What does the community think of Octopath Traveler?

Tressa for best girl

Octopath Traveler has held onto positive public opinion for a couple of weeks now, of course the most exciting of hot takes being: “Why is this pixel game $60?”

But, this being a Nintendo Switch game, the community on Destructoid has excitedly been sharing opinions and screenshots since release. Many people love the characters, of which there are eight to take for a ride. Others, like me, see past the pixel art and are continually blown away by what else is on display, the dynamic lighting, the fading backgrounds and foregrounds, and man oh man whatever is happening when you spend BP.

Octopath Traveler can be pretty open-ended, since you have eight different characters you can start the game as. Still, some may be disappointed when you learn that the eight stories actually don’t intersect in any grand way. But, in my own experience, the writing is much tighter all around. Which leads to the inevitable question “Who’d you start with?”

Of course, we want to know what you think of the game overall. Has the battle system gotten stale for you? Are you not impressed by the character stories? Or have you found the depth in saving BP and breaking shields? Have you’ve found someone endearing to latch onto in every way? It’s Tressa for me: not only is she just a pure and endearing girl, looking for adventure as the daughter of successful merchants, but all her battle chatter is so fun from, “Open for business!” to “Time to close up shop!”

Fuzunga has already been all about Octopath Traveler, so here are his thoughts:

Well I didn’t want to do Olberic or Primrose because I already played those in the demo, so it was between Alfyn and Tressa for me because they both seemed like such completely average people and that’s something I found interesting. I ended up going with Tressa because her story just seemed so plain I wanted to see where it went. Of course, I then found out that you play everyone’s story at the same time anyway. Turned out to be a great starter pick, though. She has a very useful path action for early on that lets you buy better gear and her “donate bp” skill is probably the most useful one in the game to me.

TheLimoMaker has been struggling with one aspect of the game for awhile now:

I stared at the box in GAME for about twenty minutes and have only added it to my Amazon cart twice before cancelling it due to realising my funds need to go elsewhere.
So it’s going pretty well.

ShadeofLight is inverting those gender images:

I had to wait a couple of days before I could get home to pick up my copy, so in that time I went through everyone’s prologues in the demo.

Primrose was the one that stuck out to me from the very first moment. Her story is compelling and the writing is a lot more mature than I would’ve expected. “Put that pretty mouth where it belongs, and I may go easy on you.” It made me want to help Prim get out and take back her life, so that’s exactly what we’re doing.

That said, I also have another self-made narrative, namely that I made up my party out of all the four girls. One thing that I really like in Job-based JRPGs is that you can go against the familiar old mold of Men = Strength / Women = Magic. In the Bravely series that meant that I switched that stereotype around 180, but in Octopath it means that I’m leaving the lads on the sidelines to let the ladies have their moment.

This is a story of four very different women helping each other out to achieve each’ equally valid goals.

Bit by 8 Bit needs strong and simple motivation:

I went with Alfyn, the goodest boy. I liked the simple “help people” goal, and made more sense as to why he would want to help each of the other characters through their stories.

Just hit level 50 with Alfyn, Ophilia, Therion and Tressa. Soon I’ll go and get the other characters to do their stories too. Great game!

GoofierBrute appreciates this solid gem:

I started with Olberic (he’s who I went with in the prologue demo, so I transferred that save over to the main game), and I kind of regret doing that since he’s made combat a joke (he’s almost in the low 50s), with maybe one or two boss fights giving me a hard time. And even then they were nothing that Olberic using his ultimate attack couldn’t handle.

The stories on the other hand are actually really good. The main characters themselves for the most part are kind of bland (though unlike most JRPGS, there isn’t one character that I outright hate) and I could tell what was happening in each one a mile away, but the side characters that you meet are interesting and I like that each chapter is a relatively brisk stroll to complete.

I don’t know if I would call it my favorite JRPG of all time, let alone my favorite on the Switch, but Octopath is a solid game for the Switch, and if you’re one of those Switch owners who thought that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 focused a bit too much on the Japanese part in JRPG and not enough on the RPG part (and I know a fair number of you did), I think this is the game for you.

Shoggoth made a man of knowledge explore the exciting world of dancing:

When I started playing Octopath Traveler, I chose H’aanit. All I really had to go off of was character art because I wanted to go in as blind as possible but another factor for me was how I don’t usually take on the role of a beastmaster or hunter. I was really hooked by her first chapter though and the second was pretty darn interesting too. Since it was the first shrine I found, I made it so that her first secondary job was that of the Warrior but I have since used a guide to find the locations of the other job shrines. Once I have her leveled up enough, I’m going to stick Tressa with Scholar so she too can be an unstoppable, magical, killing machine who upsells additional items and services at your own funeral.

For story/character reasons, I want to make Cyrus a dancer but the merchant skill halves MP consumption after a while so I’m feeling kind of torn. There’s always grinding of course. I’m really loving this game so far, I never finished Bravely Default and I don’t own Bravely Second but this game is really scratching an itch I didn’t realize I had.

Pixie and H’aanit both like dunking on Z’anta:

I chose H’aanit. While I haven’t gotten too far into the game, Beastmaster was one of my favorite jobs back in my FFXI days and its something of a rare sight in RPGs now. I also liked how her introductory chapter unfolded, from her relationship with her mentor to how seriously she takes her work.

While she may be all nature-loving, there’s a dash of samurai in her, She believes there’s an order to nature, but is also ready to put it all on the line to protect the weak in an out of the forest when the circle of life gets twisted.

I also like how she dunks on her mentor for him getting sidetracked gambling and boozing when he’s got a hunt to attend to.

Agent9 will get back to us on it:

I really want this game, but haven’t been able to get it. In time though, all in good time.

Octopath Traveler‘s community is ripe with interesting opinions and asides, from the eight different starting chapters, eight different experiences of writing, and eight different methodologies in combat. How have you been liking the adventure so far?