That I enjoyed this as much as I did I think is a testament to the fundamentals of great JRPG design. From the more restricted (compared to Bravely Default/Second/FF5) yet better-balanced job system, to the combat which branches off from the Bravely series with its own unique quirks, to the beautiful town and dungeon designs, to the excellent soundtrack composed by Yasunori Nishiki, reminiscent of the Romancing Saga soundtracks.

Because if all that stuff wasn't as good as it is, I wouldn't have wanted to push through the forgettable story and bland world. The characters are well-written, but the 4-chapter setup makes their stories feel quite predictable and samey. The true final boss gauntlet is one of the biggest difficulty spikes I've seen in an RPG... not sure whether I'm impressed or annoyed by that.

Ah, Octopath 1.
I remember being a lot hesitant of trying this game when I first got it, because the reception people had on the story and the characters, and I kinda told myself to agree to those statements. For the most part I thought the criticism of the game were enough to justify the "lack of quality" of this title.

But then I swallow this hesitation and finally tried by myself and...... this game is magical.

It's an amazing recreation of a old formula with a tecnology that not only evolves it from a graphical stand point (many people don't think that this game LITERALLY INVENTED the HD2D), but also from a gameplay stand-point, creating a combat that feels simple and deep at the same time, that alone makes you replay the title over and over again.

Yasunori Nishiki, the main composer, is easily my favorite musician in the industry, able to create some of the best OST I have heard in a videogame.

The writing is.... I like to describe it as a really tasty "Pizza Otto Stagioni": basically a meal prepared in eight sections, each with diverse ingredients, with each section having a different "tone" or vibe. As a whole it may feel too segmented (especially for a JRPG) and I get if people may not like it.
But the way it is all presented, prepared and cooked makes you understand how much care was put into it, despite its shortcomings, and makes you appreciate the title even more.

It's not a title for everyone and I personally prefer of Octopath 2 evolves the formula, but nonetheless, I will still recommend Octopath Traveler to any sort of fans of JRPGs. It's a gem!

A really good 2.5D turn-based JRPG with a weakness-focused combat system, very memorable music, and a lot of freedom in team setups and builds.

Still suffers from a lot of the problems JRPGs have, like being pretty grindy at points and a really slow start until you can actually play the game properly. The stories of each protagonist are hit-or-miss, and pretty predictable most of the time. Interactions between your party members is exclusively relegated to Tales-Of style banter events, except they only trigger during main quests of each character, and only with specific characters in the party.

Suffers from the cardinal sin of not having an option to speed up combat, especially because the base speed is really slow.

The Nintendo Switch library, through a series of strange coincidences and historical dates, has become this love letter console to the entire history of video games. This is the console generation that gave us the first great Sonic game since 1993 in Sonic Mania. Ultra Street Fighter II and Street Fighter: 30th anniversary are both the best versions of those games. The Crash Bandicoot Trilogy is very good. And this is the console generation where Square Enix figured out how to make classic-looking and classic-playing RPGs feel fresh and beautiful.

They’re on a roll, too. They’re releasing the first 6 Final Fantasies with updated pixel art and music (and bad fonts) on PC and phones. But I think it all started with Octopath Traveler and its “HD-2D” look, which mixes hi-res pixel art with cool lighting effects. The battle system is addictive enough to make random battles fine, and most stories in this anthology are compelling.

"The characters only have a few conversations with each other!" pop quiz, in no fewer than 200 words describe the fleshed out and engaging relationships between Garrus and Liara or Astarion and Wyll

"It's so grindy!" unironically skill issue, sorry the combat system expects you to learn it instead of brute forcing the entire game with Big Number

"The stories and characters are boring!" you are not worthy to be a worm in the dirt upon which Primrose Azelhart walks

Okay, so I've been militant about this game as like... 5-10% a joke for years. In seriousness, I can acknowledge it's a flawed gem, especially now that it has a sequel that absolutely transcends it.

