My playtime with Octopath Traveler

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Spoiler's BTW!

I talk very in depth about each character's story line.

You have been warned!

Octopath Traveler was one RPG that interested me back when it first released, mainly because of it's artstyle. It reminded me of older Pokemon games, specifically Gen 4 and Gen 5. But other than that, I had no real reason to buy it, so I skipped on it. I had some friends pick if up and play it, love it. But that's about it.

A couple of months ago during summer break, I got bored. Who would've guessed. I wanted a long RPG to sit down with and play through. I had played both Xenoblade games, and those aren't very long so, I needed an actual RPG. That's when I ed Octopath Traveler! I was absolutely down to buy it and play it, it was the perfect game to get.

...

It's still $60 though

I was not trying to spend a lot of money at the time, I did not want to drop $60 on a new game. so, I waited. Weeks later, Square Enix has a digital sale of games by them. Obviously, I go and check to see if Octopath is apart of the sale.

(Spoiler: it wasn't)

So that kinda sucked.

But I decided to check Octopath on Amazon anyway, and suprisingly, the physical version was on sale! There were only a few copies left, so I rushed to nab my wallet and buy the game. A day later it arrives, and I was excited. A brand new blind playthrough of the game, I couldn't wait to start!

All there was now is to play the game. But now that I have, I supposeI should tell you my experience with it.

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Therion is who I considered the main protagonist of my game, the character that was always first in the party. This is because he was the first character I picked. I was originally gonna start with Cyrus, since that was the only character I knew much about before plsying. But them I saw Therion, a badass looking thief, and just couldn't say no to that.

Therion starts off in the town of Boulderfall, a town build into the mountains, where both the poor and the rich live. Therion has always lived a life of crime, thievery, and doesn't plan on changing it. He catches wind of a special and rare stone being held inside of a mansion in Boulderfall, this stone of course, becomes Therions target. However, he gets caught in the act of stealing, but was not thrown in jail. Instead, the person who caught Therions puts a chain wristband around his arm. This wristband is very special among thieves, as it's to show mockery and foolishness to whomever wears it.

Turns out, that stone was a setup for thieves to be tricked into doing the mansion owners bidding. Not in a bad way though. Therion is told about a deal he is basically forced to agree with. Return the 3 missing Dragonstones back to their owners, and the wristband will come off. He of course says yes, and off he goes. That's Therion's story without giving away too many spoilers.

I think Therion's story is my favorite simply because of the character. I think Thiefs in games always have the same kind of gameplay. Snarky and sarcastic attitudes, but serious and dangerous when angered or in battle. Seemingly always has tricks up their sleeves too, and typically armed with some kind of dagger or sword, having quick speeds and attavks for extra stealth like movements. Something about this setup just really draws me in, so that's probably why I liked Therion the most. Not to mention is overall design is just cool, and has purple, my favorite color.

From what I described of Therion's story, I only talked about the plain and obvious tale that's told to the player from the start of the game. I didn't want to spoil the actual story in this route, but it's the reason I love Therion's route.

As for battling, Therion acts like the coniving Thief he is during a fight too. Wielding a Knife and sword, inflicting debuffs and tricks onto opponents, all while doing it quickly and swiftly too. Therion's attack is mainly based on his Speed stat, so it's important to have that high. So I mainly used Therion as an enemy debuffer and damage dealer.

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Alfyn was the next character I brought onto my team, as he seemed the closest to Therion. Thankfully, Alfyn is an apothecary, meaning I had a healer early on my team. That was very good to have, especcially early on. Alfyn stayed as my main healer throughout the game, basically being another staple to my main team.

As stated, Alfyn is an apothecary. He helps out all the sick people in his village, all for the low price of...nothing! He does it all for free. Him and his best friend Zeph are both apothecaries actually, both with similar dreams. Wandering the realm, helping out as much as they can. Alfyn of course, actually does this. He travels the world helping anyone in need for free, just as someone did the same for him. Whether the person in need is a thief that backstabs Alfyn, or others that have been tricked into taking bad substances from a rival apothecary. Alfyn tries to help as many people as he can.

On the surface, the story sounds very light hearted. An Apothecary strolling the land to help people in need, all while charging not even a penny. But this story has it's dark moments, really dark moments. Some of the twists are quite shocking. That's one of the reasons I was interested in Alfyn's story until the end.

As for in battle, usually, Healers are typically pretty weak. But Alfyn? I found him to be incredibly strong and OP mid game. His Amputation Skill in particular is super strong, and his Empoison ability to Poison enemies up for 9 turns can help deal a bunch of damage every turn. Truthfully I barely used Alfyn as a healer at all.

