So like I know the original Octopath isn’t particularly beloved among the big RPGheads on Backloggd and while I do kind of get it due to it having some pretty significant flaws, I still liked it a lot. I mean you can read it, it’s not like I went too deep into it but my opinion was pretty positive! The weird way the travel banters were handled kinda messed with the characters feeling connected at all and while I do think the way everything was connected was pretty neat it felt kinda underbaked and the way you figure it out is kind of bullshit. It was a pretty good foundation to me, though; I enjoyed the gameplay and the individual characters and their stories a whole lot, the game looked great, and the OST fucked. I wasn’t sure if it would ever get a sequel, but I’d kind of hoped for one.
Then they announced a sequel with a cool new setting featuring like, desert Chinajapan and a cowboy and some smarmy-looking white haired pretty boy cleric and a furry and I was SO stoked. Octopath II doing the Final Fantasy thing with a different setting every game is extremely good to me, and it basically polished everything I enjoyed about the first game while addressing the problems I did have with it and adding some fun new stuff! I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect improvement, mind; the way that the different storylines are handled could theoretically still mess with the pacing a bit, and I did want a little more than just four Crossed Paths storylines.
However, man, just having all the travel banters accessible in the journal after you finish a chapter instead of just hoping you have the right party composition to activate the banters fucks, and I think it was pretty cool how a lot of the characters had split chapters that you could approach in any order (even if the recommended levels made some orders pretty, uh, obvious). I also really enjoyed all the storylines! There was a nice balance of fun, more lighthearted storylines and The Horrors. And, uh, barely anything in between. Like, I laughed a lot, I cried a lot, I was impressed by just how many characters were just, like, super gay? Like, damn. You got wholesome yuri. You got toxic yuri. You got useless lesbians. You got tragic yuri. You got old man yaoi. You’ve got a BL scenario where a straightlaced young knight must choose between his childhood friend and the obnoxious white haired pretty boy who keeps teasing him. You’ve got the most deranged heterosexuals on the planet. It’s great.
Anyway while I loved the first game’s cast, this game’s cast is, like, so excellent, and the party chats are real treasures. The more serious-seeming characters like Castti and Osvald have some of the funniest shit in the game, and I really love the friendships that develop like the one between master thief Throne and her gay best friend Church Detective Temenos. (btw starting with temenos was great, but every character gets to shine and i’m sure some alternate starter character decisions would have produced some truly wild scenarios, particularly once you’ve completed every character’s storyline and encountered The Thing That Comes After…) It’s like, the difference between sensibly enjoying the first game and wanting to grab the second game with my teeth and shake it around like an excited dog with their very favorite toy.
Anyway while I… think I might still prefer some specific tracks for specific scenarios in the first game, the music still rules, and the boss sprites are somehow even better than in the first game? They all have at least one unique animation to go along with a special attack, which makes them feel even more special. But god damn some of them are wild. Some of the things that happen are wild. I just kind of stared in horror through one of the most fucked up cutscenes in the game and the battle starts and I see this guy posed like a Renaissance statue with his big fat titties out for all to see and I just start laughing about how I want to cover Ochette’s innocent eyes (she’s like 20 so she’s probably had sex ed from her lion dad but she wasn’t really paying attention because she was busy thinking about lunch).
But what is an RPG without the battle system? God it feels good, though. Like I love turn-based RPGs but I have rarely found a gameplay element in a menu-based RPG that has the feel of breaking enemies in the Octopath games. Like the sound effect, the vibration from the controller, the slowdown… it just feels REAL fuckin good, dude. It’s pure dopamine. I liked that the first game ensured every character felt unique to a certain extent because they had one “base” class that they would always have access to and then you’d assign them a secondary class on top of that, and Octopath II keeps that system. However, it further gives every character their own Latent Power which gives them extra unique utility and sort of functions as a limit break, and I truly love that. It’s great.
The new secret classes are also pretty fun, with the added quirk that two of them require doing sidequests to unlock all their skills rather than requiring job points. I ended up using a guide to figure those out, which I haven’t really been big on doing but the game is chunky enough that I don’t really consider it to be cheating for me… also the improvements to the base classes! The hunter character went from having a talent that honestly kind of sucked to one that is honestly kind of OP? Ochette can use monsters as often as she wants, gets several permanent bonus monsters that have Big Limit Break Summon potential, and whenever you want to add a better monster to your roster you turn the old one into an item? It’s great!
Speaking of said items, the day/night system and the impact it has on path actions is pretty neat. It feels like they’ve kind of divided each action into four categories: percentage based, combat based, level based, and resource based. So, for example, to get items from NPCs, you have a percentage based chance of stealing them with Throne, a level based means of… I guess busking for them with Agnea, a resource-based means of buying them with Partitio, and a combat-based means of mugging them with Osvald. It’s neat! Some options feel obviously better than others, but I don’t know, I kind of liked them for the roleplay opportunities. It was fun to try and figure out a NPC’s moral character with Castti or Hikari’s inquiry-related skills so I could determine whether I wanted to pay them money for their items or if I just wanted to rob them blind. Sometimes you just want to play the moral arbiter of things, you know?
