5/5 ★ – beemancer's review of Octopath Traveler II.

The first Octopath Traveler, despite my own rather strict criticisms, is a game that was fairly well received. Square would have been well within their rights to simply iterate the franchise, but instead they went back to the drawing board on almost every single thing where the first game fell a little short. In this way, Octopath Traveler II was a lot like Tears of the Kingdom for me: the first game had a lot of fresh ideas, but it was the sequel that really delivered on execution. Everything I liked about Octopath Traveler returned with renewed vigor in Octopath Traveler II. The nostalgic sprite work is improved further with even better special effects than before, and the cutscenes are made more dramatic with fresh camera angles and 3D modelling additions. The combat retains the extremely satisfying conditional turn-based style, but the addition of character-specific latent powers and unique skills make combat more dynamic and less stale. Bosses are crammed full of new gimmicks to challenge your assumption that you can just break their shield and burst them down. The music... well, I'm sure there's people arguing in favor of both games, but let's just say the OST is fantastic. Of course, my biggest gripe with the first game was that while the characters were cool, the story-telling was pretty weak. Fortunately, this is the area in which Octopath Traveler II made the biggest strides. It was clear even in the first game that Square wanted to show us a new way to tell a story; rather than a single plot line we can trace from end to end, these games follow an ambitious eight different stories and let you bounce between them at will. The place that the first game failed was that the stories were not very well linked, and the characters didn't really interact with each other or grow together. Octopath II aimed to fix these problems, and succeeded handily. The addition of cross-stories, where two characters would share a smaller story-arc, really helped the characters form some inter-party relationships. There's even a story arc where all eight characters interact together, which really cements them as a party in a way that was completely absent in the prequel. It's actually done so well it leaves me wondering why Square did not choose to have one or more characters support each traveler's story. RPGs figured out a long time ago that a character doesn't need to be in the party to show up in the cutscene, and I feel like expanding on the cross-party ideas they had would've made the stories even stronger. Still, this time around there weren't really any moments that felt like I had to ask the question, "why isn't my party helping me right now?", and usually the party banter additions made it clear that they were still there to help even if they didn't participate in the most dramatic parts of each scene. Each story also does a better job of foreshadowing the final chapter - you'll start to notice some common themes and links regarding the final mystery. The improvements to the story don't end there. The presentation is improved dramatically by having more action-packed cutscenes - no more boring one-on-one dialogues with side-by-side characters. The stories are less cookie-cutter, with each traveler having multiple branches that can be done in any order and each traveler has a different number of chapters of different sizes. The stories themselves are also just way, way better. I won't say they don't fall into a few tropes but the execution is just so good they don't feel tropey or cringey. I certainly wasn't expecting the story about amnesia to be my absolute favorite, but it shook me to my core and brought me to tears multiple times. The use of character specific path actions, like stealing objects and knocking people unconscious, felt a little forced at times, but they absolutely paid off by the end of the game. And while Octopath I didn't struggle with character design, in the sequel they absolutely cooked. The characters are all badass in their own ways and tell awesome and unique tales, and while there were a few I wasn't that fond of, they were all well-executed and I can see how any of them could be someone's favorite. The combat continues to be stellar, and somehow Octopath II made me do something I really didn't expect - I liked the blue mages. It was fun to collect abilities and Pokemon. I even did some sidequests, which is crazy for me. I wanted to get items and hang out with my characters and fight strong stuff earlier. The game had some of my favorite RPG bosses in a while, and the final climactic battle left me on an incredible adrenaline high. I could think of a ton of ways to build each traveler and even each party. I will say that I played this game on PC with two mods that I would recommend, because they improved my experience. The first guarantees escape when running from random encounters. Failing to run from an encounter is a super annoying mechanic that's more or less in place to keep you from running into high level areas and looting chests, so just don't do that. The second allowed me to removed the starting traveler from my party whenever I wanted - normally, they're locked in place until you finish their story. In the first game, I played under that constraint and more or less had three badass characters dragging around the character required for each story, which led to the main character of the arc becoming the side character in the boss fight. Instead, I ran through the eight stories with two different fixed parties, which kept them all roughly evenly leveled without thinking about it and let me play with two very unique combat strategies. I think Square would be wise to remove this restriction in the future, but I'm not against modding games for my benefit anyway. I applaud Square and Acquire for not only trying something unique, but knowing when not to be satisfied just because a lot of people liked it. I don't personally think this is even a better way to tell a story than the traditional single plot adventure, but it was refreshing to have a new angle. It's not like having one story with eight characters with a common goal; Octopath emphasizes that each traveler has their own dreams and they're all helping each other achieve those dreams. I'm so, so glad that they were able to really show me that this time. Octopath II is not a perfect game. There were some lulls in the middles of some stories, and there were some important bosses that I one-shot on turn two or three because the break system is still a little busted. But it's got 70+ hours of content, and the endings of the eight stories and the final chapter all left me feeling incredibly satisfied. If you're a fan of turn-based RPGs, this is one you simply must pick up, preferably with THESE HANDS!