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Despite being closer to Primrose after getting Alfyn, I decided to go another direction. Instead I went towards the woods and eventually found H'aanit, a huntress. H'aanit became another staple of my team due to her special ability to capture and send monsters into battle for her. It can be very OP sometimes, especcially early game. Sometimes I would deal over 15,000 damage with the right setup done. Basically, I found H'aanit to be a great damage dealer/killer.

H'aanit's story starts in a forestry area filled with nothing but hunters. H'aanit's parents both died when she was younger, so another big named hunter known as Z'aanta took her in and showed her the way of being a hunter. Somewhere along the line both of them get animal companions. Z'aanta gets a wolf named Hägen, and H'aanit get's a snow leopard named Linde. After this, Z'aanta gets tasked to hunt down and kill a large beast known as Redeye. So he sets out on an adventure himself with Hägen by his side...But a year es, without any sign of him coming back. The only thing sent by him was one letter to H'aanit.

Surely this would cause some concern, yes? Even more concern is when Hägen returns back to their village, alone, with no sign of Z'aanta. Without much hesitation, H'aanit knew it was time to set out on a journey for herself and find Z'aanta. Later down the line...well, I don't think i'll spoil the rest. But let's just say it's definitely an interesting story.

I enjoyed H'aanit's story quite a lot. While the special speaking patterns of her native accent can be a little annoying sometimes (especcially during the no voice-acting segments), that's not what her story is about. The story is about a troubled hunter, traveling the realm of Orsterra to avenge her master and rid the evil of this world.

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Ophilia was the fourth member I nabbed onto my team, but was not always a main staple of the team. See, there are 8 characters in this game with different stories, and I wanted to play the stories at the same time, chapter to chapter. Because of this, I needed to switch characters sometimes, and I would always replace Ophilia with another character. She was still on the main team though, just always being switched out. Either way, she's another healer, so that's cool.

Ophilia's story starts off focusing about religion. I'm not the most religious guy, so stuff like that is not typically interesting to me. Thankfully that's not what the entire story is about, as it definitely expands upon that.

Sister Ophilia is much like H'aanit, an orphan who's parents died when she was younger. She was adopted by The Archbishop of her town, Flamesgrace. Because of this, Ophilia helps serve the "Order of the Flame". To give a small TL:DR of her religion/story, they do not believe in gods, but instead believe in special flames lighten up across Orsterra, that were created by gods. These flames protect the land of Orsterra from...? idk, something.

Every certain # of years, a member of the Church must go to each flame and re-kindle it to keep it's flame bright. Originally, Ophilia's sister Lianna was supposed to embark on this quest. However, her father (and Ophilia's adoptive father) has grown old and sick. Lianna did not want to leave her fathers side, but knew she needed to because it was her duty to re-kindle the flames. Instead, Ophilia decides to take her place and re-kindle the flames herself, so Lianna can stay by their father's side. And now, Ophilia's on a journey to re-kindle the flames, while also dealing with plenty of disruptions.

Fun fact: Ophilia's sister, Lianna, is voiced by the same voice actor of Bernadetta from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. As you may know, I am a big Bernie and FE:TH fan, so it was pretty easy to tell. That's not the only FE:TH voice actor though!

In battle, nothing big for Ophilia. She makes a great healer since she can heal multiple people at a time, and can also deal Light based attacks too. But other than that, she's nothing big...But! That's only if she were to be kept in her normal job, I had Ophilia become a Scholar too, and she became absolutely powerful. Havibg a character know Fire, Ice, Thunder and Light bases attacks all in one. Very helpful when needed.

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Now we're at Cyrus, the first pick I was gonna originally go with. While Cyrus's story may seem boring from the start, it becomes SUPER interesting. Definitely my second favorite story. I was honestly suprised how much I enjoyed this story. I hate school esc vibes, or learning kind of stuff, but this was different.

Cyrus is a scholar, a teacher in Atlasdam. Along with his focus, his quest for knowledge is unparalleled, always trying to learn more while sharing it with others. During his time he learns of a special tome in their campus's library, in their Secret Archive, which only certain people can access. He looked for a tome known as "From the Far Reaches of Hell." Upon looking for the tome it's...missing! This tome has many dark secrets that should not be shared with the world.

So he decides to go look for it! Again, as I said, the story doesn't sound that interesting from the start of it. But it gets a lot more interesting...Not that I will be talking about it though, since I don't want to spoil it. For a story about a Scholar simply looking for a tome, it gets dark fast. It's like Alfyn's story.

When it comes to battling now, we're getting to the part of my playthrough where I just did random stuff with these characters. As I said with Ophilia, being a Scholar is great for elemental attacks. But I also made Cyrus a Merchant due to just needing extra weapons to attack and break.

