Welcome to my gameplay of Octopath Traveler.
“Eight travelers. Eight adventures. Eight roles to play in a new world brought to life by Square Enix. And now, you can enjoy all of them in the new demo. Step into the shoes and live the stories of each of the eight travelers and freely explore the world of Orsterra. Then, carry your choices and adventure into the main game with save data transfer. Use each character’s special abilities in and out of battle. Break through enemy defenses by discovering and targeting weaknesses. Store Boost Points with each turn and then spend them at strategic times to strengthen abilities, chain attacks, or provide aid. Choose the path you wish to walk and discover what lies beyond the horizon.” —Description from the Nintendo Website
In Octopath Traveler (オクトパストラベラー, Okutopasu Torabera), Square Enix has brought a new world to life through a mix of CG, pixel art, and “HD-2D” visuals. Embark on a vast new role-playing adventure as one of eight travelers, all with their own origins, paths, and goals.
Where to begin? Who to team up with? Where to go next? Only you can decide.
Development
Octopath Traveler was announced on January 13, 2017, under the working title of Project Octopath Traveler. A playable demo was released on the Nintendo eShop on September 13, 2017, with a second demo being released on June 14, 2018. The second demo included improved mechanics and all eight playable characters, as well as save data transfer to the full game. The game was released worldwide on July 13, 2018. A special edition that includes the game’s soundtrack, a replica of the game’s in-game currency, a pop-up book, and a map was also released the same day.
The project was started by producers Masashi Takahashi and Tomoya Asano, who previously headed the Bravely series. Acquire was chosen as development partner for the game based on their previous work on the What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? series. During the development process, various graphics options such as the depth, resolution, saturation, as well as other features such as whether water should be pixel or photorealistic are taken into consideration to perfect the “HD-2D” look. The eight main characters, four male and four female, are chosen to provide different party variations. All characters have different classes, and the character design, as well as the field commands, are based on different occupations in Medieval Europe.
For the demo, Olberic and Primrose were chosen to be the protagonists as their stories started in a similar place, and the developers wanted people to be able to recruit the other character after beating the story. According to Takahashi, no downloadable content or other large post-release content updates are planned for the game.
A Microsoft Windows version of the game is planned to come out on June 7, 2019.
A prequel for Android and iOS, titled Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, was released in Japan in 2019.
Battle system
The battle system in Octopath Traveler is a turn-based battle system, similar to early RPGs such as the older Final Fantasy games. Players control up to four characters in battle against enemies. Each player character and enemy will (generally) act once each turn, and turn order is determined largely by the relative speed of each character. A player character who defended on the prior turn or an enemy who recovers from being broken (see below) will always act at the start of the turn regardless of speed.
A unique element of the battle system is the Boost system. Each player character receives a boost point at the start of each round, provided they did not spend any boost points in the prior round. Each player character can save that boost point (up to a maximum of five) or spend between one and three boost points to empower their action for that turn. Class skills can be empowered to deal more damage, provide more healing, impose status effects for increased duration, or improve the odds of chance-based skills. Basic attacks can be empowered to provide multiple attacks on a single turn, which is critical for leveraging the break system described below.
Another unique element is the Break system. Each enemy has a defense strength, paired with weaknesses to certain weapon types or elemental attacks. Damage from such attacks is increased by 30% and reduces the defense strength of the enemy by one. Reducing an enemy’s defense strength to zero will break them, causing them to lose any remaining actions for the current round, prevent them from acting on the next round, and will double all damage taken (regardless of their weaknesses).
#jrpg #octopathtraveler #squareenix #olberic #primrose #alfyn #therion #haanit #ophilia #cyrus #tressa #hd2d #turnbased
