Long ago I became disenchanted by JRPG’s. They were long. They were tedious. They were all the same. In a word: boring. News of a new Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest was as exciting to me as a lecture on ontological empiricism. In this genre of games, there seemed to be little in the way of innovation. So, why, you might ask, would I even bother to play Octopath Traveler (OT), a game made by the company known best for Final Fantasy? Because in OT, I found something new, something fresh. Innovative ideas and unique mechanics that gave a bloated, boring genre fresh life.
On the surface, OT seems like your average JRPG. It consists of travelling across a fantasy world. Visiting towns and villages, exploring dungeons, engaging in turn based combat, fulfilling critical story quests, and so on. However, once you look past that most superficial of surface layers, you’ll find something much more unique.
OT is unique from the second you start the game. There is no sole protagonist. No “main character,” so to speak. You are given the choice to choose whomever you would like to act as your main character from a choice of eight different playable characters. Each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and abilities (much more on that later). Even this choice is not really all that important though, as you can recruit the other seven characters easily enough in the first portion of the game (the only real restriction yo have in choosing a “main character” is that is the only character you cannot swap out of your party, until you finish their story, an odd but not game breaking design choice). These “other” characters, though, are not like normal party members of a traditional RPG, though, as they all have their own unique stories, or “paths” if you will. Recruiting one to your party does not sway that new character to abandon his own goals to join you on your quest. They are simply along for the ride, making their own quests (which will never have anything to do with the first character you chose, or any other recruited characters), a playable option. There will be optional moments for you to read banter between party members regarding the current quest you are undertaking. But it is purely optional. Just a little juice. Never critical to the current story.
I found this a very strange, but interesting way to handle a narrative in a JRPG. JRPG’s are often overstuffed with narrative, which often make little to no sense. And thanks to their usually massive lengths, become bigger than they can handle. In OT, no story is ever too big (no story is ever too amazing either, but this isn’t a narrative analysis). Each character has four “chapters” in their quest arcs. A chapter almost always plays out like so: the character visits some new town/village, experiences some dialogue heavy cut scenes, the player then needs to use that character’s special “path action” (more on those in a bit) to further along the narrative, this then unlocks a “dungeon” where the player can explore and fight monsters in random encounters (much like you would expect in any JRPG), which of course, will lead to a final boss fight, defeating the boss will lead to the current chapter’s narrative wrapping up, leading the player to go to a new town to continue the character’s story, or to choose to follow a different character’s path. The choice is totally up to the player. No one story ever takes precedence.
Because it was set up in this way, I found the narrative much more digestible. Having no overarching, world ending, massive narrative was an extremely refreshing change of pace (although, it was a bit jarring at the end of it all, that there really was no overarching narrative tying everyone together; a few stories hinted at something larger, but nothing ever came of it [EDIT: After writing this analysis, I discovered that upon completing every single obscure sidequest, a secret, unfairly overpowered, final boss unlocks, which does loosely tie together all eight characters’ stories]). Of course, this also meant that certain characters and their stories would be less than interesting to me, but you gotta take the good with the bad (except the Huntress… She and her stupid, grating, unbearable, fake old-English speech patterns can just go jump off a cliff…). And because all the stories were divided up into smaller chapters, I found that I could easily just play a bit here and a bit there, and never got overwhelmed. In this sense, OT reminded me of more of a handheld game (even though I play my Switch almost exclusively docked), due to it’s bite-sized, easy to pick up and put down, chapter structure.
With eight different characters, and eight different quests, you’d think the game might be a bit confusing on where to go and when, but OT handles this wonderfully. If you enter a town where two different stories are taking place, you choose which one to focus on (or choose not to focus on either, if you’re just in the town to do non story-related stuff, like shop, or what have you). Any and all quest related goals are also marked very clearly on the map and mini-map in a bold green coloring. So, I never found myself at a loss of where to go or what to do. With eight different quests going on at once, I found this helpful.
