4/5 ★ – fez219's review of Octopath Traveler.

It took a while for this one to click, but once it did, I couldn't put it down. I tried Octopath when it first released and didn't like it at all. I found the combat to be overly simplistic, the stories boring, the lack of interaction between party members grating, and the quests and dungeons extremely repetitive. I put it down after playing through every character's first chapter. Then years went by, the sequel, dropped, and I decided I'd give it another shot. This time around I played the absolute hell out of it. The combat doesn't show its true fangs until after the initial chapters; nor does the ever-evolving world full of NPCs to interact with. Once you start to understand the depth of this game's systems — which are easy to mistake as shallow due to the drudgery of the first few chapters — Octopath Traveler becomes an absolute blast. The two things that carry this game are its presentation and combat. Octopath Traveler pioneered the HD 2D artstyle and it's simply beautiful. The sprites are wonderful, especially the bosses, and the 3-D towns and modern particle effects and lighting complement the NPCs and player characters perfectly. Combat effects like spells are awesome too. Square really nailed this artstyle, and I can't wait to see more games like this. The Dragon Quest 3 remake is especially exciting. I would LOVE HD 2D Pokemon remakes... but that's getting off track. Suffice to say the game is a work of art in terms of presentation. The music is also phenomenal. Town tunes are catchy and relaxing, while combat (and especially boss encounters!) have awesome music that feels very classic JRPG and gets you in the zone. I LOVE how this game looks and sounds. The combat is phenomenal. I got sick of it during the initial playthrough because of the simplistic enemies of each of the 8 character's initial chapter, and the limited skills you start with. The game tricked me into thinking the combat would always be the same slog of break, unload, break, unload, etc. But while the break mechanic is the core pillar of the combat system throughout the entire game, buffs, debuffs, and other moves become critical to survival as enemies get stronger and more complex. You get tons of different options for how to build characters. Without spoiling, character customization and combat becomes a total blast. When you start to realize how different skills interact with each other and set off your first nuke-level attack, things will all of a sudden click. It will only get better from there. Later bosses have all sorts of crazy skills that to force you to keep thinking on your toes. Later fights are so damn hype; I hesitate to use the word epic unironically, but they're indeed quite epic. It's a good thing the combat is so fun, because the game's story and main quests are for the most part very mediocre and repetitive. They do have their moments — Olberic's story is a standout. But man did the writers need some better editors. The dialogue is extremely slow and can sometimes be outright painful (the Dunkey "your excellency" video comes to mind). Japanese audio helps a lot, but too much of the time it feels like you're sitting through filler. Most of the Chapter 1s are especially bad. But the stories do for the most part get more interesting. Each is pretty simplistic and the characters are all pretty cliche, but they're at least rarely as dull as the first chapter slog. One thing you'll have to just learn to ignore is the cognitive dissonance between the individual character stories and cutscenes, and the fact that you actually have an entire party. It's especially weird for Therion, where his main trait is that he cannot trust anyone ever and only works alone... yet promptly joins your party with zero explanation. Don't overthink it. Just ignore it and try to suspend your disbelief. There are infrequent party banters peppered throughout the main story, and postgame pub interactions, but they're far too rare. It's especially baffling why the pub interactions — which feature 3 characters at once, instead of 2, doing more to flesh out your team — are gated off until you're almost done with the game. But these at least help a little. I understand the game's core tenet is that each character has a separate story, but the lack of development outside of the extremely rare party banter of your party relationships hurts the already mostly weak 8 individual stories. I think the premise of 8 separate stories that don't explicitly intersect is interesting and could make for a masterpiece, but this game's story doesn't nail it. If you can compartmentalize these annoyances and just enjoy each characters' story for what they're presented as — completely solo stories where they don't have the rest of the party there for moral and combat support — you'll at least have a much better time with the game. The overwhelming majority of chapters (four for each of the eight characters, so 32 total chapters) boil down to go to a town, find NPCs to trigger cutscenes, go to dungeon, explore dungeon, fight boss. More ways to interact with the environment and more variety to mission design than dungeon crawling would have made a huge difference, but sadly dungeons are never more than mazes with chests at dead ends and a boss as the goal. You'll never so much as click a switch or open a door — the dungeons are as basic as they come. The characters do have "path actions" to interact with NPCs, but the main story does disappointingly little with the actions. A few chapters have interesting twists, but only one actually impacted the dungeon formula. More variety to what you're doing and what you can do in dungeons would be a huge improvement in the next game. There are quite a few towns, and each at least has plenty of identity and charm. At the start of the game, it feels like each town is totally static, with NPCs to exhaust your path actions on and nothing more to do. Luckily, there's a lot of fun to be had in returning to towns to do sidequests and pick at the world through character items and analysis you can do via your path actions. Towns do develop, with new characters appearing, dialogues shifting, and other movements throughout the game. Character items and summaries you can dig into with path actions can actually be super fun, and can aid in worldbuilding where the shallow story falls short. As you scrutinize/inquire and steal/purchase from NPCs, you'll see that the devs actually put quite a bit of thought into these. Characters are often holding items that give you insights into their character, and their secret summaries are usually fun jokes or give context to towns and the greater world. The more you put into interacting with NPCs, the more you'll get out of the game's worldbuilding and vibe. I at first thought Orsterra was an extremely basic world, but path interactions massively flesh out the world. If you're willing to put in the time, Octopath's towns and NPCs are actually pretty fun; I just wish this was more apparent during the dull initial chapters. On top of each character's four chapters, there's 101 sidequests to do. Most are pretty simple, but some tugged at my emotions or got a chuckle out of me. They all require path actions, and a good chunk of them tie into main character chapters. There also is an overarching story and a postgame resolution that involves everyone — but it takes quite some time before it starts to become apparent. I won't spoil, but I thought it was pretty cool. I did beat every single mission and boss, and the big finale was incredible! I spent about 100 hours in Osterra, and I loved the overwhelming majority of it. It's a beautiful game that feels modern while harkening back to the classics, and the combat is incredibly engaging and satisfying. The stories were mostly mid, but path interactions and sidequests can help add a lot of fun content and context to the game. Much of the best writing is in the optional content you'll discover and implications from that content you'll piece together yourself. I may have burned out quite early the first time I played Octopath, but I promise it gets better the more you play it. By the end, the combat will make you feel like a god and you'll have discovered quite a few fun aspects of the world and its characters — even if the eight main stories would have been much better served by cutting down on filler missions and dialogue, shifting up the much too formulaic dungeon crawling, and properly developing character relationships through the story. I hear Octopath Traveler 2 improves on all of these aspects. I'll need a break before I jump into it. But I can't wait to dive back in!