vow to end poverty!" like what the fuck kinda childish motivation is that??

 

I feel like the game is much more designed for high FPS and resolutions. The original game was locked to 60 and party members would get weirdly stuttery and choppy if you went into the config and overrode the cap. This one just has an FPS option right in the options menu that seems to work perfectly.

The visuals seem to have been upgraded as well. Opening up the original game, a lot of the texture work and geometry seems much simpler, 2's use of lighting and visual effects give a much more convincing look and less "we had an idea for a graphical style and didn't take it far enough" impression.

For some reason you can change the time between day and night with the push of a button. You get different field abilities depending on time of day, and monsters are stronger at night. I presume some quests will also be affected by this.

 

I remember a lot of folks liked the combat in the first game, but it always felt like a way less fun Bravely Default to me. Not sure how that may or may not change here, a lot of it seems really similar, I think latent power is new though? You fill up a bar over time and can activate it at will, and for the character I started with, it changes his normally target-all spells to single-target, but massively increases the damage they do. Combined with a full boost you can do some insane damage even to higher level enemies. I'm curious as to what the others are, but I'll wait until the full game.

 

Voice acting still isn't amazing but I like it a lot more. It seems more lively than the very, exceptionally stiff and clinical acting in the first game. In fact, the whole thing seems a lot more hammy in a way that makes it more entertaining without coming across as overly cheesy or embarrassing. At least so far. Also there seems to be a lot more of it? I feel like the voice acting in the first game was pretty sparse.

 

Still not sure I understand the point of the danger system with sprinting. Comes across as a cynical way to keep playtime high to me. If you sprint, your encounter rate goes up. So play longer by not sprinting or play longer by battling more. That's all it looks like to me, I see no added depth of complexity beyond that.

 

Boss sprites are still big and chunky and fun. And I didn't notice any of that weird moving seam issue you saw with the first game. I remember it being especially bad on Switch and still-there-but-barely-perceptible on PC. (When the camera would move, a visible seam of sorts could be seen scrolling across big sprites, and it was really weird and distracting.)

 

Let's see, what else... The reputation system is back and makes less sense than ever. Basically you have a chance of succeeding your field action on villagers in towns, if you succeed you get a benefit, if you fail your reputation can go down and if you fail enough you can no longer use job actions without paying a bartender to "fix" your reputation. This is exceptionally bizarre and stupid for Osvald. For one, his nighttime ability is mug. Which makes no sense because he was never a criminal to begin with. But worse than that, mugging doesn't affect how townspeople feel about you one way or another, whether you succeed or fail.

 

You get into fights with townspeople to mug them, and if you win you get the items you see in the pre-mug screen, and if you "die" you're left at 1HP and that's the only punishment, which is especially toothless when there's an inn (because it's a town) that costs like 10 leafs (I think that's the currency name?) when you have thousands already. This field action makes no sense for this character and you kinda feel like shit using it, or at least I do. Pregnant woman? Beat her ass and steal her stuff! Her husband? Slice him up and take the child's toy he has on him to sell for 50g at the shop. Grandma and grandpa caring for their foster granddaughter? Burn them alive and take their meager possessions! Guy who saved you and nursed you back to health? Why, you assault him viciously and take his most precious keepsake, idiot!

 

And none of this impacts reputation or dialogue at all. You can talk to them after and they don't even mention it. In fact, the game seems to encourage it, you even get a little checkmark above their head after successfully mugging them, plus the rewards and danger-free experience/job points! Contrast this to Osvald's daytime field action, study, which reveals backstories about each character to make you like them, and at least theoretically it kind of seems like a relatively cool morality system but with no obvious consequences whatsoever. I'm hoping if you're a serial mugger the game has something prepared, because if it's only rewards that's really bizarre. Oh also, if you fail the study field action, THAT'S when villagers get mad. Beat the shit out of me and steal my belongings all you want, but don't learn my backstory.

 

While this one specific action is very confusing to me and doesn't fit the character, and the lack of consequences make the world and its characters feel that much less believable, I've enjoyed everything else so far. I really hope they can tie the characters together better this time. I feel like if it turns out like the first game they'd have been better off just making it 8 individual stories that don't really intersect at all rather than half-assing it.

 

Finally, I really enjoyed the prison aspect of this characters, as I did with Tales of Arise in 2021. Something about starting from such a low point in an RPG is really satisfying to me. And the mug action actually made a LOT more sense in prison. You can choose to head straight to a story point to unlock your ability to cast magic, but I wasn't sure if it would critical path me and lock me out of returning, and the NPCs around the area had a lot of nice items, but were real strong, especially since you're basically a mage who can't use magic in the beginning, making you super weak. It was so satisfying determining which NPCs were the weakest (and also had a weakness to staves) and trying to ration my meager resources to defeat all 7 or so of them. Had to retry many fights several times and learn when to defend and what my openings were and try and guess how much HP they had and whether I should go all out or use one of my sparse items to heal (or tough it out and heal using my NPC ally who does not engage in these fights with me) and win a war of attrition. Critically, two NPCs had consumables that dealt elemental damage, so beating them and using that to kill the hardest was key.

 

Of course, all that could've been skipped if I just unlocked my magic, went down into the area with monsters, and grinded a bit. But that would've been WAY less fun. Actually beating all these NPCs with a weak ass magic-less mage and like 3 healing items was intense!

I'll stop now, I only intended this to be a paragraph or two long.

[Xbob42]

Oh and YOU CAN GO INTO THE GODDAMN SHOPS AND STUFF NOW.