Enough about that, though. Let’s talk about the characters themselves. As I mentioned earlier, each character is very unique, possessing their own special talents. In OT the character classes (like thief, warrior, huntress, etc.) are called “Jobs.” With each job comes weapon proficiency, skills (special abilities that use SP [this game’s “magic/energy/mana/psynergy/whatever”], like spells and powerful attacks), support skills (passive abilities that can be bought with special “job points,” which are earned like xp), a talent, and a path action. Those last two are a little more complex, so I will go more into detail on them next.
Talents and Path actions are unique to each character, and can only be performed by that character.
Talents vary in many ways, so it is difficult to describe them in one overarching explanation. Suffice it to say, that they are abilities (activated or passive) that can only be performed by a single character. For example, the thief talent is “pick locks.” This talent allows the thief to open any purple colored treasure chest. So, if you came across one of these chests, and you did not have the thief in your party, you’re plum out of luck. Meanwhile, the apothecary’s talent is “concoct.” This is an ability that can only be used in combat, allowing the apothecary to concoct potions and poisons of varying effect. Meanwhile, the merchant’s talent will allow her to simply “find” money on the ground, while traveling the world, at random. A completely random, passive talent which the player has no control over.
While these are all rather interesting, due to the strange nature of the talents, it seemed almost pointless. It was also poorly explained by the game, as it wasn’t until many hours in that I realized they were even a thing. As I had chosen the thief as my “main” when I started the game, I had no idea you couldn’t open purple chests without him. And the Apothecary, I just thought concoct was just another “skill.”
Path actions, however, were much more clear in their design and intent. As each character has a unique talent, so too do they have a unique path action. Path actions allow the player to interact with almost any NPC in (sometimes) fun and clever ways. These actions are sometimes fun just for the sake of doing them, such as the apothecary’s ability to “inquire,” which gives the player info on the NPC (which often has no bearing), but also sometimes provides a bonus (cheaper lodgings at the inn, new weapons for sale at the shop, or even hidden items revealed in the town for you to find). Of course, some path actions were far more useful than others. I found very little use in using the huntress’s “provoke” action to pick a fight with random NPC’s using only her beasts to attack. The cleric’s “guide” action used to bring NPC’s along as a “fifth” party member was also almost never used by me. But using the thief’s “steal” path action to rob a town blind, getting a ton of free items was great.
My biggest complaint with path actions, though, is that, while each character is unique, they are also similar. Where the thief can steal, the merchant can purchase the same items, for money (naturally). The huntress can provoke fights using her trained animals, but the warrior can challenge, using all his abilities (which is much less of a handicap on his part). Some were even less unique, like the Cleric and Dancer. The Cleric guides, where the dancer allures. Both actions accomplish the same goal, the only difference is, the cleric can only guide NPCs when she’s reached a certain level, while the dancer can attempt to allure anyone, based on a percentage probability based on level. The same goes for the apothecary’s inquire and the scholar’s scrutinize.
Path actions where probabilities or the chance of failure (like losing a fight) are involved impact your “reputation” in a town. This was a needless mechanic added into the game, simply to make the probabilities of success and failure mean something. If you fail a path action five times, your reputation in the town will suffer. What this means is that you must go to the tavern and pay a random fee to restore your reputation. Unless your reputation is restored, you cannot perform any path action in that town. Once it is restored, you can go right back to trying to steal that high level item the NPC caught you trying to steal five times already. It really means nothing.
Of course, path actions play a role in completing chapters, as mentioned earlier. It’s just one part of the chapter’s cycle. But I personally found it more fun to use at my leisure. Of course, I also found it a bit tedious. Every NPC I encountered, I’d inquire for any bonuses, then I’d rob them blind. Then I’d go to the next new NPC and rinse and repeat. I’m often the type of gamer who will talk to any new NPC I encounter, to get the full experience of the game, but with this repetitive process of path actions, I often found myself skipping over that actual talking part of the encounter, because I was already doing so much with the NPC as it was. This often led to me overlooking many clues to solving the game’s many side quests (side quests in this game often make use of path actions, but are presented in such a vague way, I rarely knew what I was supposed to do; I’d either finish the quest by accident, or just leave it unfinished).