But I love the anthology-style story, as uneven as the characters are some of them (see above) are great, the artstyle and especially the music should be the stuff of legends, and the Octopath combat system is simply my favorite for a pure RPG, all time. It has a ton of depth but it's also so punchy and bombastic, the sound design alone on the break and boost mechanics is satisfying on an almost indecent level. There's no dopamine rush quite like fighting a group of enemies, systematically wearing down their shields so that they all break on the same turn, and vaporizing them with a fully-boosted AoE spell. It's a system that's tense and challenging and asks a lot of you strategically, and at the same time routinely makes you feel like a wrathful god if you use all the tools at your disposal and meet those demands. Absolutely peak.

The worst thing you can say about Octopath Traveler is that it's not Octopath Traveler II, but that's a devastatingly cruel comparison to make for most games.

A estrutura repetitiva pra maioria dos capítulos e a falta de uma interatividade ávida entre os oito integrantes do grupo me afasta de dar uma nota mais alta pra ele. Entendo que isso foi necessário pra aumentar a liberdade de rotas que você pode escolher/fazer, mas esse próprio conceito se dá uma rasteira com dois personagens específicos que possuem traits semelhantes.

Mesmo assim seria desonesto não falar do combate que conseguiu me prender até o final com a mecânica de break, que deixa os oponentes incapazes de agir por até 2 turnos ao quebra seus escudos. Fica claro nos bosses de endgame que o jogo foi desenhado em cima de você quebrar o escudo dos oponentes e te fazer pensar sobre possíveis estratégias em qual party e qual job usar antes de ir pra luta. Isso aliado com a OST a altura dos gigantes do gênero compensam a run (ao menos pra mim.)

Ao passo que esse jogo introduz meu estilo visual favorito atualmente - os HD-2Ds -, também serve como um lembrete de que a Unreal Engine 4 tá muito longe de ser obsoleta e usa do seu combate de maneira mais eficiente que muitos jogos que ele homenageia e definitivamente muito mais do que um certo jogo que saiu em 2023 e também diz ser uma "homenagem aos JRPGs da era de ouro" (e ele é até demais).

P.S.: Eu não vou entrar em detalhes sobre o estilo artístico do jogo pois acredite, eu tenho muito pra florear sobre, e assim o farei em outro local...

A simply incredible 2D JRPG, start to finish. Not only is the art-style absolutely gorgeous, but the musical score composed by Yasunori Nishiki is one of the best gaming soundtracks I've ever had the pleasure of listening to, rivaling even that of Nobuo Uematsu's Final Fantasy scores, which I didn't think was possible. The soundtrack is so good that I could have played through the game simply off the back of the music alone. Beyond that, turn-based RPGs are always welcome gameplay in my book, and I loved getting back into that style of RPG after not having played one in a long time. While the turn-based combat feels mostly familiar, the inclusion of the "Boost" system was a lot of fun, especially when you're able to combo multiple boosts for some devastating damage.

My only complaint about the game is that I only found 2 - 3 of the 8 separate storylines to be truly interesting, with Primrose's story being the best of the bunch in my opinion -- the rest varied from just OK, to rather banal. Still, there was nothing inherently wrong with any of the storylines, and it wasn't enough to keep me from absolutely adoring nearly every moment I spent with this game.

Where do I begin?

This game is fantastic, I loved it so much! It was legit love at first sight, right when I started to play and picked H'aanit.

The J-RPG mechanics are fine for me; the soundtrack is on point; the voice acting was good and it brought quite some known voice actors; the boss fights were challenging, for sure, although the H'aanit's bosses were my favorites design-wise; the story was nice, I enjoyed the plots of each character, especially Primrose's; the exploration is fun, we have to find treasure chests while we randomly encounter enemies; and the art is beautiful, all of it!

Overall, my favorite J-RPG to this moment.

I found it to become quite boring quite quickly. Many people say that it's a bit long, especially towards the end, and that it's weak in terms of story, but I thought that even the beginning was a bit shit :D Unfortunately, I found the writing very mediocre and on the nose. It looks great and the music is excellent, but unfortunately I wasn't particularly interested in the world or the characters. The fact that I have to grind at the beginning and that there are random encounters doesn't make the game any better.