Anyway in conclusion this game rules, it was released at an unfortunate time so I hope it sold okay, I want Octopath III. I love what the Octopath team has been cooking and I hope they get to do even more in the years to come.
Then they announced a sequel with a cool new setting featuring like, desert Chinajapan and a cowboy and some smarmy-looking white haired pretty boy cleric and a furry and I was SO stoked. Octopath II doing the Final Fantasy thing with a different setting every game is extremely good to me, and it basically polished everything I enjoyed about the first game while addressing the problems I did have with it and adding some fun new stuff! I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect improvement, mind; the way that the different storylines are handled could theoretically still mess with the pacing a bit, and I did want a little more than just four Crossed Paths storylines.
However, man, just having all the travel banters accessible in the journal after you finish a chapter instead of just hoping you have the right party composition to activate the banters fucks, and I think it was pretty cool how a lot of the characters had split chapters that you could approach in any order (even if the recommended levels made some orders pretty, uh, obvious). I also really enjoyed all the storylines! There was a nice balance of fun, more lighthearted storylines and The Horrors. And, uh, barely anything in between. Like, I laughed a lot, I cried a lot, I was impressed by just how many characters were just, like, super gay? Like, damn. You got wholesome yuri. You got toxic yuri. You got useless lesbians. You got tragic yuri. You got old man yaoi. You’ve got a BL scenario where a straightlaced young knight must choose between his childhood friend and the obnoxious white haired pretty boy who keeps teasing him. You’ve got the most deranged heterosexuals on the planet. It’s great.
Anyway while I loved the first game’s cast, this game’s cast is, like, so excellent, and the party chats are real treasures. The more serious-seeming characters like Castti and Osvald have some of the funniest shit in the game, and I really love the friendships that develop like the one between master thief Throne and her gay best friend Church Detective Temenos. (btw starting with temenos was great, but every character gets to shine and i’m sure some alternate starter character decisions would have produced some truly wild scenarios, particularly once you’ve completed every character’s storyline and encountered The Thing That Comes After…) It’s like, the difference between sensibly enjoying the first game and wanting to grab the second game with my teeth and shake it around like an excited dog with their very favorite toy.
Anyway while I… think I might still prefer some specific tracks for specific scenarios in the first game, the music still rules, and the boss sprites are somehow even better than in the first game? They all have at least one unique animation to go along with a special attack, which makes them feel even more special. But god damn some of them are wild. Some of the things that happen are wild. I just kind of stared in horror through one of the most fucked up cutscenes in the game and the battle starts and I see this guy posed like a Renaissance statue with his big fat titties out for all to see and I just start laughing about how I want to cover Ochette’s innocent eyes (she’s like 20 so she’s probably had sex ed from her lion dad but she wasn’t really paying attention because she was busy thinking about lunch).
But what is an RPG without the battle system? God it feels good, though. Like I love turn-based RPGs but I have rarely found a gameplay element in a menu-based RPG that has the feel of breaking enemies in the Octopath games. Like the sound effect, the vibration from the controller, the slowdown… it just feels REAL fuckin good, dude. It’s pure dopamine. I liked that the first game ensured every character felt unique to a certain extent because they had one “base” class that they would always have access to and then you’d assign them a secondary class on top of that, and Octopath II keeps that system. However, it further gives every character their own Latent Power which gives them extra unique utility and sort of functions as a limit break, and I truly love that. It’s great.
The new secret classes are also pretty fun, with the added quirk that two of them require doing sidequests to unlock all their skills rather than requiring job points. I ended up using a guide to figure those out, which I haven’t really been big on doing but the game is chunky enough that I don’t really consider it to be cheating for me… also the improvements to the base classes! The hunter character went from having a talent that honestly kind of sucked to one that is honestly kind of OP? Ochette can use monsters as often as she wants, gets several permanent bonus monsters that have Big Limit Break Summon potential, and whenever you want to add a better monster to your roster you turn the old one into an item? It’s great!
Speaking of said items, the day/night system and the impact it has on path actions is pretty neat. It feels like they’ve kind of divided each action into four categories: percentage based, combat based, level based, and resource based. So, for example, to get items from NPCs, you have a percentage based chance of stealing them with Throne, a level based means of… I guess busking for them with Agnea, a resource-based means of buying them with Partitio, and a combat-based means of mugging them with Osvald. It’s neat! Some options feel obviously better than others, but I don’t know, I kind of liked them for the roleplay opportunities. It was fun to try and figure out a NPC’s moral character with Castti or Hikari’s inquiry-related skills so I could determine whether I wanted to pay them money for their items or if I just wanted to rob them blind. Sometimes you just want to play the moral arbiter of things, you know?
Anyway in conclusion this game rules, it was released at an unfortunate time so I hope it sold okay, I want Octopath III. I love what the Octopath team has been cooking and I hope they get to do even more in the years to come.