So, as I’ve said, each character is pretty unique. But you can only have a party of four. This means four of the possible eight characters are left to do nothing and gain no XP as you play. This was an annoying, archaic design choice, that made me completely neglect half of my team. This was made all the easier to do due to the bizarre way you handled part members. It wasn’t an option in the menu to just swap them in and out, or to even equip them. No, you had to visit a tavern if you wanted to do anything with your party members not currently in your party. Such an odd design choice, and one that I did not appreciate at all.
Luckily, this could be somewhat offset by secondary jobs. As I said before, each character has a single base job, giving them access to a multitude of abilities. Well, if a player is industrious enough to go exploring, they may come across certain shrines, which will give them access to a secondary job. Each character can take on the secondary job of any other character, to shore up your party’s weaknesses and bolster their strengths. For example, I had my apothecary take on the cleric secondary job to give him full access to the game’s repertoire of healing abilities.
It is worth noting, though, that secondary jobs give access to only the weapons, skills, and support skills of the job. Talents and path actions are strictly limited to that specific character.
There are also four secret shrines/dungeons that give access to four secret secondary jobs (two of which are amazing, the other two, though, are strangely pointless). Players had better be prepared before attempting to access these shrines however, as the recommended level is fifty (which is very high for this game) and the bosses protecting these jobs are no joke.
Speaking of bosses, let’s talk about combat. My only real complaint about combat is the frequency at which it occurs. I have never been shy about my stance on random encounters. They’re awful. It is one of the worst mechanics in an RPG. I hate them. And in OT, they happen at a far too frequent rate. I would have just loved to be able to walk for more than ten seconds in a dungeon, without entering yet another battle scene.
Luckily, the combat in OT is one of the most innovative things about the game. When fighting an enemy, The enemy has a set of weaknesses displayed below it (or a set of “?” boxes, if the enemy has never been fought before). Discovering and using the enemy’s weaknesses against it is a satisfying feeling in OT. Using a certain weapon or spell that an enemy is weak against, will result in the enemy’s “break counter” to go down. Once that number reaches zero, the enemy will be stunned for one turn. Attacking a stunned enemy will result in a lot more damage. As the game makes use of initiatives (turn orders), deciding who to break and when, adds a fun layer of strategy to the basic turn based combat model.
Added onto this are boost points. Boost points accrue naturally throughout the fight (to a maximum of five). Using boost points in battle can have varying effects for the character. The player can “boost” an attack up to three times. Boosting a standard, physical attack will result in the character attacking that many more times in one go (essential for breaking an enemy fast). Boosting a skill will make the skill that much more powerful (great for attacking broken enemies). And Boosting a boon giving skill will make the boon last many more turns.
While incredibly simple concepts, these two aspects made combat so much more enjoyable and much more strategic. I wasn’t just scrolling through menus to select the same attack over and over. I was legitimately thinking out thoughtful strategies to finish the fight as efficiently as possible. And boss fights were a whole other beast, as they could often change their weakness, enhance their break numbers, and so on.
But again, the sheer rate of encounters made even the most fun combat get dull and annoying over time. Thankfully, no dungeon was ever too large. In fact it struck me as almost odd how simple the dungeons were, in design. They never seemed too big. And thanks to the incredibly unique art style, they were packed with secret paths, leading to treasure chests. Unfortunately, no treasure chest was ever really all that amazing. Usually just money, or HP/SP/BP restoring items.
OT is certainly not a perfect RPG. The random encounters are awful, the equipment and party UI’s are a joke, the huntress made me want to tear off my own ears, and many narrative cut scenes ran for far too long, just to tell a boring, cliched story.
But beyond those small annoyances, there is a rather fantastic and innovative game full of fun moments to be had.
