11 votes

Octopath Traveler releases tomorrow (July 13) on Nintendo Switch. Anyone preordered and/or have thoughts on the June demo?

I played the older 2017 demo with 2 characters and really liked the gameplay and visuals. Great old-school feel, yet very polished to feel somehow modern and unique, with novel mechanics like the character-specific skills or "paths" when interacting with NPCs.

I also tried the new June 2018 demo for a few minutes as Tressa. It was fun but jarring with few interactable NPCs and very little in the way of introductory story or cutscenes, fewer than I remembered from the old demo. I wasn't sure if this was because it was still just another demo, so I've decided to hold off and start from scratch in the full game. (The save file carries over from the June demo to the full game.)

I would normally have preordered, except for my extended backlog from the Steam summer sale.

There's a review roundup on Reddit in /r/JRPG: https://old.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/8ybg3i/octopath_traveller_review_megathread/ -- looks like a lot of 8's and 9's with a meta score around 84/100.

6 comments

  1. [2]
    demifiend
    Link
    For some reason the whole premise of being able to choose your main and having everybody's stories intersect reminds me of Romancing SaGa. I won't be playing it anytime soon, though, because I...

    For some reason the whole premise of being able to choose your main and having everybody's stories intersect reminds me of Romancing SaGa. I won't be playing it anytime soon, though, because I don't have a Switch and can't justify buying one right now.

    2 votes
    1. talklittle
      Link Parent
      You're right, I've seen the Romancing SaGa comparison all over the place, although I haven't played any of them and can't offer a firsthand opinion. Wikipedia doesn't show any common...

      You're right, I've seen the Romancing SaGa comparison all over the place, although I haven't played any of them and can't offer a firsthand opinion. Wikipedia doesn't show any common directors/designers between the two series -- SaGa vs. Octopath -- but there's surely some inspiration there.

      1 vote
  2. Defluo
    Link
    I pre-ordered it! I only played the 2017 demo with just the dancer character. I chose not to play the new demo or even try the 2017 demo with the warrior because I wanted to save the rest of the...

    I pre-ordered it! I only played the 2017 demo with just the dancer character. I chose not to play the new demo or even try the 2017 demo with the warrior because I wanted to save the rest of the story for the full game. I really love the fight mechanics and the difficulty level of the boss fight.

    I was into the dancer's story. Something about pixelated sprites makes it easier for me to empathize with them as opposed to a highly detailed 3d model of a character.

    I really hope there are multiple save slots because my girlfriend and I are both dying to play it.

    2 votes
  3. [2]
    captain_cardinal
    Link
    Looks interesting to me, but I see some complaints out there about lack of a cohesive story. It looks worth playing to me.

    Looks interesting to me, but I see some complaints out there about lack of a cohesive story. It looks worth playing to me.

    1 vote
    1. talklittle
      Link Parent
      Yeah I definitely would prefer more story overlap. To be fair, given the open ended nature of the game where you can recruit any of the 8 in any order -- and even complete the game without all 8?...

      Yeah I definitely would prefer more story overlap. To be fair, given the open ended nature of the game where you can recruit any of the 8 in any order -- and even complete the game without all 8? -- that would be an exponential explosion in development work to have all the desired interactions. It's Square Enix, so budget wouldn't be an issue, but still, that would be really time-consuming to develop and test.

      Wonder if AI-assisted game development could possibly help with this in the future? Either generating simple dialogue/interactions, or help on the testing side to find out which plot scenarios are lacking. AI composed dialogue might be cheap and superficial, but better than nothing, I guess?

      2 votes
  4. DMonitor
    Link
    I have the benefit of having a friend who is intensely obsessed with RPGs. He introduced me to the Xenoblade Chronicles series, and I cannot repay him for it. I’m going to wait until he finishes...

    I have the benefit of having a friend who is intensely obsessed with RPGs. He introduced me to the Xenoblade Chronicles series, and I cannot repay him for it.

    I’m going to wait until he finishes to hear his verdict.

    1 vote