 

Fucking HATED how shops in Octopath 1 were just doors you talked to to buy stuff. Stop peeling away little parts of RPGs for no reason!

[Keyser_Soze]

The most surprising part of this post is that it's not a switch exclusive for a certain amount of time this time around.

[Mr.Vic20]

@Xbob42 I truly appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this one! I played but quit Octo 1 after chapter 2, so I was planning to skip this one. I will give the demo a try and see if it grabs me as much as it has you. 

[Xbob42]

6 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The most surprising part of this post is that it's not a switch exclusive for a certain amount of time this time around.

Yay for not having inexplicable exclusivity on a random platform to the benefit of no one!

[Bjomesphat]

I played a lot of Octopath 1 but never finished it. I really loved it, but it wasn't an RPG that really compelled me to keep coming back. I think I just didn't care much for the disconnected storylines, and even each individual story was a bit dull.

 

No idea when I'll get to the sequel though. I have, AT LEAST, in front of me: Persona 5, Xenoblade 3, and Live A Live.

[Paperclyp]

The last thing I needed was a massive Xbob thread detailing his fondness of a game I didn't plan on getting because I thought the first one seemed more like a proof of concept than a game. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

This would come out a few weeks after I started playing Skyrim for the first time. I’ll never get to it, and I liked the first one!

[BloodyHell]

I played octopath into the 3rd chapter, but I was forcing myself so I dropped it. Game just didn't grab me. I'll give this a chance eventually, but i'll be hopping into VR next week, so this game isn't on the list yet. It can wait for a sale. 

 

 

[XxEvil AshxX]

On 2/14/2023 at 7:02 AM, Xbob42 said:

Yay for not having inexplicable exclusivity on a random platform to the benefit of no one!

 

Just the inexplicable exclusion of a platform (Xbox).

[Xbob42]

Yeah, excluding any platform that can reasonably play a game is always a negative to me. Exclusives suck ass! Don't exclude, include!

 

That aside, playing through the first game (until I get sick of it again) mostly out of curiosity to see why exactly I enjoyed the demo for 2 so much more. I think it's a lot of little things. Like how the fucking DANCER, when given a DANCE COMMAND, will step forward to perform the action, and then a voice line plays like "The lion dance." and she doesn't even dance! Not even a cute little spin or twirl animation! It's so lazy. If you didn't want to make sprites dancing, why is there a dancer in a village full of dancers and not once during any "dance" scene do we get any better than a fade to black?! (Some of it early-on is implied to be sexual, but not always, definitely not during combat, and especially not a dance for a little girl!)

 

No wonder FF3 used their dancing girl sprite at basically every inn, apparently this is the peak of technology!

 

(24:16 if it fails to link to the correct time)

 

It's a small thing, and in the end it shouldn't matter, but I think it does, it's just another missing brick in the foundation of what I consider the love and passion that goes into these kinds of games. They're always full of weird little details that make the world more fun to explore and that show a touch of humanity from the weirdos who made them. I feel like when the dancer in Octopath is in my party I can practically hear the chain smoking producer denying the team the resources to make dances because the deadline's in 4 months and the Switch still can't get hit the 30 FPS target. The omission of obvious things, even if they're not technically "important," distracts heavily from being able to focus on and get lost in a game.

 

EDIT: I take it back, the dancer DOES in fact do like a 4-5 frame twirl when she uses Lion Dance. It's so short that it's easily missed but at least it's there! Another dance, Moonlight Waltz, absolutely does not have an associated dance animation. So... sorta good?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Game Information

Game Title: Octopath Traveler II

 

Platforms:

• PC (Feb 24, 2023)
• PlayStation 5 (Feb 24, 2023)
• Nintendo Switch (Feb 24, 2023)
• PlayStation 4 (Feb 24, 2023)

 

Developers: ACQUIRE Corp., Square Enix
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX

 

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 86 average - 97% recommended

 

Critic Reviews

God is a Geek - 10 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II is a spectacular sequel, and the easiest recommendation I could ever give to RPG fans.

Atomix - Spanish - 92 / 100

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Thanks to a fantastic combat system, entertaining stories and a spectacular visual style, Octopath Traveler II is the sequel we have been waiting for so much. It is a JRPG for those of us who love JRPGs.

RPG Fan - 91%

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Octopath Traveler II takes everything that works about the original, makes it better, and is a fantastic game steeped in appropriate nostalgia.

Game Revolution - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler 2 is another love letter to Square Enix’s golden years. It’s a greatest hits comprised of mechanics from across several franchises, even if it doesn’t build on the original’s formula too much.

Nintendo Life - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II is a triumphant and confident follow-up to its predecessor, building on the established foundation with welcome new ideas and tweaks that make for an overall excellent experience. A strategic combat system, open-ended character progression, well-written stories, gorgeous visuals, and an incredible soundtrack all coalesce into one of the finest RPGs available on Switch to date. Though it may be more of the same, Team Asano demonstrates mastery of its craft at every turn here. We'd give Octopath Traveler II a high recommendation to anybody looking for a beautiful new RPG to add to their Switch collection.

PSX Brasil - Portuguese - 90 / 100

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Octopath Traveler II is an excelent example of how to release a classic JRPG with a modern flair. Its engaging narrative and captivating characters by themselves already deliver a highly valuable title, but it is on the rich simplicity of its combat where it reaches an even higher bar. The small technical issues, excessive random encounters and simplistic character evolution system are the only complaints that can be made about a title that delights at every minute.

Prima Games - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II has already cemented itself as my comfort game of 2023.

