https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/feb860da9e2aacfd852aeb769f01365/205667504/C2ub2coWIAAdU5a-ed.jpg
Octopath Traveler is a turn-based role-playing video game developed by Square Enix, in collaboration with Acquire, and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. The game was released worldwide on July 13, 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopath_Traveler
-Explore multiple, distinct RPG adventures in a world created by Square Enix-Choose from eight characters, each with their own distinct story-Deep, strategic turn-based combat with a layered battle system-Visuals inspired by retro RPGs, brought to life with modern touches and a rousing, dynamic musical score
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/octopath-traveler-switch
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 14 July 2018 15:41 (five years ago) link
this game is pretty wonderful. the combat is a lot of fun and the level design and pathfinding, especially in the fields and dungeons, is a whole lot of fun and a cool new twist.
it is rare to have a game that does the retro thing but also does so much new stuff with it. the added depth and 3D solution to the pixel art is wonderful. the music is so good as well. the arrangements are very much classic SNES era RPGs but recorded with live musicians.
really love the game. im only like 3 hours in? the dungeons are jaw dropping, like living dioramas, like shadow puppets or something. i love the manga style art for the speech bubbles and emotional indicators.
great game! 20 years in the making and worth it.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 14 July 2018 15:49 (five years ago) link
It’s good
― devops mom (silby), Saturday, 14 July 2018 17:25 (five years ago) link
I'm enjoying it. the characters I like playing with so far are the opposite of the ones I was interested in going in
― ciderpress, Saturday, 14 July 2018 21:51 (five years ago) link
i started off w the thief and then got Cyrus and after that i was wanting to get the hunter, who i used in the demo. it was a little unclear when chapter 2 started or whatever but i wanted to add new party members. opened up the map and found where she was and made my way over there. i thought the new character thing was all going to be done through menus so it was cool to actually be able to huff it across these maps rather than just fast travel.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 15 July 2018 14:19 (five years ago) link
this was underprinted and is sold out everywhere apparently, lol at squenix continuing to be perplexed that people actually want to play games made in the style of their most famous/classic games.
― ciderpress, Monday, 16 July 2018 13:48 (five years ago) link
about a dozen hours in, this is damn good
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 16 July 2018 15:01 (five years ago) link
15 hours in, 1 more character to discover. i am traveling counter-clockwise and just did Alfyn, Primrose, & Olberic's storylines so am wrapping up the first Chapter 1's with Tressa. just 8 of these missions took me 16 hours, and there are 3 more sets of these, meaning this is a big epic game for real.
my main character is Therion the thief. it is nice to be able to try to steal from pretty much anyone in the game, and open all the treasure chests. you get a lot of equipment picking off random townspeople.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 19 July 2018 21:17 (five years ago) link
i am loving all the environments in this game. the music is solidly amazing too, this is easily one of the better Square RPG soundtracks of the century.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 19 July 2018 21:19 (five years ago) link
I did not like olberic's voice acting in the demo
― Impossible Burgermeat. Unlikely Seitan. (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, 19 July 2018 21:26 (five years ago) link
i subclassed tressa as a scholar and now she has a black mage robe and is blasting enemies for thousands of damage with her stupidly named 'trade tempest' spell and then saying pun one liners like 'you got more than you bargained for'. very good
― ciderpress, Thursday, 19 July 2018 22:10 (five years ago) link
tressa no
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DigGl5YVMAEBEPM.jpg
― ciderpress, Thursday, 19 July 2018 22:34 (five years ago) link
tristressa
― Impossible Burgermeat. Unlikely Seitan. (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, 19 July 2018 22:53 (five years ago) link
ive been using Japanese voices/English text
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 July 2018 10:56 (five years ago) link
I play all games with english voices unless the dub is really really bad or doesn't exist. Xenoblade 2's dub was heavily criticized but was still well above the line for me
― ciderpress, Friday, 20 July 2018 14:13 (five years ago) link
if I'm only gonna get one of Xenoblade or Octopath, which one right now?
