Reviews are out!

Sounds like it's even better than the first.

I have high hopes for this. It seems they've remedied all the stuff I complained about in the first game, and the demo's been really promising. Can't wait to see what the different character plots end up being, and if we'll get anything as awesome as Primrose's plot line.

What character are you gonna main? I think I'll be going with Partitio. Guess Tressa gave me a thing for merchants or something.

Can't wait! I loved OT1 and enough time has passed since its 2018 release that I'm hungry for more.

I went with Ophelia in the first game as Clerics/Paladins are some of my favorite classes in RPGs (which is why I gave Olberic the cleric job as a secondary class). But I also like Thieves, and I wasn't crazy about Therion in the first game, at least his personality. So I've hit the road with Throne, who's got kind of a Primrose vibe to her. Her battle mechanics are very cool, as I love stealing from enemies in RPGs and the night time boosts are significant.

Very excited to enjoy what's sure to be another top-five-of-all-time soundtrack! Go reread my Top Ten and get hyped!

@TriforceBun
Are you going with the English or the Japanese voice tracks? I tried Throne at first, because I too have a soft spot for thieves, and her setting is awesome, but her English voice didn't work for me. Didn't try the Japanese acting, though.

I still haven't gotten around to the first game yet, so I may or may not care about this sequel at some point sometime.

Perhaps I should bump up the original in my backlog queue. It's funny, the demo for the first game was the very first thing I ever played on the Switch, which makes me feel oddly nostalgic for a game I never actually played.

@r_hjort

I like Octopath's voices in general so I'm good with English. Throne sounds fine to me, kind of quiet and detached which fits well enough. I watched my sister-in-law play Agnea's chapter and the actress for her does this fun thing where the character is trying to cover her southern accent but at times it slips out when she gets excited. So I'll probably be sticking with English VAs.

I liked Throne's chapter. Not just for the little surprises in it but because it addressed my biggest complaint with OT1: the structure of the chapters being too similar. This one breaks the trend of "town intro; problem; dungeon; boss; town conclusion" and I hope more chapters in the game do that as well.

Wait, I just realized that I've been assuming I played the first but I think I'm thinking about Bravely Default? I don't think I ever played these games at all?!!?

@TriforceBun
Yeah, I noticed the small changes in progression too! I hope the world map progression is less predictable this time around as well. I didn't have a big problem with Throne's voice acting, but it felt a bit forced at the most dramatic points, to me. The supporting actors and other characters have been good, I think.

@Zero
If you haven't played Octopath Traveler, you're in for a treat. I've admittedly only played the demo of Bravely Default and then all of Bravely Default 2, but Octopath Traveler blows all of that out of the water as far as I'm concerned. There are similarities, though.

Guess I'm cross-posting my shit from T-Bun's thread.
r_hjort said:

Been too busy to play it a lot, so I'm only eight or so hours in, having gathered up two characters, playing the prologue of my third. Since I'm still in the tutorial parts of the game, pretty much, I haven't gotten to dig into the meat of it yet, but I'm enjoying myself. Love the world, the ambience and the music. Still haven't heard any songs that rival my favourites from the first game, but it's still pretty friggin' amazing.

Started out with Partitio, 'cause his story has some themes that speak to me, he's a merchant just like my old main, Tressa, and also he has a cool hat.


This is basically what I wanted old school Final Fantasy to turn into. So happy to get games like this still.

Does anyone else think it's a bit of a shame that you can switch time of day at will? It's definitely very convenient, and I'd have a hard time making good arguments against it, but there's something about having to bend to the will of the game world that makes things feel more real and adventureous, I think.

r_hjort said:

This is basically what I wanted old school Final Fantasy to turn into. So happy to get games like this still.

I've always wanted to see a FF with the newer HD graphics but with the old FF 1 jobs and areas. But like, with maybe a better plot and less grinding

What the heck with me forgetting about this thread and making another?

Okay so until yesterday, I would've said this sequel is basically everything it needs to be. It's bigger and deeper, its stories are more varied, it's even more gorgeous, and all the good points of OT1 still apply. That said...some of these new abilities and things are letting me break the game in half! Yesterday I got a passive skill (available for all the characters at once, no less) that lets me take an extra turn at the beginning of battle! This already is a huge advantage, but it also means that on the subsequent turn (the enemies' first turn), you have one more BP on everyone that you normally wouldn't. That's a massive shift in the party's favor for just a single passive skill.

The latent powers and passives give tons of options, and once you start getting sub-jobs, everyone in the cast feels like a superhero. There's really no wrong choice at the beginning of the game because these travelers all have plenty of options for Breaking enemies and keeping each other covered. I'm hoping the difficulty evens out a little more as I start to do the third chapters because I love the battling and all the games' little systems, but I crave that delicious white-knuckle strategy challenge after obsessing over Slay the Spire for a year (which I 100%ed)!

@r_hjort
I'm someone who hasn't enjoyed a mainline FF game since they hit double-digits, so Octopath is basically the follow-up I always wanted. I get what you're saying about the day/night switch too. It kind of reminds me of when some people complain about having to go to a church to save in Dragon Quest. On the one hand, yeah, it takes up time, it's inconvenient and the dialogue is repetitive etc. On the other, sometimes little menial tasks like that draw me into the game further and make its world and characters feel more real. The day/night switch is awfully convenient but it's also terribly "gamey" so I can see the issue.

No qualms about the music so far! I'll probably need to make another Top Ten for that eventually but I'll go over some of my favorites later in this thread when I get further.

