Octopath Traveler – Still going strong after 40 hours (spoilers)

I said I would be back to report on Octopath Traveler once I’d finished chapter 3 for everyone, so here I am! Still having fun!

8 separate stories

I’ve really been saved by my laziness this time. Long time readers may have noticed that I almost never play games at launch. Even if I get them immediately, I don’t start for months and sometimes years after a game was released. There’s no special reason, I just don’t get round to things very quickly.

Apart from putting me at risk for spoilers, there’s no real downside to this practice. If anything, there’s a huge upside, which is that it lets other players be the guinea pigs for me. All the bugs have been identified, all the FAQs written and playthroughs filmed by the time I start playing. For example, I remember a lot of complaints about runey management from players of Rune Factory Frontier on the Wii. When I played it, someone had come up with a “runey farm” strategy that solved the issue while still being incredibly tedious. Imagine if I’d had to do all that work myself!

So it is with Octopath Traveler, where early players were the ones who kindly discovered that the interweaving story promised by Square-Enix was actually a pack of lies. There are a lot of places where it seems like the stories will intersect, and it would be plausible for them to do so. The organization behind the destruction of Hornburg could also be the one manipulating the bad guys in Cyrus’ route, and they could be related to the crows in Primrose’s route, and so on and so forth. But no, they remain completely separate until the end.

Nowhere near “excellent” and not that “deep.” But very good nonetheless

And you know, that’s okay with me because I know it in advance. I don’t think it’s even that strange to have stories that never come together. “Everyone’s a main character in their own story” and all that. But two years ago when I played the demo, that’s not the impression I got. I thought everything would come together someway somehow down the road, even if it was just little changes to the towns depending on whose route was played first.

So since I was forewarned, I’m not particularly disappointed by that development. It’s just that having 8 short stories without a single grand finale is probably going to make me go “Oh, okay” by the time it’s done. Because most of the stories are in the “Oh okay” category, nothing really mindblowing. Explorations of trust, betrayal, looking for hope in life again, finding pride in one’s job, those are all nice to read about and fun to play through. But in an “Oh, okay” kind of way.

Not as dark as I’d expected

Based on the demo which covered Primrose’s and Olberic’s routes, I thought Octopath Traveler would have grimmer and darker stories than most JRPGs, but that isn’t really the case. It’s not like Square-Enix didn’t try at all; they just failed to go the full gamut when it came to brutality. This leads to enemies making all kinds of mistakes a sensible bad guy just wouldn’t. Just for once I wanted to deal with competent enemies.

I’m going to give examples from a few routes, which is spoiler material, so you can look away now if you haven’t played the game yet.

Primrose’s chapter 3: She runs into the big bad boss of the three crows after killing the second henchman. Said boss manages to come close enough to her to stab her in the stomach… then flounces off without making sure she’s dead. This, after the same guy sensibly ensured her father was truly dead all those years ago. Granted, this guy is shown to have a flair for the dramatic and all that, but it’s still an extremely dumb mistake that destroys any previous threat he seemd to pose.

Cyrus chapter 3: Evil Boss 101: if a plucky scholar is on the verge of finding the truth of your scheme, and you manage to sneak attack and knock him out, KILL HIM IMMEDIATELY. Gloating over your clever plan and leaving him to starve to death is very suave and Bond villain-ish, but you know how those movies always end, right?

Aight, aight, let’s say you were careless and let his student rescue him. But you then took the student hostage. And the scholar showed up to save her. KEEP HOLDING HER HOSTAGE! That’s what hostages are for! You don’t ignore the hostage and engage the scholar in hand-to-hand combat. You grab the hostage, make your demands, and wait for an opportunity to kill your enemy. You hear?

Tressa chapter 2: Same goes for the bad guys here. If you’ve got Ali in custody and Tressa shows up to save him, do not engage! Get a knife, grab Ali by the throat and that pitiful idealistic sap of a Tressa will hand over everything to save him. It’s just that their situation is slightly understandable because Tressa doesn’t look like much of a threat. But still, it’s not that hard to have one guy hold the hostage while the other engages, juuuust in case.

Alfyn chapter 3: Miguel! *bonks him on the head* Have you read a single word I’ve written? When you take a little kid hostage so you can escape from town, you don’t put the kid down to fight your pursuers. I don’t care how heavy the little rotter is, you grab that sucker and hold on for dear life. That’s how it’s done.

