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.
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.