Push Square - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II presents enough rich, turn-based action to forgive its minor combat system flaws. It's a breath-taking work of art, filled to the brim with story and adventure, bolstered by a cast of incredible characters who will leave you wanting more at every turn. A masterfully crafted RPG.

Saudi Gamer - Arabic - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler 2 is made with love and care that can be felt by whoever decide to give this game a shot, from the breath taking 2D HD Pixel art to the legendary soundtrack and engaging combat mechanics. Square Enix gave us their first huge win this year with this legendary game

Siliconera - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler 2 is one of those sequels that builds on the original in every way, remaining accessible even with eight stories to tell.

TechRaptor - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II outdoes its predecessor and adds in a lot of missing features as well as new mechanics, making it feel like a grander journey to embark on.

TheSixthAxis - 9 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II manages to improve on almost every aspect of its predecessor, whether they needed it or not. The exploration is deeper with more nooks and crannies to nose your way through. The combat is far more intricate, giving greater options to build your party and skillset, and a large degree of player choice. The visuals are absolutely beautiful, and the sound design is phenomenal once again. Honestly, Octopath Traveler II has basically negated the need to play the first title, and I cannot think of higher praise.

We Got This Covered - 4.5 / 5

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Octopath Traveler II sticks with what works, weaving the lives of eight unique characters -- each with their own story and motivations -- to create an epic narrative that old-school gamers will absolutely love.

GAMES.CH - German - 88%

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The first Octopath Traveler is still a great game. The sequel does not change anything beside story and characters, but simultaneously maintains the strengths and rises comfort and depth. If you like the predecessor or JRPGs in general, you will need to play it.

Spaziogames - Italian - 8.8 / 10

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While Octopath Traveler II is a better game than the first overall, thanks to improved writing, visuals and combat, we would have liked to see more courage from the people at Square Enix and Acquire, which both did a great job with this IP five years ago. Nonetheless, this is an absolute must buy for RPG fans all around the world.

Hobby Consolas - Spanish - 87 / 100

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Octopath Traveler II is a more and better manual: a game that may not get the detractors of the first to change their minds, but thanks to its novelties and improvements will dazzle lovers of turns and traditional JRPGs.

GamePro - German - 86 / 100

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Octopath Traveler 2 is a really successful successor that builds on the strengths of its predecessor and brings meaningful improvements.

Game Informer - 8.5 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II does what an excellent sequel should. Instead of breaking new ground left and right, it improves on the original in nearly every way and feels more confident about the stories it tells. There’s still room for improvement in some of its stiffer areas, but Octopath II is a sterling achievement all around.

Press Start - 8.5 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II does an earnest job of trying to right the wrongs of its predecessor, making more attempts than ever to integrate the stories of its eight characters. While the result falls slightly short of this promise, Octopath Traveler II offers everything the original did and more. It's a stellar RPG with a fantastic presentation and mechanically robust gameplay systems that any genre fan shouldn't miss.

Wccftech - 8.5 / 10

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Octopath Traveler II plays it safe when it comes to its core gameplay, offering a handful of small positive tweaks that don’t entirely make up for returning problems like clumsy party management and battles that take too long to wrap up. Thankfully, the game also takes a big, confident step forward in terms of writing, offering a cast of well-wrought, interesting characters and a vividly-detailed world you won’t soon forget. Octopath Traveler II may have the same old engine under the hood, but the road trip it takes you on is well worth experiencing.

COGconnected - 80 / 100

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Whether or not you’ll enjoy it yourself comes down to what you’re looking for. If you’re starving for more Octopath, then this is perfect. Eight new characters, a whole new world to explore, and a handful of new systems. On the other hand, if you’re hoping for something truly new, you’ll be disappointed. I loved the first game, so all I wanted was more of the same. There are enough little changes to keep me pretty happy. But if you weren’t happy with the first one, then Octopath Traveler 2 likely isn’t for you.

Digital Trends - 4 / 5

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Octopath Traveler 2 builds on its predecessor's strengths to create another charming retro RPG.

Hardcore Gamer - 4 / 5

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When compared to the original, Octopath Traveler II is largely more of the same but better.

Shacknews - 8 / 10

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I give Square Enix and ACQUIRE Corp props for ambition, but there's still a ways to go before the Octopath Traveler lives up to its potential and reaches its final form.

TheGamer - 4 / 5

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When all is said and done, and the eight storytellers have finally found a way to make their narratives line up and come together to deliver the exciting finale, Octopath Traveler 2 makes for a satisfying night at the bar. It’s full of pathos and excitement that pushes you forward, and the gameplay is tight and enjoyable. You can’t help but wish it was a little more well-structured, but seeing how the storytellers learned so much from their previous attempt, it’s hard not to look forward to the tales they’ll tell next time.

CGMagazine - 7.5 / 10

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Octopath Traveler 2 makes a number of improvements to the original, yet it is still an extremely similar game — for better and for worse.

NintendoWorldReport - 7.5 / 10

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However, if you really enjoyed Octopath Traveler and want a better, improved version of the combat and overall exploration, Octopath Traveler II will deliver that in spades. This is a strong RPG that I enjoyed my time with, but it's not a bold new step forward. Instead, it moderately iterates on an enjoyable formula to good success.

Tom's Guide - 3.5 / 5

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Octopath Traveler II is a mixed bag. Most of it is good, and fans of turn-based JRPGs will enjoy the game, but it can be a difficult sell if you aren’t willing to overlook some of its major faults.

IGN - 7 / 10

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Octopath Traveler 2 is a very enjoyable JRPG sequel that feels a little too safe and familiar.

