Ordered the special edition (that's apparently less special than the US special edition for once), and it should arrive tomorrow. Too bad I'm not gonna be home over the weekend, 'cause I could really go for some retro styled RPG'ing right about now!

I saw some folks talking about the Kotaku review, which is apparently a long series of complaints about the mechanics that define an RPG. So... I guess if you don't like RPGs you will not like this RPG.

Oh Kotaku...

@J.K. Riki

That's certainly not what I heard. I watched the GameXplain review today and while they had some criticisms, play-style may alleviate some of them. I think this is going to be a really neat experience.

I’ll have to add this to my list. I honestly haven’t even heard about this until now. Sounds very good.

@Oldmanwinter
There's a playable demo (well, two actually!) out on the eShop where you can essentially try out the first 3 hours of the game, and transfer your progress to the full game if you wish. Give it a shot!

TriforceBun said:

@Oldmanwinter
There's a playable demo (well, two actually!) out on the eShop where you can essentially try out the first 3 hours of the game, and transfer your progress to the full game if you wish. Give it a shot!

Awesome, thanks! I’ll check that out.

@J.K. Riki

Can't spell "ignorant" without "Kotaku". Well you can but the point is Kotaku sucks and no one should read that garbage.

THIS GAME IS SO GOOD.

Anyone who misses pre-FFX Squaresoft (or even pre-FFVII Squaresoft) owes it to themselves to give this a shot. It's not the second coming of FFVI, but it legitimately feels like a SNES-quality RPG regardless.

@chrisbg99

I'm pretty sure I have them blocked on Twitter because their articles tend to be so unenjoyable.

@DrFinkelstein

I've never liked Kotaku but they've become this weird mix of moral scolds with "humor" articles peppered in.

Either way I am loving the game. Working on Ophilia's quest right now.

Voices volume all the way off. Mmm, that's better! It's so nice just listening to the pretty music and imagining the character voices in my head myself. Sure is faster too.

@Hinph

I'm deciding to leave it on. I like the voice acting so far.

Here's a thought I had last night while fighting my fourth Chapter 1 boss: does using healing items in RPGs kinda feel like cheating to you guys? I feel like I ought to have to manage my healing and support abilities to keep my team powered up. Having +500 HP at any moment to fall back on kinda takes away from the stakes to me, it's this outside factor that makes it feel like I have an unfair advantage.

I remember when I first started playing Pokemon back in elementary school, the idea of using healing items on my Pokemon didn't even pop into my brain. I struggled against the Elite Four for weeks (months?) until I realized I could just stock up on Max Revives and breeze through. (Ironically, the computer in that game does use healing items, which always felt cheap to me as well.)

@Hinph

Oh, turning the voices off was the first thing I did. I feel like simultaneous voice acting and text is an obviously dumb way to experience dialogue, but that I'm the only person on this "I watch Netflix with subtitles" planet who cares.

@Secret_Tunnel
That's an interesting way to look at it. The way I see it, you're still penalized for using healing items because they carry monetary value, and the more of them you use, the more of them you need to buy and the less other stuff (new equipment, etc) available because of your shoddy playing!

Also, depending on the group makeup, some parties wouldn't be able to have access to any healing abilities at all.

It is kind of a bummer that my healer's revive ability is worse than an item anybody can use despite costing a lot of SP... I'm imagining that she'll get more effective though. I doubt I'll ever play without my lovely healer in my party.

@Hinph

Have you tried boosting it for more healing power? It did save my life once in a tough battle where the enemies were a higher level than me. Also, Ophilia gets some great passive skills that boost her SP significantly, so the SP cost won't always be a huge issue.

Got back from my little trip and got my copy of the limited edition in the mail today! It's a shame there's no art book or soundtrack sampler, but the pop-up book scenes were cool in their own way! Gonna frame the map and put it on the wall, just like I did with the old Squaresoft game maps of the 90's!

Gonna start it up any minute now, but I'm stuck on the title screen, listening to the glorious soundtrack. I've heard it many times before, but it's been a while, and it kind of blows me away again. Loving this shit!

@TriforceBun

Oh yeah. Oops! I've only used it once so far and didn't think to boost. Thanks.

@Secret_Tunnel I think the ideal RPG makes it so that healing items help but don't let you just instantly and easily heal everything, so the battle is still hard enough that you can't just make a lot of bad decisions and rely on them to save you. At least, for boss battles.

@TriforceBun Hmm, but I sort of hate things that penalize you financially in RPGs, because that can just lead to a lot of grinding.

@r_hjort

Be sure to let us know (if you haven't already) who you started with in Octopath Traveler!