Man, I spent way too much time in this game. I really enjoyed Octopath Traveler 1, and this game was coming out right around when I beat that, so I picked it up a fair bit after it was released. I’ve never been a fan of gacha games and of how grindy and bloated they can get. Sadly, this game is no exception on that front, but luckily there are good things in store for people who want to put in the time or are tolerant of gacha game design.

Honestly, the entire 40-50 hour journey up to the end of Master of All felt like a pretty normal JRPG experience. The menu seems like a lot in the beginning, but the game eases you into learning it pretty well. The free stuff they give you at the start was plenty to build up a team that can take you through the Masters, and if you’re in time for a Sacred Blaze banner, you can fill up the team with 4 stars way quicker. 5 stars aren’t super needed at this point because all of their strong stuff is unlocked at a higher level than what you’ll be dealing with in the Master stories.

The main story itself is pretty neat. I remember enjoying Master of Wealth and Power, but didn’t like Fame as much as others did. Master of All was sick though, probably the most memorable section of the game in terms of story. Then there’s the Bestowers after that. Wealth was really strong, while Power and especially Fame felt lacking. Everything ends in Bestower of All, and, with a few hiccups, it all comes together in an awesome way. The journals near the end and the last scenes really nailed it for me. Now all that being said, waiting for these stories to come out was a drag. I recognize this is the case with just about every gacha, but waiting so long between sections made me not as invested in what was going on in the story. I decided to wait for every chapter of each Master of ___ or Bestower of ___ before starting it just to hold on to some continuity, but it's harder when they all connect to and reference sections I played over a year ago.

There’s also Traveler stories and the Emberflame story. Traveler stories are pretty cool, giving you around a 40 minute adventure with any unit you own. I’ve done 49/118 so far, and, expectedly, the quality of these can range pretty far. In general, the 3 stars are pretty generic, while 5 stars and some 4 stars can be a great time. It’s great as a way to be more attached to these relatively simple characters. Emberflame is still ongoing, but it’s pretty light-hearted with small hints of things to come. The main draw of it is to get Keepers, who are pets that give immediate effects in battle and can give a lot of HP to a unit. A very welcome buff to survive the hard fights in this game.

However as soon as the Bestower section begins, all of the designs of a gacha game make themselves apparent. There’s a significant jump in difficulty that urges you to exclusively use 5 stars. In order to level up these units, you’ll have to make use of hunts/expert hunts (which are unlocked through tedious quests and can only be done once a day), experience nuts (which are slow to obtain through the Nameless Town unless you grind the board game), and boost berries (you can get some in the exchange, but you mostly get these from the developer mails). Normal enemy encounters give negligible exp and are more of a nuisance. Later on you’re gonna need gold guidestones as well to raise a units level cap, which are extremely slow to obtain. You need 2000 to get one unit up to Lvl 100. You’re able to get 15 for 8 characters a day from hunts, and 50/week + 150/month from all the exchanges. This can be sped up a bit by paying, but it still takes forever compared to a normal RPG where bosses, enemy encounters, and sidequests suffice.

Weapons at this point begin to require materials you get from grinding enemy encounters a lot. This turns into needing more to upgrade the weapon of choice (you’ll need these materials for armor too, but nowhere near as often). Now I’m not sure when exactly they become available, but once you’re able to get Fortune weapons, they trounce any previous weapons you might’ve made. These are a type of Soul weapon you can buy from the Board exchange, where you can add souls to them to boost their attributes, of which there are 4 soul slots on each weapon. Thing is though, the bonuses you get from these souls are left entirely up to chance. Each soul gives 1 of usually 5 things, and on top of that the potency of the effect is also randomized. For Fortune specifically, even the boxes you get these souls from give you 1 of 6 kinds of souls. So to decently kit out a full team may take hours and hours of rerolling, not to mention you’re spending soul shards to get these souls (or void dust). ALSO, whenever you get to ____ later in the story, a different kind of soul weapon is introduced called ____ weapons, which deal more damage to enemies in ____. These are upgradeable to level 3 through grinding enemy encounters, and are also soul weapons, meaning that the entire process of rerolling souls happens again for one team. Oh but wait, then this happens AGAIN for the final area of the game with its own special enemies and bosses. The boosted strength is very needed to tackle the challenges there. Truly the most time was spent wasted in this chore of a system. This isn’t even a thing you can bypass by spending money. In a normal RPG, it would be just buy the best weapon from the newest store, find it in a dungeon, or get it from a quest and that’d be it.

Gameplay is very mixed for me. Using 8 characters at once is cool, but not being able to command one unit at a time like the original is not as engaging. Buffing and healing take a bit more planning now that there are units you can’t target in the back row, but they do get HP and SP recovery. Switching often is incentivized due to much higher SP costs later on. Difficulty is almost entirely determined by what units you get from the gacha. Enemy weaknesses are VERY emphasized to the point where using a character that does non-weakness damage is a waste of a slot. So depending on what types of damage you’ve pulled thus far, some fights may be way harder than they should be. I’d recommend looking up any hard bosses’ weaknesses so as to not waste time bringing a useless unit. Powercreep probably trivializes the early game nowadays. Units like Sazantos, Bargello, Elrica, Nephti, Primrose EX, and Rinyuu drastically outperform old ones. Battles also feel extremely fragile with reviving being a 5 star character exclusive and limited skill now. Any small mistake leading to a unit’s death feels way too frustrating and punishing, especially because of how LONG these fights can last. When all the pieces line up though, it can be pretty fun to break and do insane damage to bosses. Getting those pieces in places though feels so luck dependent, and it can crumble so quickly (unless you have Rinyuu).

One definite fact though, Yasunori Nishiki is officially one of the GOATs after hearing everything he cooked up for this mobile game. Even if you just took the songs from Bestower of All, it’d be one of best soundtracks I’ve ever heard. If you played the original Octopath, you might get tired of hearing a lot of the same songs over and over again at the start, but MAN do all the new songs go hard. Some of my favorites are Isle of Orsa, Prison of the Past, ____ Serene 1, Castle Edoras, Both Power themes, and ALL 23 new battle themes. There’s also a ton of pre-boss fight themes that smoothly transition like what was pioneered in the original. Can’t wait to hear what’s in store for Octopath 2. A couple nitpicks though are you might get tired of Decisive Battle III with how much it’s used, and that some boss themes like to reuse their intro whenever the song loops.

Anything I mentioned about interacting with the gacha is from my experience with it, and it may be different for you. I never put a dime into the game. I’ve spent 390 hours on this game, finished Master of All on 2/16/2023, and finished Bestower of All on 6/10/2024. While the content itself is mostly decent and sometimes great, I can’t help but feel all that content could’ve been enjoyed in way less time. I recognize most of the problems I have all stem from the decision of this game being a gacha and all the design choices that came from that. Even so, there had to be a better way to go about it and still keep profits up. I’d gladly get the monthly passes and pay if I wholeheartedly enjoyed most of the game, but I have yet to play a gacha that is so enticing to play. If you loved Octopath 1 or 2, I’d still recommend trying this game out, because there is a lot to like. You may enjoy it more than I did. The community is still pretty active too and makes a lot of resources to help other travelers.