― droit au butt (Euler), Friday, 20 July 2018 14:14 (five years ago) link
do you like big immersive weirdo anime RPGs or cozy retro rpgs? Xenoblade will take you for a ride, Octopath is more about just having a tight RPG system and nice aesthetics. theyre both good and bad in their own ways though Xenoblade is way more unique imo, there's not really anything else like it for better or for worse
― ciderpress, Friday, 20 July 2018 14:58 (five years ago) link
nice, I should probably go for xenoblade for now then
― droit au butt (Euler), Friday, 20 July 2018 15:11 (five years ago) link
be warned, it's extremely anime
― ciderpress, Friday, 20 July 2018 15:11 (five years ago) link
well I'm gonna alternate this & persona 5 this fall so
― droit au butt (Euler), Friday, 20 July 2018 15:24 (five years ago) link
ah yeah get both the cool and the uncool sides of the shonen anime rpg experience
― ciderpress, Friday, 20 July 2018 15:30 (five years ago) link
i need to check out Xenoblade someday, it sounds up my alley. it is alongside Ni No Kuni and Beyond Oasis as games i need to play next.
OT is something special tho. i have been playing Final Fantasy XV and at around Chapter 9 just gave up. the level design, while gorgeous, became a nightmare to navigate, the quest system was just a menu of enemies to fight in an alleyway, combat was just holding down a button and moving the camera (it did look amazing, tho, certainly impressive for the first dozen or so hours).
this is easily the better Final Fantasy than that game. it really is like FF3 to me. in that game the character backstories were always a highlight, and it is neat to see those back, aggressively so. after so much confusing multi-syllabic cosmic bullshit, story is back on track, back to being about characters and their relationships.
these aren't incomprehensible CGI cutscenes, they are the classic pixel puppet plays of characters delivering lines of dialog and stage direction. even before FF6 this style of storytelling was in danger of becoming extinct, you had the anime comic book cutscenes of Phantasy Star IV, the animated cutscenes of Lunard and CD-ROM RPGs. especially alongside the Unreal Engine 4 graphical post production, it is almost frustrating how simple the story bits are delivered. but for that reason it must be a considered design choice.
ditching the cinematic realism of modern games, it allows the player to participate in the creative fiction that much more. imo a low resolution rendering of a mountain conjures an imaginative (idealized) image of the mountain in the mind of the gamer, since they are aware of "real" mountains and want to have an idea of how they would look if "real"y existed. this kind of interaction plays across all the low resolution elements of these games, from character models to background tiles to the low-production theatrical-style story bits. RPGs, ROLE playing games, are a particularly effective form of this immersive/interactive storytelling. maybe not as abstract and arcane of a ZORK or a text based but just on the edge of text + still image, putting it alongside books, rather than movies, in that realm of imaginative storytelling.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 July 2018 16:36 (five years ago) link
appy polly loggies for all the typos
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 July 2018 16:37 (five years ago) link
this is Great
― Roberto Spiralli, Sunday, 22 July 2018 01:55 (five years ago) link
i'm planning on playing this after i finish Hollow Knight
one thing though - i heard that after each character's unique prologue, you're really only playing one character for the rest of the game, other than in battle? is that kind of weird to get way into a character in a prologue and then never hear back from them again afterward except in a generic way? or did i totally hear wrong about all of this?
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 22 July 2018 02:49 (five years ago) link
hmm, actually from reading adam's post above i guess the character-specific structure continues throughout? sorry, i'm probably just asking about something that doesn't even exist, in a very confusing way
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 22 July 2018 02:51 (five years ago) link
Each character has their own four chapter storyline to follow, in which only they appear in cutscenes etc. You can switch between following each character’s story whenever you want, more or less. The first character you pick can’t be removed from your party (until after you beat their last chapter, i have heard?).
― devops mom (silby), Sunday, 22 July 2018 03:04 (five years ago) link
The stories are told as solo character stories despite you having a party with you for combat, maybe that's what you saw. The characters weigh in on each others stories via Tales style optional conversations that pop up, that's the only real party interaction outside of combat.
― ciderpress, Sunday, 22 July 2018 15:26 (five years ago) link
i am just doing my first chapter 2 (Therion's) right now. each character has 4 of these narrative story sequences, each with a dungeon/town. this means 32 story sequences in the game, cutscenes along with towns, NPCs, dungeons, bosses, etc. to go along with them.
storytelling doesn't bother me in the least. every game does not need to have the exact same structure, it is refreshing. and tbh a lot of the older games highlights were just centered around one character and their NPC relationships - think Celes's post-World of Ruin personal drama, Gau's flashback to his relationship w his father, etc.
it is just now this is modularly implemented into an Open World like game where you can customize it to your liking. if you want you can just follow one character's story through to the end, rather than having them come at you in a linear order. the content of the games is more or less the same as it always has been. fwiw i have already seen 2 FFIX-style Active Time Event scenes where you can check in on other party members chatting it up. this is a nontroversy.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 22 July 2018 15:37 (five years ago) link
gotta say i like how story is tied to the geography of the game. you pull up the map and can see where all the story chapters take place. there is fast travel but it's a convenience and you still have to walk to get anywhere - exploring the map is key to uncovering the story.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 22 July 2018 15:46 (five years ago) link
cool, thanks for the explanations!
