Octopath Traveler is an old-school Eastern RPG with a delightful art style, great battle mechanics, a crap-ton of content and secrets, an expectation that you would break the battle system and accordingly Beyond the Impossible bosses, and the greatest OST since Chrono Trigger. It's probably my favorite game of the century, and Octopath Traveler II fixed everything the first game got wrong.
And the first game definitely got things wrong. Early Game Hell was real, and even later Total Party Kill bosses were normal. The story follows eight unrelated protagonists on eight unrelated quests, with the result that the other 7 characters don't even show up in cut scenes, interactions between them relegated to skippable side content. The game was designed as a mystery, all eight characters dragged into the centrifugal threat of a single Big Bad, but the clues are so oblique that it's totally possible to miss that Big Bad, to give up playing the game without understanding why it hasn't ended. The character you choose to start with becomes your Main Character and you Can't Drop the Hero until you complete their Story Arc, even though there is neither mechanical nor story justification for this; meanwhile they complicate Level Grinding by being 25% higher leveled than everyone else.
OT2 introduces an entire new cast and setting but retains the original's mechanics. Characters still don't appear in each other's stories but they do chatter during battle; there are new chapters that explicitly star two characters at once; the game takes you straight to the Big Bad as part of the plot instead of burying it amongst side quests. Individual Story Arcs are better-written, and the overall tone more cohesive. The whole game is easier, but the first was unnecessarily hard; Tropes Are Tools. The addition of character-specific Limit Breaks and "EX Skills" help make each Traveler more unique. I still couldn't ditch Castti until she was Level 65, but I did discover her absurd anti-boss capacity. And at the end of the game you finally get the chance to change your party via the menu.
OT2 fixes much bad... but I'm looking for it to additionally add in new good things, and it does not. It's less a sequel than it is a patch for the original game. I do recommend it, especially for those new to the franchise, but people who want to see the formula to evolve might be better served with Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent and its really-neat eight-character battle system.
The Sophomore Slump has me concerned about the threequel. If it doesn't make legitimate progress with the format — more character interaction, more story branching, maybe even a crossover with the Orsterran and Solistian characters — I'm not sure I'll bother. The franchise is a deliberate throwback, but you can still grow within that category, and I hope they do.
VideoGame Oh good, they caught up.
Octopath Traveler is an old-school Eastern RPG with a delightful art style, great battle mechanics, a crap-ton of content and secrets, an expectation that you would break the battle system and accordingly Beyond the Impossible bosses, and the greatest OST since Chrono Trigger. It's probably my favorite game of the century, and Octopath Traveler II fixed everything the first game got wrong.
And the first game definitely got things wrong. Early Game Hell was real, and even later Total Party Kill bosses were normal. The story follows eight unrelated protagonists on eight unrelated quests, with the result that the other 7 characters don't even show up in cut scenes, interactions between them relegated to skippable side content. The game was designed as a mystery, all eight characters dragged into the centrifugal threat of a single Big Bad, but the clues are so oblique that it's totally possible to miss that Big Bad, to give up playing the game without understanding why it hasn't ended. The character you choose to start with becomes your Main Character and you Can't Drop the Hero until you complete their Story Arc, even though there is neither mechanical nor story justification for this; meanwhile they complicate Level Grinding by being 25% higher leveled than everyone else.
OT2 introduces an entire new cast and setting but retains the original's mechanics. Characters still don't appear in each other's stories but they do chatter during battle; there are new chapters that explicitly star two characters at once; the game takes you straight to the Big Bad as part of the plot instead of burying it amongst side quests. Individual Story Arcs are better-written, and the overall tone more cohesive. The whole game is easier, but the first was unnecessarily hard; Tropes Are Tools. The addition of character-specific Limit Breaks and "EX Skills" help make each Traveler more unique. I still couldn't ditch Castti until she was Level 65, but I did discover her absurd anti-boss capacity. And at the end of the game you finally get the chance to change your party via the menu.
OT2 fixes much bad... but I'm looking for it to additionally add in new good things, and it does not. It's less a sequel than it is a patch for the original game. I do recommend it, especially for those new to the franchise, but people who want to see the formula to evolve might be better served with Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent and its really-neat eight-character battle system.
The Sophomore Slump has me concerned about the threequel. If it doesn't make legitimate progress with the format — more character interaction, more story branching, maybe even a crossover with the Orsterran and Solistian characters — I'm not sure I'll bother. The franchise is a deliberate throwback, but you can still grow within that category, and I hope they do.