The late 1990s were a time for experimentation especially with the rise of 3D gaming on consoles. One of the developers on the forefront of that experimentation and eventual revolution was none other than SquareSoft – the future Square Enix. Square’s “Final Fantasy” franchise exploded in popularity during the Playstation era; giving way to developers embracing the genre and games that in year’s past wouldn’t see the light of day on western shores.
Fast forward two decades later and RPGs, while not as popular as they once were, still provide immaculate avenues to tell stories in video games unlike any other gaming genre – a great example of this occurred in 2018 when “Octopath Traveler” was released. Featuring turn-based gameplay, stylized pixel graphics and a narrative where players fit together eight branching stories, “Octopath Traveler” gained praise and accolades aplenty. Following the release of a mobile prequel, the obvious nature of a sequel was on the horizon and finally arrived in 2023. Being a fan of the original release and old school RPGs like it, I gladly bought “Octopath Traveler II” with the intent of seeing everything this new adventure had to offer.
Did I Complete “Octopath Traveler II”?
Though presented as a sequel, “Octopath Traveler II” from a narrative perspective is a completely fresh adventure that allows gamers who didn’t play the first game a chance to enter this one without needing any backstory or knowledge of the previous entry’s events. But certain mechanical presentations and player-designated choices are rooted in the “Octopath Traveler” standard including picking one character that cannot be removed from the active party until their story is seen all the way through – in this gamer’s case that protagonist was Hikari representing the “Warrior” class.
Traveling throughout the massive land of Solistia, the player is able to recruit the remaining seven protagonists at any time in any order, though the game does warn of areas discovered and hidden on the map until the player reaches its entry point of the recommended level; meaning it may be easier to recruit, say, the dancer Agnea than Osvald of the “Scholar” class as the latter is found on the opposite end of the map if the player initially picked a starting character located on the western continent like Hikari.
It would take over 120 hours for yours truly to see the true ending after completing every characters’ stories including the newly-implemented “Crossed Paths” two-chapter adventures featuring two of the Travelers solving a particular mystery while getting to know one of their new allies a little better such as Throne – an orphaned thief – and the not-so-pious cleric Temenos. Before finishing the final mission and overcoming the last boss, I made sure to complete every side story with some taking some deep thinking as to how they can be completed like helping a young woman embrace her own mortality in a positive light instead of longing for death, or making a spoiled child understand his attitude will not make his father love him more.
Just like the original “Octopath”, an optional super boss awaits those who are ready to challenge it – a fight that took me at least three hours to prepare for and another hour or so to actually overcome mostly due to experimenting with equipment set-ups and a sheer luck of the draw in regards to character turn order. Exploring the world in full, collecting musical records connected to the magnificent soundtrack, and defeating all the game’s major enemies provided another platinum trophy.
What Makes “Octopath Traveler II” Unique?
Though set in a new land during a period of time where steam power runs the world instead of the original game’s more medieval aesthetic, the basis of almost everything about “Octopath Traveler II” comes from the systems established in 2018 and improved upon to ensure this sequel is both more player friendly and just as challenging during those harrowing dungeons both mandatory and optional. As noted, picking a protagonist that can’t be removed from the party until their story is fully completed is the most important choice a player must make as it will dictate their play style in the early hours and beyond.
All eight protagonists have incredible stories dedicated to their primary classes with the player unlocking the option of adding a secondary job to any character after discovering that class’s “Guild” and meeting specific requirements associated with the dojo. A bombastic battle starts off the hard-hitting Hikari’s story rooted in his “Warrior” class where the player can give him skills like “Vengeful Blade” that has Hikari counter a physical attack with a devastating sword slash. Hikari is the prince of Ku – a nation built on blood, violence, and conquest through war – and looks to change his peoples’ ways, but is stopped by his own brother who seems corrupted by a power beyond comprehension.
On the opposite end of the narrative spectrum is someone like Agnea representing the “Dancer” class that mixes buffing and debuffing abilities with certain elemental and non-elemental attacks. A figurative ray of light, Agnea delights almost everyone with her dancing abilities while attempting to reach the same level of stardom as her deceased mother and more antagonistic contemporaries.
