Octopath Traveler Review (Nintendo Switch)
Tessa’s Verdict:
I give this game 3.5 out of 5 stars. With eight different main characters, I originally thought the game’s focus would be on the story, but the story as a whole is not great (some characters have better stories than others, like Primrose the dancer, for example). Octopath Traveler’s can be found more in the battle system and the soundtrack. It’s much easier to enjoy a JRPG if the music is phenomenal. Let’s take a look at the categories I based my rating on:
The World
The world in Octopath Traveler is a mixed bag. Many of the cities are imaginative and fit their surroundings, like a seaside port city of rich nobles that instills a sense of grandeur, or a magnificent cathedral in a city blanketed in snow that sparkles with entrancing solemnity. The problem with the game that harms immersion a bit has more to do with the way the game was designed. All the areas and dungeons are an unusual fusion of 2D and 3D elements. By this I mean the game feels like a side-scroller, but with the ability to move forward and back through the depth between different 2D paths in the landscape. It makes the exploration of the game feel a bit limited, but there are still secrets, treasures, and hidden dungeons to stumble upon. Overall, I feel the world is imaginative, but some of the wild lands, and especially the dungeons, are very similar with little effort put into making them interesting. Many of the wild lands are designed to fit the landscape, but that’s all there is to them, for the most part. For these reasons, I'm giving the world a rating of 3 out 5 stars.
The Story
What would a JRPG be without a story? The once rhetorical question is now becoming a reality as modern JRPGs become less story focused. I was pretty excited when I first heard the 8 characters in the game all had their own storylines, but playing through them quickly killed my excitement. Square Enix was going for quantity, not quality, and it shows. If you make a game showcasing a story with many different main characters, you should go through the effort to make their tales interesting. It also helps to make their stories interwoven, where possible, but there’s no real tie-in between the characters in Octopath Traveler. There is a minor post-game story that has them all fighting for the same cause, but it doesn’t do much to overlap their paths. Of the 8 characters, the dancer, Primrose, has the best story. It is interesting, meaningful, and the deepest of the stories available to play through in Octopath. While there are some good bits and pieces in the other characters stories that are worth seeing, there is no other character who has a story that is solid from start to finish. I do respect the attempt of SE trying to make so many stories in one game, but the company is out of its depth these days and just a shell of Square as far as story quality is concerned. For these reasons, I give the story in Octopath Traveler a rating of 2 out of 5 stars.
The Music
The soundtrack is amazing and is honestly wasted on Octopath Traveler. It could have been used seamlessly in a far better game, but does go a long way in increasing Octopath’s immersion. The quality of the soundtrack is ultimately what convinced me to chance buying a modern SE RPG. The battle and boss themes are amazing, many of the city themes fit and deeply add to the setting (like Sunshade, the City of Pleasures), and the songs that play in many of the wild lands make lackluster areas feel enriching and deep (The Sunlands, and My Quiet Forest Home, for example). There are also some good character themes, like Primrose’s theme, that add a bit more depth to the characters. The OST spans all emotional ranges, like calm and peaceful to grandly intense. I’ll link a few soundtrack video examples at the bottom of the review for you (all songs are composed by Yasunori Nishiki). Even if you don’t play the game, the soundtrack is worth listening to. For these reasons, I give the Octopath Traveler soundtrack 4.5 out of 5 stars.
The Battle System
In addtion the music, Octopath Traveler’s other strength is in its battle system. The game has an interesting class system that includes “sub jobs,” where a character can be a main class, but also equip a secondary class and have some of its abilities. Sub jobs have been in other SE games, like FF11 for example, and add very enjoyable level of customizability and rich complexity to battle. Each character has their own primary class, which they keep throughout the game, but all primary classes eventually become available to other characters as their secondary classes. There are even unique, advanced job classes that can be discovered later in the game and are very powerful. All characters can equip all the job classes (although there cannot be duplicates among secondary classes; only one person can have thief as a sub job, for example). The classes all have unique abilities that can be used in battle and also job traits that can be learned over time for passive (but powerful) bonuses.
Beyond the class system, the battle system is styled almost like Final Fantasy 6, with enemies on one side and your character on the other in a 2D plane. The combat has HP, SP (the equivalent of MP), and orange BP (battle point) orbs. HP and SP work how you would imagine, but the real strength within the simplicity is BP. Characters start a battle with one or two BP (depending on whether you surprise the enemies) and gets an additional BP at the start of each new turn for that character. BP caps at 5 points stored. BP can be saved, or spent in a number of different ways: Each BP consumed can add another attack fold to the character’s normal attacks (a single axe swing with 2 BP consumed would become 3 axe strikes), BP can be used to bolster the power of special abilities (an offensive spell with BP consumed would be much more powerful and healing spells bolstered with BP would cure for much more), and BP can also be used to add more turns to buff and debuff durations.
All enemies in the game have different weaknesses to elements, specific weapon types, or both. Much of the battle revolves around figuring out what enemies are weak to, but there are special skills (like analyze), that will reveal one of the enemy’s weaknesses. Once a weakness is learned, you will automatically have it revealed if you encounter the same monster/enemy again. All enemies have defense points; these points show how many times you have to strike that monster’s weakness in order to “break” them. Breaking an enemy is extremely helpful, especially in the more difficult fights. A break causes the enemy to miss its next turn and take more damage.
The combination of all these angles makes the battle system very fun. It has the perfect balance of simplicity and complexity. For these reasons, I give the battle system 5 out of 5 stars.
Post-game and Extras
Octopath does have some post-game quests and a challenging secret last boss, but is otherwise lacking in additional fun secrets. The secret optional boss is one that requires you to have all 8 of your characters in top shape, so keep that in mind if you decide to give it a try. I think it goes a long way when companies put in extra effort to give additional bonuses, instead of just releasing the bare minimum; or worse, releasing an unfinished game then expecting the player to buy DLC in order to fix it or make it fun. Octopath could have had more extras, but the game was playable and complete with extras on release, so for that I give them a 3 out of 5 in this category.
Conclusion
Adding the ratings then dividing by the the number of categories gives Octopath Traveler a rating of 3.5 Stars. I’m not sure the game is worth buying, outside the soundtrack of course, but could be worth it if you have no good JRPGs to play. The concept of many characters with unique stories has been done before and better by other games though. SE tried at the very least, and that’s about as good as they’re capable of these days in creating new titles. As promised, below are some examples from the soundtrack (Keep in mind the quality is reduced so the videos won’t be taken down from youtube, and the OST will have better versions). Enjoy!
Author username: Tessa Vanesla