Ophilia chapter 3: Gaaahh, are you guys even LISTENING?!! The bad guys kidnapped yet another kid and held her for ransom, wanting to exchange her for the ember Ophilia was carrying. Why oh why would you put the kid down and fight? Why kidnap her in the first place if you weren’t going to use her? Knife. Throat. Press. Demands. A softie priestess isn’t gonna watch you gut a kid, trust me on this one.

You might be seeing a pattern here with all the kidnappings and letting gos. I hadn’t noticed the repetition before I set out to write this but… yeah, the stories aren’t really that repetitive. It’s just a pattern of bad guys giving up obvious advantages so that the game doesn’t become too dark. Just like the Redeye on H’aanit’s route doesn’t kill anyone but just petrifies them. And Olberic doesn’t kill Erhardt once he finds him, instead they practically make up. This is a big spoiler for his route BTW, but I did warn you.

The TL;DR is that I was expecting darker, more mature stories based on the Octopath Traveler demo and art style, but it didn’t deliver. And it’s not just that it “didn’t deliver” but that lack of delivery was artificially manufactured by Square-Enix’s writers forcing the bad guys to do dumb things no normal bad guy would do. Not a dealbreaker, but still a letdown.

The gameplay isn’t completely tedious yet

I’ll wait to give my final verdict when I finish once and for all, but I’m still not sick of the Break system. I just wish there were more ways to deal damage to large group of enemies besides soulstones and a few select attacks. I’m running more and more from random enemies these days, which may end up screwing me over when I face the last bosses.

More attacks like Level Slash, please!

Another thing I really wish for: more sidequests. Especially more updating ones. As it is, you finish all the quests in S’warkii and that’s it. I wish they could have added maybe one or two with every new chapter, because I enjoy sidequests.

Nothing further to report. My save file reads 42 hours or so, about to face Redeye on H’aanit’s route, then will do Therion, Alfyn, etc. in the order that I got them in. I’m guessing I have another 10 hours or so to go to finish Octopath Traveler. But my next post will be about Picross S4 and S3 because those are the games that really matter 😀

See you soon!

One Hour Review: Ys VIII Lacrimosa of DANA

To briefly recap my history with Falcom, developers of the Ys series, I think their turn-based RPGs like the Trails games are too slow and plodding but I really like their action RPGs. Or at least, I absolutely loved Nayuta no Kiseki, and I seriously enjoy the combat in the Tokyo Xanadu eX+.

Somehow I haven’t been able to get into the Ys series as much as I thought I would. The originals with the bump system don’t need to be mentioned, but I’ve also briefly tried Memories of Celceta, Ys Seven and most recently whichever Ys it is on the PSP where the main character washed up in this jungle village place. Can’t remember the title right now, but it’s one of them.

But I haven’t given up on trying to like them, hence this attempt at Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA. And thanks to the system of “One Hour Reviews,” I figured out one of the problems with the Ys games: there’s too much talking early on! In Celceta you have to walk around some large boring town first, Ys Seven has a large boring dock, Ys Jungle Village has a large boring jungle village, and now Ys VIII has this large boring ship.

If not for the One Hour system, I would have lost interest when forced to roam around the ship. But because I’d committed to playing a full hour no matter what, I managed to keep going, and eventually stuff started to happen. Where “stuff” means a giant tentacle monster attacked the ship and knocked us all overboard! That was dramatic.

The story in Ys VIII is that the main character Adol happens to wash ashore yet again, and this time there’s a whole ship’s crew with passengers washed ashore with him. Now he has to gather all the castaways so they can find a way home. TBH it’s pretty unrealistic that they can build a ship large enough and get enough provisions to sail anywhere meaningful, but they have an experienced captain with them, so it’s not entirely impossible. More importantly, Adol also has to explore the Isle of Seiren while he’s at it, because that’s just his thing. And my thing too, to be honest.

What I liked

🌴Fancy moves and flashy attacks! Bright happy colors! Especially after playing Octopath Traveler, seeing bright blue skies and bright green grass is great. I like the island motif especially. It reminds me of Nayuta and Shining Ark.

🌴It doesn’t seem too difficult yet, even though I’m playing on Normal. I wanted to start on Easy TBH, but I did that with Nayuta and later on it was just too easy. That said… I almost died against the tentacle monster on the ship. And I haven’t fully gotten the hang of the battle system, so I’ll need to spend some time practising on mobs. There’s a slight chance I will indeed restart on Easy if I decide to play the game for real.