The “Merchant” class-based Partitio adds to any team thanks to his abilities focused on spending currency/“Leaves” to hire temporary help in battle, sacrifice some of his own buffing meter, and rob the rich – the latter being tied to his hatred for capitalism and its cause for poverty that he hopes to rid the world of starting with his hometown where a crooked businessman ruined the town’s economy. Partitio also has three character-specific side stories called “The Scent of Commerce” including one where the player can spend 100,000 Leaves to buy a ship so players can freely travel through the sea to reach some of those optional dungeons and fight some tough enemies.
While Partitio could be considered something of a thief, the game’s actual “Thief” class character is Throne. As expected, Throne is able to rob enemies of items in their inventory as well as steal their HP, land sneak attacks, and even use the cover of darkness to blind enemies at the battle’s start. Throne’s story is a depressing one as she is victim of kidnapping by a group of thieves known as “The Black Snakes” that raise children to be unseen plagues on society while constantly abusing the wayward youths.
Another dark plot is that of Osvald representing the “Scholar” class – this game’s version of a black mage. Wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his wife & daughter, Osvald breaks free from his cold capture in hopes of discovering the truth behind his framing and who will pay for the destruction of his livelihood and his freedom.
Another series of murders starts the quest of white mage “Cleric” Temenos. Working as an inquisitor for the Church of the Sacred Flame, Temenos presents himself as something of a devil’s advocate when paired with a rather by-the-books trainee who too wants to reach the high level of authority associated with Temenos.
The other protagonist with a mystery to be solved is Castti the “Apothecary” – a character who can mix certain found and purchasable ingredients together to form helpful concoctions for the party or damaging potions against enemies. While having an innate knowledge of her Apothecary abilities, Castti has no memory of who she is and why she is urged to discover the truth about certain NPCs she constantly encounters and why Apothecaries are looked at with such disdain.
Unlike every other protagonist, Ochette is a “beastling” who is able to communicate with animals while having several animalistic qualities including a tail. Ochette’s “Hunter” class not only gives her the ability to wield a bow and set traps for immediate usage with the latter pushing an enemy’s next turn to the very end of a round, but also capture non-boss enemies to either recruit them for battle or cook them into beneficial stews and jerky. Ochette’s story plays more into overall narrative connecting every protagonist as she is tasked with finding legendary beasts to help her stop an unseen, though upcoming threat that may destroy the entire world.
Every character also has a “Path Action” that, depending on their method of interacting with certain NPCs may or may not ruin their reputation in whatever town they are currently occupying such as Throne failing to steal a rare sword or Hikari not overcoming a certain adversary in battle that would’ve resulted in him getting the option of learning a new skill if he did defeat his conquering NPC. Temenos can get NPCs to follow him both to every town and into battle with his “Path Action” during the day while his “Path Action” at night allows for him to gather information by fighting an NPC similar to Hikari in method and Castti & Osvald’s daytime and Hikari’s nightfall “Path Actions” in result.
Ochette uses her foods to recruit NPCs at night while having the ability to knock them out via a battle during the day just like Throne and Castti can do with their nightfall “Path Actions” minus the need to fight like the “beastling”. The same items Throne may steal, Partitio can pay for during the day thanks to his “Path Action”. At night, Partitio’s money is spent hiring help with certain NPCs providing specific abilities like saving anywhere from ten to thirty percent on the price of using a “Merchant” class’s “Hired Help” attack. Agnea’s dancing skills during the day also recruits NPCs for summoning into battle for a short period of time, and, depending on her level, will convince townspeople to give up the same goods Throne can steal and Partitio can buy when the moon rises. Osvald also has the ability to rob people of their items with his nighttime “Path Action”, but only if he can defeat them.