One More Game - Buy

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Octopath Traveler II is an improvement over its predecessor that keeps all of its familiar charms while elevating the experience at the same time. It adds just enough for old players to find joy with the new travelers introduced, but it also doesn’t alienate any newcomers who want to jump ahead with this new game.

 

The music and gameplay conspire to create a timeless adventure for every JRPG fan to experience. While it still has some minor convention gripes, for the most part, it doesn’t take away from the overall enjoyment of the game. JRPG conventions abound, so know what you’re getting into.

 

Polygon - Unscored

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Anyone who’s spent any time in fandom circles knows how a little goes a long way when it comes to filling in the gaps in character relationships. A hand on a shoulder, a passing compliment, a little joke — anything can be fuel for the imagination. There was plenty of time in Octopath Traveler 2, during exploration and combat, when my mind was free to wander and would have done most of the work — if there was any foundation for me to build from. But I can’t help feeling that imaginative fuel wasn’t put into the script to begin with. Without it, Octopath Traveler 2 is beautifully realized, but there’s a hole at its center.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Unscored

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Square Enix's gorgeous JRPG returns for a second outing, but bar a couple of very minor evolutions, this is effectively the same Octopath Traveler as before.

[Brian]

Yea this is an easy pass

[Biggie]

9 minutes ago, Brian said:

Yea this is an easy pass

I grew tired of the first Octopath and this looks exactly like that. 

[thedarkstark]

The first game was incredibly mid.  Fantastic battle system, terrible everything else. 

 

From my time with the demo the 2nd is just more of the same. I'll pick it up when it's $20 will have fun with it and then immediately forget it ever existed.

[Bloodporne]

I never played the first one and tried the demo for 2 on a whim today. Played the entire 3 hours and really enjoyed myself. I replayed Chrono Trigger a while back and I'm really liking turn based combat again and this feels great.

 

I just spent full price on Dead Space so not just yet but yea, it's a purchase pretty soon I'm thinking.

[Xbob42]

3 hours ago, thedarkstark said:

The first game was incredibly mid.  Fantastic battle system, terrible everything else. 

 

From my time with the demo the 2nd is just more of the same. I'll pick it up when it's $20 will have fun with it and then immediately forget it ever existed.

Try the imprisoned dude in the demo. That to me felt like the biggest step up in quality compared to the first game. In terms of story being told, pacing, quality of combat and combat encounters, sense of stakes, amount of voice acting, quality of the actual world itself, etc, it all felt far, far more refined and cohesive.

 

Of course, it could regress back to being the shallow experience Octopath 1 largely is right after that (somehow Octopath 1 makes the concept of a dual class system boring) but based on those reviews, I'm at least hopeful.

 

I don't blame anyone for being massively skeptical though. I'm sloggin' my way through the first game right now mostly for the hell of it and it's as mid as it gets.

 

1 hour ago, Bloodporne said:

I never played the first one and tried the demo for 2 on a whim today. Played the entire 3 hours and really enjoyed myself. I replayed Chrono Trigger a while back and I'm really liking turn based combat again and this feels great.

 

I just spent full price on Dead Space so not just yet but yea, it's a purchase pretty soon I'm thinking.

 

Yeah it seems pretty well done. I'm glad that it at least at first glance appears to be more than the shallow experience that I find the first game to be, which seemed to mostly coast along in public perception based on art style and not much else.

[Bloodporne]

7 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Try the imprisoned dude in the demo. That to me felt like the biggest step up in quality compared to the first game. In terms of story being told, pacing, quality of combat and combat encounters, sense of stakes, amount of voice acting, quality of the actual world itself, etc, it all felt far, far more refined and cohesive.

 

Of course, it could regress back to being the shallow experience Octopath 1 largely is right after that (somehow Octopath 1 makes the concept of a dual class system boring) but based on those reviews, I'm at least hopeful.

 

I don't blame anyone for being massively skeptical though. I'm sloggin' my way through the first game right now mostly for the hell of it and it's as mid as it gets.

 

 

Yeah it seems pretty well done. I'm glad that it at least at first glance appears to be more than the shallow experience that I find the first game to be, which seemed to mostly coast along in public perception based on art style and not much else.

Bit worried now after seeing all the comments in here!

 

I did play the prisoner segment only in the demo and even there I thought the story was okay but definitely disliked the voice acting. I actually tuened it off, I prefer just reading and half of the dudes unintentionally sound like Pateick Bateman somehow.

 

BUT. It is really fun and gorgeous in other ways. Just hope its not like Witcher 3 where I'm enamored for a bit and then the game just drops and drops.

[Xbob42]

Figured if I'm gonna be playing Octopath 1, might as well check out some mods to make it a little more enjoyable and less obtuse.

 

There aren't many available, but they're pretty good.

 

 

Replacing vague tooltips with accurate ones is always a chef's kiss for me.

 

Speaking of which...

 

 

This one replaces the vague as hell side story text with what you're actually supposed to do. Sometimes you can figure it out on your own easily, sometimes it's just some random nonsense you never would've guessed without just trying everything on everyone, everywhere. So if I have no idea what to do, I now have an in-game tool, which is quite nice.

 

Also got one that increases the amount of beasts a certain character can have at once, up to 10 from 6, nothing dramatic. And another that means if you beat someone in a challenge, you get their item 100% of the time instead of having to fight them over and over and over for an RNG drop, which is stupid as fuck.

There are others, such as several difficulty ones, including one that seemed to overhaul most of the game's balance and redo the boss AI to be more challenging and have more unique moves, which sounds interesting, but changes stuff a bit too much for a first-time playthrough for my tastes. There's also "steal always works" "summoned NPCs never leave battle once summoned/you can summon them 99 times" and others like that, but I feel these would all adversely affect the difficulty, which by default is pretty decent.

