weyard
i don't really play dating sims OR mmorpgs, but if no one else is going to step up and review this game i will, because i had a blast. i do at least have enough knowledge of mmorpgs to know that the UI design for this game is great. honestly a huge selling point here is all the details that make it feel really immersive. super appreciate the way there will frequently be multiple conversations going on at once across the realm/guild/officer chats as well as PMs, it really does feel like you're hanging out in a MMO. one (1) member of your guild having a mic that's way shittier than everyone elses was a nice touch. i could go on.
while i don't know that i'd want to be in a relationship with most of them (i may be overthinking it, because again, not a big dating sim person?) all of the characters felt pretty realistic, including the ones who weren't love interests. they all feel like real people i could meet online, and i appreciate how all of the characters (the MC included) have already known each other for a while; it's way more interesting and believable than starting all the relationships from scratch, and i think it was well-done in that despite the player being thrown into the guild literally mid-raid i could still easily understand how all these people know and feel about each other. and i liked getting to uncover more history as the game went on.
i REALLY appreciate this game's supporting cast; i wasn't expecting so many supporting characters in a dating sim, but i think they're one of the best parts of the game. i like that so much of this game is focused on the guild, up to there being different endings both for how well you romance your love interest AND for how well you do in the final raid. i also think it's really impressive how well this game was able to balance such a large cast of characters: there are a LOT of guild members, and sometimes they chat with their alt accounts, but i still found it pretty easy to keep track of everyone and their relationships to each other, and i was very VERY invested in all of the guild drama happening. some of it (like 2 of your guild members being in the middle of getting a divorce? but they're still in the guild together?!?! and nobody knows about the divorce until halfway through the game!!! WHAT) was so juicy, i love it. also i would die for jim.
while i don't know that i'd want to be in a relationship with most of them (i may be overthinking it, because again, not a big dating sim person?) all of the characters felt pretty realistic, including the ones who weren't love interests. they all feel like real people i could meet online, and i appreciate how all of the characters (the MC included) have already known each other for a while; it's way more interesting and believable than starting all the relationships from scratch, and i think it was well-done in that despite the player being thrown into the guild literally mid-raid i could still easily understand how all these people know and feel about each other. and i liked getting to uncover more history as the game went on.
i REALLY appreciate this game's supporting cast; i wasn't expecting so many supporting characters in a dating sim, but i think they're one of the best parts of the game. i like that so much of this game is focused on the guild, up to there being different endings both for how well you romance your love interest AND for how well you do in the final raid. i also think it's really impressive how well this game was able to balance such a large cast of characters: there are a LOT of guild members, and sometimes they chat with their alt accounts, but i still found it pretty easy to keep track of everyone and their relationships to each other, and i was very VERY invested in all of the guild drama happening. some of it (like 2 of your guild members being in the middle of getting a divorce? but they're still in the guild together?!?! and nobody knows about the divorce until halfway through the game!!! WHAT) was so juicy, i love it. also i would die for jim.
i tried playing this because i wanted to try playing a dragon quest game. i knew enough about dragon quest beforehand to expect a fairly basic jrpg. but i love a good ol fashioned jrpg, and this one came highly recommended from those who played it as a kid. and yeah, i see why. the protagonist being a fallen angel is conceptually pretty neat. there's plenty of good ol fashioned jrpg charm, plus the ability to completely customize your whole partys appearance, outfits(!!), and vocations, and the entire game has multiplayer support. im sure this would've been my favorite thing ever...if i was 10 years old and had people to co-op with.
as i am not 10, however, this game is just a little too annoying. anything interesting the gameplay has to offer requires grinding: trying out different vocations/skills, doing alchemy (a crafting system i actually find fun, which would be impressive but...) , or even progressing the story. grinding is made annoying by the fact that combat is simplistic without the decency of at least being forgiving. i had to backtrack to revive or heal up my party a good few times...and i personally think a story and combat system as simple as dqix's should at least make itself easy to progress through. the storyline suffers greatly from the fact that none of the player characters have any personality. the writing of other plot-important characters like the wight knight, phleming, or marionette, is often interesting enough, but their stories are so short compared to the amount of time i had to spend mindlessly fighting monsters that it doesn't feel worth it.
