The date is January 13th, 2017. Nintendo hosts an event where they show trailers for some of the first games for their brand new console, the Nintendo Switch. Among the games shown are new entries in some of the company’s biggest franchises such as Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2. But Nintendo was not the only company to reveal new games there – Square Enix presented to the world Octopath Traveler, the first game made in their new “HD-2D” style. This style emulates SNES-style character sprites and textures but with modern high definition flare. The game released in 2018 to pretty solid commercial success (more than 2 million copies sold) – and in the September 2022 Nintendo Direct, we got the announcement that it would be getting a sequel. Said announcement finally convinced me to try the first Octopath Traveler for myself before the follow-up to it comes out this February. Does the game set me on a path of no return when it comes to this newly minted franchise, or is it travelling back to my Nintendo Switch Game Card Case, never to be put out of there again? Let’s find out.

Octopath Traveler is a classic turn-based RPG. You explore an overworld with a team of four characters at a time, and fight battles against enemies with your characters on one side of the screen and the enemies on the other side of the screen, taking turns attacking each other until one of the two sides runs out of Hit Points. I will go over how the battle system works later, because it is important to understand the game’s structure first. You begin the game by picking one of the eight protagonists to start your journey through the continent of Orsterra with. After that, you gain access to the first chapters of the other seven protagonists, which you can do in any order you want. Then, each chapter completed for a character will grant access to that character’s next chapter until their story is finished. Unlike most RPGs and honestly just stories in games in general for that matter, the titular Octopath Travelers do not actually have one unified goal. Instead, they all have four chapters dedicated to their own completely unique adventure. On the gameplay side of things, this makes the difficulty balance a bit of a mess. Despite the player technically having a lot of freedom in their order of proceedings, they are limited by four things: danger levels, the forced deployment of a character in their respective chapters, the forced deployment of the player’s first protagonist at all times, and the inability to switch out party members wherever. Each area and chapter has a danger level that shows what level the game recommends the player be at for that area/chapter, so the player can’t safely do any chapter they want if their party is not at an appropriate enough level for it. Being at an appropriate enough level can be hard though because of the second limitation: every character is naturally required to be in the party for their own chapters, meaning the player can’t simply only use four characters throughout the entire game – every character must be used at some points and thus remain appropriately leveled. The second limitation is made even worse by the third: the first protagonist the player chose can never leave the party, causing that character to always be at a higher level than the rest of the team (often by far) and making it so that the player can only have three other characters in their party to “train”. Lastly, switching party members is only possible at taverns located in towns, and while the player can fast travel to those places it remains a fairly large inconvenience. Now none of this ruins the game by any means, but it did lead to plenty of moments of uncertainty during my playthrough. Moments where I’d ask questions such as: can I do this chapter right now if most of my party is appropriately leveled but one character isn’t? And after one chapter figuratively told me the answer was “it is possible but you’re going to have a bad time”, I ended up biting the bullet to get that one underleveled character to the same level as the rest of my party more often than not. Out of the 95 hours I spent playing Octopath Traveler, I’d say I was grinding around 10% of that time. Whether or not it was actually necessary, I don’t know, but the game did seem to send me the message that it might’ve been. While I personally didn’t mind this too much, your mileage may vary and so I must make note of it. Don’t worry though, because I had a lot of fun for most of the remaining time I spent in Orsterra.

One benefit of Octopath Traveler’s structure on the story/character side of things is that every main character is actually relevant and receives development. There really are eight protagonists and none of them become side-lined over the course of the game (which is something other games can struggle with at times). But the large downside comes from the fact that you play through these stories with only one hero on screen at a time while the other seven characters become exclusively gameplay tools. They only ever interact through something called “travel banter”, which at certain points in each chapter (starting from chapter 2) shows conversations between two characters, that more often than not concern the happenings of that chapter. These conversations imply that other party members are actually present during moments of one character’s story, despite the story scenes not including them whatsoever. While I can see that this is likely the best the developers could do given the game’s admittedly unique approach to story and structure, it still never really stops being a bit jarring. These characters are on their own separate journeys but also have both the time and willingness to help seven other people with their journeys, all while none of these stories and/or characters can have any meaningful effect on each other, despite travel banter making it sometimes seem like they actually do. Better introductory scenes between the characters would’ve already gone a pretty decent way in remedying this issue.