 

Game still isn't wowing me, but now that I've unlocked all the characters (going to each town and watching the first chapter of their boring ass stories was not a thrill) and have started unlocking secondary jobs (as well as finding what looks like advanced jobs that I'm not yet strong enough to unlock) I'm at least a little more interested.

Some of the side stories are mildly interesting, and the main stories of a few of the characters can be interesting as well, but it's always the same problem: none of it meshes and it all feels disconnected and not designed around you having these 8 characters. 

 

I'm starting to see how they're going to weave all 8 of these stories together (clumsily but at least they're trying) but that doesn't change the fact that any given character's story quests don't have any of the other characters in it, including scenes where they go up against an enemy, they don't talk to each other (outside of these Tales-like skits that I've seen like 3 of in my entire playthrough so far and aren't voiced and are just sprites standing in the void, and only 2 at a time) and even when you do side quests, instead of writing unique dialogue for the one or two times you might respond per side quest, your characters just never speak. At most if they convey info they'll get an ellipsis above their heads.

 

Further, I'm still struggling to figure out why there needed to be 8 different characters to begin with. They couldn't even come up with 8 different field skills. There's only 4, but they work slightly differently. One is usually "guaranteed but there's a level requirement" and the other is "chance-based but you can do it whenever"; so the risky one is the one that costs you reputation if you fail, which is just a money sink. You can also just reload a save to save scum the RNG. The field skills are:

 

Purchase <> Steal

Perhaps the most actually different abilities, they'll both show the same items, except one way involves paying of course. The other is chance.

 

Inquire <> Scrutizine

Get information about an NPC, including where hidden items are or quest knowledge. Both do literally the same thing, except you can fail scrutinizing and it doesn't have a level requirement, unlike inquire.

 

Guide <> Allure

Make an NPC follow you, you can then summon them in battle or take them to meet other NPCs for specific side quests. Guide is guaranteed, allure is RNG. While other skills render their counterpart useless (you can't purchase an item and then steal the same item or vice versa, or unlock more info about an NPC) you actually can drag along 1 NPC per character here which has niche use cases.

 

Provoke <> Challenge

I think provoke might have a lower level requirement than challenge, but both appear to require you be at a certain level? I'm not sure. These are kinda different. Challenge involves one of your party members getting into a 1v1 with an NPC, while provoke seems like that on the surface, except it's the beast tamer who uses provoke, and during provoke battles you can only use summoned animals, no normal attacks or abilities, which is a kinda neat twist but doesn't amount to much.

 

All this also makes it less fun to take the characters you want to take because field ability overlap just means you're missing out on a bunch of free resources or side quest options from whatever field skill is missing due to you having a duplicate. 8 truly individual skills would've been better here. I'd also have liked far less side quests but having each character properly interact with them. The game is friggin' overflowing with side quests but they all feel half-finished because you're basically just observing/listening then doing a chore, with no voice of your own.

 

Welp, back to it. I know the second game doesn't appear to be too related to the first, but I always really enjoy comparing and contrasting games in a series and seeing how certain mechanics evolved or stagnated. So far I think OT2 has a lot of potential, potential which I'm seeing fall through the cracks again and again in the first game.

[Xbob42]

Christ, talk about a game overstaying its welcome. I feel like I could write a dissertation on Octopath 1 and its bizarre, often bad and very rarely good choices. AND I WILL! But maybe I'll do a short...ish version here first.

 

First off, to anyone who talked about how "the story wasn't that good but the battle system was great" fuck you, go play Bravely Default. This is like Bravely Default minus all the fun and charm that you eventually unlock in those games. This game's battle system is absolutely nothing compared to BD.

 

I think I finally pinned down what exactly has bothered me about Octopath for so long. Well, besides shit I've already talked about. I keep bringing up why does it need to be 8 characters? And now that I've thought more about it, I'm DOUBLY confused. Because having 8 characters is nothing special, and separating all their stories just makes it so your story sucks ass. I realized partway through my playthrough why this irritated me so much: Final Fantasy 6. There's a game with branching paths that tell individual stories WHILE weaving them together AND YOU PLAY AS 14 PERMANENT GODDAMN PARTY MEMBERS. And that game came out 29 years ago! So the entire gimmick of this game is that it's a shittier, smaller concept done way worse?? Hell, FF4 has 12 playable characters!

 

So right away the entire concept is just rendered moot and stupid. You'd think by putting "Octopath" in the title we'd be dealing with 8 intricate and interweaving paths.

 

In fact, I'll make a little drawing:

 

 

Every story is exactly 4 chapters long (each chapter being more or less the same length... like 45 minutes each once you're leveled up) and wraps up near identically. And each gets just a hint of the """""""""bigger""""""""" overarching story, which is technically labeled as a single side quest and is entirely non-voice acted. Fucking incredible. I thought beating all 32 chapters would unlock a big chapter 5 and maybe even 6 with all the characters, but no... if you've done a certain set of side quests to completion, you go to this random ass location I had to look up because I'd already did every available side quest and visited every town (it's a random dude OUTSIDE of a town, despite there being like 15 towns) and then you do an incredibly unsatisfying wrap-up.

