I’ve long since thought of the perfect way to sum up my feelings about Octopath Traveler in terms of its gameplay (if you want story thoughts, go here instead). The problem is that doing so means embedding a video that functions as a pretty heavy spoiler for Part 4 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and I have qualms about dropping that out of the blue. Then again, the last episode for that aired, like, two years ago and it’s one of countless other memes, soooooooooooooooooo…yeah.
On the other hand? If you’re anything like me, clicking on anything JoJo-related will flood your YouTube recommendations with spoilers for the now-airing Part 5 adaptation. I guess it’ll be fine for now, given how early in the run we are (as of writing), but anyone who wants to go in raw is in for a rough time. On the other, other hand, it’d be a travesty if I indirectly instigated spoiling. Sooooooooooooooooooo…let’s not.
This is a lot of JoJo talk for a post on Octopath Traveler. Let’s change that.
I’ll lay it all out in the open: to me, Octopath Traveler’s gameplay is its greatest asset. Now that I’ve thrown that qualifier out there, let me back up and say that it’s not perfect. Having put in over 60 hours up to this point, I feel comfortable in saying that. There are problems. My guess (or hope) is that they’re problems unique to me, based on A) my preferences, or B) my lack of skill. Either way, I have to be honest. So apologies in advance if I rustle any tail feathers. Better rustled than plucked, as I never say.
For the uninitiated? Octopath’s battle system has you take on hordes of monsters with a team of up to four -- I.e. the travelers you’re either rocking as your main team, or a combination based on whose story you’re tackling. As you can guess, it relies on old-school, turn-based combat; choose which skills and spells you want to use out of a menu, and use them to tear apart any foe that stands in your way. Simple enough.
There are two mechanics that spruce things up, though. First off, enemies have weak points that you can exploit along the way. If you run into a frog that’s weak against swords, for example, he may have a 2 next to his line of weaknesses. That means you have to hit him twice with sword-based attacks to make him enter Break status; not only does he lose a turn, but he’s also more susceptible to damage. Basically, getting a Break means that’s your cue to go full ham.
You’ve also got the boost system. Each turn, your party members gain a point of BP you can tap with a press of the R button. What’s the point, you ask? A character with just one BP tapped can attack twice with their equipped weapon, power up skills or spells, extend the duration of buffs/debuffs, increase the likelihood of landing percentage-based techniques (like stealing items or capturing monsters), and gain access to class-specific limit breaks with 3 BP instead of 1. Part of the strategy means knowing when to go nuts with your BP; you can only have a max of 5 at any given time, and using even 1 in a turn means you don’t get extra charges in the turn afterward. It’s another layer of resource management that’s appreciable.
Now here’s the problem. Octopath has systems and tricks worth learning, and it’d be to your advantage to learn them, or else. Not because the game is especially heard. No, it’s because if you don’t, you’ll crash headfirst into a major issue.
This game is slow.
Dunkey implied as much in his video, and at a glance you’d think he was just putting on an act (given that his example featured some sub-optimal play). But in a lot of ways, he’s right. Even when you “crack the code” on how to beat a pack of monsters -- exploit their weaknesses, break their defenses, unload all your BP -- it still takes a long time to clear them out. That’s a problem when, again, you’ve cracked the code and know how to beat them; it’s just a matter of going through the motions. Again. And again. And again.
In 60 hours’ time, I’ve only gotten a Game Over four times (the theme of which is shockingly unsettling for its first 12 seconds). One of those barely even counts, given that I was 85% asleep at the time and pushed my luck in running away from a horde of elemental enemies. The challenge is there, but it rarely overwhelms. And it’s always a rush to find the real challenge in the game, not just the cannon fodder in random battles -- but it’s a hassle at times, because tons of enemies in this game have unusually large HP pools. It’s not like the JRPGs of old where you can mop up with a few physical attacks or the odd Dual Tech. You have to exploit weaknesses, have to Break, and have to. The only other option is to run away, and forgo the EXP you’ll always need. Not that it isn’t a viable strategy at times.
The game really comes alive during the boss fights, though. As it should. It’s not just a matter of exploiting weaknesses and going all guns blazing with your BP -- well, not entirely, at least. Bosses tend to bring something new to the table besides raw damage, be it unique status effects, special conditions, or just an utter resistance to being Broken. You have to react to and adapt to their strategies if you want to win, learning how to pick your shots and negate their damage gains with your party’s tool kit.
To be fair, bosses also have huge HP pools, so that they tend to overstay their welcome. And in a number of cases, it seems like their dominant strategy is to crank up the number of times they can act/attack in a turn, meaning it just turns into a DPS race -- or in Octopath’s case, testing if you can Break them before they overwhelm you with their extra turns. Still, for the most part I had more fun during the boss fights, because it felt like I actually had to use my head to win. Clever application of the systems and skills, and such. Not just “spam attacks until it’s time to heal”. And to be sure, in the best scenarios that same level of thought is in random battles. Not always, but…well, it could be worse.
So that’s what makes Octopath fun. But what makes it really fun is the metagame. This is a JRPG that asks you one simple question: “How broken do you want to be?”
You can answer that question in many ways.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve played a game that lets you break it so casually. And I’m not just talking about grinding until you can crush everything you see underfoot. See, each character in this game carries with them a default, starter class. For argument’s sake, let’s focus on my main, Ophilia -- the Cleric, and thus the dedicated healer/white mage of the cast. Since she was my first pick, that meant (until I cleared her 4 chapters) she couldn’t be taken out of the party, which meant I would be forced to have a character with full-party heals and the massive SP pool to cast them. What a burden. But wait -- what if I want a character who can do more than just heal? Well, the option is there.