i won't rate this game unless i finish it, but right now it'd be about a 2/5. i played up until getting the boat before deciding that if the game was still boring me a solid 90% of the time i should probably go play something else. i might come back to it for completion's sake one day, but this was a pretty disappointing first foray into dragon quest.
as i am not 10, however, this game is just a little too annoying. anything interesting the gameplay has to offer requires grinding: trying out different vocations/skills, doing alchemy (a crafting system i actually find fun, which would be impressive but...) , or even progressing the story. grinding is made annoying by the fact that combat is simplistic without the decency of at least being forgiving. i had to backtrack to revive or heal up my party a good few times...and i personally think a story and combat system as simple as dqix's should at least make itself easy to progress through. the storyline suffers greatly from the fact that none of the player characters have any personality. the writing of other plot-important characters like the wight knight, phleming, or marionette, is often interesting enough, but their stories are so short compared to the amount of time i had to spend mindlessly fighting monsters that it doesn't feel worth it.
i won't rate this game unless i finish it, but right now it'd be about a 2/5. i played up until getting the boat before deciding that if the game was still boring me a solid 90% of the time i should probably go play something else. i might come back to it for completion's sake one day, but this was a pretty disappointing first foray into dragon quest.
2018
this game reminded me so intensely of people i used to know through forums and chatrooms and AIM. i hope you are all living beautiful lives out there somewhere. and i hope you remember me fondly, too, even if it's with a different set of pronouns than the ones i use now.
+0.5 stars for keeping me entertained for a week trying to figure out how anything in this game was possibly gonna add up in a way that made sense (it didn't)
-0.5 stars for being a $60 game that frequently lags on switch, and for half of the somniums being way too much of an overcorrection for the first game's randomness to the point of being essentially linear "interact with the 1 thing in the room to progress" segments instead of puzzles
-1 star for doing a major disservice to the characters by refusing to follow up on any of the relationships or plot threads from the first game in the name of "no spoilers", then dropping an unavoidable major aitsf spoiler into the game anyway
-1 star for extremely disappointing killer reveals and story... this is a murder mystery game where solving the murder mystery is one of the least satisfying parts of the game
-1 star for the fact that every single character's behavior in this game is driven entirely by a need to pull off the main "plot twist"....which is solely for the player's benefit and does not actually affect the characters at all. there's a certain amount of vague dialogue, coincidence, and information witholding that one has to be prepared to accept in a mystery story, but this game took it to a truly ridiculous level and the story is weaker for it.
+1 star for ryuki being the most relatable uchikoshi protag yet due to him being motivated entirely by severe mental illness and the desire to fuck kaname date
-0.5 stars for being a $60 game that frequently lags on switch, and for half of the somniums being way too much of an overcorrection for the first game's randomness to the point of being essentially linear "interact with the 1 thing in the room to progress" segments instead of puzzles
-1 star for doing a major disservice to the characters by refusing to follow up on any of the relationships or plot threads from the first game in the name of "no spoilers", then dropping an unavoidable major aitsf spoiler into the game anyway
-1 star for extremely disappointing killer reveals and story... this is a murder mystery game where solving the murder mystery is one of the least satisfying parts of the game
-1 star for the fact that every single character's behavior in this game is driven entirely by a need to pull off the main "plot twist"....which is solely for the player's benefit and does not actually affect the characters at all. there's a certain amount of vague dialogue, coincidence, and information witholding that one has to be prepared to accept in a mystery story, but this game took it to a truly ridiculous level and the story is weaker for it.
+1 star for ryuki being the most relatable uchikoshi protag yet due to him being motivated entirely by severe mental illness and the desire to fuck kaname date
some of the most interesting mechanics, sidequests, world design, and narrative in the zelda series. and probably all games ever. also, an incredibly meaningful story about grief and healing and kindness and growing up.