 

The sad part is the only story build-up happening outside of each individual character WAS this thin, thin thread, and it all but snaps when you realize it's like a little bonus mission where you fight the final boss. After a """""""boss rush""""""" of 8 bosses you've already fought with someone using the MS paint bucket fill set to blue. They're technically stronger than the first time you fight them, but since you're dramatically stronger, each fight is over in a few turns, making it just tedious and time-consuming and confusing. Then after that, you go fight the last boss. Where the game all of a sudden decides "hey wait, we know you've only been allowed to use 4 characters at a time the entire game, but what if we do that shitty JRPG thing where we make you form 2 groups so you can look at how shitty the characters you never leveled up are?"
 

Well they were pretty shitty, as it turns out. They were all half the level of my main team and with almost no job abilities unlocked. So I split my good guys between them best I could and tried to YOLO it, but one random turn the boss decides that to use an ability that doubles up its next move, which is a team-slash that already brings my mage-heavy group real low, but now hits twice so I wipe. Woo! Hey, you know another shitty JRPG trope? Having a boss rush and a final boss where you don't get a save point. So my option was to go grind for an hour to level up my little shits, or try again, maybe adding a tankier character. But then I realized either way I'd have to redo the shitty boss rush each time, I chose option C and downloaded a trainer and turned on one-hit kills and that side quest was finished 5 minutes later! God I love JRPGs on PC. Say no to time wasting bullshit, JRPGs are already made out of this subtance, don't need to enable them any more than the baseline.

 

The game has very little voice acting, and very random voice acting. Having the final quest be non-voiced was so bizarre. Having the characters never interact with each other outside of a handful of Tales-style skits is bizarre, having no character speak at all outside of their own personal story is bizarre, having a job system where you can't change your primary job is bizarre, adding like a million fucking side quests filled with text but again not expending ANY of that effort on different party composition text is bizarre, having all 8 stories be completely unrelated and not having a follow-up story where all 8 are united is bizarre, having secondary jobs change your character's appearance but only in battle is bizarre, everything about this damned game is bizarre!

And unfortunately, most of those things I call bizarre could easily substitute the word "bizarre" with "bad." So it doesn't even get the benefit of being quirky most of the time. The localization is good but the script is boring and bad, the characters occasionally show signs of humanity but are mostly tedious, one-note affairs, production values across the board seem miniscule, with only very lightly animated big boss sprites being the standout.

 

I'm trying to focus in on one particular thing but every time I remember something all I can think is "Oh yeah, that fucking thing!"

 

Maybe I need more time to collect my thoughts, I was completely blindsided by how lame the fina-- err, sorry, the last sidequest was. Going by How Long to Beat, the average main story time is 60.5 hours, with extras bringing it up to 80, and completionist runs up at a whopping 103, but I feel like it's an entire game made up of filler. You can finish 100% of Final Fantasy 6 in that time, and then have like 40 hours left to beat Chrono Trigger for good measure. A far better use of your time! Or play either any of the Bravely Default games, which have some similar flaws but killer endings and INSANELY good turn-based combat that eats this trash for breakfast! Whatever redeeming qualities Octopath Traveler has, Bravely Default has but with more character and fun.

 

On the bright side, the couple hours I played of Octopath 2 were infinitely more interesting than the entirety of the first game. I hope they're better able to weave the stories together, make the battle system dramatically more fun, and LET PARTY MEMBERS TALK TO EACH OTHER. I can't stress enough how bad it feels in an RPG when you have characters that are basically just battle avatars, not involved with or even corporeal to the story, mysteriously vanishing any time they're not meant to be around. This comes off as especially lame compared to other recent JRPGs. The Trails series in particular just makes this come across as lazy BS, a fluffed up tech demo, way too fluffed up.

 

I gotta go play some Returnal to wash this taste out of my mouth. Why did I do this to myself? I wonder that too.

[thedarkstark]

I'm not reading all that but the first 2 paragraphs sum up my thoughts on the first octopath. I also agree the bravely default series is in an entirely different league despite its many shortcomings. All the Bravely games are games I'll play though again at some point, I have zero interest in ever touching Octopath again.

 

I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts on Ocopath 2 once you've gotten a bit further, since it seems like you and I are very often on the same page with our opinion on games. 

[Biggie]

5 hours ago, thedarkstark said:

I'm not reading all that

lol right? The alphabet called, they are running out of letters. 

[Xbob42]

A thread isn't a thread until Biggie comes in without contributing anything! 

 

Also, the best part of Octopath Traveler is the final boss theme.

[Xbob42]

Alright, getting back into the second one, and I can immediately feel all the little improvements that are much harder to notice without having played the first. All the character and NPC sprites are more detailed, and I feel like every area I've been in has a much more natural and far superior sense of color and artistry than the first game, which often came across as very simplistic, relying heavily on lots of depth of field. This game still has the DoF, but tones it back.

 

Some of it I can't quite place my finger on, but just stepping into this random area felt far more arresting than just about anywhere in the first game. By all appearances it's nothing special, but it has, I guess maybe a better sense of place? It looks a lot less rigid and mechanical than the first game, while still being very similar looking.

 

 

Even simple things like battle transitions feel much better, with the camera sort of spinning a bit and then "swirling" into the battle scene as all part of one smooth animation rather than a weird screen wipe. Also Octopath 1 had this weird stutter thing in the first few frames of battle that this doesn't have. Plus running at a native 120 FPS instead of having to uncap it, it's so smooth.

 

I also feel like the DoF is used to much better dramatic effect, while in the first game is was often distracting.

 

 

Also having beaten the first game, I still find it hilarious that your "latent power" here (a special per-character skill you activate with Y/Triangle anytime you've got that little white circle on the top right filled) at least for this character, was the first game's "ultimate ability," which required you to use a full boost to activate, and this ability in particular was only active for 3 turns. Meaning it was a multi-turn setup and then you had to use BP recovery items if you wanted to use another full-boost to actually utilize the buff fully.

