underrated game that really requires you to use your imagination in ways that very few modern games do nowadays. some absolutely magical music and visuals. side-content is pretty minimal and just consists of wandering into caves/areas you find between towns, but the main content is meaty enough for it to not matter too much unless you're a very weird sort of gamer. the final boss is epic and difficult as hell, though the boss gauntlet before it sure is a bitch. if you like rpgs, definitely play this game

This is such an incredible game that really meant a lot to me. I initially picked this up on the Switch years ago, but stopped at around the third chapter of the travelers. I picked this back up recently on PC and finished it within a week. I'm so glad I finally finished this.

As long and as hard as I think about it, I can't not rate this game 5 stars. It just has so much going for it that puts it into the "wow!" territory for me. It's made it into my top 10 JRPGs of all time.

Let's talk about the good:
- That music? I could literally listen to the soundtrack all day (and at this point, I probably have). Huge shoutout to My Quiet Forest Home
- Each of the 32 chapters were incredibly engaging and full of twists and turns. I genuinely felt like I was reading a well-written novel. I never once felt bored.
- These characters are some of the best characters I've ever met in a video game. I use the word "met" because it really does feel like I went on a journey with them. Sure, they might be a little flat, but there is something about each one of them that makes them so likable.
- The voice lines that play at the beginning of the battle will ring in my head for the next few weeks. Big shoutout to "What is the logical course of action??"
- I love the map. It's so refreshing to actually have an overworld in a JRPG nowadays.
- I can't talk about Octopath Traveler without talking about the art style. It singlehandedly created its own new genre, coined HD 2D, that now seems to be a popular direction. We can thank this gem of a game for starting that gorgeous trend.
- The battle mechanics! I absolutely loved the break system and thought it was so clever. It was fun trying to find each enemy's weaknesses.

Now, let's talk about the bad:
- I dislike how running makes the encounter rate increase. I get that they wanted to go for a risk/reward type situation, but speeding up the walking shouldn't equate to increased random battles. Otherwise, what's the point?
- The pacing is just slightly off. Near the end of everyone's fourth chapter, I felt like it was dragging on a bit. But this wasn't enough to make me dislike it, I just think it felt very repetitive after a while.
- Some characters felt a bit too OP. Like, why is Therion the only character who can open locked treasure chests? I get what they're going for here, but I pretty much always had Therion on my team even though I wanted to use Primrose instead just because I felt like I couldn't complete a dungeon fully without him.
- I strongly disliked how the side-quests were handled. Not sure if it was just me, but I rarely ever had a clue of what to do for each side-quest. It got to a point where I had to install a mod that acted as a guide, but this is just poor game design in my opinion. Main story quest? Keep me guessing. Side plot? Give me directions.

Overall, this game really wowed me. As you can see, the good majorly outweighs the bad. No game is perfect, but this one came pretty damn close.

I've heard the sequel is even better. Can't wait to give it a go!

Octopath Traveler was an interesting game for me, I initially started playing this game near the beginning of 2023, but dropped it just because I had other games I wanted to prioritise. I didn’t dislike the game, in fact I loved it.

Octopath Traveler, as in Eight-Path Traveler, covers the stories of eight different characters on each of their own journeys with different motivations and goals. My starting traveler was Therion, The Thief, and that was a great choice imo, I love thieves in games. You meet a variety of NPCs throughout each characters story, and many villains. It is truly a bummer that this game didn’t have the stories intertwine at all, as that could’ve been a huge selling point for the game.

The game has it all, a beautiful art style, great music, good combat, good exploration (thought I hate the encounter rates without an ability that reduces them). I didn’t mention stories because that’s what I want to cover mainly in this review.

I will say that a majority of the stories aren’t that great (in my opinion), without any spoilers, I’ll just say that the only stories that really captivated me were from the Dancer, Thief, and Apothecary. The others just didn’t click for me. Now I will say this may be because I stopped playing the game for a bit after completing each characters Chapter 1s, and some of their Chapter 2s, but that definitely wasn’t the main reason. Some of them personally just seemed really really boring that I didn’t really care about what happened. Also, the language used in one of the protagonists stories was a HUGE turn off, especially coming from me who hates that type of language. Like I stated before, they should’ve made the stories interconnect at different points, it would’ve been much more interesting that way, truly a missed opportunity.