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 22 July 2018 16:02 (five years ago) link
I started out with Ophilia the Cleric, recruited the blond guy from the tavern with the wind spell, and then got my ass kicked by the first boss who apparently has infinite HP. For the number of encounters and interactive elements involved, was it really necessary for all that to take longer than a fucking Marvel Cinematic Universe entry? Maybe I’ve just been away from “real” JRPGs for too long and I forgot all the tedium. I’m willing to dive back in a few more times but I need someone to tell me that Ophilia has the worst starting story, because if she isn’t, ⌛️
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 22 July 2018 21:54 (five years ago) link
ophilia's story is the least interesting through 2 chapters yeah, though none of them are grand world-saving plots. olberic and primrose's stories feel like they were written by a different person, they're more dramatic than the others.
― ciderpress, Sunday, 22 July 2018 22:31 (five years ago) link
oh Cyrus's is more dramatic too
― ciderpress, Sunday, 22 July 2018 22:32 (five years ago) link
I’m finally enjoying this but the rest of family is still making fun of me for it. “Do they ever stop talking? When is the game?”
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 03:39 (five years ago) link
Some people just don’t like doing the same thing over and over and they are entitled to their preferences I suppose.
― devops mom (silby), Tuesday, 24 July 2018 04:13 (five years ago) link
Octopath Traveler’s battle system is like a cross between Magic the Gathering and TurboTax.
― devops mom (silby), Tuesday, 24 July 2018 04:15 (five years ago) link
I mean Quicken.
if you think this game has a lot of text/dialogue, you should avoid every other jrpg made since about 2003
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 04:24 (five years ago) link
I am aware of all jrpg traditions, but it’s been a long time since I played one on a big screen where other people (namely, my 7yo) can watch
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 14:08 (five years ago) link
dunkey rates this
― ||||||||, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 15:56 (five years ago) link
Played first 10 hours of this, good stuff. One of the kids just said "crivvens" which made me lol. Would play a FF5/6 remake in this engine.
― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Tuesday, 24 July 2018 16:06 (five years ago) link
dunkey hates jrpgs in general
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 17:16 (five years ago) link
I'm at like 35 hours and running out of steam now, haven't finished any of the stories yet but am about to attempt Alfyn's finale with a slightly underlevelled party. this game has not changed my theory that 6 is the ideal jrpg crew size, 8 is pretty common but always feels like it's stretching it.
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 17:39 (five years ago) link
have you been trying to level everyone equally or mostly sticking with a core 4 and just switching in and out for stories?
― Roberto Spiralli, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 17:44 (five years ago) link
I've been using a core 2 and rotating the other 2 slots such that I have good coverage of weapon types and buffs/debuffs. the core 2 are level 45 now which is the recommended level for the last chapters, most everyone else is in the 30s and then poor Cyrus is still at 22
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 17:55 (five years ago) link
Cyrus is my first character and tbh getting that free weakness every fight is pretty great. I walked up to my first chapter 2 boss yesterday with a party at levels 14-20 or so and got my face melted off.
― devops mom (silby), Tuesday, 24 July 2018 17:59 (five years ago) link
yeah I built Tressa as a scholar early on and liked it enough to stick with her which made Cyrus redundant. merchant has some good defensive abilities for glass cannon casters and the 4th merchant passive is halved SP costs so you can just spam the double hit spells once you have that.
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 18:12 (five years ago) link
I like how guessable a lot of the weaknesses are once you've seen enough of them - bow or lightning against flying enemies, fire against plant enemies, holy against undead, lance against armored stuff, etc. it's pretty consistent at meeting my expectations, and then they always are sorted in the same order so the remaining ones get progressively easier to guess
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 18:24 (five years ago) link
don't quote me on these but I think the sort orders are:sword lance axe dagger bow stafffire ice lightning wind light dark
more confident on the elements than the weapons
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 18:29 (five years ago) link
I just found the mage one! near the therion town. I haven't been looking for the others yet, sounds like I should.
