#but OT2 is a good game x2 you know?

[tarn-ati0n]

I had heard the OT1 was a little disjointed, is the second really that much better ? I do like jrpgs and the bits of music I've heard from the series + the artstyle of the game had been tempting me for a while ! I really have very little idea of exactly what I'm getting into and any advice on why go for the second game before the first is welcome :)

I don’t know how much you already know about Octopath, but the basic gist of the games is this:

Both games feature 8 travelers, each one with their own story and goal. You have to pick one at the start (your protagonist) and then start your journey across the continent to pick up the rest of the cast. The gameplay is your standard JRPG goodness, explore dungeons, random encounters you defeat to level up, though boss battles that make you feel amazing when you finally beat them, you know it.

It manages to put it's own spin on the turn based mechanic battle style with the break and boost system. Which is actually one of the best battle systems in any jrpg if you ask me.

Break - Every Enemy has a certain amount of shield points and specific weapon/elemental weaknesses. If you attack them with one of their weaknesses, their shield point lowers by one, and once it reaches 0, they're broken. That means they won't be able to act for the next turn, and every damage done to them will be critical.

Boost - Every character has not only HP (Health Points) and SP (Special Points), but also BP (Boost Points). A character can have maximal five BP at a time, and using them powers up your attacks to do the real big and hard hitting damage. It takes 3 BP to max out an attack, and unlike SP and HP it replenishes itself (one BP per round)

This already adds like 3 new layers to the battle system. Figuring out when to use your BP or when it's the best time to break an enemy can be quite tough, especially during boss fights where your understanding of these skills is put to the test.

OT2 adds latent powers to the mix, special abilities that differ from Traveler to Traveler. They're neat but just a little bonus for battles, and don't mix up the game too much.

OK, enough talking about game mechanics, back to the main appeal, the characters and story.

The thing is that the biggest criticism I hear about the games is that the cast may consist of 8 different travelers, but that the characters themselves don’t really interact with each other. The only thing you got in the first game was the travel banter, short little sequences in the middle of stories that featured two (or more) travelers talking to each other for a bit. And those are completely optional and can be skipped entirely.

Also, the different stories are completely separate from each other and only really come kinda together at the very end of the game. OT2 has the same problems, but besides the travel banter it also added „crossed-paths“ chapters, little side stories where two travelers would get a spotlight and interact with each other even more than just in the travel banter. The culmination of everyone’s stories is also done way better in II as well.

But in the end, yeah, the problem with disjointed feeling stories and characters is still there. But, if you ask me, filling in the gaps yourself and imagining how the characters would interact with each other is half the fun of the games. Playing dolls with them is an important aspect of the Octopath meta game.

Oh, and besides that, OT2 allows itself much more freedom with the way it tells the travelers story’s. In OT1, every character got 4 chapters, with every chapter having one dungeon with a boss at the end. But OT2 throws all that out of the window. There are chapters with dungeons but no bosses. Chapters with bosses but no dungeons. Chapters without boss or dungeon. Differing paths. Side Stories.

Damn. I can yap about these games a lot, huh? I know it seemed like I talked a lot of shit about OT1 here, but I still like it a lot, and it remains a really solid game. It's just that OT2 took an already good game and made it fantastic.