Sometimes, you don't need to reinvent the wheel; just make a really damn good wheel.

The original Octopath Traveler is one of my favorite games of all time. I love pretty much everything about it. The characters and their individual stories, the combat, the visuals, the music (especially the music), and yes, even the infamously brutal final boss. It's an incredible game that I feel everyone into JRPGs should play at some point.

...is what I would say, if Octopath Traveler II didn't exist.

Octopath Traveler II is unquestionably my game of the year for 2023, and is one of the very few games I've played I'd confidently consider a masterpiece. Not in the sense that it'll revolutionize the genre, like Persona 5 and Final Fantasy VII, or become a game that others will try to imitate for decades to come, like Chrono Trigger and EarthBound; but in the sense that it's the absolute pinnacle of what it set out to be: a perfect sequel. It took the original Octopath Traveler, which I think was already a fantastic game, and blew it completely out of the water in every conceivable way. It's literally that Hydrogen Bomb vs. Coughing Baby meme, it's not even funny just how much better this game is than the first one. When I say it improves upon everything, I mean it improves upon everything, to the point that the first game is pretty much completely redundant. The characters, their individual stories, the combat, the visuals, the music, and, oh my god, especially the final boss. By video game standards, it's a perfect sequel in every sense of the word.

Each of the eight main characters have their own unique stories to tell; stories that serve to enrich and connect you to Solistia and the diverse people in it. Ochette and her animal companion's quest to save her island village from devastation; Castti and her journey of self-rediscovery, uncovering the ephemeral truth of her forgotten past; Throné and her quest to free her of the literal and figurative shackles that bind her; Osvald on his path of revenge to exact retribution for the family he lost to avarice and cruelty; Partitio aiming to destroy capitalism bring joy to the hearts of all in a world filled with suffering; Agnea shooting for the stars to become a dancer her family, and the world, would be proud of; Temenos investigating a troubling murder, only to uncover a web of lies that...lies beneath; and Hikari fighting to save his kingdom from itself, before it strays down an irreversible, self-consuming path of bloodshed. These eight travelers join together out of convenience, but by the end, they stick together because they genuinely want to. The final act of the game ties every loose end, and brings all eight stories together into a dramatic, climactic finale that I don't think I'll ever forget. That moment in the final boss fight (If you've finished the game, you know what moment I'm talking about) is the absolute hardest moment in any JRPG in the past, like, 10 years. GOD I love video games.

Despite being, luckily, largely unchanged, the combat and character building were greatly improved from the original, all because of one simple addition: the Latent Power mechanic. Each character now has their own meter that fills as they engage in combat, via chipping away at Break meters and taking damage. Once filled up, a character can unleash their latent power, which differs depending on the party member, to have one superpowered turn. For example, using Throné's latent power gives her the ability to act twice in a row, one after the other; using Agnea's latent power allows her single-target skills to hit all available targets instead; and using Partitio's latent power instantly maxes out his BP. This one, simple change, completely changes how the game is played, and adds another layer of strategy to make combat that much more engaging. Building characters isn't just about finding which subclasses work best with which character's base class anymore; it's about finding how to best take advantage of the latent powers, on top of their initial class, to the best of that character's abilities. Let's go back to Agnea's latent power, for a little demonstration. Agnea's base class, Dancer, is a support class that relies on buffing allies' offensive power. Her latent power lets these buffs hit all allies instead of just one, giving the whole team a damage boost. There are also multiple subclasses that work well for her; Inventor is the obvious one, because Arkar's Coil is genuinely ridiculous, but Apothecary and Merchant are also very much worth mentioning. Apothecary turns Agnea into a support machine, providing powerful healing and more buffs to the team to protect them against anything that could come their way, and Merchant because AOE Donate BP is hysterical.

OK, so music taste, like pretty much everything ever in regards to media, is a subjective thing. That being said, Yasunori Nishiki, I KNEEL. This man is responsible for creating some of the best video game soundtracks I've heard in my entire life. He hasn't even been in the industry for that long, especially when compared to game composing legends like Yoko Shimomura, Nobuo Uematsu, and Grant Kirkhope, but my god, he's been killing it for the relatively short time he's been active. I've been in love with his music since I first learned about him through his first big project, which was, well...the original Octopath Traveler, and I gotta say, I think Octopath II is his best soundtrack yet. You know the phrase "no-skip album?" Yeah, this game's soundtrack is a no-skip for me. Literally every song is just that good. Nishiki absolutely deserves all the attention he's been getting since his work in the original Octopath Traveler shot him into stardom, and I can only hope more projects bring him on. This man will go down as one of the greatest video game composers of all time, that I'm 100% certain of.

This game is everything I ever wanted out of a game I never thought would get a sequel, and I'm beyond elated that it did. For the comparatively short time this game has been out next to other games I love from the bottom of my heart, this game means a lot to me, and I'll never forget the time I had with this game. Even if they'll probably never see this, to everyone who was involved with this game's creation, I just want to say thank you. It was wonderful traveling with you.