Here's it's just... when the meter is full, press the button and it instantly activates and you can spend your boost points on actually attacking! If that was a little confusing, the short version is it went from mid-game unlock that required multi-turn setups to a single button press at the start of the game. 

[stepee]

13 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Christ, talk about a game overstaying its welcome. I feel like I could write a dissertation on Octopath 1 and its bizarre, often bad and very rarely good choices. AND I WILL! But maybe I'll do a short...ish version here first.

 

First off, to anyone who talked about how "the story wasn't that good but the battle system was great" fuck you, go play Bravely Default. This is like Bravely Default minus all the fun and charm that you eventually unlock in those games. This game's battle system is absolutely nothing compared to BD.

 

I think I finally pinned down what exactly has bothered me about Octopath for so long. Well, besides shit I've already talked about. I keep bringing up why does it need to be 8 characters? And now that I've thought more about it, I'm DOUBLY confused. Because having 8 characters is nothing special, and separating all their stories just makes it so your story sucks ass. I realized partway through my playthrough why this irritated me so much: Final Fantasy 6. There's a game with branching paths that tell individual stories WHILE weaving them together AND YOU PLAY AS 14 PERMANENT GODDAMN PARTY MEMBERS. And that game came out 29 years ago! So the entire gimmick of this game is that it's a shittier, smaller concept done way worse?? Hell, FF4 has 12 playable characters!

 

So right away the entire concept is just rendered moot and stupid. You'd think by putting "Octopath" in the title we'd be dealing with 8 intricate and interweaving paths.

 

In fact, I'll make a little drawing:

 

 

Every story is exactly 4 chapters long (each chapter being more or less the same length... like 45 minutes each once you're leveled up) and wraps up near identically. And each gets just a hint of the """""""""bigger""""""""" overarching story, which is technically labeled as a single side quest and is entirely non-voice acted. Fucking incredible. I thought beating all 32 chapters would unlock a big chapter 5 and maybe even 6 with all the characters, but no... if you've done a certain set of side quests to completion, you go to this random ass location I had to look up because I'd already did every available side quest and visited every town (it's a random dude OUTSIDE of a town, despite there being like 15 towns) and then you do an incredibly unsatisfying wrap-up.

 

The sad part is the only story build-up happening outside of each individual character WAS this thin, thin thread, and it all but snaps when you realize it's like a little bonus mission where you fight the final boss. After a """""""boss rush""""""" of 8 bosses you've already fought with someone using the MS paint bucket fill set to blue. They're technically stronger than the first time you fight them, but since you're dramatically stronger, each fight is over in a few turns, making it just tedious and time-consuming and confusing. Then after that, you go fight the last boss. Where the game all of a sudden decides "hey wait, we know you've only been allowed to use 4 characters at a time the entire game, but what if we do that shitty JRPG thing where we make you form 2 groups so you can look at how shitty the characters you never leveled up are?"
 

Well they were pretty shitty, as it turns out. They were all half the level of my main team and with almost no job abilities unlocked. So I split my good guys between them best I could and tried to YOLO it, but one random turn the boss decides that to use an ability that doubles up its next move, which is a team-slash that already brings my mage-heavy group real low, but now hits twice so I wipe. Woo! Hey, you know another shitty JRPG trope? Having a boss rush and a final boss where you don't get a save point. So my option was to go grind for an hour to level up my little shits, or try again, maybe adding a tankier character. But then I realized either way I'd have to redo the shitty boss rush each time, I chose option C and downloaded a trainer and turned on one-hit kills and that side quest was finished 5 minutes later! God I love JRPGs on PC. Say no to time wasting bullshit, JRPGs are already made out of this subtance, don't need to enable them any more than the baseline.

 

The game has very little voice acting, and very random voice acting. Having the final quest be non-voiced was so bizarre. Having the characters never interact with each other outside of a handful of Tales-style skits is bizarre, having no character speak at all outside of their own personal story is bizarre, having a job system where you can't change your primary job is bizarre, adding like a million fucking side quests filled with text but again not expending ANY of that effort on different party composition text is bizarre, having all 8 stories be completely unrelated and not having a follow-up story where all 8 are united is bizarre, having secondary jobs change your character's appearance but only in battle is bizarre, everything about this damned game is bizarre!

And unfortunately, most of those things I call bizarre could easily substitute the word "bizarre" with "bad." So it doesn't even get the benefit of being quirky most of the time. The localization is good but the script is boring and bad, the characters occasionally show signs of humanity but are mostly tedious, one-note affairs, production values across the board seem miniscule, with only very lightly animated big boss sprites being the standout.

 

I'm trying to focus in on one particular thing but every time I remember something all I can think is "Oh yeah, that fucking thing!"

 

Maybe I need more time to collect my thoughts, I was completely blindsided by how lame the fina-- err, sorry, the last sidequest was. Going by How Long to Beat, the average main story time is 60.5 hours, with extras bringing it up to 80, and completionist runs up at a whopping 103, but I feel like it's an entire game made up of filler. You can finish 100% of Final Fantasy 6 in that time, and then have like 40 hours left to beat Chrono Trigger for good measure. A far better use of your time! Or play either any of the Bravely Default games, which have some similar flaws but killer endings and INSANELY good turn-based combat that eats this trash for breakfast! Whatever redeeming qualities Octopath Traveler has, Bravely Default has but with more character and fun.

