Octopath Traveler Review. Review of the video game Octopath…

Octopath Traveler is a 2019 turn-based JRPG developed and published by Square Enix with development assistance from Acquire. It originally released for Switch but over the years has come to all modern consoles. Turn-based RPGs became my favorite genre of video games after I played and loved Pokemon as a child, and I naturally gravitated towards Square Enix games like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy as the years went by. I adored the way this game looked and sounded when I first laid my eyes on it, and I knew I was in for a special experience when I finally got to play it!

Story

Octopath Traveler’s story takes place on the continent of Orsterra and focuses on eight main characters (Alfyn, Primrose, H’aanit, Olberic, Therion, Ophilia, Cyrus, and Tressa). Each character has their own individual story, such as Primrose seeking revenge against the men who murdered her father or H’aanit looking for her master who has gone missing. Every character has 4 chapters each to tell their stories, and these chapters don’t intersect with each other, and thus characters will not interact physically with each other during their individual stories. However, the end of each story has some connecting threads that all eventually connect to the true ending and final boss.

I have very mixed opinions on the game’s story. To start with the positives, some of the individual stories were amazing. My personal favorite was Primrose’s, as her situation and the ordeals she had to go through really make you empathize with her. Alfyn’s story about traveling the world and finding himself was also very enjoyable and goes in ways you don’t expect. However, there are also some stories, such as Ophilia’s and Cyrus’s, that I don’t think are BAD per se but are more generic and have characters that make some nonsensical decisions, which really takes you out of the story. The lack of main character interaction in each chapter also contributes to the stories feeling a little lacking, as it doesn’t really feel like a band of people traveling together. The only times you can actually see the characters interact are with optional scenes during each chapter, and while they are enjoyable and written well, I just wish they were mandatory or at least a little more integrated into each story to really make our protagonists feel more like a group that grows and learns together as their journeys go on.

Gameplay

While I might not have the highest praise for the story, I can say right now that I do for Octopath Traveler’s gameplay! You control 4 characters at once in a turn-based battle system where every turn both your characters and the enemies get a chance to attack or use an ability. This game features a boost system, in which you accumulate 1 boost point per turn to use on augmenting your abilities to either attack multiple times or unleash stronger versions of spells. Every enemy has shield points and multiple weaknesses to both weapons and magic, and every time you land a hit on an enemy, they lose a shield point. When an enemy loses all their shield points, they “break,” which staggers them for the current and upcoming turn and makes them take more damage from attacks during that period. Battles give you experience points and job points, which can be used to unlock new skills for your jobs. Because every enemy has multiple weaknesses, there are multiple ways to tackle every battle! Your party composition can be changed many times throughout a playthrough and still be equipped to deal with any upcoming danger.

One of the highlights of the battle system is the uniqueness of every character. Every character has their own job that gives them unique weapon types and spells, as well as a unique talent only they can use. To use Primrose as an example, as a Dancer she can attack with daggers and use buffing magic, but she can also summon NPCs that you allure outside of combat to do special abilities based on the NPC. You eventually unlock subjobs as well, which allow you to add one class’s weapons and spells to any character, though not their unique talent. Using Primrose again, if I gave her the Scholar subjob, she can now also attack with staffs and use fire, ice, and lightning magic, though Cyrus’s talent to reveal enemy weaknesses before a battle is not available to her. Every job also has support skills, which range from stat increases to passive HP restoration and so much more. Learning support skills are permanent even when you switch subjobs, and while every character can only equip 4 at a time, you are free to switch them out anytime between battles. This gives every character SO MUCH customization! You can make whatever party compositions you want after unlocking subjobs; whether you want to focus on pure attack power, casting spells, or tanking damage, the options for all are available to you.

I absolutely love the combat of this game! The amount of customization options your party has makes the battle system extremely fleshed out and encourages lots of experimentation to find what works best for your playstyle. It is worth noting, however, that the game’s bosses can be difficult. The game gives you lots of options, and it expects you to use those options against some of the later encounters, whether you are fighting a giant beast or a human adversary. Most bosses are fairly designed, though, so while they can seem daunting, the right strategy and character setups can make a difficult fight much more manageable. While I have given lots of praise to the combat so far, there are some structural issues that limit some of your flexibility with your party composition. When you start the game, you choose your “main character,” and that character cannot be removed from your party until you finish their chapter 4. While this limits your creativity with party compositions for a lot of the game, this is the only real drawback with the system, and you still do have the other 3 slots to change as you see fit.

Structure

Octopath Traveler has many towns and dungeons that you must explore to complete every character’s story. Towns have NPCs to talk to, weapons and items to buy, inns to restore your health to full for a fee, and taverns to change your current party. NPCs also have sidequests, which usually involve path actions to get items or information, or it could even be escorting a specific character to their side. These give money and items when completed and are very helpful early on if you need more money for equipment. In between towns are many landmarks such as mountains, fields, and forests that you must traverse through to get to the next town. Each chapter consists of going to a specific town for that character, talking to NPCs to progress the story, and then going to a dungeon and fighting the boss. Dungeons are fairly straightforward and usually just involve hallways and rooms with random battles and chests to open until you get to the boss, and I personally don’t see this as a problem. Dungeons usually aren’t too big, so you are free to either explore for chests or just rush straight to the boss if you already feel prepared enough.

