Octopath Traveller is a story of stories. Eight travellers agree to unite in their travels, following their own goals while they wander the world. From a ruthless thief to a pious knight, each is given the chance to tell their own tale, and occasionally take centre stage while following their own arc. In layman’s terms, it’s the Samurai Champloo of JRPGs, and the story is every bit as good as you would think from that comparison.
At one moment you can be participating in a heist, at another investigating a missing member of a character’s family, or hunting for a tome of lost knowledge. The game proves to be bizarrely episodic, but through this it allows every one of Octopath Traveller’s characters to have far more distinction than the usual divide between protagonist and supporting cast.
The combat system is extremely well developed, and proves to be elegantly simplistic. It’s a turn-based system which hinges on exploiting weaknesses in foes and utilising Bonus Points to augment skills. You can generate these during fights and choosing when to use them allows players to chain together potentially devastating strikes if conserved and used correctly. It makes battles remarkably engaging, and it’s one of the best examples since Chrono Trigger on how a game can make a simple but tactically complex system.
Even without this, the side-quests prove to be engaging even when their rewards are lacking. This is largely thanks to the Path action system the game utilises, where characters can perform tasks relating to their role outside of combat. These can open up any number of new opportunities, with the likes of Ophilia the priest being able to recruit NPCs, or Olberic the knight to challenge people to duels. This offers the game a much higher level of replay value than the average JRPG.
Where Octopath Traveller fails to fully succeed lies largely in how it fails to fully debunk a few underlying problems within the JRPG genre. There are multiple points where the game descends into a grind, typically when you’re up against a brick wall of a boss. This drags the story to a screeching halt and, even without these narrative speed-bumps, this only further highlights a few problems with the story structure. While juggling between plots, several stories resort to very abrupt conclusions to close out certain elements. These prove to be very hit and miss, with some succeeding in terms of surprise drama, while others feel like a cheap way to rapidly resolve dangling plot threads.
Despite its two failings, Octopath Traveller succeeds where the likes of Lost Sphear stumbled. It manages to perfectly call back to yesteryear without falling into the same old traps. If you have a Nintendo Switch, this should be an essential addition to your gaming library.
OCTOPATH TRAVELLER / PUBLISHER: SQUARE ENIX, NINTENDO / DEVELOPER: SQUARE ENIX, ACQUIRE / PLATFORM: NINTENDO SWITCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
