I was so excited for Octopath Traveler when it came out. JRPGs are my favorite genre of games. I absolutely fell in love with the art style and thought the premise of 8 different stories was a cool concept. Unfortunately Octopath Traveler under delivered in every aspect for me outside of art. That is why I waited so long to really give Octopath Traveler 2 a try even though I bought it the week it came out. I’m very happy to report that Octopath Travler 2 succeeds in every aspect that failed in the original.
Let’s start with the story and characters. In the original I only like 3 of the 8 cast the other 5 I didn’t even care about. They felt soulless and I didn’t care about anything going on with them. In Octopath 2 I struggled on who to keep in my party as I loved all 8 characters very much. Each one had motives, struggles, and real emotions that made me care about them. But what really made this game so much better was the story. In the original the stories were so disconnected with chapter after chapter being a boring slog fest. Characters didn’t have any relevance at all unless the chapter was about them. No inner party connections and at times you wondered if they even knew each other were there together. It felt like there was no purpose, no over arching story. Now I’m not going to lie to you and say this is a great story and that the party was as connected as some of the greats in the genre. But I will say it was a Grand Canyon size difference from the original. The story’s were entertaining with no throw away chapters. As the stories unfolded you could see there was something connecting these stories that was drawing closer to being realized. The party grows together, have real conversations, and care about each other. These small things made a world of difference in the quality of the games.
The battle system is very similar to the original but with minor changes that make all the difference. For one the battles felt faster and more snappy. My second biggest problem with the original outside of story is it blatantly didn’t respect the players time. If you wanted to beat the original plan on running in circles for hours to grind out EXP from random encounters. With Octopath 2 you can change at will whether you are playing at day or night. When it is night you fight tougher enemies leading to more EXP thus killing the need for grinding as well as making you use more strategy than just hit X to kill the enemy but gain no EXP. My final major upgrade is the boss fights. In the original literally EVERY SINGLE BOSS FIGHT was a DPS race with each side one a timer. It wasn’t fun or satisfying. Octopath 2 is much more strategy based finding weak points and exploiting them to gain an advantage. Again simple things can make worlds of difference.
The art style is one thing that didn’t change and thank God for that. The game is a beautiful masterpiece with wonderful set pieces and great character designs. I love thier take on 2.5D and wish many more games made use of it. The music is equally sublime and many tracks stand out as greats in the medium.
All in all if you were turned off from Octopath 2 because of the extremely average Octopath Traveler please don’t be. Give this game a chance if you are a JRPG fan, it is worthy of your time.
My 2024 ranked. (It’s been a supberbyear in gaming for me so far)
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/
Let’s start with the story and characters. In the original I only like 3 of the 8 cast the other 5 I didn’t even care about. They felt soulless and I didn’t care about anything going on with them. In Octopath 2 I struggled on who to keep in my party as I loved all 8 characters very much. Each one had motives, struggles, and real emotions that made me care about them. But what really made this game so much better was the story. In the original the stories were so disconnected with chapter after chapter being a boring slog fest. Characters didn’t have any relevance at all unless the chapter was about them. No inner party connections and at times you wondered if they even knew each other were there together. It felt like there was no purpose, no over arching story. Now I’m not going to lie to you and say this is a great story and that the party was as connected as some of the greats in the genre. But I will say it was a Grand Canyon size difference from the original. The story’s were entertaining with no throw away chapters. As the stories unfolded you could see there was something connecting these stories that was drawing closer to being realized. The party grows together, have real conversations, and care about each other. These small things made a world of difference in the quality of the games.
The battle system is very similar to the original but with minor changes that make all the difference. For one the battles felt faster and more snappy. My second biggest problem with the original outside of story is it blatantly didn’t respect the players time. If you wanted to beat the original plan on running in circles for hours to grind out EXP from random encounters. With Octopath 2 you can change at will whether you are playing at day or night. When it is night you fight tougher enemies leading to more EXP thus killing the need for grinding as well as making you use more strategy than just hit X to kill the enemy but gain no EXP. My final major upgrade is the boss fights. In the original literally EVERY SINGLE BOSS FIGHT was a DPS race with each side one a timer. It wasn’t fun or satisfying. Octopath 2 is much more strategy based finding weak points and exploiting them to gain an advantage. Again simple things can make worlds of difference.
The art style is one thing that didn’t change and thank God for that. The game is a beautiful masterpiece with wonderful set pieces and great character designs. I love thier take on 2.5D and wish many more games made use of it. The music is equally sublime and many tracks stand out as greats in the medium.
All in all if you were turned off from Octopath 2 because of the extremely average Octopath Traveler please don’t be. Give this game a chance if you are a JRPG fan, it is worthy of your time.
My 2024 ranked. (It’s been a supberbyear in gaming for me so far)
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/