 

On the bright side, the couple hours I played of Octopath 2 were infinitely more interesting than the entirety of the first game. I hope they're better able to weave the stories together, make the battle system dramatically more fun, and LET PARTY MEMBERS TALK TO EACH OTHER. I can't stress enough how bad it feels in an RPG when you have characters that are basically just battle avatars, not involved with or even corporeal to the story, mysteriously vanishing any time they're not meant to be around. This comes off as especially lame compared to other recent JRPGs. The Trails series in particular just makes this come across as lazy BS, a fluffed up tech demo, way too fluffed up.

 

I gotta go play some Returnal to wash this taste out of my mouth. Why did I do this to myself? I wonder that too.

 

I like how you always start with saying you won’t type too much but then get lost in your thoughts but leave that there lol 

 

But yeah I hated that game after not too long. I kept seeing you play it on Steam with all the other games coming out around now I was like whyyyyy

[Xbob42]

Oh no, that's not me typing too much. That was me forcing myself to stop because I don't think single comments can have multiple pages!

Enjoying the second game a whole lot more so far though!

[Biggie]

It’s literally the exact same game as the first. Come on bruh no matter how much you type we got eyes. 

[Xbob42]

20 minutes ago, Biggie said:

It’s literally the exact same game as the first. Come on bruh no matter how much you type we got eyes. 

Shit I think you might be right...

[Xbob42]

Started my third character's story, and all 3 so far have been infinitely more engaging and interesting than the entirety of the first game, are fully voice acted during every cutscene (instead of like 50% of half the cutscenes) and are exponentially better written. They're also far darker on average so far. These seem closer to stories the writers actually want to tell instead of just the mostly generic fantasy fluff of the first game.

[stepee]

I was looking at reviews and was thinking oh wow this must be way better than the first but then saw the reviews of the first game and damn now there is a game that was rated too high.

 

Glad to hear they improved the story/characters here - so do they actually intersect in this one?

 

And is is still random battles?

[Xbob42]

9 minutes ago, stepee said:

I was looking at reviews and was thinking oh wow this must be way better than the first but then saw the reviews of the first game and damn now there is a game that was rated too high.

 

Glad to hear they improved the story/characters here - so do they actually intersect in this one?

 

And is is still random battles?

 

So far they still don't seem to interact much, but the part where you meet them and learn their story, they're actually voiced and have a reason for wanting to join you instead of just going "lol hi I'm usually a lone wolf but can I come too" and that's a little better, I'm hoping the skits are actually voiced if they brought them back, but haven't seen one yet.

 

They do call out each other by name in battle, though! Like if my scholar breaks an enemy's shield, my Cleric will say something like "Nice one, Osvald!" -- in the original game, there were zero instances of one main character actually having a voiced line referencing another main character, it was weird.

 

Yeah, battles are still random. But just like the last game you can get an ability to halve the encounter rate very early on, and drop it even further by not sprinting. And this time your default non-sprint speed is actually basically the last game's sprint, while the new sprint is like turbo speed.

 

On top of that, you can press the start button in battle to double the game speed if that's your thing.

Jobs are also done way better. Now there's guilds, where you go there to unlock a license for the job (doesn't cost anything, you just get it) and if you do tasks for the guild, you can get additional licenses. In the first game, each job could be equipped to only one character, meaning no doubling up on the jobs that didn't suck. With this system you can earn more licenses to have, I assume, a full party of Cuckmancers!

The shrines from the first game are also back. In the first game you used those to unlock the jobs, but here, if you have that job unlocked and go to the shrine, it unlocks a special EX ability, and it looks like each job can unlock 2, which is really cool and rewarding.

 

I also just unlocked an inventor job by going into a random guy's house! And instead of just spending JP to unlock more abilities, I have to bring certain items for him to make more inventions. And those inventions then get unlocked in battle, and none of them use SP to cast despite being pretty powerful! But you have to spend a turn rebuilding an invention if you want to use it again, so that's the drawback. Plus one of the first abilities is this way overly-animated catapult that I love.

[Xbob42]

Getting back around to this, and I can see many little ways they've learned from the pitfalls of the first game. Just did an entire chapter with no combat, not even a boss. In the first game, EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER had to have a boss fight, which was great for getting a cool boss sprite to admire but often made no sense and felt forced. Seeing them have actual restraint here for a scenario in which having no combat was 100% the right move was excellent.

Also, why the fuck do they keep making games called Octopath where you can only take 4 party members at once? Know what'd help the party interact more? If you just... took all 8 everywhere, all the time. Hell, pair them up (combining to make a single character with a unique "paired class" depending on their own classes or something, to keep combat from involving 8 separate turns) if you have to, leaving half the group out of the game for most of your playtime is super weird.

[Xbob42]

Well well well, looks like they took a crack at solving party interactions on a deeper level after all!

 

Spoiler

 

[SaysWho?]

Might actually buy this game after finishing Resident Evil 4 Remake.

[BloodyHell]

13 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Getting back around to this, and I can see many little ways they've learned from the pitfalls of the first game. Just did an entire chapter with no combat, not even a boss. In the first game, EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER had to have a boss fight, which was great for getting a cool boss sprite to admire but often made no sense and felt forced. Seeing them have actual restraint here for a scenario in which having no combat was 100% the right move was excellent.

Also, why the fuck do they keep making games called Octopath where you can only take 4 party members at once? Know what'd help the party interact more? If you just... took all 8 everywhere, all the time. Hell, pair them up (combining to make a single character with a unique "paired class" depending on their own classes or something, to keep combat from involving 8 separate turns) if you have to, leaving half the group out of the game for most of your playtime is super weird.

Seriously, at least allow switching characters in battle if they are set on only four on the screen.