I had fun, but the story failed to grip me and keep me invested after a while. And with gameplay as simple (albeit flashy stylish) as it was, if the story wasn't keeping me invested, my interest was going to inevitably wane.

One of my biggest gripes was the fact that cutscenes just felt like they went on forever. Often enough, the only gameplay break inbetween cutscenes would be walking five meters to the left to talk to a story NPC to queue up yet another cutscene!

I thought I would be more invested in the game.

Eu me apaixonei por Octopath Traveler na depois de algumas horas jogando o primeiro jogo. Apesar de minúsculas ressalvas, fui cativado pela sua mistura de um estilo clássico com sensibilidades modernas em seu gameplay, estilo artístico, trilha sonora e construção de mundo e personagens.
Sua continuação pega todas essas características e as eleva a um patamar ainda maior.
Mas a principal coisa que torna esse jogo ainda melhor que o primeiro é suas histórias e a forma como elas se convergem no final. Se no primeiro jogo elas eram apenas um plano de fundo para justificar as batalhas, aqui elas emocionam, empolgam, alegram e arrepiam.
Octopath 2 é simplesmente uma obra-prima e eu estou muito feliz de ter passado por mais de 80 horas dessa jornada maravilhosa. O sentimento depois de ter terminado é agridoce, pois parte de mim não queria que acabasse. Parabéns aos envolvidos.
Por favor não deixem essa série morrer, e por favor contratem Yasunori Nishiki para fazer mais trilhas sonoras. Esse homem merece um prêmio.

Un JRPG estupendo que, aunque apaña bastante bien muchos de los peores vicios del género, sigue cayendo en ellos (combates aleatorios, necesidad de parar a grindear, jefes frustrantes e injustos...). Aún así, es uno de los "clásicos" que más he disfrutado, y eso tiene muchísimo mérito.

La presentación es fantástica y los personajes protagonistas son todos interesantes a su manera. Algunas de las tramas se hacen algo más lentas o densas, pero en general son todas muy disfrutables.

El sistema de combate me ha gustado mucho. Quizá se hace algo repetitivo a la larga, pero es muy satisfactorio cuando consigues hacer una combinación buena de turnos y pegas un golpe de varias decenas de miles de daño.

Lo he disfrutado bastante a pesar de sus cosillas y lo recomendaría a cualquier fan del género. Si me ha gustado a mí, que tienden a cansarme, a vosotros os encantará.

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A fantastic JRPG that, despite fixing several of the worst vices of the genre, still falls on them (random encounters, need to stop and grind, frustrating and unfair bosses...). Still, it's easily one of the most enjoyable "classics", and that's worth something.

The presentation is fantastic and everyone in the main cast is interesting in their own way. Some plots are a bit slower or dense, but overall they're all very enjoyable.

I really liked the combat system. It's perhaps a bit repetitive near the end, but it's very satisfying when you manage to string a good combination of turns and you deal a several-tens-of-thousands-of-damage blow.

I enjoyed it quite a lot despite its flaws and I'd recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the genre. If I liked it while I tend to grow tired of them, you'll love it.

My game of the year for 2023
I was always thankful that I enjoyed turn based rpgs, since I know its not a genre for everyone. However it had been a while since i engaged in one without and i never realized. Playing this game honestly reminded why the turn based rpg genre is my favorite in games. There is so much passion and love in every little corner. All the stories are satisfying and enojyable, the characters are all lovable ( Partitio the GOAT) the music is phenomal OH MAN honestly shouldve taken music of the year over FF16
The most impressive part of the game for me is how fresh every single fucking boss fight is in this game, it so so much fun. and the build variety is insane. ive never gone so far to experiment on different party setups before and this game really encouraged me to try all these different stuff.
Fantastic game from the start to the 95 hour mark.

Abandoned after 30 hours. It's very good, but it demands way too much of my time and patience - and I just don't have enough right now.

The difficulty spikes can be quite deflating and I'm not the biggest fan of the pacing. But there's some great gameplay and storytelling here.

Maybe I'll return one day.

It really is the most straight-forward and traditional JRPG experience refined into its best iteration yet.

The combat system is really satisfying during mob encounters, but still intense and creative during boss battles. Team building is also as fun as ever, as is figuring out some of the best combos you can pull off with your jobs and gear available at the moment.
Although the writing is a bit too silly for my taste most of the time, everything comes together nicely at the end. Some of the twists actually took me by surprise this time, and alongside some of the best soundtracks of the genre, I actually felt some goosebumps here and there.

It's the best parts of the first game combined with some actual decent story moments this time, highly recommend.