That is not to say that the lack of interaction between the protagonists make the stories and/or characters bad though – far from it, in fact. I would be very surprised to see someone play this game and not fall in love with at least one of the eight travelers. My personal favorite ended up being the kind cleric Ophilia (who I chose first), but I definitely like all of the other main characters as well. The same goes for each protagonist’s side characters and antagonists, who provide the consequential interactions with the heroes that travel banter cannot give. Every story has things to say, messages to give, topics to explore – and does so in a unique way while still having enough thematic cohesion with the other stories in the game. Characters are one of the most important parts of a good story, and Octopath Traveler certainly soars in this department. They stand out in a sea of games where you play as the chosen one destined to save the world – and while Orsterra has a lot of fantastical elements, the characters feel genuine and grounded. The protagonists are also used to great effect for one of the game’s unique features: Path Actions. Each hero has their own individual one and can use this on NPCs to get various things from them: items, their help in battle (for a limited amount of times), experience or information. Some Path Actions are more useful than others, but they nonetheless add more spice to exploring towns and allow for some interesting moments where the story can be told more deliberately through gameplay.

Let’s finally talk about Octopath Traveler’s meat and potatoes – the battle system, which is defined by two mechanics: Break and Boost. Every enemy in the game has weaknesses to a certain amount of weapons and/or magic types. They also have a certain number of “shields”, which represent the amount of hits – specifically from a weapon/magic type they’re weak to – it takes to inflict Break on them. When an enemy is inflicted with Break, they won’t be able to do anything for 2 turns and take double the amount of damage from attacks, giving the player a large opening. At the end of each turn, every character gains one Boost Point. Boost Points – of which you can have a maximum of five at a time – can be used to either attack with a weapon one more time per Boost Point, or make one of your character’s Skills (attacks exclusive to a “job”, more on that a bit later) stronger. You can’t simply use Boost indefinitely though, because if a character uses even a single Boost Point during a turn, that character will not get the standard one Boost Point at the end of that turn. The combination of these two mechanics – on top of character exclusive actions, items and defending to make a character faster the next turn – allow for a lot of different approaches and strategies when it comes to the game’s battles, especially bosses. There is nothing quite like figuring out the best time to Break an enemy, proceeding to think of the one exact play that will grant you the most damage during that window of opportunity and then watching that play work out precisely how you intended. If I had to pick the one thing I like the most about Octopath Traveler, it is this expertly crafted battle system. It also encourages players to make the most out of the previously mentioned jobs – each character has a starting job that they’re stuck with throughout the game, which dictates what weapons and skills they can use and thus what sort of role they play in your party during battle. By exploring the overworld you can “find” each character’s job and give said job to one of your other party members, without giving up their initial job (a character can only have one second job at a time though). You can even switch these jobs around however and whenever you like, encouraging experimentation and making it easy to form a party that is tailored to your playstyle. Not only does this system make literally every character both better and more fun to use, it allows for even more customization and possible team combinations – despite the forced deployment issues mentioned earlier.

Time to discuss the last piece of the Octopath Traveler puzzle: the world and how it’s presented. The HD-2D style – first introduced in this game – is highly praised and for good reason. The environments and characters overall look very aesthetically pleasing. I have one personal gripe with it though, and that is the fact that the character sprites just aren’t very detailed, which makes it hard for them to convey emotion through their facial expressions. Something similar to the character portraits from the more recent Fire Emblem titles that show different emotions based on the situation would go a long way in helping me connect to the characters that tiny bit more. And despite the great looking environments, I would also not say that visual variety is the game’s strong suit. The player will end up exploring a lot of similar looking mansions, caves and forests to cap off each chapter. While going through these locations they will face tough decisions, like going left to find a treasure chest or going right to get closer to your current objective. And then at the next T-junction they’ll have to make the same exact choice again, but maybe the directions are reversed this time. If world design is important for you in RPGs, Octopath Traveler might disappoint in this regard. Something that does not disappoint in this game however is the music. Various battle themes that I somehow never got tired of hearing, and overworld tracks that perfectly complement each area and town and effortlessly set the mood of whatever circumstances the player finds themselves in. Heck, I’m literally listening to the soundtrack right now while I’m writing this. Not much more to say than that, I think.

