Octopath Traveler - Be a Dancer, or a Merchant!

That’s what my gut says too. Only a minor bummer – I’m still excited for it. I just doubt I’ll play through it more than once. More likely I’ll play through once and then check YouTube for whatever I missed.

Didn’t somebody say upthread that when you meet a new character you had the option to play their intro? That would strongly suggest the former, but without the need to replay everything.

That was me, and that’s why I also think it’s going to work the way we think it is. It’s fine, the other way would have been mind blowing and pretty awesome for sure, but I think what it will be is going to be memorable and enjoyable all the same.

memjoyable.

You’re welcome!

Yes, I’ve done it in the demo. Started with the Cleric and then made my way down to the Scholar’s starting city. When you meet you can just add him to the party, or play through his origin from the beginning. All the starting character cities are marked in green on the world map so no matter where you start you can go through and collect everybody and play their stories. Each character has their own specific goal in mind when they set off for adventure, and in the first three hours with the demo I didn’t encounter a distinct “main” storyline. Presumably that will emerge deeper in the game as the different character threads start to intersect.

Hahaha I started with the scholar too, and got my ass beat by the boss the first time too!

Second time I went for all the chests, so I got level 5 and enough JP for a new spell, so the fight was easier.

Spend Mana. You are a caster, so just spend mana (SP) in almost every turn. Every time you level up you fill your mana, so spend it a lot in early levels because you level up quickly.

Famitsu review is in:

Octopath Traveler (Switch) – 9/9/9/9 [36/40]

Does that mean four separate reviewers at Famitsu loved it or do they score their reviews in separate categories (sound, control, graphics, whatever the fourth was) like GamePro magazine in the ‘90s?

I still don’t like Octopath’s art style, but I wouldn’t mind a meatier RPG-type game to close out the summer with, especially one I can play in Switch’s portable mode.

Yes, theoretically. Though I’ve been told by people who pay more attention to the Japanese gaming scene than I do that Famitsu’s reviews make minimal attempts at critical analysis, just cheerleading big names, and that the reviews just regurgitate bullet points from the box.

Yeah, I heard similar - their reviews used to be highly regarded way back in the days of yore but now they’re a shadow of their former selves. Kind of like Edge magazine.

Personally I’m a bit uncertain if I’ll get into it - I played the latest demo but I’m not sure I get on with random encounters anymore.

Sucks that this is Switch exclusive, but I admit I was shocked when I read a $60 pricetag, surely if it encases the SNES era of JRPGs (and upgrades them with modern bells and whistles) I could see $40 being the maximum for a pixel art game.

Owlboy, as gorgeous as it was, is only $25, and while it’s probably not as lengthy as an RPG, in general RPGs have never had price tags attached to length, which funny enough despite loving them, was what i’d always pick out once a month when I got a new game because they held up longer, so i’m not factoring that in.

Is there any speculation of the length? It would definitely need to be at least a 30 hour endeavor for me, I’d wait for a sale. If the new Pokemon games coming deliver the fresh approach I’ve been hoping for it’ll push me over the edge and the Switch will be the first console I’ve owned since PS3

It’s usually more about the size of the development team and the resources put into the game to make it what it is, than the length of the game. Owlboy could have been made by a much smaller team; certainly big RPG’s with lots of ideas are going to be quite a bit more expensive to develop than a platformer would be, generally speaking. Plus Nintendo puts a premium on all their exclusive titles, they’re sort of like the Apple of the gaming world.

I totally get that, I’m working on a game, and 10,000 in revenue for me would be A LOT different for a team, but at the same time, we can’t exactly say it’s fair to revisit that on the player.

It’s just a hard concept to wrap my head around, I remember paying 60 bucks for Super Mario RPG, at the time, I thought it was one of the BEST LOOKING GAMES on SNES, the top of technology so it was totally worth it. I guess after seeing the era of Playstation and 3D make a lot of people and my friends leave the 2D era in the past, it’s bizarre, bold, and partly revolutionary to slap a 60 dollar tag on a nostalgic 2D SQEX experience.