― L'assie (Euler), Monday, 10 June 2019 14:46 (four years ago) link
Ophilia is my main & I gave her the mage second & with 200 spell points she's now a capable master
also equips, especially weapons, are more powerful than levels in this game, so seeking out good ones from npcs in the chapter 2 towns may be worth the time. iirc you can hand a strong weapon to an underleveled char and they'll contribute decently as long as they're not so low level that they're getting one-shot.
― ciderpress, Monday, 10 June 2019 14:54 (four years ago) link
I tried to steal all I could in nobleville but therion's percentage for the good stuff was only 8% :(
― L'assie (Euler), Monday, 10 June 2019 14:55 (four years ago) link
or you can always just give one of the supportive secondaries to an underleveled char e.g. dancer or cleric and have them contribute that way
― ciderpress, Monday, 10 June 2019 14:56 (four years ago) link
it still sucks that the game doesn't have bench exp when almost all other JRPGs have moved to having it in the past 10 years but there's enough of these ways to mitigate it that it's not as bad as it could have been
― ciderpress, Monday, 10 June 2019 15:00 (four years ago) link
Going around the chapter two cities tonight w an under level party was good, grinding without feeling pointless as I open up map and find new cities and shrines. I found the starseer one though and holy fuck
― L'assie (Euler), Monday, 10 June 2019 21:44 (four years ago) link
oh yeah don't bother with the ones in the outer ring yet, those are for the endgame. i think my party was level 40ish when i beat them
― ciderpress, Monday, 10 June 2019 23:24 (four years ago) link
I made it to the final boss last night, and it sucked. I haven't lost yet, maybe I can win it, but it's so tedious that I don't think I want to. I just put the machine to sleep after about half an hour, realizing that I have to somehow coordinate killing the dumb nodes it grows. Ah well, the game was pretty good until here! My party ended up in the 58-65 range, with Ophelia, my main, pushing 75 I think.
― L'assie (Euler), Tuesday, 16 July 2019 08:28 (four years ago) link
its more of a postgame challenge boss than a final boss. there's no dramatic conclusion or anything after it.
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 16 July 2019 15:17 (four years ago) link
CoolAny suggestions on another rpg on switch or ps4 if I dug this?
― L'assie (Euler), Tuesday, 16 July 2019 15:20 (four years ago) link
which elements of this are you looking for? turn-based? 'retro'?
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 16 July 2019 15:30 (four years ago) link
turn based, retro not a pro or con really
― L'assie (Euler), Tuesday, 16 July 2019 15:32 (four years ago) link
I should add that I haven't played a Final Fantasy since II. I played Dragon Quest IV and V on DS a while back, but I don't know that series otherwise.
― L'assie (Euler), Tuesday, 16 July 2019 15:38 (four years ago) link
dragon quest XI is pretty good, its on ps4 and has a switch version coming out in a couple months
the FF games on switch are all from the PSX/PS2 era and i don't know those ones very well
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 16 July 2019 15:50 (four years ago) link
FFX is turn based but very linear, FFXII is not turn based but really interesting imo most of the modern turn based JRPGS that I liked were on 3DS, going to take a while for them to turn up on Switch
― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Tuesday, 16 July 2019 16:02 (four years ago) link
i am playing this in quarantine. the bad Middle English for the hunters is doing my head in.