Overall, Octopath Traveler is a very enjoyable RPG with some flaws that mostly only exist because of its deliberately unique structure. As such, fixing those flaws is not easy without potentially taking away what makes the game what it is. But if you can put up with them, there is a lot to love. The battle system is one of the most fun I’ve ever tried, the characters and their stories are great, and the presentation is wonderful. I can’t wait to join eight new Octopath Travelers in Octopath Traveler II next month.

The release of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, more than 25 years after Pokémon took over the world, mark the beginning of a noticeable new phase for the franchise. Similar to the introduction of online functionality in Pokémon Diamond & Pearl (2006) and the jump to 3D in Pokémon X & Y (2013), these games will forever change the way that Pokémon games are made in the future. After Nintendo’s new home/handheld hybrid console – one you can use on the TV and take with you on the go – in some sense “forced” Pokémon to bring their classic formula to a more powerful console after all the success on Nintendo’s weaker handheld consoles, the standards for what a Pokémon game could be shifted. Fans asked for an open world, and slowly but surely Game Freak (the developers of Pokémon) started to listen. Pokémon Sword & Shield (2019) had one open area with the DLC (downloadable content) for those games introducing even more, Pokémon Legends: Arceus earlier this year gave us five bigger open areas, and now Scarlet & Violet feature a fully open world. Each previous step was more well received than the last, but the question now is: does Game Freak stumble while taking this last step, or do they successfully take it?

To wash the negativity out of my mouth, I’ll start with Game Freak’s biggest hurdle and what is far and away the worst aspect of the games: the graphical performance. This is one of the least polished games I’ve played in a while, maybe ever. The games are not only largely ugly outside of battles, there is slowdown everywhere. There are also various objects, Pokémon and characters with glitchy characteristics that only become visible once you come close enough to them (also known as pop-in), NPC that move at a few frames per second unless you stand next to them, it is just unpleasant overall. These games simply did not have enough time in the oven, that much is clear. If graphical quality is important for you then I cannot recommend Scarlet & Violet, the problems are sadly unavoidable.

It would be easy to fully write off the games based on the outside, but just like with people it is the inside that really counts – and Scarlet & Violet’s inside is luckily a lot more beautiful. Every Pokémon game has good gameplay and these games do not change that fact. You catch Pokémon – that are visible in the overworld just like in Legends: Arceus, there are no random encounters – and use those Pokémon against other Pokémon (usually owned by trainers) in turn-based battles. These battles have been made a bit fresher again through the introduction of “Terastallization”, which allows one Pokémon per battle to change its type. Most Pokémon you’ll catch can only change into one of their already existing types, and it that case attacks of that type will receive and extra power boost. This will not always make the difference in every battle, but the moments when it does feel good – and your opponents also make good use of it, which helps to keep you on your toes during the most important battles in the game.