🌴The controls aren’t quite as confusing as in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ yet. There’s no complicated platforming yet, no annoying dungeon puzzles yet. But this is all me talking after 1 hour of gameplay and only fighting one boss – two if you count the tentacle monster. So far so good.

🌴I can save almost anywhere in the field! I remember getting really stressed with Celceta because of the vast areas to explore with no save points in sight. With Ys VIII I won’t have to worry about that, and if I keep a couple of different saves, I won’t have to worry about locking myself into a death spiral either. Phew.

What sucks

🙄Talking sequences. I used to say “dungeon crawlers don’t need stories,” now I’m starting to think “action RPGs don’t need stories either.” At the very least Falcom’s ARPGs don’t, because their games already tend towards the wordy side. But it’s only the first hour, so this could be a set up and then they let me roam as much as I like. That would be nice.

🙄The idiotic Laxia girl and the whole peeping sequence revolving around her. Basically this idiotic girl washed up on the island. And being somehow armed with a big fluffy white towel, she decided to take a bath the middle of a stream, in full view of passers by. But oops, what is this, she “accidentally” dropped her towel in front of Adol! Then she slapped him for looking, even though she’s the exhibitionist pervert tsundere idiot who flashed him. What the heck is this nonsense. I thought that kind of stupidity went out of fashion with Love Hina 20 years ago. I can’t wait to replace her in my party.

The controls are a bit confusing right now, because the on-screen controls assume you’re using the joy-cons, but I’m using the pro controller. The camera controls are also uncomfortable. I have to adjust the camera all the time to see where I’m going. But controls are things you can get used to with time and it’s only been one hour.

Will I continue playing Ys VIII?

Yeah sure, why not? It didn’t set my heart aflutter or anything, but after 1 hour they set me free to explore the Isle of Seiren and that’s what I’ve been itching to do from the start. I really wanted to play the Ys games in order, but it looks like that’s not possible for me tastes-wise so Ys VIII will have to do.

Whether I do continue Ys VIII or not, it won’t be for a long while anyway. On the Switch, I’m almost done with Picross S4, then I have to play S3 while continuing Octopath Traveler. Plus Tokyo Xanadu eX+ takes priority in the ARPG rankings, followed by a retry of Dark Cloud 2. So for now I’ll file Ys VIII under “Promising,” and try to get back to it in the future.

25 hours into Octopath Traveler – Still good

octopath traveler bannerOctopath Traveler was good when I started out. It’s still good now that I’m over 25 hours in. I hope it will be good all the way through.

I’ve done all the Chapters 1s for all 8 characters, now I’m almost done with the Chapter 2s. IIRC I only have Ophilia’s, H’aanit’s and Olberic’s left. It seems there’s no feasible way to just focus on one person’s route all the way through, because the jump in level requirement from chapter to chapter is huge. For example, H’aanit’s chapter 1 had a recommended level of 1, but chapter 2 has a recommended level of 27!

I think you’re expected to do at least 4 characters’ routes at the same time, possibly more. This leads to the problem of a disjointed story with wildly shifting moods: from comical hijinks on Tressa’s route to bloody revenge on Primrose’s followed by a gory detective mystery on Cyrus’s. Early players expected all these plot threads to intersect eventually, but since I’m playing years after release, I already know they will be separate all the way through.

Gameplay/combat

I’ve made a bit of progress. My main party consists of H’aanit (fixed), Therion and Alfyn and all three just hit level 30. H’aanit and Therion are working on their sub classes (Thief and Hunter respectively) while Alfyn is cooling his heels and racking up the job points because I’ve only unlocked two sub classes so far. I could get more by FAQ’ing the location of the rest of the jobs, but it’s more fun to try and discover things for myself. The last slot in my party is taken up by whoever’s story I’m currently working on. If I had to pick a favorite fourth member it would be Cyrus. Mainly because his personality is funny, but also because his elemental attacks and Analyze skills are really useful in longer battles.

Least favorite character is Tressa because she’s too cutesy. Also I’m a hater.

I’m not quite sick of the Break system yet… yet I can see the clouds on the horizon. Breaking just gets tedious when you’re fighting a lot of mobs who are not that strong but nevertheless have a ton of HP so you have to break them several times just to get rid of them. Cyrus’s skill that reduces random encounters is another reason why I like him. Can’t wait to get the Scholar sub class so I can have it on at all times.

