So I’m mostly through everyone’s chapter 2 and I’m still really liking this game. The scholars passive keeps battles from being a little too frequent. But it’s starting to catch up with me because these battles are getting tougher and I might have a grind in my future.
I was also expecting the game to be a little more story driven, but it really is just 8 separate stories thus far with MAYBE a connective tissue between some, by that could just be reusing assets.
I’ve done all Chapter 1s and played one Chapter 2. It feels a bit grindy, and battles take longer since some of the characters are a bit underlevelled. I am not sure their gear is a bit low level too. Still enjoy the game, looking forward to digging further in.
Olberic: Wanna fight, old woman???
Octopath Traveler: This is a NOBLE action. It’s only bad if you beat her up using animals.
Olberic: Why am I even doing this?
Mark: Because you can. Shhhh.
I stumbled over a job shrine! Then I found another one in the next area. A bit earlier than I thought, I could probably have found them before I did any Second Chapters.
I’ve found 3 but I have yet to actually use them because I haven’t maxed out my first job and I want to see what happens there
Assigning a secondary job gives stat boosts, and you spend JP from the same pool.
Also the secondary jobs start off with the normal progression of 10, 30, 100, etc jp to unlock skills. So you can grab some useful passives. E.g. Scholar has one that gives +50 ele attack (2nd passive I think) in addition to evasive maneuvers. Those are handy to have on a couple of different people (just because you might swap out the first person you got Evasive Maneuvers on, and anyone doing any form of spell damage wants the ele attack).
Regardless of which secondary job you equip (and you can only have one person using a job as a secondary in the active party. You can e.g. use Cyrus and have someone else do Scholar secondary but not have two people do Scholar as a secondary), you can equip any passives you can unlock. Which is also useful and is begging you to grind FOR-E-VER.
Also, secondary jobs means new weapons, which can be useful depending on where one is.
Yeah, the secondary job system really opens things up, character progression-wise. I was starting to wonder if the game would get stale soon, but advancing the secondary jobs and collecting passive skills seems like an interesting way to make character builds.
I picked up the fifth character. I’m not sure who i’m supposed to level up and stuff. I am guessing the increasing XP values means it is not that painful to switch the lowest level people in to level them up.
I checked out the demo for this game and picked the hunter character. I’m so annoyed by the way that these characters talk that I might not be able to give this game a fair chance.
I did the same!
Hunter, Cleric, Scholar, then… Merchant and Warrior is my order. The other ones are nowhere as annoying…
The Hunter is indeed awful. Letten her goeth sit on the benchen.
Have any of you gotten very deep into the game yet? Are you still enjoying it? It seems the review are mixed on this one, but I also think a lot of people came into it with too many expectations. I haven’t been into JRPGs since the golden age of SNES/Squaresoft, but the throwback style of this game is kind of intriguing to me.
I’m about 10 hours in, finished all Ch 1’s on all characters. I would say most of the middle of the road reviews get it pretty spot on. This game is not like the SNES glory JRPGs in anything but art style. There is no overarching plot, no reason for the group to be together, no meaningful interaction whatsoever. That being said the combat system is very good but it can get grindy especially as you want to keep all 8 characters at level parity (those not in your active party do not gain XP). The world is artistically very nice but also very repetitious. Pretty much every Ch 1 is exactly the same and this becomes very obvious as the game almost forces you to do each one before moving on to the Ch 2’s. I’m still enjoying it but I had proper expectations going in so I think that mattered.
TL;DR: download the demo, that’s basically the entire game for the next 30-40 hours. If you like the demo you’ll like the game.
I’m pretty deep in, 25 hours or so and I’ve got all of the Chapter 2s finished, and a few of the 3s. It’s fine. It’s got some things that are great: I really like the combat, the job system is simple but fun, I like the world itself and a lot of the one-off 'moments. It’s got some things that are really bad: the Hunter’s writing does not get better, several of the other story-lines are also well-below-average-JRPG-writing, and the overall structure is oh-my-god repetitive. Most of it falls somewhere in between. The Kotaku review that was linked somewhere above was, honestly, pretty right-on.
I’m generally into JRPGs and I like the throwback aspect, and I like figuring out gear and systems to blow enemies up efficiently, so I’m still enjoying it. If you haven’t played a JRPG in a while, I’d recommend Trails in the Sky (for something more 2D/old school) or Persona 5 (for something more modern) over this with zero reservations. But those aren’t on the Switch, of course, so no portable goodness… and if that’s what you want, then yeah, this is fine. I’m enjoying it enough to finish it, if that means anything.
It’s interesting how much the story stuff bothers people. I personally don’t care about it a bit. I wanted a jrpg tactical combat game and that’s what I got.
I like that the combat is strong, and don’t care as much about a great story, so maybe it’s up my alley. I do have Persona 5 and liked it, but didn’t go back to it for some reason after I completed the first dungeon thing. Maybe I should just go back to that instead, but the 3d world isn’t as appealing to me or whatever reason.
Getting back to Octopath and characters: at least through the chapter 3 range, I would definitely recommend having the Thief and an elemental attack character with access to Scholar abilities as your highest level/core characters. The item/gear economy is a lot less grindy when you can steal everything, and high powered double-attack-all elemental abilities seem to be the best general combat choice most of the time.
Anybody wanna talk parties?
I’ve got:
Fighter
Thief
Alchemist
???
The fighter fights, and does it well. The thief debuffs and does decent damage, although I wish he did not use a sword as it is redundant with the fighter. The Alchemist heals, buffs, and can add BP too. He even has an axe and a bit of frost damage. Very versatile.
I just don’t know who I want in the last spot. The “classic” answer is the mage, but I already have a little bit of single target fire and frost damage, so he really only adds the aoe spread of his damage, lightning, and his staff. That’s not bad or anything, I just wince when I have him against strong single targets like bosses. Any thoughts?
My main is the hunter, so with that in mind:
Hunter
Cleric
Scholar
Whoever’s chapter I am on. If I’m on one of the 3 permanent party members I go thief for stealing shit.