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Tuesday, 31 March 2020 01:23 (three years ago) link
is this ‘badly written’ by video game standards or is it just a long time since i played this type of video game
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:41 (three years ago) link
just went through the dancer’s prologue and oh lord everything about that was a bad idea, executed poorly. (i did actually download the demo and start with that one, two years ago? and i deleted the demo before i even made it to a battle)
(battles are tite tho. i went and did a level two quest and some random dungeons once i had a team of four because i couldn’t deal with any more inept first chapters)
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:44 (three years ago) link
i wouldn't call it a well written jrpg but a few of the stories have their moments
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:59 (three years ago) link
strength of the game is mostly the combat especially the boss fights. also the music
― ciderpress, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:00 (three years ago) link
Imo if you’re playing a JRPG for the writing read a book
― silby, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:07 (three years ago) link
unless that book is the novelization of octopath traveler in which case play the game
― Mordy, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:10 (three years ago) link
lol i thought this was 'lamo' but i see it is 'imo' -- idk, i'm playing it for the battle system but i do wish the writing was less bad, one doesn't go to action movies for 'the writing' but the first couple terminator movies are a lot better written than suicide squad
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:30 (three years ago) link
Fair enough
― silby, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:32 (three years ago) link
the book version of the game of the novelization, though. Best in class
― Karl Malone, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:40 (three years ago) link
yeah i don't think a novelization of, say, ff7 would be very good but as a rpg scenario it lands its story beats strongly
― ciderpress, Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:18 (three years ago) link
octopath is mostly doomed from the start because the 8 short stories thing doesn't really work
― ciderpress, Thursday, 2 April 2020 01:31 (three years ago) link
idk it worked fine in dragon quest iv
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Saturday, 4 April 2020 04:01 (three years ago) link
i've never played any of the SaGa games w/ this gimmick or Live A Live, and i am curious now to see if they tick me off any less. the tonal inconsistency is what does it, the gross slippage from 'what if the merchant was the protagonist of the rpg?' (n.b. this is the fifth time i have seen this question answered) to the revenge thriller ft. human trafficking
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Saturday, 4 April 2020 04:05 (three years ago) link
I have 70 hours in this but I am doomed to never finish it
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 4 April 2020 04:08 (three years ago) link
dear lord, does it get slower? i'm 18 hours in with 12 quests done
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Saturday, 4 April 2020 04:20 (three years ago) link
No I just “took a break” after getting crushed in a boss fight and then our daughter took over the Switch for Minecraft and Splatoon purposes. I got another Switch for the adults and moved my game over, but have been anxious about diving in again. I feel like at this point I’ve forgotten how to win and it’s not going to be like a bicycle and the boss fight isn’t going to be any easier even this I’m intellectually 100% sure of what I got wrong. And so forth. Ugh.
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 4 April 2020 04:40 (three years ago) link
live a live is cool
all the other games that do this thing have you play each story separately rather than putting all the protags in the same party (or else they do that much later in the game)
― ciderpress, Saturday, 4 April 2020 05:03 (three years ago) link
And 70 hours seems like such a sunk cost I don’t want to start over. Double ugh.
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 4 April 2020 05:06 (three years ago) link
My ex played this, sunk ~100 hours into it and didn't bother for full completion because... ~boring~
Me I'm gonna finally play Secret Of Mana and then Seiken Densetsu 3
― we have no stan but to choice (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 4 April 2020 13:19 (three years ago) link
most things are boring after 100 hours!
― Nudeln und Klopapier Gore (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 4 April 2020 17:09 (three years ago) link
i hit full completion in 55 hours, and its not like you can rush in this game since its got random encounters..
― ciderpress, Saturday, 4 April 2020 17:15 (three years ago) link
Yeah but you’re, like, actually good at video games I think
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 4 April 2020 17:33 (three years ago) link
only the ones that don't require dodge rolling
― ciderpress, Saturday, 4 April 2020 19:20 (three years ago) link
thirty hours in, about to finish my lead character's level 4 so i can swap her out. is this about when i ought to go looking for the other job shrines or are those really just a post-game thing?
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Saturday, 11 April 2020 04:00 (three years ago) link
you can beat the bosses for those when your party is around level 40 iirc. or maybe a bit less even but they're tough
― ciderpress, Saturday, 11 April 2020 04:20 (three years ago) link
thx. i did one of them that seemed fairly straightforward and now the game seems to have some more interesting tactical decisions available. i do feel like if i focus on clearing the rest the remaining lv 3 and lv 4 quests are going to be entirely trivial, tho
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Sunday, 12 April 2020 10:28 (three years ago) link
this game is super chill. i picked it up again and have been enjoying it
also, i didn't have to fight any bosses in the job shrines?? i've only just finished chapter 2 and i've found 5 of them
― real muthaphuckkin jeez (crüt), Monday, 21 December 2020 05:05 (three years ago) link
still slowly working my way through this every few months. an enemy just used a move called "These Nuts" on me
― eisimpleir (crüt), Saturday, 19 June 2021 15:14 (two years ago) link
top 5 Switch game
― What it's like. Havana Syndrome. What it's like. Havana Syndrom (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 5 November 2021 19:19 (two years ago) link
before i argue, what are your other 4
― When Young Sheldon began to rap (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 6 November 2021 05:37 (two years ago) link
and why!
― just staying (Karl Malone), Saturday, 6 November 2021 05:44 (two years ago) link
I am planning to say why. However i've been playing more, and Tressa's story has turned into Karate Kid but where the karate is replaced with "selling geodes". well, i'm not so confident anymore.
― accordion folder full of Zoobooks (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, 16 December 2021 18:07 (two years ago) link
hahaha
― my hands are always in my pockets or gesturing. (Karl Malone), Thursday, 16 December 2021 18:36 (two years ago) link