2013
troy baker was there
played this game all the way up to chapter 9 before abandoning it. i liked some of it. both the pixel art and 3d environments are executed well. the yarhi pact system is probably the best thing about the game, and the reason i kept playing so long. it feels very close to being a decent RTS game, except for the fact that the actual RTS aspect of it absolutely sucks.
the undeniable best "strategy" for 95% of this game is to choose yarhi your opponents are weak to, then keep the entire party together and order them all to attack things as they very slowly traverse the map and hopefully win. this is not very fun or interesting, but controlling just one specific unit, or even a group of units quickly becomes very annoying, and you will likely lose precious seconds (or units) trying to execute commands. healing or buffing specific units is near impossible given how crowded the maps get during combat. ironically, a lot of this could have been alleviated with the gambit system from the original FFXII, but it's been reduced to a much less useful version: you get 1 gambit per character, and you can no longer set specific triggers for them.
i really wanted to enjoy this game, but there's only so far pixel art and a fondness for ivalice could take me. the combat is just not well designed enough for me to feel motivated to grind the extra levels and equipment that i clearly need to beat the last 2 chapters. plus i did not find myself invested in the story at all. this is much less disappointing to me than the combat, since i went in with realistic (low) expectations for the writing, but it's still a shame. & while i admittedly loved flying around the sky islands, it's kind of weird that the sequel to FFXII-- a game with a well established, massive world and lore that's only partially revealed during the game-- chose to instead make up a bunch of unrelated shit and set the game in the sky.
the undeniable best "strategy" for 95% of this game is to choose yarhi your opponents are weak to, then keep the entire party together and order them all to attack things as they very slowly traverse the map and hopefully win. this is not very fun or interesting, but controlling just one specific unit, or even a group of units quickly becomes very annoying, and you will likely lose precious seconds (or units) trying to execute commands. healing or buffing specific units is near impossible given how crowded the maps get during combat. ironically, a lot of this could have been alleviated with the gambit system from the original FFXII, but it's been reduced to a much less useful version: you get 1 gambit per character, and you can no longer set specific triggers for them.
i really wanted to enjoy this game, but there's only so far pixel art and a fondness for ivalice could take me. the combat is just not well designed enough for me to feel motivated to grind the extra levels and equipment that i clearly need to beat the last 2 chapters. plus i did not find myself invested in the story at all. this is much less disappointing to me than the combat, since i went in with realistic (low) expectations for the writing, but it's still a shame. & while i admittedly loved flying around the sky islands, it's kind of weird that the sequel to FFXII-- a game with a well established, massive world and lore that's only partially revealed during the game-- chose to instead make up a bunch of unrelated shit and set the game in the sky.
2023
super long review tl;dr: i adored the original octopath, but this game is undeniably an improvement!!! however... i also feel like there are a few areas where it fell a bit flat in comparison, namely the story (spoiler warning if you actually scroll all the way to the 4th paragraph); i have high hopes for a theoretical octopath iii to give me the best of both worlds one day!
the overworld, dungeons, and even some of the characters' stories feel much less linear than the original; i thought the addition of canoes was a little pointless when i picked up the demo but they actually do so much for expanding how you can explore the world. same with having each area be different depending on the time of day. not to mention the addition of "world map" type exploration through the sailboat! that did a ton for making the world feel bigger (and made me very happy as someone with a lot of nostalgia for just sailing around and exploring in golden sun tla on the gameboy.) the first game's world was a joy to explore despite it often falling into extremely linear pathways, but i'm really happy to see the noticeable effort into making solistia even better, and i think it definitely paid off!
most of the other high points of the original are also either carried over or improved: once again, i love how rich the world feels, with the huge number of npcs with unique items or backstories, the many, many sidequests, the optional dungeons and jobs, and the absolutely gorgeous pixel art and music (i think i preferred most of the original battle themes, but the music in this game is still incredible and MY GOD WHEN AGNEA'S THEME HITS...)
the combat/job system has also definitely been refined! i like that you can unlock multiple licenses for the core jobs if you put in the effort, and while most of the special jobs are still locked behind fairly difficult boss fights, they don't feel nearly as unattainable as in OT1 (plus i love how a few of them don't require JP and instead make you hunt down items to get certain skills - that was interesting!) i also really like the addition of character-specific abilities in combat. this makes them feel more unique, and adds an extra element of strategy when mulitclassing and forming teams (although lbr 90% of the strategy of that is just deciding how you're going to exploit agnea's latent power like crazy...but i still appreciated that other 10%!) giving each character 2 path actions depending on the time of day was also a cool choice in that it makes it easier to build a party that can cover just about every action, but you have to mess with the day/night cycle more. i thought that was fun, and it also encourages you to engage with the world more, because there were at least a few times where a npc would move after i changed the time and i'd have to explore the town a bit more to find them and use a path action.