@Stan McStanly
That seems like something the teams behind the Bravely series would be able to pull off. Those games seem like a natural extension of the original FF's job system, at least.

@TriforceBun
Totally agree about the churches in Dragon Quest. It may be a hassle to some, but I like the idea of telling your story to someone to keep track of your progress.The day-night thing isn't a big deal to me anymore, but it's one of the small things that I reacted to at first.

Something (probably the only thing so far) that really bothers me, though, is that the characters don't seem to interact much more with each other in this game, compared to the first one. I thought that was one of the selling points, or was that just my wishful thinking?

Whenever your character(s) meets a new companion and they invite themselves to your party, your character just stands there in silence. It can't have been too much to ask to have the writers create seven extra lines of dialogue per character, so that they at least seem to interact with the newcomer when they meet.

And just now, I reached the point where I get to start Agnea's second chapter. Good shit all around, love it. But, when the chapter starts, my other three characters just disappear while she discovers the new area, as if she's all alone. Then they suddenly reappear when the cinematic is over, just like in the first game. Why couldn't Partitio have made an offhand comment about the size of the town compared to where he grew up? Couldn't Agnea have looked to Castti for some moral support or shared enthusiasm? Wouldn't Hikari have anything to say about the horse carriage passing by given his history with horses on the battlefield? One single line from any given character would have gone such a long way.

I've noticed that the characters sometimes throw little comments of encouragement or gratitude towards each other in battle, but that's not the kind of interaction I was hoping for. Is this the extent of the character interactions we get? Very disappointing, if so. This isn't bloody Suikoden, we've only got eight characters for crying out loud.

Other than that, the game is bloody great so far. Just like the first one.

@r_hjort

Yeah, that was the number one request from fans from the first game. I do like the inter-battle banter. The main new element for character interaction though is the Crossed Paths feature, which are side-chapters that start to pop up shortly after doing a couple chapter 2s. These help fill some of the characterization gaps from what I've played so far, but since they all focus on a pair of characters there's not quite as much interaction as, say, the gang in DQXI all chiming in on what the next objective should be.

I don't really mind the weird dissonance from situations where a character is supposed to be by themself in a cutscene but are actually with the party (etc) since I kind of chalk it up to standard video game abstraction. Same reason why people's manors are laid out like dungeons, etc. But a little more interaction between everyone would be great since the story elements and characterizations are all solid.

You guys, I'm starting to think this might be a pretty good game.

I've only played 20 hours, and I'm stilling missing two characters, but even so it feels as if I've gotten so much good RPG-ing out of this game already. A few of the single chapters of the game could have been expanded into fullblown games in their own right, storywise, but they're still just snippets of what this package offers up. So good.

Also, the game is so pretty. Yesterday I played through the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw demo on Xbox, but it was Octopath Traveler 2 that made me say "wow" in response to the visuals. Those tropics, man.

@TriforceBun
It is a case of video game abstraction, but I have a harder time to come to terms with this one, since games have been able to have character interactions front and center since the 90's.

Yeah I'm like 45 hours in and hooked for sure. Although there was a span of about 10 hours there were I felt everything was way too easy (mostly in most of the chapter 2s), the difficulty has evened out again and I'm having a great time. I think it helped that I had Evasive Maneuvers equipped for a lot of that to avoid over leveling.

Currently doing the Ch 3s. The gameplay in this is really solid; the exploration is fairly simple in nature but fun and rewarding as there's plenty of stuff the game does to make things worth your while. Few things are more frustrating than a great game with a broken economy, after all! The storylines themselves have moments that are really compelling and others that I'm not a fan of, but they average out to be interesting enough for my tastes. And the lore and NPC detail all really contribute nicely to the worldbuilding.

@TriforceBun
They've done a fantastic job with those NPC info sheets. Really help bring the world to life.

Haven't had time or energy to play much recently, but when I do play I love it. It's overtaken the first game for sure now, as far as I'm concerned. Already dreaming of a third game in the series.

Just beat Throné's third chapter. The Mother route, at least.It wasn't particularly special in terms of gameplay (feels like the best gameplay comes from just exploring between chapters anyhow), but the story and the atmosphere were top notch. It's tragic without being too melodramatic, it's dark without seeming edgy, and those locations around the orphanage were so beautiful, in contrast to what was going on in there. Only being able to gain some very basic, non-personal information from the kids with your field skills was a great touch too.

As fate would have it, I ended up grabbing this in GameStop's buy 1 get 1 free sale, since it was a smallish selection and I didn't see much else I wanted. Now the question becomes: is it still worth playing the first game before this? Or better to just jump into this one at this point?

(For curious parties, the other game I chose was Xenoblade 3. What am I doing to myself with all these massive RPGs I can't find time for!)

@Mop it up
The first game is still worth playing in general, but you don't seem to benefit from playing it first, 'cause as far as I know the two games aren't directly connected to each other. The only drawback from playing Octopath 2 first seems to be that Octopath 1 will seem inferior to you at that point, but it's still a really good RPG.

I say jump in, though!

Trying to beat as much of this game as I can before Zelda hits. Good thing it's so damn good it doesn't feel like a chore; It's just nice to have an excuse to spend hours upon hours straight in Solistia. Just beat Castti's third chapter. Whoa. So good. The all-in-your-head trope isn't exactly new, but it was done well, I think. It's also really cool how the game shifts in tone depending on whose quest it is you're playing. I mean, it should, but not all games would, or pull it off like Octopath 2 does. It combines the light hearted with the dark pretty well. And it does get dark. There's an awful lot of dead children in this game, isn't there.