In terms of the world, I enjoyed how each sub area had three different cities/towns. You had the sunlands (deserts), frostlands (snowy plains), flatlands (plains), highlands (mountains), riverlands (river banks), cliftlands (cliffs), woodlands (forests), and the coastlands (by the sea). I enjoyed exploring each of the different little towns and their own unique styles. One has a grand theatre and prioritises theatrics, whilst another is very reminiscent of Salem. All in all, the world of Orsterra was full of life and I enjoyed exploring the world.

Now, in regards to gameplay, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The boosting system is probably one of my favourite systems (except when enemies either disable your boost gauge or steal your BP, that’s not fun). I guess I just love doing big unga bunga damage. Bewildering Grace is simultaneously the best and worst skill, and it probably killed me more times than it actually helping me. I initially had no idea how to use the Apothecary class, but once I found out how good it was, I could never be stopped. The one thing about gameplay I dislike is the fact you have to grind, you might’ve not needed to grind (might be a skill issue on my part then), but the grinding just probably killed the momentum of the game for me, especially trying to reach the minimum level for each story chapter. I liked how each character came with a different path action, like Steal, Purchase, Allure, Guide, Challenge, Provoke, Scrutinize, and Inquire. Stealing was a god send, and found it funny how you could (if you really wanted to torture yourself), attempt to steal a high level item that has a 3% successful steal rate, and if you fail, to just reset the game and resume your save, and repeat. Another dislike about the gameplay is that each dungeon had a purple chest, and only Therion was able to open it (I had Therion on my team all the time so it didn’t really affect me at all, but I can understand how annoying it is). Also, the side quests being riddles from hell did not incentivise me to complete them. I also tried doing the true final boss, but after finishing the boss rush and dying like instantly from the final boss and having to do it all over again, I called it a day.

In my opinion, the game is solely carried by the world, the art style, and the music. Everything is either tedious or boring.

Overall, the game is solid, and I enjoyed my time with it. It was tempting to play OT2 before this game with the many quality of life changes, but I decided against it so I could have a better experience with both games. The game might not be your cup of tea, and that’s okay, don’t try to force yourself to like something like this, it can turn people off. Great game, with some questionable decisions, but they do not affect my overall enjoyment with the game.

Unfortunately, they fumbled the actual "Octopath" part pretty bad. Sure, you've got the eight separate story arcs as promised. But none of them really have anything to do with each other. None of the main characters have any meaningful interactions save for a few short skits between certain story beats, and the entirety of the game is written so that it can still function while being completely agnostic to whoever's in your party. Which is, as you can imagine, quite disappointing in a genre that has historically prided itself in its character-driven narratives.

It's still an incredibly polished little game that looks great, sounds great, AND plays great. The Break & Boost battle system is simple at its core but thoroughly addicting, and the ability to grant your party members a secondary Job opens up a whole slew of possibilities that allow you to do some incredibly silly shit. And the MUSIC. GODS. Yasunori Nishiki was in there composing those tracks like his fucking LIFE depended on it.

It's just. Y'know. Kind of a bummer that the one thing they couldn't pull off was the primary selling point of the game. Written there in the title and all.

Cheio de charme, Octopath Traveler mostra que até na simplicidade você pode se divertir com um RPG bem feito.

O jogo é lindo, as histórias separadas são bem proveitosas, apesar de que a distância de progresso entre seus capítulos possa não ser tão engajante.

E a gameplay é super divertida, montar as combinações de personagens, trabalhos e habilidades junto ao manuseio dos boost points (BP).

Se não fosse o ritmo mais lento entre os capítulos e o jogo saindo do gamepass pra eu fazer o superboss, acho que minha impressão seria ainda melhor. De qualquer forma, recomendo muito.

I do not like this game. To sum it up the experience feels like I am in Groundhog day forced to replay a terribly written prologue to a fantasy RPG but they replace the character each time loop.

The game presents you with eight characters, but none of them are particularly interesting, and they barely interact with each other. They feel like tropes and stereotypes of medieval western characters without much to differentiate them. Writing everything in such a self-contained manner, as if each adventurer has entirely set off on their own, does no favors too. It hinders potential interactions and makes everyone feel even more like blank slates and cardboard cutouts. Not to mention for me personally, there are no interesting themes or overall cohesion to the character’s journeys.

Each plot line also feels so damned terrible, they read like someone put up a board of ideas and started throwing darts blindfolded. And with eight of them, none of the individual plotlines have room to fully develop into an actually unique narrative. But I think the biggest problem of all is the pacing. As said in the beginning, each new character’s story starts generic and cliché, and you have to go through this eight times. This makes it such a drag, a long tedious and arduous drag for people who put a lot of points into narrative in a video game.