despite all these improvements, i'm still giving this game the exact same rating as the first one because i'm annoying and like to nitpick story choices. of course no one is really playing this game expecting a mindblowing narrative, including me. that's not the point of octopath. but i can still be disappointed, because i was expecting a story that was at least as good, if not better developed than OT1. and despite OT1's connections being more subtle, unacknowledged by the party members, and locked behind a secret sidequest chain....it still had a more satisfying plot twist and "main story" than this game. once again, spoiler warning for the whole game from this point forward.
first, just like with the other improvements made, i was really happy to see that OT2 let the party members interact outside of travel banter. i enjoyed the crossed paths sections! but i also thought they were...not nearly enough to back up the main story OT2 was trying to tell. the existence of the crossed paths feels like a step in the right direction for octopath, but the execution leaves so much to be desired. all of them are pretty short, when i would have loved to have seen something more like an actual full length character chapter. they only let two specific characters interact with each other, while everyone else remains trapped in travel banter. and while there are 4 crossed paths, weirdly one of them is super super relevant to the main story by giving you an important key item, one of them is pretty relevant by at least building up towards the final chapter, and the other two are...barely related at all.
this kind of imbalance is one of the main things that bothers me about OT2's story. in comparison, OT1 introduced 8 people journeying for entirely personal reasons, and gradually introduced more and more hints as to how they might be connected in a way that felt fairly balanced for each character and built up to the gate of finis. the main issue for many players, understandably, was that the characters never actually discuss any of this. even without that, though, OT1 is honestly pretty masterful in how it allows every character a personal narrative, yet still ties every story together if you look in the right places.
OT2 is clearly making more of an effort to tie things together without the player having to go to so much effort-- confusingly so, since i didn't think OT1's connections were obscure enough to warrant "THE SHADOW" and "NIGHT SHALL FALL" being shoved in my face every five minutes. but it is a jrpg, after all. the main issue for me is not the in-your-face references to some ultimate greater threat, but the fact that these references feel so wildly unbalanced across character arcs. temenos, ochette, and arguably castti, all begin their story with the threat of some huge conspiracy or apocalyptic event already in place. the rest of the characters don't, and while most of them are eventually wrangled into some kind of connection with THE SHADOW, it's done much less elegantly. OT1, no matter how self-motivated or lighthearted a character's individual arc was, managed to, at minimum, have every character fight a final boss directly related to the "main story." agnea's only connection to the main plot of OT2 is a NPC she speaks to one time who then dies as soon as her role is revealed. this was so underwhelming i was convinced i had accidentally missed some huge lore moment, but nope. partitio fares a little better, since i think the truth about ori is the best of OT2's final twists, but he still remains much more tangentially related than other characters. and while the realization that ori has constantly been in the background is pretty incredible, i wish it had been built up a tad bit more through her appearing more in other chapters or sidequests and/or her being the actual mastermind, or at least a boss. the other two betrayals did not feel like they were built up in a satisfying way at all, and it was a bit weird how the "dark hunter" never actually appeared in any of ochette's chapters and you only interact with her through fighting her as a monster (at least i assume that was her.)
one other thing is that, despite the clear effort to get rid of the weirdness of "these 8 people on a journey together never talk to or acknowledge each other", OT2 doesn't really...actually clear that bar. the characters are still not allowed to really interact outside of crossed paths until the final chapter when they actually talk to each other, which in a way, breaks my suspension of disbelief way more than OT1 just flat out not having them interact ever. i did appreciate the unique voice lines in battle where they call each other by name, though. this game feels like it's taking massive strides forward with the gameplay, but baby steps with the writing.