One of the biggest woes associated with “Octopath Traveler” was how formulaic the storytelling felt by having every story play out mostly in the same manner with plot progression being broken up by a dungeon crawl before more of that character’s story is seen leading up to that character’s final boss. While the outline is similar, the narrative presentation is different depending on the character including Osvald having two chapters playing out back to back in flashback form and having a few major battles throughout his story; while Hikari’s journey back to Ku after being exiled from his home by his tyrannical brother in hopes of stopping more bloodshed and further corruption of his sibling’s own mind sticks to the more traditional storytelling seen in the original iteration.
Unfortunately for players who may find themselves enthralled by a particular story, each new chapter is practically level locked. The suggested level party members should be for an upcoming chapter after completing the previous narrative portion may be anywhere from five to ten levels higher; meaning players will have to either grind if they aren’t near that level, or play another story closer to their current team level average. This may cause the player to wander around for hours trying to get their team up to par for what’s to come, or be forced to explore hazardous areas resulting in lost progress if their group is overwhelmed by foes between save points that may or may not be placed distressingly far apart.
The addition of two-times battle speed does help the grind slightly; though non-active party members don’t gain XP or JP (“Job Points”), unfortunately. This means certain battles may be perfect for a character not being used constantly that forces the player to either go back to the tavern and pick that character, or suffer through a dungeon; though this becomes less of a problem with the option of more secondary job slots.
Thankfully, the combat is quite entertaining no matter if the player is going through stories, taking on particular challengers, or just grinding for experience and “Job Points”. The premise is simple: With a team of up to four characters, players have to defeat enemies by whittling away their health with a variety of physical, magical, human-assisted, and beastly attacks. As the characters land certain attacks, a meter above their health will rise with the maximum of five segments – this is the “Boost Points” meter. Spending these segments will increase a protagonist’s abilities be it strengthening & extending the amount of regular attacks used in a round or making it possible to unleash devastating class-specific maneuvers.
Every enemy has a weakness or weaknesses. If the player can discover an enemy’s weakness and hit them where it hurts the most over & over again, the foe will enter a break state where they’re vulnerable to take more damage while being stunned & unable to fight back. Of course some bosses and optional enemies make things a little more complicated including summoning allies to lock their weaknesses until those minor foes are defeated. Major enemies also have super attacks that they will usually initiate during the latter-half of a fight. If the player is unable to break an enemy before that super attack is performed, expect major, if not fight-ending damage.
While the previously mentioned combat systems were established in the prior entry, this game adds something to make battles more epic: “Latent Ability”. Each character has a “Latent Ability” associated with a circular meter that fills up as characters deal and take damage. Essentially presented as a “Limit Break” a la “Final Fantasy VII”, a “Latent Ability” isn’t just some grandiose maneuver to do damage at the most opportune time when an enemy is in its “break” state.
While characters like Hikari and Ochette have devastating, offense-based “Latent Abilities”, Throne’s “Latent Ability” gives her the opportunity to act twice in a single turn and Partitio sees his “Boost Points” meter reach the maximum when his “Latent Ability” is activated. With all of these systems in place, the game’s overall difficulty and general RNG nature is connected to how well the player understands what to do, when to do it, and how effectively equipped their characters are with upgraded Job Classes, weapons, armor, and accessories.
Another addition to the overall gameplay is the day & night cycle. While the day & night cycle will dictate certain things like what “Path Action” can be used by a protagonist or what NPC will show up that may or may not be needed to complete a side quest, the time of day also changes the combat. Nighttime allows for more powerful, dangerous enemy encounters than during the day for bigger rewards if the player can overcome those nocturnal creatures. Certain characters actually thrive when fighting at night like Throne as it makes her stealing ability more effective and even gives an enemy an automatic debuff like blind. Though the game will automatically shift the setting from dawn to dusk, the player can also manually change the current time of day.
Equipment actually plays a huge role in how well characters are set up as leveling is only one part of the goal in making sure a team can conquer any foe. While there are optimum setups in regards to equipment, a majority of the time players are allowed to specialize their weapons & armor around the job classes assigned to a character. As mentioned, “Job Guilds” open up the option of adding secondary jobs to any character that isn’t already associated with that job (so you can’t, say, double up the “Warrior” class with Hikari to reap the benefits of maximizing his physical attack power and health; though other classes will accomplish that goal).