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Tressa's story is a lot different compared to the other stories, it's way more light hearted and cheery, rather than deep and mysterious like the other stories. It's nice having a more light toned story but, I won't lie, this is probably my least favorite story because of that. I much more prefer the darker, grimmingly deep written stories over something light and simple.

Tressa is a young Merchant, she helps sell items at her mom and dad's shop down in Rippletide, her home town by the sea. One day when she is tasked to stock up the shop, Pirates loot and pillage the townspeople there. Not much is taken, but Tressa is determined to take it back. In her journey to take it back, she meets some trouble along the way, but gets back the stolen goods safely.

At the same time, Tressa meets this Captain of a Merchant ship, that sails across the sea moving many rare objects and rarities. Tressa buy's one of these treasures from the Captain, with that being a lost journal from an unnamed adventurer. As Tressa reads through the journal, she makes the decision to become a traveling merchant and follow the same adventure this journal talks about, while writing down her own journey.

That's about it. Truthfully it could have been summarized in a few sentences, but I don't want to show obvious biasness against the story.

I didn't use Tressa a lot in battle, only when grinding, or progressing her story. But appearantly she is super overpowered because of one move, that I barely used. Hired Help. Tressa can hire a multitude of people to attack in combat for her, but at the expence of actually having to use your in game money for it. I guess this move alone is super good, but I never really used it that much

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Olberic's route is a very interesting one, and another one of my favorite's. It's possibly the most in depth, well written story out of the bunch. A story filled with vengance, doubtfulness, and the urge to learn the truth behind why Olberic wields his mighty sword. To learn what his desire is to fight, and know the full truth behind the fall of his home town, Hornburg, and his fallen king too.

Olberic is a warrior, and a mighty one at that, with having the title of "The Unbending Blade". During a great battle at Hornburg some years in the past, his king was slain right infront of his eyes, and his hometown fell to ruins. All from one specific person. A trusted ally, a fellow warrior of Hornburg, a friend. Backstabbing their king, and scaring Olberic.

Years and Olberic is found living in a smaller town. He's a sort of protector of the town there, and it shows, as he protects the place from bandits. Bandits who work under that one specific enemy previously mentioned. Knowing this, Olberic sets out on an adventure to find that backstabbing enemy, and get the answers to why he did what he did.

Personally I would love to talk about the story immensely, but even I don't want to spoil the whole thing. I already feel like I said too much, truthfully you should see it for yourself.

In Battle, Olberic has high defence and attack stats, but low speed and evasion stats. Basically a tank character, that's used to absorb all the hits, while also dealing a lot of damage back at enemies. Just because I could, I made Olberic an Apothecary, so he can heal himself when needed.

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Primrose is another very popular character I seeing a lot around Octopath's release date...i'm sure you're wondering why she is popular, and if you can't tell, oh boy. Despite the easy jokes to make about her, the story that goes along with Primrose is another amazing story. Deceit, death, and vengance, again!

Primrose was a Princess of House Azelhart, a house in the kingdom of Noblecourt. Her house fell when she was young, all because her father was stabbed and killed, right infront of her child eyes too. Killed by 3 men, all marked with a Crow tattoo. One had a right wing, one had the left wing, and the other had a head. Years and Primrose now resides in Sunshade as a Dancer, winning the crowds attention (and money) by dancing on stage.

She does this knowing full well that one member of the Crow Marked men visits from time to time. And one day, she finds him, and follows him out of Sunshade. And now, her journey is set. Find and kill each member marked with the crow, to avenge house Azelhart, and more importantly, avenge her father.

Out of the four extra characters I didn't use in battle that much, Primrose was the easiest to add onto my team. I didn't used her buffing skills that much, so she was basically just a character to deal extra knife damage to enemies. She didn't add anything major to the team, but didn't take anything away either, and i'd say that's pretty good

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Here I just want to talk about a couple of things I enjoyed, and rant about some problems I ran into while playing.

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Ranking the stories

Reminder this is just my personal opinion.

1. Therion

2. Cyrus

3. Olberic

4. H'aanit

5. Primrose

6. Alfyn

7. Ophilia

8. Tressa

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Beautifal art style

The biggest thing that caught my eye with it's game, it's amazing artstyle. I love it when developers mix 2D and 3D into one. And I don't mean 2.5D, like the New Suped Mario series. I mean like the way Octopath did it. 2D Sprites, on a 3D overworld. I said previously that it reminded me of some older Pokemon games, and now seeing that exact style in HD with amazing lighting and all. It makes me wish for a Pokemon game to look like this again.

I think it's mainly the lighting in this game that makes it look so beautifal. Everything shines with those crisp 2D Sprites, but still keeps it looking like a modern game by not giving the feeling of a retro inspired game.