Speaking of opponents, Scarlet & Violet contain the usual eight Gym Leaders, Elite Four and Champion that the player must defeat, and also feature two other storylines besides that. In “Path of Legends” you search for Titan Pokémon to battle them (similar to Totem Pokémon from Alola), and in “Starfall Street” you square off against members of Team Star in their bases (similar to the villainous teams from earlier Pokémon games). These storylines sound familiar at first glance, but Scarlet & Violet distinguish themselves in the execution. There is no freedom of choice in what you do in the game, the three storylines all need to be completed, but the order in which you do everything is completely up to the player. The game does nudge you in certain directions – which is visible in things such as the levels of Pokémon trainers in the overworld and Gym Leader descriptions – but besides the few mobility upgrades locked behind the “Path of Legends”, you can go wherever you want from the very beginning. This sense of freedom is great, made even better by the excellent exploration elements. There is something useful to do/find everywhere you go: an item, a trainer, a new Pokémon to either catch or fight against. These things then all help to make your Pokémon team stronger in different ways, and this leads to a very satisfying positive feedback loop. Not only that, you get to do all these things while riding on top of a Legendary Pokémon you befriend at the beginning of the game, what’s not to love? The music is also better and more dynamic than ever: when you enter a battle with a wild Pokémon the area’s music track seamlessly changes into a battle version of the same music track. And then we haven’t even talked about the 400 Pokémon available during your journey, of which 100 are brand new. The fact that a quarter of those 100 are in some way related to an old Pokémon doesn’t spoil the fun – as expected the designs are just as cute and/or cool as always.

The remaining part of the distinctive execution lies in the region, characters and storylines. The different cultures of each new region have become more and more unique and noticeable since the moment that they stopped being only based on regions from Japan. The Paldea region – based on the Iberian Peninsula, largely consisting of Spain – continues this trend. The Spanish influence; visible in the language use, the history of the region, Pokémon, characters, and cities is a delight. At the start of the game you become a student at Naranja/Uva Academy (Naranja in Scarlet, Uva in Violet) – and it is this setting that brings the story and characters to life. You learn from and work together with different teachers and classmates to bring the previously mentioned three storylines to a successful conclusion. It is these characters, all with their own fun quirks, that make the entire story – especially the last few hours – special.

In conclusion, when I look at the game design Game Freak took the last step towards the open world Pokémon experience convincingly, and they even managed to take along a bunch of fun new Pokémon, characters and stories. But it ultimately didn’t matter how well they took that step. Their destination – a game that is the complete package – was still far away. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are therefore the perfect representation of the state in which the entire series finds itself. The vision of hardworking developers that, under all the pressure of the corporate machine, manage to create a pretty good Pokémon adventure. And to be honest, I feel bad for them, because these games will be – partly deservedly so, don’t get me wrong – remembered for their bad graphical performance while I can’t imagine that the people working at Game Freak were satisfied with how the games looked on release day. Give them more time and we’ll get Pokémon games that are beautiful on the inside and on the outside. Sadly I don’t think that will happen, considering the money that any product with the Pokémon logo on it keeps generating. Regardless, Pokémon still hasn’t lost that magic with which it enchanted the world in 1996, and with which it enchanted me in 2011 when I started my first journey through a Pokémon region. There simply is no other series like this one, no other feeling like seeing a Pokémon you’ve never seen before and wanting to add it to your team as soon as possible. If you can look past all of the graphical problems, then this is one of the best Pokémon games, and a great addition to the Nintendo Switch collection of any RPG fan.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an exciting, bold step forward for a franchise that has – for better and worse – had its games conform to a similar and familiar style for 25 years. When you look at the success of this style it’s honestly no wonder that it has barely changed after all this time, because the simple Pokémon formula is just so solid. This game finally challenges a lot of those typical Pokémon conventions in a meaningful way, and while being rough around the edges, manages to wrap it all up in a pretty damn enjoyable package. I’m unsure about whether or not I would want this new style of game to become the new standard for the series; but regardless of where the series heads next, there are many things introduced in Legends: Arceus that absolutely need to be kept forever and will make it hard for me to go back to older Pokémon games without those things.

The freedom Legends: Arceus offers to the player is astounding, especially compared to other games in the series. While it takes a bit too long for the “tutorial phase” to finish, after that, you can truly do a lot of things at whatever pace you desire. While I like Sword & Shield, it’s no secret that in that game you’re mostly forced to do the story at the pace that the game wants you to. In this game, you can make your own pace. If you want to follow the story along a mostly linear path, you can do that (for the most part, since you are required to rank up by doing research tasks in order to gain access to new areas). But if you want to explore every nook and cranny of the map, do every sidequest, catch every Pokémon, you’re also more than free to do so. This may not be revolutionary for gaming in general, but it kinda is for Pokémon, and since Pokémon is so unique as a series it leads to this game feeling unique as well even with all the other “open world” type of games out there.