That doesn’t mean I dislike the Break system entirely… yet. I do look forward to getting to new areas so I can fight new enemies and figure out how to break them. It’s just that because of the way the system is designed, you won’t be doing much damage especially to bosses without breaking them. That means many battles are going to take a lot longer than they have any right to, just because you have to figure out weaknesses, break, break, break and break again before a boss finally goes down. I’m not even halfway through the game but I’m already dreading the last boss battle =___=

As for the individual stories in Octopath Traveler, I have nothing to say about them at this point in time. That’s because nothing much has happened on any individual route yet. And probably won’t happen until chapters 3 at the earliest, most likely chapter 4. Because one game is telling 8 separate stories instead of 1 or 2, they all come across as really shallow. And trivial, to be honest. Blah blah revenge~ Ehhh. Blah blah I wanna travel the world~ Yeah okay, whatever. And there are two revenge plots, two solve-the-mystery plots and two travel/adventure plots, so they lack a bit of freshness. But I shouldn’t be judging this early, so let’s allow the game to develop a little further first.

That’s enough for an early update on Octopath Traveler. When/if I finish chapter 3 for all characters, I’ll be back with more comments and opinions.

One Hour Review: Tales of Vesperia – an hour is enough 👍

Continuing the One Hour Review series. Just a few more titles to go. Yesterday I tried an hour of Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition on the Switch. It was just the right length of time to meet the two main characters, get into plenty of trouble, fight a number of battles, escape the first city and make my way to Deidon Hold, the first real town area in the game.

It was a nice, round self-contained experience, but as I said in the title, an hour of Tales of Vesperia is enough. It’s enough for me to see what my boy Yuri Lowell is really like in his own game. He’s one of the first characters I got when I started Granblue Fantasy, and he was a staple of my Dark team for the longest time. I never read any of the collab stories so I had no idea of his personality. He’s more childish than I’d thought. His whole character screams “trying to be cool” with that faux-nonchalant attitude and drawling speech… but I don’t dislike him. The ditzy princess Estellise is right out, though. Never want to see her again. She’s a big reason why I want to quit while I’m ahead.

The even bigger reason is that I can already tell that the plot of Tales of Vesperia is going to be stupid, just like the rest of the Tales games. Tales fans are going to jump down my throat for saying that. Well “Aaaaah~” come on down! Y’all’s favorite series has dumb plots. I played Tales of the Tempest, bless my soul, and I almost finished Tales of Hearts. Thanks to those bitter experiences, I can see the signs in Vesperia right from the beginning:

  • Blastia cores are so vital to the fountain’s operation. They are also prohibitively expensive. And yet they are easily removed and completely unsecured even in the commoner’s area. Riiiight.
  • The comical levels of discrimination from nobles towards commoners, despite living a literal stone’s throw away. I can see this leading to many preaching sessions from Yuri and the princess. *screech* We are all equal~ We need to work together~*screech* Please. Spare me.

  • Commits crimes.
    *gets arrested*
    *shocked Pikachu face*

    The idiotic main character who assaults guards in broad daylight, sneaks into a mansion in broad daylight, walks out in broad daylight and then is somehow astonished when he’s stopped and arrested. And despite all that, he still tries to act cool. There’s more hope for a fool than for a man who is wise in his own eyes.

  • The idiotic main character who really believes he can sneak out of a jail and be back the next morning without anyone noticing. Without even bothering to close the jail door or leave a decoy in his bed. And then he’s somehow surprised that a manhunt starts for him. What did he even need to break out so urgently for? If he really thought he was that indispensable to the commoners then maybe, just maybe, he shouldn’t have gotten himself arrested? TBH it’s already unbelieveable that he was sentenced to just 10 days in jail for breaking and entry and stealing a big bag of money with his accomplice.
  • The idiotic naive princess (?) character, full of meaningless ideals, devoid of any common sense. At least she can heal in battle, that’s always a plus. Running around in a frilly dress. Then she decides to change into something easier to move in. And the resulting outfit is even more eye-catching. And all this takes place in the middle of a thrilling escape from the castle. Who knows how many more such nonsensical scenes are lined up in the future?
  • The idiotic random enemy who bursts into Flynn’s room and attacks whoever is inside just because. Like, okay. Sure. And even though we clearly beat him, he still got away and will definitely return for even more idiotic hijinks down the road. Why do games still pull this crap?