the "protagonist" system they carried over from the first game also feels more out of place here: it's much more difficult to feel like you're choosing the main character of the story when some characters are just way more important to the story than others. massive win for temenos mains like myself, though. also, while i actually thought it was really fun to have temporary party members in everyone's chapter 1, this made the protagonist thing feel even more irrelevant in comparison to OT1, where your protagonist actually had to go pick everyone up and play though their chapter 1 with them. that being said, i don't think they should have gotten rid of the protags. i think picking a character to be your most important special little guy is a core part of octopath, i just wish it felt like it meshed better with how they executed OT2.
i could probably go on forever trying to unpack why this game's connections just feel so much less satisfying that OT1, but i think i've hit the main points, this review is already super super long (i have a lot of thoughts after 100 hours of this game), and despite how the overarching story fell somewhat flat for me, i still enjoyed each character's individual story. even when they were low-stakes, or borderline nonsensical, or felt like the writers didn't quite have time to expand on things as much as they should have, there were so many moments in this game that honestly just filled me with joy. octopath is still an excellent homage to the golden age of jrpgs, an category of games that i love and miss a lot, so i'm happy to see something like this still being made in 2023!
the overworld, dungeons, and even some of the characters' stories feel much less linear than the original; i thought the addition of canoes was a little pointless when i picked up the demo but they actually do so much for expanding how you can explore the world. same with having each area be different depending on the time of day. not to mention the addition of "world map" type exploration through the sailboat! that did a ton for making the world feel bigger (and made me very happy as someone with a lot of nostalgia for just sailing around and exploring in golden sun tla on the gameboy.) the first game's world was a joy to explore despite it often falling into extremely linear pathways, but i'm really happy to see the noticeable effort into making solistia even better, and i think it definitely paid off!
most of the other high points of the original are also either carried over or improved: once again, i love how rich the world feels, with the huge number of npcs with unique items or backstories, the many, many sidequests, the optional dungeons and jobs, and the absolutely gorgeous pixel art and music (i think i preferred most of the original battle themes, but the music in this game is still incredible and MY GOD WHEN AGNEA'S THEME HITS...)
the combat/job system has also definitely been refined! i like that you can unlock multiple licenses for the core jobs if you put in the effort, and while most of the special jobs are still locked behind fairly difficult boss fights, they don't feel nearly as unattainable as in OT1 (plus i love how a few of them don't require JP and instead make you hunt down items to get certain skills - that was interesting!) i also really like the addition of character-specific abilities in combat. this makes them feel more unique, and adds an extra element of strategy when mulitclassing and forming teams (although lbr 90% of the strategy of that is just deciding how you're going to exploit agnea's latent power like crazy...but i still appreciated that other 10%!) giving each character 2 path actions depending on the time of day was also a cool choice in that it makes it easier to build a party that can cover just about every action, but you have to mess with the day/night cycle more. i thought that was fun, and it also encourages you to engage with the world more, because there were at least a few times where a npc would move after i changed the time and i'd have to explore the town a bit more to find them and use a path action.
despite all these improvements, i'm still giving this game the exact same rating as the first one because i'm annoying and like to nitpick story choices. of course no one is really playing this game expecting a mindblowing narrative, including me. that's not the point of octopath. but i can still be disappointed, because i was expecting a story that was at least as good, if not better developed than OT1. and despite OT1's connections being more subtle, unacknowledged by the party members, and locked behind a secret sidequest chain....it still had a more satisfying plot twist and "main story" than this game. once again, spoiler warning for the whole game from this point forward.
first, just like with the other improvements made, i was really happy to see that OT2 let the party members interact outside of travel banter. i enjoyed the crossed paths sections! but i also thought they were...not nearly enough to back up the main story OT2 was trying to tell. the existence of the crossed paths feels like a step in the right direction for octopath, but the execution leaves so much to be desired. all of them are pretty short, when i would have loved to have seen something more like an actual full length character chapter. they only let two specific characters interact with each other, while everyone else remains trapped in travel banter. and while there are 4 crossed paths, weirdly one of them is super super relevant to the main story by giving you an important key item, one of them is pretty relevant by at least building up towards the final chapter, and the other two are...barely related at all.
this kind of imbalance is one of the main things that bothers me about OT2's story. in comparison, OT1 introduced 8 people journeying for entirely personal reasons, and gradually introduced more and more hints as to how they might be connected in a way that felt fairly balanced for each character and built up to the gate of finis. the main issue for many players, understandably, was that the characters never actually discuss any of this. even without that, though, OT1 is honestly pretty masterful in how it allows every character a personal narrative, yet still ties every story together if you look in the right places.