Initially, secondary job classes only allow for one character to be assigned to that job with players having to earn two extra “Licenses” by meeting certain requirements like collecting a particular item or learning a new skill to unlock the ability for more than one character to equip that secondary job at the same time.
Upon winning battles, characters in the current team will be given “Job Points” alongside experience points that, when spent, unlock “Job Skills” that can be used in battle. “Support Skills” that unlock when buying a certain amount of “Job Skills” in any class prove invaluable as players are able to mix and match these passive and active skills including a damage limit breaker skill associated with the “Warrior” class and the “Dancer” class’s “A Step Ahead” skill that allows for anyone equipped with it to get an extra turn at the start of a fight.
There are also “EX Skills” associated with each character’s primary job with the first being unlocked by completing a character’s story while the second is only gifted by reaching particular shrines hidden throughout Solistia. The “Divine Skill” is unlocked when that job class is maxed out in regards of learning every ability and can only be used with a full boost for devastating effects.
There are also four hidden job classes with two featuring very unique progression systems connected to side quests including finding rusty weapons for a blacksmith to restore (the “Armsmaster” class) and collecting certain items for an engineer to create his greatest works passed down to whomever has equipped the “Inventor” class.
From a technical aspect, “Traveler II” is masterfully done graphically and sonically. The soundtrack must be celebrated as one of the best in years, if not decades (mostly thanks to Partitio’s magnificent jazz-based themes). Voice acting is used for a majority of every interaction and presented exceptionally well from dialogue choices to the sound mixing. Sadly, one of the most requested aspects from the original game was more interaction between the protagonists.
While there are moments of encouragement and concern during fights and the previously mentioned “Crossed Paths”, there are also hidden “Travel Banter” moments between characters that is entirely voiceless and text-only. Some very heartfelt and humorous dialogue exchanges happen during these “Travel Banter” sequences that lack the benefit of voice acting. Another issue with text-only dialogue exchanges is how fast the text box disappears if the player has the game set to automatic play instead of manually hitting the “confirm” button after each statement is finished.
The lush backdrops and settings representing each town or major area in this 2.5D experience are gorgeous, as are the animations both in and out of battle. The character sprites are much cleaner in this iteration, though the gigantic pixels that make up everyone are quite large in comparison to the actual model size. This slight problem could’ve been avoided by making the character models larger so they wouldn’t look so pixelated.
Another questionable decision in regards to the model presentation is the fact each protagonist’s battle appearance changes to whatever secondary job is equipped and the player can’t change it back to the original job’s attire for some odd reason. Frame rate drops, crashes, or corrupted saves were non-existent during the equivalent of four full days of playing.
There’s so much to enjoy about “Octopath Traveler II” including magnificent storytelling complemented by rewarding and, at times, oppressive battles with the prior being hindered by level-based requirements potentially causing broken narratives if the player isn’t high leveled or willing to grind.
Should You Play “Octopath Traveler II”?
In a world where developers continuously say turn-based RPGs are a dying breed or just plain uninteresting, “Octopath Traveler II” feels like a breath of fresh air while invoking a rush of nostalgia. For all the things “Octopath II” does similar to its past contemporaries and even the franchise’s prior offering, the game somehow feels fresh, innovative, and crafted with the utmost of care to the point it stands out amongst the pack unlike any game in the genre in quite some time. “Octopath II” isn’t a perfect game due to its usage of level-based narrative progression points most likely causing players to experience character stories in a slightly jumbled manner and the lacking of protagonist interactions as many hoped for with this sequel.
Fans of “old school” RPGs will be right at home with this one, and even those who think the premise of handling eight different characters with unique narratives may sound like too much shouldn’t fear about being overwhelmed. There’s no reason fans of the genre shouldn’t buy this even at the initial asking price of sixty dollars USD (though sales have deducted at least twenty dollars from the original price as of late) because few gaming experiences compare to landing that victorious strike on a once verbose, but now broken enemy.