I only played an hour and every 5 minutes I was going “This is dumb… This is dumb… This is really dumb…” And then you realize most Tales games are 30-40 hours long at a minimum. My patience isn’t gonna last that long. Thus it’s better to quit Tales of Vesperia while I still have a slightly positive view of it. At least the graphics were nice, the combat is snappy and not too hard, Repede is a cute dg and the colors are bright and happy. If the characters and plot were a little more promising I would keep it on my backlog. But as it is, I know myself and I know what I’ve been through with Tales games. An hour of Tales of Vesperia is enough.

One Hour Review: Octopath Traveler – It’s good!

Long-time readers of My RPG Blog may remember a brief period of time two years ago when I co-owned a Nintendo Switch. I managed to finish Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and even played the Octopath Traveler demo before the ownership partnership was dissolved due to scheduling conflicts. To be honest, Xenoblade 2 was the only thing I super wanted to play, so I haven’t really thought about the Switch in a while. But recently one thing led to another and I ended up borrowing the Switch for a while.

So if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the past two weeks or so, I’ve been playing Picross S4. Along with my usual casual fare like Atelier Online, of course. I’ve played all the normal puzzles, now I’m working on Mega Picross. After that S4 also has Color Picross, which I haven’t seen since the DS days. And once I’m done with all the S4 has to offer, naturally I will have to revisit S, then play S2, S3, and also Picross e8 and e9 on the 3DS…

But I felt like playing only Picross all the time might make me sick of it, so I decided to cut in with some “regular” video games as well. Apart from Picross and Octopath Traveler, my bro also owns fine games such as Tales of Vesperia, Ys VIII and Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (I want to play it but I don’t want to play it). There might be other titles as well, dunno.

All that background to say, I’ve played about two hours of Octopath Traveler now and it’s pretty nice. I started with H’aanit and almost quit, though.

Firstly because of the weird accent they gave her which was just like WHAT IS THIS. I couldn’t imagine playing a whole game full of such garbled nonsense. Luckily it’s only H’aanit and her people who speak that way.

Second reason, her Chapter 1 was really boring. Talk talk talk, walk through forest, kill monster, back to town, more talk. Practically nothing happened. They could have just let her set out straight to look for her master and nothing would have been lost.

Third reason, the game’s battle system is very boring when your character is weak and alone. Every battle takes a long time and you’re just spamming the same moves. It’s interesting to see that this is a direct reversal of how I felt when I played the demo. Nowadays I don’t have the patience for any video game system that feels like unnecessary work. If it’ll take party members to make the battles move faster, bring ’em on!

showing how little damage characters do in octopath traveler

Such puny numbers

Once I got out of S’warkii and met up with Therion in the next town, things got more interesting. The weird accents have gone away, Therion’s adventure was funnier (way to walk into a totally obvious trap, dude) and now that I have two party members, I feel invincible. Especially since I’m finally getting some use out of H’aanit’s Capture skill with more useful enemies. It’s pretty great. Tip: get as many Ice Sentinels as you can in the Ravus Manor. They make short work of the boss on Therion’s chapter 1.

This is why you should really give games at least one hour if possible. Now I’m about 2 hours into Octopath Traveler and starting to really enjoy it. Just arrived in Clearbrook and saw another story character. Once I recruit him and have three characters in my party, battles should become faster. I hope. It’s a bit of a pain having to target weakness and Break enemies all the time. Sometimes you just want to steamroll the easy field mobs, y’know? But that’s the only problem I still have with the game. Apart from that, Square-Enix fixed all the complaints I had about the demo, so I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of the Octopath world.

Before that, though, more Picross! And more One Hour Reviews of the rest of the Switch games, just as a formality. Though I do have some expectations from Ys VIII. What about the Tokyo Xanadu eX+ I was enthusiastically playing until recently? Picross happened. I was really enjoying it, though. I should post something about it sometime, but I keep feeling like I’m almost done. Also I don’t plan to hang on to the Switch for very long (I learned a bitter lesson about borrowing consoles some years ago) so I’ll go back to TX soon enough.

I really want to play more Octopath Traveler as well, though… I’ll try to finish at least one character’s full route before returning the Switch.