Octopath Traveler - Be a Dancer, or a Merchant!

Looks like a few folks have review copies now, and watching this video in particular I learned a few things (and a few other things were mentioned I knew or suspected, but I’ll bullet point everything in case others didn’t know).

1 - While you can have any character in your party (eventually), you always have your character in the party. So if you pick Scholar to start the game with, your party will always be Scholar + 3 other members. He indicates characters not with you aren’t leveling up on their own (or not as fast) so even swapping members in and out you will always be higher level than the rest of the party, I assume?

2 - While you can recruit all the other 7 characters, you can do so in any order. This also means the characters don’t seem to have a lot of interaction with each other, which I hadn’t thought of or considered before, but now I think about it if he’s right (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) that’s a big whiff from what I can see. These characters should have feelings towards each other, some tension between two, another pair that becomes fast friends, that sort of thing. Ah well.

However, there are interactions between your character and everyone in your party as the game progresses. That seems to start in act 2, and this guy is only a few dozen hours into the game, so who knows how the story will unfold, and how it may do so depending on which character you chose (he was playing H’aanit, the huntress, I believe).

3 - He hasn’t had to, nor felt the urge to, grind at all so far. Because of the narrative structure of doing the first chapter for various (or even all, if you like) of your party members and then bouncing into the second chapters of their stories (which, I’ll be honest, confused me. I knew you could see everyone’s first chapter if you wanted but I thought past that it was only your own characters story?) and with the game world leveling up with you, rather than grinding you can just do more character stories until you are the level you want to be for the next area you are looking at exploring.

Chapter 2 definitely gets more intense/difficult though, and that seems to be as far as he’s gotten so far, so grinding may become a heavier part of the late-game, potentially. Who knows for sure.

4 - The combat mechanics don’t change as the game progresses, so far. However, he agrees that’s common in the format (and, to me, a strange thing to even consider - it’s not like D&D combat mechanics change as you level up, either, for that matter) but there are a lot more options, skills, and things going on as you level up (again, duh) so combat seems to be keeping his interest so far.

5 - He’s digging the music, it sounds like he’s really into the music and the graphics and such. Not sure how this is a “5th” thing we learned though. I guess 4 things we learned isn’t as catchy? He does mention the battle music changes every chapter, which is neat.

Now, moving on to another video the developers were recently (just this weekend) interviewed and they revealed something crazy - the 8 jobs/characters? Yeah, they aren’t all there are. 4 more hidden jobs exist in the game as well!

“We did know there would be a sub-job for each character in the game”. Me: Wut? So, no, I didn’t know that. Very cool. Sounds like you can give a Dancer, for instance, a Scholar sub-job to mix up their abilities. This is crazy to me, I had no idea.

So the 4 hidden jobs are not characters, but rather optional jobs that can be assigned as sub-jobs once unlocked. I won’t list them here in case anyone wants to be surprised/find them on their own, but know they exist and keep your eyes peeled. They do walk through them in the developer video above, however. I watched the first one and skipped the rest (for now).

That’s all I could find so far, but with the game a week away I’m certain we’ll get a lot of impressions like the above. I posted in the comments of the first video (who has the full review version) if you can do anything with encounter rates in the options menu, I’ll report back if he answers.

Jason Schreier (Kotaku’s resident JRPG fan) wrote a piece about the first 20 hours that’s actually cooled my excitement for this. He confirms the lack of character interaction. He says there is no party interaction at all in the first 20 hours outside a few one-on-one cutscenes that he didn’t find very interesting.

Of course in a lengthy game like this it’s possible the back half could really bring everyone together plot-wise but for now it sounds like it really is 8 solo-type “stories” that all share structural similarities. I think that’s unfortunate if true, I’d much rather have a grand story incorporating all the characters instead of a single plot line I can play 8 times with interchangeable leads.

Anyway I don’t always agree with Jason (he hates all the Xenoblade games) but I do think this is worth a read.

I’m not sure how many chapters there are in the game but apparently all of those previews are only allowed to cover chapter 1 so far. So even with 20 hours in those previews it sounds like there will be a lot more to it afterward. I personally like the idea of 8 independent stories and characters I get to explore thoroughly before they come together. Hopefully in practice it’s fun too.

Oh I agree, the idea of 8 independent stories that all come together to construct an overarching plot sounds amazing. It’s just from that Kotaku article (and he does mention that he’s played all the Ch 1 stuff but not yet gotten far in Ch 2) it sounds like that’s not what’s happening. All 8 characters join your party as you recruit them but really only to take part in battles. They don’t affect the overall plot at all. It’s your main characters story and that’s it really after those Ch 1 intros.

Of course that could all change by the end but at least for the first 20 hours or so it seems there’s really no meaningful interaction among the party.

I am sad that this is a switch exclusive, and that I was stupid when I bought a WiiU for the kids 2 years ago, not knowing the switch was coming out so soon after.