There are many words I can use to describe the gameplay flow in Legends: Arceus. Smooth, seamless, quick, convenient, etc. There is a beautiful rhythm to the act of catching, battling, collecting items (to then use for crafting useable items like Poké Balls and Potions) and exploring. Furthermore, gameplay is never stopped to waste your time with meaningless shit, you can always keep going. The trainer being able to move at basically all times, including during battles and while a Poké Ball is determining if a catch was successful, seems like such a small change but it does wonders in making the game more fast paced because you can already start going somewhere else in the time that it takes to conclude a battle/catch attempt. World traversal feels similarly pretty fluid overall, at least once you have all of the Ride Pokémon at your disposal – even if some of them can be a bit janky at times.

This is the first Pokémon game to not include the ability to battle against other players. As such, they were able to change things to the battle system without having to account for how it would work in multiplayer. The way the turn order works was completely overhauled: the two opposing sides no longer have their turn at the same time, so if your opponent’s Pokémon is faster they can hit you before you can even respond. Using an agile style move will make your Pokémon potentially have another turn faster at the cost of your move being weaker, whereas using a strong style move will do the opposite, with both styles costing you extra PP. This system is quite interesting, though I don’t believe it reaches its full potential in this game, as most fights – because a lot of them are just one single wild Pokémon – don’t require thinking too much about using the styles to your advantage. Another thing about the system is that it further buffs what is already the best stat in Pokémon: speed. Sending slow Pokémon out first feels equivalent to having a piece of paper that says “hit me!” on your back, and that is quite unfortunate. It’s not a huge problem though because as said, the focus is much more on catching Pokémon rather than battling – you can count the amount of times you fight a team with more than 2 Pokémon on one hand.

Which leads to me another discussion point: teambuilding. In this game, there’s a weird sort of insignificance in building up your team and having synergy between team members. This is by far the Pokémon game where I’ve switched the least, as because of the wild Pokémon being on the overworld you always already know what you’re up against outside of the few trainer battles, and thus switching is not necessary a lot of the time. Set-up moves and the like feel less useful for similar reasons, as it almost never feels worth it to use them when fighting against a single Pokémon, especially when you’re trying to catch those a lot of the time (which means you don’t want to KO it). Your team kinda feels less like an actual team and more like 6 individuals, because opportunities where you use more than one or maybe two members of your team in a single battle are rare. This even extends to entire areas where you mostly find Pokémon of one type, such as the Cobalt Coastlands and its many Water types, which means you’ll generally only be using Grass and Electric types in that area. And since you can even catch Pokémon on the overworld without needing to battle a lot of the time, and catching Pokémon is the main focus, it doesn't feel like you're building your TEAM towards an endgame of sorts like in other Pokémon games. Other than the encounters with Noble Pokémon where your TEAM does get tested to some degree (though even then those don’t even NEED to be battled, you can defeat them just by using balms in the action parts), you never really know when the next “testing of your battle skills” moment comes. Overall though I would say this is not necessarily a big deal in the context of this game, it’s just different, but I do think I simply like how teambuilding is handled here less.

Let’s talk about the Noble Pokémon, because they are quite unique when it comes to boss encounters compared to the rest of the series. They feel like actual bosses more than ever before and require a completely different skillset than what is normally expected of the player in Pokémon. These encounters are generally a lot of fun, especially because the game once again gives you options as to how you can approach them. If you’re good at throwing balms you can beat these bosses without even battling them, and if you’re not, battling is an equally viable option after dodging enough of their attacks. Each phase makes a particular attack just a bit harder, and since the dodge move feels good and satisfying to use, it culminates into a cool, fresh, visually appealing Pokémon experience that I definitely wouldn’t mind to see expanded upon even further in future games.

