Octopath Traveler

Originally posted on Facebook on 28 December 2022

Okay so I finally actually finished Octopath Traveler!

The game is good. 😃

The game's structure is rather unusual - there isn't one big "main story", but rather eight small main stories.

You pick one to start with, and as you adventure around, you recruit the other seven main characters along the way and can play through their stories whenever it's convenient.

Each main story has 4 chapters, and each chapter takes approximately an hour or so to complete. Each chapter consists of exploring around the town, watching all the cutscenes, exploring a dungeon, and beating a boss at the end.

It's structured in such a way where the most natural way to play is to do all eight Chapter 1s, then all eight Chapter 2s, then all eight Chapter 3s, and finally all eight Chapter 4s. This is because all of the EXP and skills and gear etc you gain along the way in the earlier chapters is necessary to be strong enough to take on the later ones. 

However, the game doesn't strictly enforce this way of playing, it merely recommends it. If you wanted, you could go to the highest level locations in the game right from the beginning, if you can come up with ways to avoid being one-hit killed by everything.

Each chapter takes place within a single town, and if you enter a town that has an active chapter available, it gives you the option to select "That's a Tale for Another Day..." if you don't feel like starting it yet. This is a game that gives you a lot of freedom in where to explore, and it lets you do any of the quests whenever you're good and ready. I appreciate that.

The main stories are all completely separated from one another, and the other protagonists don't really interact with them at all. They all play out like little self-contained vignettes, and the game's graphical style makes it feel almost like a papercraft puppet theatre of sorts. It's quite cute. That being said, the story is nothing particularly special, and the scenes can have a tendency to drag on at times.

Also it does feel a bit awkward when the cutscenes only involve the main character of the chapter, yet the gameplay bits in-between have your whole team. Especially when the story goes like "Hah, you're outnumbered! No-one can save you now!", completely disregarding that there are also supposed to be seven other protagonists here alongside them...

You're really supposed to use your imagination in these cases.

So if there are 8 characters with 4 chapters that each take 1 hour to play, that's already...32 hours of RPG to play right there, but I managed to spend around 100 hours total in this game, because there's quite a lot of optional dungeons and sidequests too. Each main story dungeon is attached directly to the town the chapter takes place in, but in between the towns, in the connecting pathways, there are optional dungeons to explore too. Quite a lot of them, in fact! Usually the goal of these optional dungeons is to defeat a boss at the end that's guarding some particularly good treasure.

I'd say that the game's main most interesting point is its very intricate turn-based JRPG battle system.

The eight protagonists all have their unique class roles that allow them to equip specific weapons and use specific skills. You can only use a team of four protagonists at once, so having a team that works well together is key to having a good time.

Monsters in Octopath are not pushovers. Each monster has specific weaknesses and a number of shield points. If you attack a monster with its weakness, no matter how much damage you deal with that attack, its shield points go down by 1. Once it has no more shield points, the monster "Breaks" and cannot act for a turn, and takes double damage. It gets its shield back after the next turn.

The other major system in Octopath is the Boost system. Every turn you spend NOT using a boosted skill gives you +1 Boost Point to work with. You can spend up to 3 Boost Points at a time to augment your next move - either attacking multiple times in one turn, or boosting the power of magic or other techniques.

"Break"ing monsters and managing Boost are the two main strategic components to the battles in Octopath.

If an enemy is about to unleash a devastating attack, if you see that it is weak to Axes and has 3 shield points remaining, you'd better hope you have an Axe-wielder with 2 or more Boost Points remaining, so you can attack it 3 times this turn and Break it before the attack comes out.

If you do a bit of hunting for some of the optional caves, you can unlock the ability to dual-class your characters, which adds an entire new layer of strategic possibilities.

The boss fights in Octopath Traveler are no pushovers either. The fights are very long, drawn-out affairs with multiple phases, each with its own bespoke sets of tricks to trip you up. The bosses are your opportunity to test if your current strategy really does work - or your opportunity to come up with a new build for your team if the boss's specific gimmicks happen to shut down your approach. 

At times it can feel unfair, if you've just spent 30 mins whittling down a boss, only for its final phase to summon three small enemies that prevent the bosses' shield points from breaking until they're dealt with first, all the while the boss keeps throwing out moves that disable your buffs that you are powerless to prevent.

But all that means is, after failing once, you gotta restructure your whole team, give everyone new equipment, equip different skills, and try something else. There are always multiple ways to deal with each encounter, and the game gives you plenty of tools and resources to work with too.

The bosses are the highlight of the game for sure.

So yeah. Octopath is a really fun JRPG in terms of the raw, nitty-gritty gameplay mechanics of a turn-based JRPG. The story is definitely on the shallow side, however, as the focus is definitely on the battle system. 

I'm glad I finally got around to playing it fully! I've had this game since it came out in 2018, and I've been meaning to get through it for so long.