Not much consolation, but I wish I could play Wonderful 101 on my Switch. It is a great system. And while I loved the original DS, this system has managed to engage me in a way the PSP, Vita, and 3DS could not.

The first scholar passive skill half the random encounters.

Today Kotaku tries to breakdown exactly how the 8 characters/stories work throughout the game.

Octopath Traveler, which comes out Friday, unfolds in an entirely non-linear fashion. From the beginning, you can pick one of eight characters

Each of these characters has their own story, and you can’t remove them from your party until you beat that story, but aside from that, this choice doesn’t matter much. You can see all eight stories in a single playthrough.

You can (and should) get all eight, although you can only keep four of them in your main party at a time. As you recruit them, you’ll get the option of skipping their intro sequences, although you’ll have to go through a simple dungeon and beat a boss before you can finish each Chapter 1.

When you beat a character’s Chapter 2, you’ll unlock their Chapter 3, and so on and so on. It’s up to you if you want to do all of the Chapter 2s at once, or focus on just a few stories at a time until you finish them. But the level gates are steep, and characters who aren’t in your active party won’t gain experience, which makes progression a lot more complicated than it should be.

The optimal way to play is likely to pick your four favorite characters and stick with them, but Octopath Traveler allows you to be flexible

That article doesn’t really answer the big question everyone seems to have which is “do all the individual stories come together at any point to form a larger narrative?” Jason seems to indicate in the comments that at least after finishing the stories of 4 of the characters there does not seem to be any shared plot elements. This question is all over Reddit and no one can seem to get a clear answer.

I’m of the opinion that this game will succeed or fail on its battle system as the individual stories don’t seem to be gripping reviewers, at least in these initial previews.

@Falco - I know, but that’s not the same thing. I want to be able to avoid encounters to explore more traditional JRPG dungeons (which Bravely featured). And then when I want to grind I want to crank the rate up. Don’t like consumables to do this; the slider in the options screen was a true godsend.

Jason is limited today by the same embargo he was limited by a couple of days ago - he’s still only allowed to talk about chapter 1, which is where all of the 8 stories happen independently. Even if all of the characters eventually come together in various ways, no one is allowed to talk about those details yet.

That’s what I was thinking as well but I’m pretty sure he specifically mentions finishing the entire storyline for 4 characters and then he states that these stories are only individual in nature not combined. So maybe he hasn’t played far enough to see them combine, or maybe he has and the fact that they do eventually combine is embargoed, or maybe they just never combine.

Or it happens in the sequel.

Eurogamer’s review (they give it their “Recommended” rating):

While pursuing one character’s story, the other people in your retinue effectively vanish from the stage - they’ll appear only in fights, plus the odd, flavourful but throwaway “party banter” interlude. As a way of structuring an ensemble story, this may prove an acquired taste: it’s as though your party members were haunting one another, eavesdropping at the bar, rather than acting as comrades. The fragmented storytelling also keeps you at a slight remove from the backdrop, a realm that again compares to Ivalice in being animated as much and more by politics or civil discord as hellish slumbering evils.

Getting a decent meta score of 84 right now on OC.

Keeping up with the posts over at ResetEra, where a few folks got the game early the last few days, it sounds like the general consensus is it’s fun because the game is stylish fun with a neat and entertaining combat system that engages for a very long time, but the story is pretty weak sauce in general, and doesn’t really bring the 8 characters together. Rather it’s ONLY the story of YOUR character, the extras are just along with little to no interaction.

The problem I have with that is the structure is set up in such a way that you play each characters chapter 1 (I mean, you don’t have to, but if you don’t you have to grind until you get to the chapter 2 level gate of 20) and then to get to the chapter 3 level gate you either play everyone’s chapter 2 or you grind again. So it SEEMS (and I may be mis-understanding) that you will see everyone’s story in one long play through, but the story’s make (if even) minimal effort to tie the characters together.

I like the gameplay but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to really pull me in, it sounds like a lot of dungeons, wilderness wanderings, boss fights, loot, leveling up, and all that shit is awesome, but I’m super bummed to hear that’s pretty much all there is? I haven’t read any reviews yet, some reviewers just LOVE it though, so I’ll keep my pre-order obviously and we’ll just have to see how it goes. My enthusiasm is tempered a bit though.

Sorry for the tangent, but why keep the pre-order? Is there bonus content or discounts you receive by pre-ordering?

Well, it’s $12 cheaper to pre-order from Amazon, full price to buy it after it ships. So there is that. :)

Gotcha, that’s what I was wondering! I usually buy digitally, so didn’t think of the Amazon discount. I had hoped maybe there was a deal I could grab. :)

How does it work on Switch? Are gamed added to your account or do you need the cartridge if you bought a physical copy?

With Amazon? It’s a physical cartridge. You can’t get the 20% prime discount on digital stuff, only physical games. That’s why I have a few PC games I bought from them (though, ironically, while they come in a box they usually have a Steam or uPlay or whatever code inside the box; no media).