If you find the related shrines in the overworld, then you can cross-pollinate each character with a secondary class -- fusing two into one, in a sense. So because my main party didn’t have Olberic the Warrior, I needed someone who could do high physical damage and tank. Common sense would suggest that I give the role to H’aanit, since she’s also a physical attacker. But I had my heart set on making a Paladin out of Ophilia, and the game did more than just allow it. I was…indulged.
As a Cleric, Ophilia’s inherent faults are that she has low physical attack and defense. So you would think that making her half-Warrior would be a huge mistake -- and it would be, if not for the passive stat bonuses the role gave her. More to the point? There’s a wide array of stat-boosting Nuts throughout the game, so once you find them (and there’s no reason why you won’t, given that half the cast has special abilities to help you gain them), you can forcibly push the needle wherever you want. But because I committed to Ophilia being an invincible uber-unit…well, I committed.
No other character I have can take hits like she can. Not only does she have insane physical resistance -- alongside a massive HP pool -- but also has maxed out elemental resistance, so magic won’t do crap to her and her 999 points in that category. Her damage output is such that one 3BP Level Slash is enough to do thousands of points of damage to a trash mob. And SP? Nah, son. Not only is her SP count gigantic, but by dabbling in the other jobs (I.e. leveling them up so I can use their support skills), I’ve rigged my Ophilia so that 1) her skills only cost half the normal amount of SP, and 2) she regains SP every turn. And because that SP regen is a percentage of her maximum SP, it means that every turn she gets more SP than what she used to cast.
Tl;dr: I made a Warrior with infinite SP.
My guess is that once I clear one of the hidden superbosses and reap its secret classes as a reward, Ophilia will become even more powerful. Until then? It’s not like the others aren’t pulling their weight. Frankly, they might have already surpassed her in a number of ways. Ophilia has consistency, but Primrose has unrivaled burst damage as a Dancer/Thief hybrid. Her limit break with the thief class is a dagger attack that hits every enemy at once. Fair enough. But the trick to it is that its power is based on Primrose’s Speed stat, not her strength. So because she’s the fastest character I’ve got (ensured with a healthy supply of Nuts), she can do 9999 damage in one shot to trash mobs. So when I said it takes too long to get through random battles? That’s only true if I don’t use my special tactic with Primrose (and Tressa using Donate BP to give her an extra stock). If I do? Assuming Primrose doesn’t miss, I can win virtually any standard fight in two turns.
Don’t even get me started with H’aanit. Having unlocked the Sorcerer class (and Starseer, to a lesser extent), the huntress who would cry out “SORCERY!” whenever she got hit with a status effect is now capable of slinging magic spells that target the entire enemy party and can potentially hit for a sum of 21,000 damage on each one…with spells that hit three times instead of twice. If I made Ophilia a Sorcerer instead, then doubtless the game would already be over. But again, I want my Paladin. Screw optimal play and give me what I want.
But it’s hard for me to be sub-optimal given all the tools at hand. As a Cleric, Ophilia naturally has the ability to cast Reflective Veil, i.e. a spell that bounces an enemy spell right back at them. Fair enough. But Primrose’s Dancer limit break makes it so that, for 3 turns, a party member’s single-target spell will hit everything, friend or foe. Cast it on Ophilia, and she can put a reflector on the whole party at once. Spend BP beforehand, and the one reflector becomes 4. Activate Ophilia’s Cleric limit break -- which lets a party member repeat the same action twice -- and you’ve got 8 reflectors in one cast.
It’s not just a trick that lets you exploit bosses. You can utterly troll them to death. If you’re up against a boss that does nothing but toss out magic, put up your Eightfold Reflector. He won’t know how to handle it; the AI is limited enough so that his (or their) only course of action is to continue casting full-party black magic. But because of the reflectors, he’ll end up hitting himself four times in a row. And that’s assuming he’s only using a spell that hits your party once. If it’s twice, then that’s 8 attacks against himself. If it’s thrice, that’s 12. And in one case? Not only did I troll the boss, but I achieved hyper-troll status because his full-party, 3-hit magic hit him back and triggered his weaknesses…meaning that he broke himself. And I just had to stand there and watch him do it.
Is this…is this what it feels like to be a Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonist?
I cannot believe the audacity of this game. I know it’s published by Squeenix and not solely developed by them from top to bottom, but…I feel like that company’s continuous incompetence is what allowed Octopath to release in such a state. The state of it! There are so many ways to break the game, it’s as if the devs didn’t even try to balance it. And I love them for it.
I’m pretty sure I could grind the true final boss into dust if I wanted to (and I will once I slaughter the other two superbosses). For now, I have one priority above all others: become as broken as possible. I want to find more Nuts and boost Ophilia until she becomes a hulking colossus in a snow-white dress. I want to break the damage cap on my attackers, which is more than possible given there’s a skill that allows it. I want to laugh my ass off as any given enemy melts in the wake of my party of goddesses. I want to snap this goddamn game in half with a smile on my face.
In that sense, it really does take me back. Final Fantasy 8 made it possible. Devil Survivor 2 made it essential. Now here’s Octopath Traveler, making it entirely optional -- but way, way, WAY too satisfying when you do it right. And for that reason, I’ve got no choice but to say that --
*deep breath*
You did a good job, Squeenix. Not you specifically, given that this was the work of the Bravely Default crew. But you by proxy, and that’s about all the praise I’m willing to give you.
…Bravely Default crew, good job.
And that’ll do it for now. See you next time.
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