OT2 is clearly making more of an effort to tie things together without the player having to go to so much effort-- confusingly so, since i didn't think OT1's connections were obscure enough to warrant "THE SHADOW" and "NIGHT SHALL FALL" being shoved in my face every five minutes. but it is a jrpg, after all. the main issue for me is not the in-your-face references to some ultimate greater threat, but the fact that these references feel so wildly unbalanced across character arcs. temenos, ochette, and arguably castti, all begin their story with the threat of some huge conspiracy or apocalyptic event already in place. the rest of the characters don't, and while most of them are eventually wrangled into some kind of connection with THE SHADOW, it's done much less elegantly. OT1, no matter how self-motivated or lighthearted a character's individual arc was, managed to, at minimum, have every character fight a final boss directly related to the "main story." agnea's only connection to the main plot of OT2 is a NPC she speaks to one time who then dies as soon as her role is revealed. this was so underwhelming i was convinced i had accidentally missed some huge lore moment, but nope. partitio fares a little better, since i think the truth about ori is the best of OT2's final twists, but he still remains much more tangentially related than other characters. and while the realization that ori has constantly been in the background is pretty incredible, i wish it had been built up a tad bit more through her appearing more in other chapters or sidequests and/or her being the actual mastermind, or at least a boss. the other two betrayals did not feel like they were built up in a satisfying way at all, and it was a bit weird how the "dark hunter" never actually appeared in any of ochette's chapters and you only interact with her through fighting her as a monster (at least i assume that was her.)
one other thing is that, despite the clear effort to get rid of the weirdness of "these 8 people on a journey together never talk to or acknowledge each other", OT2 doesn't really...actually clear that bar. the characters are still not allowed to really interact outside of crossed paths until the final chapter when they actually talk to each other, which in a way, breaks my suspension of disbelief way more than OT1 just flat out not having them interact ever. i did appreciate the unique voice lines in battle where they call each other by name, though. this game feels like it's taking massive strides forward with the gameplay, but baby steps with the writing.
the "protagonist" system they carried over from the first game also feels more out of place here: it's much more difficult to feel like you're choosing the main character of the story when some characters are just way more important to the story than others. massive win for temenos mains like myself, though. also, while i actually thought it was really fun to have temporary party members in everyone's chapter 1, this made the protagonist thing feel even more irrelevant in comparison to OT1, where your protagonist actually had to go pick everyone up and play though their chapter 1 with them. that being said, i don't think they should have gotten rid of the protags. i think picking a character to be your most important special little guy is a core part of octopath, i just wish it felt like it meshed better with how they executed OT2.
i could probably go on forever trying to unpack why this game's connections just feel so much less satisfying that OT1, but i think i've hit the main points, this review is already super super long (i have a lot of thoughts after 100 hours of this game), and despite how the overarching story fell somewhat flat for me, i still enjoyed each character's individual story. even when they were low-stakes, or borderline nonsensical, or felt like the writers didn't quite have time to expand on things as much as they should have, there were so many moments in this game that honestly just filled me with joy. octopath is still an excellent homage to the golden age of jrpgs, an category of games that i love and miss a lot, so i'm happy to see something like this still being made in 2023!
2018
i will forgive this game for every linear dungeon, every one-note stereotypical character, every hour of grinding, and the complete lack of inter-party interaction, because it's so clear that it was made as a love letter to classic jrpgs....or maybe just bait for people who have jrpg nostalgia goggles welded to their face (me!)
in any case, while this game definitely has areas that could be improved, i think it went above and beyond accomplishing the main thing it set out to do: creating a modern jrpg that really pays homage to the roots of the genre. the art direction is obviously phenomenal, combat and the job systems are fun to play, the lore, worldbuilding, and vastness of the world is great, and the music is insanely good.