Here is the thing with OT2. It's a better game than 1, but it doesn't do anything substantially different. This is why I find strange when some people call this a masterpiece while look down on 1. It certainly adds a lot of qol improvements, but the main core of the game is the same.
The main party interacts more, but still feels like eight travellers that simply share the road instead of a company of heroes.
The battle system is the same with some additions of some extra moves which barely add an extra layer of strategy. Having also 16 different skills outside the battle is an overkill and a perfect example of "just because you could, doesn't mean you should". Just like the first game apart from steal and guide most of them are useless, but now they are 16 of them!

It's bizarre that I sound negative for a game that not only I actually enjoyed, but I also believe it's superior to its predecessor. It's that based on the reviews I expected a major jump in quality, but what I got is just an improvement.

(There will be light gameplay spoilers for EX skills and Jobs but nothing major)
I got kinda mixed feelings on this game. I can firmly say I had fun and enjoyed this game, right after beating I would even call this one my favorite games of all time but in hindsight it is a lot more "okay" than I initially thought. Still a well made, fun game but it lacks staying power in my opinion.

Story:

The story, despite being a significant improvement from the first game (for the most part) still feels like an outline or summary of a full narrative rather than feeling like a full story. Even some of the better stories still feel lacking due the lack of "interesting" character development or time to let the plot simmer. Due to this lack of development, each story has a really good Chapter 1; they all feel like good starting points for further chapters to develop them, however later chapters lack development and only really do the bare minimum to finish the plot. I'm aware that this is due to there being 8 unique stories that need to be fairly digestible but still it doesn't change the fact that the stories feel kinda empty and underwhelming to me at least.
Even my favorite stories (Hikari, Castti, Osvald and Temenos) are only 7/10 experiences at best, in my opinion.
However, even the worst stories (e.g Ochette and Agnea) aren't horrible per say but rather feel very undeveloped or bland.
In addition, there is also a final chapter featuring all 8 main characters (a major improvement from OT1) and it contains some of the most memorable scenes in the game. Therefore, I can't really call the story bad since I do like things about it and most of my issues stem from what isn't there or what could of been rather than what is already in it. Just don't expect Peak Fiction.

Gameplay:

Gameplay is honestly fantastic in my opinion, Break & Boost is right next to the Press Turn system when it comes to turn based combat. Personally, the fun comes from trying to optimise damage and learn new ways to experiment and win fights and Octopath 2 more than provides with it's myriad of new features.

Latent Powers and EX Skills (while fairly unbalanced) give more individuality to each character and are really fun to use in different scenarios or create entire strategies around.
Personal favorites were Hikari's Latent Power and 2nd EX Skill, Castti's 2nd EX Skill, Partitio and Agnea's Latent Powers, Agnea's 1st EX Skill and Temenos' Latent power and both his EX skills.

Though I miss the advanced job superbosses from the first game (especially the battle theme), I do like what they did with the unlocking process for new advanced jobs in this game. With the exception of Arms master, the advanced jobs definitely felt less powered compared to the first game but still fun to use.

My main issue with the combat is that magic feels very under powered and cumbersome to use effectively compared to physical skills, this is mainly due to lack of easy ways to raise Elem.Atk and decrease Elem.Def as well as needing a divine skill (preferably from another character with a scholar reclass) to use on your dps. It's just a lot of hassle for something that often does less damage than physical and while I'm aware magic is capable of doing great damage with the right setup it just feel to much effort than it's worth in my opinion.

Still battle gameplay is really good.
Gameplay on the overworld and Path actions are alright but nothing much to say there, the nighttime path actions are a neat addition (as well as the day night cycle in general) but for some reason all night path actions have no punishment for failure if I'm recalling correctly which is kinda weird for stuff like Osvald's Mug but that's just a personal nitpick of mine.


Misc:

Well this goes without saying but the Soundtrack and Presentation are top notch, I don't even have anything else to say just WOW...

In conclusion, Octopath 2 is a fun game but personally I wouldn't call it much more and if that's enough for you I'd say the game is worth it.
If you want a fun JRPG with a fun world to explore and great gameplay go for it, but like I said earlier don't go in expecting Peak Fiction.

While there are plenty of things to love for this game, like the gorgeous HD-2D art style, I walked away from octopath traverler 2 feeling particularly hollow and empty. The eight stories are unfortunately pretty bland in my opinion, to the point of finding them somewhat cookie cutters as JRPG stories go. And I think this is where the biggest issue with the game lies - it is held back by its own premise. Octopath, meaning 8 stories, seem to be too much for the writers to handle, and the resulting eight uninspiring individual stories reflects that.

This is to add to the lack of variety in the combat department as well, what I was doing in the opening hours of the game is pretty similar to what I am doing in the 20th hours.

Overall, the game failed to resonate with me, which is a shame.