This review contains spoilers
This game is completely shallow. The characters, the world, the sidequests, the combat, all of it.
The idea of going on an adventure with 8 travelers who all have separate trials and tribulations is extremely interesting in concept. However, when I say separate, I truly mean separate. There is so little interaction between the characters, and in the endgame, they do interact, but again, in such shallow ways. They treat it as if they've been traveling and experiencing everything together, but there is never any interlap with the main story. There are duo chapters though! ...Except, there are only 8 total, and they are limited to two specific characters interacting, again, typically in shallow ways. These duo chapters leave a lot to be desired. One of the Ochette and Cassti ones was pretty good, but the Agnea and Hikari ones are both hot garbage.
The characters never have any meaningful interactions. They have travel banter, and it is literally just that- banter. Meaningless and boring conversations that add nothing 90% of the time. I wish the party interacted with one another, because a couple of the characters are genuinely interesting, like Osvald and Temenos, and I want to see more of them. Though I suppose I should count my blessings, as Ochette and Agnea were insufferable whenever they were on screen.
The story of the game exists. It ranges from being horrid like Agnea's story, to fairly good, like Temenos'. Most of the stories were fine, a bit bland if anything.
That's enough slander for now, time for the part I don't hate- The gameplay! It's......... fine. Unbalanced, and way too easy to exploit. There are a lot of really cool ideas here, and the latent powers are an incredible addition and really spice up the battles, but all of the abilities at our disposal aid the player far too well. I never really struggled, or even had to think during a boss fight, with the exceptions of Throné's Chapter final, and the final boss. The game plays too much with what you can have, while seemingly not caring about what the enemies can do, leading to a lot of the boss fights feeling far too same-y, and leaving them to be completely forgettable, which is a massive shame.
The world is also fairly shallow, with sidequests and characters that don't really differ from town to town, everything blending together in an extremely boring way. There are no significant differences from place to place, and with all of the different overworld abilities that the player has, I was very quickly disappointed by the lack of variety in what I could get and do with them. It also feels quite strange how many of the abilities overlap, but I see why it's like that. It can just get to a point where there's no reason to use certain people's abilities over others.
Don't know where to put this but the lighting in the game is horrendous. Looking at the other HD2D games they've made, this one is easily one of, if not the worst looking.
I wish this game was better, and I wish it had more to it than its kiddie-pool-level gameplay, characters, and world. Octopath can be far better than how it is, and it's a shame that Octopath 2 hardly fixed any of the issues with the first game.
The idea of going on an adventure with 8 travelers who all have separate trials and tribulations is extremely interesting in concept. However, when I say separate, I truly mean separate. There is so little interaction between the characters, and in the endgame, they do interact, but again, in such shallow ways. They treat it as if they've been traveling and experiencing everything together, but there is never any interlap with the main story. There are duo chapters though! ...Except, there are only 8 total, and they are limited to two specific characters interacting, again, typically in shallow ways. These duo chapters leave a lot to be desired. One of the Ochette and Cassti ones was pretty good, but the Agnea and Hikari ones are both hot garbage.
The characters never have any meaningful interactions. They have travel banter, and it is literally just that- banter. Meaningless and boring conversations that add nothing 90% of the time. I wish the party interacted with one another, because a couple of the characters are genuinely interesting, like Osvald and Temenos, and I want to see more of them. Though I suppose I should count my blessings, as Ochette and Agnea were insufferable whenever they were on screen.
The story of the game exists. It ranges from being horrid like Agnea's story, to fairly good, like Temenos'. Most of the stories were fine, a bit bland if anything.
That's enough slander for now, time for the part I don't hate- The gameplay! It's......... fine. Unbalanced, and way too easy to exploit. There are a lot of really cool ideas here, and the latent powers are an incredible addition and really spice up the battles, but all of the abilities at our disposal aid the player far too well. I never really struggled, or even had to think during a boss fight, with the exceptions of Throné's Chapter final, and the final boss. The game plays too much with what you can have, while seemingly not caring about what the enemies can do, leading to a lot of the boss fights feeling far too same-y, and leaving them to be completely forgettable, which is a massive shame.
The world is also fairly shallow, with sidequests and characters that don't really differ from town to town, everything blending together in an extremely boring way. There are no significant differences from place to place, and with all of the different overworld abilities that the player has, I was very quickly disappointed by the lack of variety in what I could get and do with them. It also feels quite strange how many of the abilities overlap, but I see why it's like that. It can just get to a point where there's no reason to use certain people's abilities over others.
Don't know where to put this but the lighting in the game is horrendous. Looking at the other HD2D games they've made, this one is easily one of, if not the worst looking.
I wish this game was better, and I wish it had more to it than its kiddie-pool-level gameplay, characters, and world. Octopath can be far better than how it is, and it's a shame that Octopath 2 hardly fixed any of the issues with the first game.