Heck even the 3D Secret of Mana Remake (despite seeming like a let down) in full 3D which is a CLASSIC RPG that I highly regard came with a $40 tag.

So are we talking about the visuals/art style then? Because I don’t think choosing to make a game look pixel art vs. going with a more “modern” 3D texture look should change what you command for the game, either. Do you feel like Ni no Kuni 2 is fairly priced at $60 because it’s super pretty?

I don’t know why anyone thinks Octopath Traveler would be anything less than $60 on any platform except 3DS/Vita at this point, considering it’s very clear that it’s a longform RPG, sold at retail, with eight fully-formed player characters, each with unique gameplay mechanics and a different manner of interacting with the world. The art style is irrelevant, especially for a company like Square Enix.

I mean, i’m not saying it’s perfect, or my thinking is justified, I’m just saying it’s definitely pretty unprecedented and there are a lot of things gamers indulged that got carried away, like loot boxes, and the abysmal state of “F2P” mobile gaming. It seems there’s definitely some people who are unsure and people who are onboard, does this mean a new era of big studio pixel games with large price tags? Also, personally I feel like pixel art is a huge amount of the bread and butter of the indie scene so i’m definitely opposed to the market being look at long term by bigger studios :P

It’s also not really literally the art style I was getting at, it was more so with how digital tech is treated as a whole, new iphone comes out, old iphone takes a price drop, photoshop 7 comes out, 6 gets a pricedrop, so I guess I view it in that light, which connects back into the dawn of the Playstation era where super nintendo game’s used price at my local game store definitely changed and they were trying to price them out and push the 32bit stuff, the in this analogy pixel art is the “old” tech. So for me it’s kind of like saying here’s this old gen iPhone we have BUT, we gave it a unique processor that does some flashy stuff the old one didn’t,it’s 100% better, and can compete with the iphone 7 (but doesn’t use the same technology or as expensive of parts but for lovers of the old iphone it’s negligible) Obviously is very likely that to actually MAKE the game they are using current tech but try to look at the bigger idea rather than the literal side by side.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense, or if the argument i’m making is being looked at from a neutral stand point but it makes sense to me. And again, this is only my argument, I didn’t make any claims as to whether or not it deserved the price tag or not, it’s simply to my knowledge unheard of for a reputable company to put a AAA price on a pixel game in this era, so when something like this happens it’s natural for me to speculate and consider the different components.

But it’s not though. I get where you are coming from, but it’s a completely legitimate artistic style (and “pixel art” spans a lot of different things, I know we’re talking about 16-bit era JRPGs in particular here). Indeed, two different games emulating the SNES style can still look very different, referring specifically to the quality of pixels/engine (as it were). A game can look like an RPG maker game, or it can look much better (IMO).

This isn’t some indie with gamer maker XVI or whatever number they are on. It’s much better looking, albeit with a very deliberately retro look. I’m a bit surprised at the price, but I am still going to pay for it.

Speaking of the game, I haven’t found an answer to this yet. But is ther eno way to change the random encounter frequency? Honestly, this was the best part of the Bravely series. Every JRPG should include this.

I mean, there is still the point that SE did a remake of Secret of Mana in 3D a classic and only slapped a $40 tag on it, so I guess again I’m just wrapping my head around it. Personally, because game dev soaks up all my funds I’m pretty much never in a position to drop 60 bucks on a game unless it is something I can’t bare not to have, but I also imagine if I things were different I’d be less critical of price tags.

  1. Isn’t that actual 3d though?

  2. The Secret of Mana remake looks like a whale’s cancerous butthole.

Obviously some of this is to taste but the Octopath engine is a very different beast than the Mana remake. And I don’t think there exists on this planet a serious argument that the latter looks better than the former in any objective sense. That remake was slapdash and disappointing (ugly, buggy).

Because one game is like that doesn’t mean another is like that.

I don’t really see the cost inputs for a work of entertainment as being important to the price I pay for it.