Every character also has a path action. Path actions are different ways that you can interact with NPCs, such as Primrose being able to allure townspeople into fighting with her like I mentioned earlier. There are 4 actions you can do that are each split into noble and rogue path actions, with rogue versions being a potential higher risk, high reward. For example, Ophilia’s path action allows you to guide NPCs to follow you, but because she has the noble action, you must be a certain level to be able to guide stronger NPCs. Primrose has the rogue version of this action, so she has a percentage chance to allure every NPC, which can fail. If you fail, your reputation in the town can go down, which, if too low, can affect your ability to use path actions at all on NPCs in that town. Considering which version of a path action to use is important, especially early in the game. Some talents that were mentioned in the gameplay section also have overworld uses, like the thief Therion being able to unlock special purple chests in dungeons that have stronger equipment.

One great thing about the structure is that while going to a character’s specific town can trigger their next chapter, you don’t have to do it at that moment if you don’t want to. You are free to do more battles or just explore the town to get better equipment and do sidequests, and even if you do start a chapter, you are free to leave the town to go better equip yourself if you need to. You can do the characters’ stories in any order you want; you can choose to do all the chapters by character (Primrose Chapter 1–4, Ophilia Chapter 1–4, etc.), or you can do all the chapter 1s, then 2s, etc. (this is what I personally did as the level balance is much more consistent), but there is no order you need to do them in. This freedom you have really gives the game a feeling that you don’t need to rush through it; you can have shorter play sessions where you just make your characters stronger or longer ones where you take on multiple chapters and bosses, and you have the same sense of fulfillment no matter what you do.

Visuals and Soundtrack

As I mentioned in the intro, even before playing the game, the visuals had already captivated me! This game was the first to use Square Enix’s now iconic HD-2D art style, and the combination of the wonderfully drawn pixel art with beautiful-looking 3D environments is a sight to behold. Everything is so vibrant and detailed; the characters all have small intricacies in their designs that set them apart from each other, the water in oceans and rivers looks gorgeous, and the towns are all full of life, as even the smallest of details like beds in houses look so well drawn, which makes the whole world come to life. Enemy sprites in battles also have lots of detail on them, and the boss sprites truly are a sight to behold, as they are not only much bigger than your characters and other enemies but also have some unique animations, which makes you feel like you are going against a true adversary. The VFX when casting spells or when bosses are launching super powerful attacks are a treat to the eyes as well. My favorite detail has to go to the subjob sprites; when you switch a character to a different subjob, they get a whole new sprite that reflects what that subjob is, leading to nearly 100 different main character sprites! So much love and care went into the visuals of this game, and I truly think it is one of the best-looking 2D games I have ever played.

The soundtrack is also just wonderful. Everything from the town and overworld themes to the battle and boss themes to the character-specific songs just has so much impact and helps heighten the tension and emotion of certain story beats. One of the boss themes, Decisive Battle 2, has such a triumphant sound to it and just makes you want to do battle with monsters. Determination is a very melancholy piece with a longing feel to it and works so well with some of the game’s sadder moments. While I think the final boss is WAY TOO HARD, the song Daughter of the Dark God, with its Latin lyrics, is just amazing and really sets the mood of the fight as you do battle with this evil force and makes you want to give that extra push as you are almost done with the game. The sound design also works very well with the soundtrack; I like the menu noises, and the impact of spells and weapons hitting enemies has such a satisfying feel to it. Even basic sound effects like the sounds of going to shops and resting at the inn feel very relaxing, which is a testament to how well composed Octopath Traveler is!

Endgame Problems (Spoilers)

I am going to be giving some structure spoilers in this section, so please feel free to skip to the last section if you don’t want any spoilers, but tldr the endgame has massive problems with structure and difficulty that I have to address, and I used a mod to help circumvent them.

So once you have completed all the chapter 4s for each character and completed some specific side quests, you are ready to tackle the final boss… except not really. Once you enter the final dungeon area, there are 8 bosses that are just stronger versions of bosses fought in earlier stories. Once that is finished, you can fight the final boss, which is split into two extremely hard phases where you put your eight characters into two parties and fight each phase with one party.

This might sound difficult but reasonable; however, there are multiple problems with this. For one, the two-phase final boss is FAR more difficult than anything fought thus far, including all the chapter 4 bosses, to the point of feeling a little unfair. This difficulty spike took me multiple hours of preparation to fight the boss due to the insane health pools and damage output it has. What is much worse, though, is the fact that you cannot save during the final dungeon. If you die during the final boss, you must refight the 8 prior bosses every single time just to get another shot at the final boss. This is where the mod I mentioned comes into play; it allows you to fast travel out of the room once the 8 bosses are defeated, allowing you to save your game or get more prepared.

I really want to emphasize that I have never used a mod to change gameplay like this for any other game, but I just didn’t want to waste hours refighting the 8 bosses over and over just to get another attempt at the final boss. I am happy I did this because it took me quite a few attempts to beat the final boss, and I ended up saving hours of time in the long run. While this is a solution, it only works for PC players, and it also doesn’t change the fact that the endgame of this game is very poorly designed to the point of knocking the quality of the overall game down a little bit for me. While I still enjoy this game, I just wish the endgame was better balanced and at least included a save point so players didn’t have to waste hours re-fighting bosses they have beat multiple times just to get one more attempt at the final boss.

Final Thoughts

The game runs very well, and I never had any stuttering throughout my 70–80 hour adventure. It has full English and Japanese voices, with text in many languages, including Spanish, French, German, and Chinese. A fun fact is that the first letter of all the main characters’ names spells out “Octopath” when ordered properly, which I think is really funny.

Despite my thoughts on the endgame, I still highly recommend Octopath Traveler! The game is a joy to look at, a pleasure to listen to, and its battle system will keep you engaged for hours and hours on end. At 60 dollars, you will be getting your money’s worth, as it is a JRPG, but it goes on sale rather frequently, so whatever you spend on it, you will be getting a game I am sure any fan of JRPGs will enjoy!