Besides changes to the battle system itself, this game also reworks a lot of moves to fit within the new battle system. Furthermore, basically every Pokémon has a new and improved moveset, and the best part? You have access to this entire moveset at all times and can change moves whenever you want. This simple feature is probably my favorite thing in Legends: Arceus. Not only did they make a lot of Pokémon a lot more fun to use right off the bat by giving them better moves sooner, the movesets of the Pokémon are more conveniently customizable than ever before. If this is not carried over to whatever Game Freak makes next I am rioting in the streets harder than the BringBackNationalDex people in 2019.

I will say that this game is somewhat held back by the fact that it has to be tied to Sinnoh. It would’ve been even more amazing if this type of game kickstarted a new generation and most of the mons we discovered on the overworld were new. As the game is now we’re mostly stuck with the mediocre Sinnohdex featuring like 20ish new forms/evolutions and that kinda sucks. Especially in the beginning when the usual Route 1 Sinnoh stuff is almost everything that’s available. The fact that you don’t have to trade for certain mons to evolve is great though, and opens up more options for people with no Pokémon playing friends like myself. But man imagining this game with 150 completely new Pokémon, it really could’ve been even more special.

Speaking of special, I would say the story in this game certainly is, for a Pokémon game at least. Taking place in the Sinnoh of the ancient past, there are no gyms, cities and Pokémon Leagues to be found. Instead of trying to become the very best like no-one ever was, your task is to catch Pokémon and make a Pokédex, and find out what is going on behind the space rift in the sky that you fell out of. This space rift is causing certain Pokémon to become frenzied, leading to the other plot point of you quelling these Pokémon in each respective area. The premise is interesting, but for 80% of the main game the plot is simply to go to an area, quell the frenzied Pokémon, and move on to the next area – with the little stories inside of these areas being cute, but not anything substantial. It is only in that last 20% and the post-game where the story starts picking up beyond the description I just gave it. And that last 20% is actually pretty cool and fleshes out Sinnoh’s myths and legends (heh) quite nicely, featuring some of the most memorable moments in the entire series. I only wish the first 80% didn’t have what feels like Game Freak going through the motions of a typical Pokémon story despite having such a different setting for the first time.

Looking at the characters, they’re fine, serviceable – and I will say that most of them at least contribute something to the story and are better than pre-Gen 5 Gym Leaders in that regard. The character design recycling makes some sense for this game, but at the same time it also feels kinda lazy – though their personalities are at least different enough to somewhat make up for it. On the bright side, this is easily the best protagonist we’ve had in a main series Pokémon game. He/she feels appropriately competent and integral to the plot, while also actually being emotive and having some semblance of character – he/she doesn’t even feel that out of place in most story scenes and that is honestly saying quite a lot.

Legends: Arceus’s presentation is overall a mixed bag. Starting off with the positives: the Pokémon are absolutely the star of the show here. Their models look great, they behave livelier than ever before, and most if not all of them have a bunch of cute new animations to match. Unfortunately, the world they inhabit is not exactly as pretty looking. The environments in this game just look bleh overall. The actual design of the world is fairly good, but there’s not much beauty to behold in them, in stark contrast to games like Xenoblade that throw spectacular views at you constantly. I don’t think it hurts the game too badly, but it certainly would’ve been a nice cherry on top if this game actually had good looking environments. But as long as you’re just looking at your beautiful Pokémon friends, the graphics shouldn’t bother you too much.

In conclusion, while Legends: Arceus is very rough around the edges and far from perfect, it is the breath of fresh air the series desperately needed. I commend it wholeheartedly for finally making meaningful changes to the Pokémon formula that actually paid off, while being just a fun game in its own right. It does remain to be seen how much of this game will end up being brought over to future Pokémon projects. Regardless, as I’ve said previously – while I don’t think I would want this exact type of game to be the new Pokémon standard forever, Legends: Arceus does set certain standards for the Pokémon series that I never want to see go away ever again, whatever form any new game may take.