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Unique and cool combat

Octopath doesn't have the most unique combat system, but it does things a little different then most others do. But for the most part, it's basic turn-based combat.

First off, the player can now see when they can attack, and when opponents can attack. And I believe it depends on how much Speed a character has in game from armor and such. For me, Therion was almost always hitting first due to his high speed. However! If you defended yourself in the previous turn, that character will then be able to attack earlier in the next turn.

Another thing Octopath adds two distinct things in it's combat. Break and Boost. I'll start with Break first.

Breaking, in this game, is when an enemy takes enough damage to destroy it's armor, and take more damage. Bresking an enemy also makes it so they can't attack next turn. To Break enemies, you have to hit them with specific attacks they are weak too, whether it's weapons or elemental attacks. Each enemy has it's own weaknesses, and it can take a while to find what they are, unless you use a guide.

Breaking adds a very special hint of skill to the combat, and makes the player focus around breaking an enemy, rather than just killing it. Basically it's an anti "spam the A button" tactic.

Boosting is a bit more special though. After a party member gains a bit of BP (Boost Points), the player can press the Shoulder buttons to activate Boost. By using boost, it increases many different things. Whether it's the amount of turns something lasts, or increased damage output, or the character just attacks multiple times. Using Boost in the right moments add even more tactic gameplay to the battle system, and makes the player thing when is the best time to use it.

Overall, really loved how they spiced up the battle system.

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Very grindy game

Alright, now is where I start complaining about the game. I'm pretty ok with some grinding in RPG's. If it takes me a an hour or two, that's ok I suppose. Grinding in games is never usually that fun, but it's apart of the experience sometimes.

But Octopath? Yikes, they took this up to another level. It is insanely annoying to grind in this game, and it's almot mandatory to grind constantly. You have 8 party in total, but can only have 4 out at a time. This sometimes makes it so you have 4 characters all at level 30, and then 4 more in reserve, at level 10. Because of this, the player is forced to do 2 things.

1. Grind up the 4 characters in reserve for every chapter, and play each chapter at a time.

2. Finish 4 characters stories, then go back to the very underleveled , and finish their stories.

And let's not forget the secret third option:

3. Stop playing the game.

Seriously, this is one of the worst parts about Octopath.

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should talk to eachother more

This is one complaint I saw multiple times from some friends, and I didn't really think it would bother that much. Basically what it was is the wish of having the party communicate with eachother more.

The party doesn't communicate much with eachother except for when new ones are recruited, and occasionally you'll be able to hear them to talk to eachother after a cutscene, discussing what just took place. But that's about it.

I know the main point for doing this was to make it seem like each characters stories are diconnected from eachother, but happening at the same time, and they all are just traveling together helping eachother. But that just feels, awkward and weird sometimes. Idk, I just don't really like it.

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Sidequests are annoying to do.

For once, I actually wanted to do sidequests in an RPG. But only because I was told they would make grinding easier. But for some reason, the developers thought it would be a good ides to make sidequests incredibly dumb to actually complete.

First of all, you can't make it so sidequests are your main objective to do. As someone who played this game after two Xenoblade games, I kinda expected it to be here too just because I thought they did a good job of making sidequests obvious in those games. Since you could make them your main objective, it will tell you where you need to go to complete it. But since that's not in Octopath, you have to figure it out yourself.

My second gripe with the sidequests is that there is no list of sidequests you've gathered in game. So if you ever wanna look at a sidequest that has been given to you, you gotta hunt down the specific NPC that told you about it, and re-read what they said to you. Not that it will matter since the NPC's give such dull hints, and sometimes none at all!

Really killed my motivation to do sidequests.

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Octopath Traveler is yet another amazing RPG, that got stuck with bad moments that hinder games fun. While I would love to praise the game for being an amazing RPG, possibly one of the best i've played, those specific moments of heavy grinding just really take a tole on the games fun level. It can't be ignored, it's a problem, and a very severe problem. If those problems were to have gone away, this game would have been amazing.

I realize it is ironic to give the game an 8/10, but I truthfully think it's score the game deserves. The grindy aspects alone shifted the game down a whole two tiers, and then those extra little things I mentioned lowered the score too. But what made me raise it was just how great the stories are, and how amazing the battle system actually is.

I noticed that the more I played the game, the more I wanted to finish it. The more I got enveloped in the stories. Granted there were the moments of not wanting to play because of grinding, but after getting ed those parts, the game is amazing. I truthfully think this is a 10/10 game, it's just those major problems thst hinder the games fun and motivation, and thst really killed the mood a lot. So i'm ranking it appropriately.

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