Octopath Traveler

This game is VERY, VERY GOOD.
Here's the deal. When making a game clearly drawing from older games, you can take it one of two ways.
1: Make a game that's as faithful to the original style as possible, up to and including being able to run on original hardware. This is admirable from an artistic perspective - it is a terrible decision, in my opinion, for making as great a game as possible.
2: You can do what Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler and Resident Evil 4 Remake and a lot of other amazing games do: capture the FEEL of the old thing, what it FELT like to play it for the first time back then, by combining what was back then with what we can do now.
Octopath Traveler is an excellent JRPG, and honestly? The only real problem with the game is that the sequel is an ENORMOUS improvemennt. There's a lot of minor gripes and things here and there with this game that are just wholesale solved in the sequel, and the sequel has no new flaws of its own.
Still, I highly recommend Octopath Traveler to anyone who has a love of JRPGs or wants to know what it felt like to play Final Fantasy on the Super Nintendo on Christmas in the 1990s.

8.5/10 - if you like the combat, there is lots and lots of it.

Took me about 120-130 hours of playtime to finish each traveler's storylines. I'm in general a slow player so consider that.
The stories are classic anime-style stories about either betrayal, revenge or ambition, these stories don't reinvent the wheel but they are quite fun in my humble opinion with a couple of plot twists here and there.
For me it was a real feel-good game, it did have some dark things too but the quintessence is mostly optimistic and i found myself often deciding to play this game when i wasn't in the best place mentally and just escaping into this cool world, the game was never stressing me i could play at my pace and therefore it definitely has found a place in my gamer heart. Loved the characters, i was into all of the stories eventually and now I'm excited to play the sequel.

If you are not sure if you wanna play Octopath Traveler 1 or 2 first, definitely start with the first because i have already played the first chapter of the sequel and there are already so many improvements and quality of life changes that going back after two will definitely feel disappointing in some ways.

- What do you do in this game ? -

The game tells the independent stories of eight travelers who set out on a journey, each for their own reasons. You start with a single character (out of the selection of the mentioned eight) and you can theoretically ignore all other character and grind your way to the level of the next chapter of this character's story until you have finished all chapters but that would definitely be hard mode and probably not much fun.
The intended way to play the game is to travel the world to the starting areas of the other characters and pick them up to join your group, you will play the intro chapter for each character, no matter which is your first one, via a flashback, you will then make a group of up to four travelers at a time and fight the monsters of the world.
In cities you can mix and match your party to have the right weapons and elemental types for the given challenge you are facing.


- How does Combat work ? -

Enemies have armor stacks, the stronger the enemy the more armor stacks they have. They also have weaknesses to certain types of weapons and to magical elements. You use your weapons for free and your spells cost mana aka sp, there are also some few abilities that are free but they are usually utility focused and not damaging.
Every time you hit an enemy with a weapon or spell they are weak to you remove one stack of armor.
Now there is also a mechanic called Boosting, after each turn each character gets one point of boost. You can save up to five points of boost. Then you can use those boost points on attacks (with your weapons) or on abilities, attacks will be repeated once for each point spent so they can remove several armor stacks at once and abilities will become stronger much stronger but only hit once and therefore still only remove one stack of armor.
Once all armor is removed the enemy will be broken, taking more damage and being unable to act for the rest of the turn plus the turn thereafter, so that's when you will deal the big damage.
Buffs and debuffs can also be boosted to add two turns of duration for each spent boost point.

Pro:
Great looking gaming.
Very nice, fun take on turn based combat.

Con:
The 8 stories are completly seperate and not very deep/interesting.

Beautiful JRPG. 8 stories with 4 chapters each with incredible moments, the visuals and music are top notch. Do yourself a favor a do all side quest, the reward is really worth it. A must play, can't wait for the second one.

I think the sequel, which is also on Steam at astonishingly a similar price, is a better game that does not require knowledge of this game, but if you play this game first you may appreciate the QOL improvements in the second. I would comment that I enjoyed the cast of characters in this game a bit better than the sequel, they're all lovable individuals.
For the game itself, it's a solid RPG game with a fun combat system and an interesting story. I enjoy the graphic style as well immensely. I think the story did not have proper time to really blossom into something particularly evocative, but it was certainly still something that can be appreciated. I recommend going an all female roster because they're cooler than the guys, let's be real.

Octopath Traveler was a really fun game to play that has 8 mini adventures/heros to explore with clever lore that links them together in the end game content. The gameplay of the battles is where I feel the best part of the game lays, with clever builds needed and rotations of heros. Other reviews I've noticed have mentioned they get lost or forget about the hero stories with there being 8 in the game but I never came across this myself. The only issue I feel with the story is the repetitiveness of the stories, as in "oh this is the person this time to be evil and back stab you".
For the achievement hunters, the game has a few missable items which I was lucky to have collected on my first play through, which meant not having to do a whole second proper play through which would have pushed my total time of 100% over the 200 hours mark. I really hate speed runs but it was fun to learn and play the game in a different aspect. The game has no check list option for some of the achievements which meant I had to print off lists to keep track where clearing up the game after the main story.
Overall I give this game a 7/10. The lack of story depth and repetitiveness of chapters with all the heros made the game feel abit grindy in places, but the battles itself are really fun and enjoyable to play with good end game content to explore :)

Eight strangers traveling together, have almost no connection to each other whatsoever. Worth the money tho! 8.5/10 in the begining and drop to a 7/10 towards second half of the game.