Octopath Traveler
Switch
Each of Octopath Traveler’s eight playable characters seems, in some way, to reflect the JRPG maker’s dilemma. They’re either caught between the comforts of home and the allure of what lies beyond, or otherwise held captive by their past. Take happy-golucky merchant Tressa, blissfully content in her idyllic coastal village before a chance encounter encourages her to seek her fortune outside its boundaries. Or Olberic, a nomadic mercenary, who has finally found a place to settle down, until an echo of his former life sets him back on the road again. Then there’s dancer Primrose, demeaning herself for an abusive boss to track down the tattooed men responsible for her father’s death. It’s not hard to see something of the game’s creators in these tales, since Octopath Traveler seems similarly torn, unwilling – or perhaps unable – to fully break with the traditions of its genre, while at the same time demonstrably keen to stride forward into the unknown.
Nowhere is that tension between old and new more clearly expressed than the game’s instantly eye-catching art style, a captivating fusion of classical sprites and contemporary effects. Smart use of light and shadow, shallow focus and bokeh – from shimmering seas to twinkling snowscapes – helps transform 2D worlds into tactile, three-dimensional dioramas. There is something strangely hypnotic about watching realisticlooking waves gently lapping against a pixelated pier, and the unorthodox presentation benefits exploration, too. Hidden routes are properly hidden, in the sense that they’re often physically obscured: your party will disappear behind scenery, usually reemerging to find a treasure chest containing something valuable at the end of the path. As a result, a comparatively small world comes to feel much bigger, while sharp-eyed and thorough players are frequently rewarded.
Your journey is sporadically punctuated by random encounters with a roll call of monsters ranging from crabs to serpents and bandits to birdmen – though the threat level remains pleasantly parochial throughout. There are no world-ending threats nor megalomaniacal villains; rather, there’s a focus on a relatively mundane brand of evil, with various men (and in one particularly memorable case, women) exploiting the poor and the fearful for their own personal gains. If the episodic nature of the storytelling means they’re ultimately a little thinly sketched, you’re at least given plenty of motivation to wipe the smile off their faces. And their monstrousness is reflected in their size when you face them in battle: your chibi-style heroes remain small, while they grow substantially in stature, their huge, characterful sprites towering ominously over you.
These extended skirmishes are the strongest showcase of a terrific combat system that similarly finds fresh ways to explore familiar concepts. It’s reminiscent of the Shin Megami Tensei games’ Press Turn mechanic, in the sense that it’s about finding, and exploiting, an enemy’s vulnerabilities, whether they be elemental or physical, to break them: deplete an enemy’s shield points and you’ll not only stop them from attacking, but leave them defenceless for a turn. This is combined with an idea that owes a debt to Bravely Default and its sequel: you can store attacks for future turns, increasing their potency significantly the longer you wait before unleashing them. As such, you can steadily chisel down an opponent’s defences, soaking up the odd hit for the opportunity to unload a devastating flurry of stabs or a violent volley of lightning. Or you might prefer to break them down quickly, giving yourself a chance to recover and prepare for when they’re ready to take their next turn, perhaps weakening them with curses (the usual suspects: poison, confusion, blindness) in the meantime. Underlings complicate matters further: some can launch attacks that target your entire team, others causing individual afflictions that you’ll waste valuable turns trying to fix. Sometimes you’ll merely need to fend them off before they can do any real damage, while others must be removed entirely before you can break down their master’s shield. In truth, some of these battles drag on a little too long: you’ll often have figured out an effective strategy within the first few minutes, and for the remainder you’re joylessly chipping away until they finally fall. And though the random battles in the lead-up are by no means trivially simple, there’s quite a leap between those encounters and the bosses, with no mid-level opponents to fill the gap. Their weaknesses, too, are often very different from the guardian you’ll face at a dungeon’s end – and so sometimes you’ll find yourself either struggling en route to a boss you finish off easily, or breezing through until you suddenly hit a brick wall.
Characters can, however, assume alternative jobs to cover for any eventuality – at least once you’ve found the location of the accompanying shrine in the wild. Our party’s healer benefits from the attacking options of a scholar, letting her alternate between dealing damage and healing it. Similarly, our hunter becomes a thief, stealing SP to pay for her more powerful physical attacks. Even so, a glance at your opponent’s ludicrous health pool can prove faintly depressing. It does at least ensure you can’t simply stock up on dozens of items to brute force your way through a battle; rather, you’re incentivised to come up with efficient combinations. But then JRPGs have always tended to allow players the option between a sledgehammer approach to progress and more thoughtful, technical play.
There’s plenty of grinding either way, in truth, since the four characters you’ve left out of your party don’t level up away from the action, and as a result it takes time to get them back up to speed, with the main
The extended skirmishes are the strongest showcase of a terrific combat system
protagonist always several levels ahead since they can’t be removed from the party. A quick jaunt through more dangerous territory – each new area comes with its own suggested level – can get them in fighting shape, though you’ll have to nanny them through, with enemies liable to targeting weaker links. After a while, you’ll find you’re able to carry one character, but no more; otherwise, in a game that promises to let you tell your own story, you don’t have much option but to keep chopping and changing your party. Unless, that is, you opt to focus exclusively on four stories rather than eight. But then the level gating for later chapters of each individual story all but determines where you’ll go next. You’re never exactly forced to approach it a particular way, but it’s clear Acquire would rather you see everyone’s story play out in its entirety.
Not that you’ll mind too much. This is a charmingly varied cast, and their self-contained narratives, though rarely crossing over with one another, are often welltold. The olde-worlde language used throughout by hunter H’aanit is sure to be something of an acquired taste; likewise the game’s mile-wide sentimental streak. Still, composer Yasunori Nishiki’s splendid score approaches the heartfelt highs of Nobuo Uematsu’s work, while his jovial village themes and lively battle music bear plenty of repetition.
And Octopath Traveler is quite unconcerned with repeating itself, often sending you back to old haunts, albeit with a different character from your first visit. It’s an opportunity to mop up any side-quests you might have put off – and if you have, it’s probably because their solutions can be frustratingly opaque. It’s here that the game’s ‘path action’ system comes into play, inviting you to use an individual character’s special ability to influence others. You might need to reunite two NPCs, for example, using Ophilia’s Guide or Primrose’s Allure skill to have them accompany you. When someone’s stubbornly obstructing a door, you can Challenge them to a duel with Olberic or have H’aanit Provoke them into battle. Apothecary Alywn can Inquire for info to earn discounts at the inn or unlock fresh stock at the weapon shop; foppish scholar Cyrus can Scrutinise villagers with similar results.
That each ability essentially has two variants highlights the limitations of what is a fairly shallow idea, and yet proves handy in that you’ll usually have the option you need to finish a quest without having to head to the tavern to change your party setup. Yet if this suggests the makers have player convenience in mind it’s inconsistently implemented. You can quickly optimise a character’s gear, for example, yet there’s no way to access anything equipped by anyone you’ve benched; you’ll have to get into the habit of stripping them bare when you swap them out.
That might seem picky, but it epitomises a game that too often falls back on outmoded systems – which, after the intelligent modernisations of Square’s Bravely Default, is all the more surprising. For better and worse, Octopath Traveler manages to evoke the games its creators grew up with, without ever quite matching the profusion of new ideas that made them so beloved in the first place. There’s still much to enjoy here, but if Acquire had shared the courage of its protagonists’ convictions, this could have been a journey worth making eight times over.