Octopath Traveler (PS5) Review
In its finest moments, Octopath Traveller harks back to some of my favourite RPGs from the 16-bit era. Its strategic turn-based battles push your thinking skills to the limit. At the same time, its job system gives you all the freedom in the world to tinker with your party lineup, all bolstered by a fantastic visual style and one of the greatest soundtracks ever to grace a videogame. It all works beautifully up to a point. Beyond that point, the cracks in Octopath Traveller‘s armour begin to show.
However, those early hours are truly something special. The dreamy HD-2D visuals make the game’s world appear like a meticulously handcrafted pixel diorama. You start by choosing one of eight heroes, then set off on a journey to recruit the remaining seven. In every case, you play through a short vignette that details each hero’s backstory and motivations (these can be skipped if desired). The cleric is on a religious pilgrimage, the scholar is searching for a lost tomb, the thief is seeking a jewel, and so on. It’s a delightfully unconventional and intriguing structure at first glance.
Each hero’s storyline has four chapters (making for a total of 32) and almost all of them follow the same structure: arrive at a town, watch a cutscene, use that character’s ability to complete a minor quest, then crawl through a dungeon to fight a boss.
On a conceptual level, I was always drawn to the stories being told, but the lack of depth makes the repetition set in quickly. Every character is exactly who they appear to be on the surface, and there’s not a single twist in sight. That doesn’t mean these are bad stories. The vast majority of them are excellent, but it does mean they are rote and unremarkable. Any one of these eight tales could be a good time in a short, 15-20 hour RPG (something like I Am Setsuna or ONINAKI), but having eight of them all in one game is a tall ask.
This is exacerbated by the fact that the eight heroes rarely, if ever, interact or acknowledge each other. Their stories never converge, and their motivations never intersect. This has the advantage of ensuring that each character and their story are given ample time in the spotlight, but it fails to feel like they’re on a journey together. They feel like eight strangers who sometimes fight together.
Thankfully, the vast majority of your time with Octopath Traveller will be spent in battle, and the combat mechanics happen to be this game’s greatest strength. Battles are wonderfully layered and strategic, focused on fully utilising your team to break the enemy’s defences. You’re shown a turn order on top of the screen at all times, and are tasked with targeting enemy weaknesses to cause them to skip turns. Every turn, you acquire a boost point that can be used to increase the power of your abilities or increase the number of times your basic attack hits.
In addition to all this, each character has access to their job-specific skills. Haanit can tame animals and call on their help in fights, Alfyn can mix up apothecary concoctions, etc. Your enemies aren’t exactly pushovers either, and even basic mob flights can provide ample challenge if you’re not careful. This is multiplied tenfold for boss battles, which often introduce twists like disabling the attack command or draining your max HP every turn, forcing you to think on your feet and develop new strategies on the fly.
The job system also deserves special praise. Once you unlock a job, you can assign and swap it between characters as and when needed. This gives your party access to additional weapons, allowing them to target even more weaknesses, as well as letting them learn passive skills they can equip regardless of their current job, such as breaking the 9999 damage limit or even decreasing the rate of random encounters.
Octopath Traveller feels like a game from another world where RPGs never strayed from their 16-bit roots, for both good and bad. The result is a game that provides a hefty burst of nostalgic fun while also sometimes adhering a bit too closely to antiquated design philosophies. Still, its retro charm and exciting combat alone make Octopath Traveller worth a look for all RPG fans.