while the characters' personalities and stories may not be highly complex, they're endearing enough, and the lack of complexity combined with the old-school adventure tone of the game makes them feel more like old friends than horribly unoriginal. i do wish their stories had been more heavily interconnected, but it's pretty clear the developers wanted to prioritize players freedom of choice over forcing them into a massive overarching narrative. while i don't entirely agree (i gladly would have given up the ability to not recruit characters in exchange for more connections between different stories), i can definitely see why that choice was made...because octopath is a game that cares less about an epic overarching narrative, and more with you enjoying the adventure. which i did.
tl;dr what's truly precious to me...is this journey :-)
in any case, while this game definitely has areas that could be improved, i think it went above and beyond accomplishing the main thing it set out to do: creating a modern jrpg that really pays homage to the roots of the genre. the art direction is obviously phenomenal, combat and the job systems are fun to play, the lore, worldbuilding, and vastness of the world is great, and the music is insanely good.
while the characters' personalities and stories may not be highly complex, they're endearing enough, and the lack of complexity combined with the old-school adventure tone of the game makes them feel more like old friends than horribly unoriginal. i do wish their stories had been more heavily interconnected, but it's pretty clear the developers wanted to prioritize players freedom of choice over forcing them into a massive overarching narrative. while i don't entirely agree (i gladly would have given up the ability to not recruit characters in exchange for more connections between different stories), i can definitely see why that choice was made...because octopath is a game that cares less about an epic overarching narrative, and more with you enjoying the adventure. which i did.
tl;dr what's truly precious to me...is this journey :-)
5 stars simply because this game is just so........FUN!! amazing job system that still holds up - even playing this 20+ years later i still found it super satisfying to experiment with each character's jobs and figure out which skills worked well together (ninja + rapid fire is awesome for the record) and i honestly think its some of the best combat in the entire final fantasy series.
and no, the story and characters aren't as deep as a lot of the following titles (or maybe even ffiv) but there were some surprisingly touching scenes in there, and i found myself tearing up at the ending cutscene because after hours of grinding abilities and exploring the world(s) with these characters i couldn't help but become attached :'') also, if you care (i do) having a gender nonconforming party member, especially in a game this old, is pretty cool.
for the most part, though, the story is pretty lighthearted and a lot of the dialogue is incredibly silly...which i also think is fun! possibly a controversial opinion, especially if you're a fan of final fantasy's more serious narratives, but i think the localizers really nailed the tone and humor (while still keeping enough of a balance for the occasional serious moment), and i found a lot of the sillier scenes and characters genuinely very funny. gilgamesh is one of my favorite ff antagonists now, just because he never failed to make me laugh.
i really don't have it in me to seriously criticize any part of this game, it was just that fun. bartz & co. im so sorry you were robbed of your ds remake your game is a solid 10/10
and no, the story and characters aren't as deep as a lot of the following titles (or maybe even ffiv) but there were some surprisingly touching scenes in there, and i found myself tearing up at the ending cutscene because after hours of grinding abilities and exploring the world(s) with these characters i couldn't help but become attached :'') also, if you care (i do) having a gender nonconforming party member, especially in a game this old, is pretty cool.
for the most part, though, the story is pretty lighthearted and a lot of the dialogue is incredibly silly...which i also think is fun! possibly a controversial opinion, especially if you're a fan of final fantasy's more serious narratives, but i think the localizers really nailed the tone and humor (while still keeping enough of a balance for the occasional serious moment), and i found a lot of the sillier scenes and characters genuinely very funny. gilgamesh is one of my favorite ff antagonists now, just because he never failed to make me laugh.
i really don't have it in me to seriously criticize any part of this game, it was just that fun. bartz & co. im so sorry you were robbed of your ds remake your game is a solid 10/10
2nd playthrough was definitely worth it
utilized both alttp's concepts and the 3ds to their fullest potential. perfect balance of paying homage to its predecessor and adding something fresh to the series. every zelda fan should play this.
2003
there's a lot of things in this game i wish had been written differently, and yet i enjoyed it so so much. play at your own risk.
1997
i don't want to pretend this game is completely devoid of issues, but also it's literally final fantasy 7
This review contains spoilers
the way all the puzzles and hints and different routes fit together in this game is crazy good. i was theorizing until the very end, where uchikoshi played me like a fiddle because up to that point i truly believed there was no way anyone could write a character as annoying as akane unless they were 100% sincere about it. i love you 999.