Review – Octopath Traveler 0 for Nintendo Switch 2

Octopath Traveler 0 is nearly upon us, and thanks to the folks at Square Enix I’ve spent plenty of time with it over the last few weeks. For those who are unaware, Octopath Traveler 0 is essentially a remake of the mobile game Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent with the gacha elements removed and brand-new story elements added, making for a full-fledged RPG experience for PC and consoles.

The story starts with you creating your own character, contrary to previous Octopath titles that had you select one of eight pre-made protagonists. You’ll choose how they look, their signature pose, their favorite food, and so on. It’s a neat process, getting to essentially design a character in Square Enix’s now-iconic HD-2D art style, and I had a lot of fun seeing the different options available to players. Once you finish up the customization, the prologue begins. Your character hails from the small town of Wishvale on the continent of Orsterra, the same continent that the original Octopath Traveler takes place on. The prologue puts a lot of work into endearing your own character to you by showing you their place in Wishvale, and I really appreciated the effort since it’s often difficult to feel drawn into a story where the main character is a blank-slate silent protagonist. Unfortunately, the silent protagonist still means that throughout a ton of this prologue (and the game as a whole, really) you have several characters taking care of your exposition for you while your character stands there silently. Eventually, Wishvale is destroyed, and you and a few survivors embark on a journey to get revenge on those who played a part in the destruction of your town and to rebuild Wishvale bit by bit.

 

 

You’ll initially have four quests to pursue: three that involve the masterminds behind Wishvale’s destruction, and one that involves rebuilding Wishvale. Each of these quests sort of has their own “main” character and story separate from your revenge that you’ll interact with, though as they each come to a close it’s clear that your character is getting their revenge as well. Each quest contains its fair share of twists and heartbreak completely separate from your own character’s ambitions, so shoehorning your customized character into them ended up feeling a bit clunky at times. On the other hand, the freedom you have to really go and tackle any and all of these quests as you wish felt fantastic, even more so than in past Octopath games, because your character is realistically able to just go and help out around the world instead of having the game cut in and out of the main stories of eight different characters. I found myself bouncing around a ton between each quest for a large part of the game simply because I could. Early on, priority one for me was filling out my party, so I flitted around completing each quest’s first chapter, but also made sure to recruit every optional character I came across so I’d have more firepower to tackle each story battle with ease, and I’m incredibly glad I did for reasons I’ll touch on shortly. 

Despite relishing the ability to go where I pleased and do what I wished in general, when it came to the story I didn’t love controlling just one main character as they took part in several stories. Narratively it’s a big departure from the previous Octopath games, and it gives off “chosen one” vibes that you’d find in a more generic RPG, especially as each story plays out, whereas I’ve always felt that Octopath Traveler excelled when it was fleshing out characters from a variety of circumstances.

 

 

Gameplay-wise, Octopath Traveler 0’s biggest shakeup is the ability to bring eight characters into battles rather than just four, which really broadens the options of a combat system I already loved. As I mentioned before, I loved heading around the map recruiting everyone I could, including a few familiar faces from the original Octopath Traveler, and this new eight-fighter mechanic was a huge reason. You’re basically fitting eight party members into four slots, meaning you have a frontline and a backline to work with, though each slot can freely switch between characters during the frontline party member’s turn. Since this new system is simply enhancing the existing Octopath Break and Boost combat — where each enemy has weaknesses to different weapons and element types that you have to hit to Break them in order to do big damage — the ability to switch things up between both lines of battle really adds another layer of strategy and variety to the combat that I cannot get enough of. 

I was glad that this extra layer opened up so many new avenues for strategy, as I didn’t get a great chance to explore the depth of this two-layer combat system during my hands-on preview. In the full game I had a blast with the strategizing, especially against tough bosses, and thankfully so, because the combat difficulty is definitely scaled to the ability to have eight characters at your disposal. Some of Octopath Traveler 0’s bosses pack a huge punch and sometimes last for multiple phases, and I found myself struggling against a couple even with the extra layer of strategizing and firepower available to me. The new strategies included things like deciding who to leave it the frontline versus who needed to retreat to the backline to avoid certain attacks or recover their HP, or making sure the frontline was full of characters that could break the boss quickly so that the heavy hitters could jump up from the backline for massive damage. Those and more are just a few of the thrilling pieces added to Octopath’s puzzle-like combat, and I really hope it’s a system that this series sticks with going forward.

 

 

Like I mentioned before, Octopath Traveler as a series excels at fleshing out a variety of characters, and while things felt a little all over the place and “chosen one-y” in the story, there’s no lack of characters here. This cast is huge, and while you might see some faces and names  from the first Octopath Traveler, you’ll find plenty more brand-new characters that will join you on your journey. A lot of these characters will be new to fans of the Champions of the Continent mobile game too, since a lot of work was put into freshening up the cast and story for a wider audience. A few big standouts for me include Bargello and his (unrecruitable, sadly) “family” of thieves and the core group of Wishvale survivors, including Phenn and Stia. No longer limited to eight playable characters, you’ll be able to recruit dozens of characters to really customize your party to face any challenge. There are usually short quests involving these characters either before or after you recruit them that fleshes them out a bit, but don’t expect each and every one of them to play a massive part in story events. One thing I wish had been touched on a little deeper was really giving more personality to all these characters. Yes, there are some interactions and details revealed in Side Stories/Party Chat, but it just doesn’t feel like enough. This is a common complaint with the Octopath series as a whole, I know, and it would have been especially hard to get so many party members to realistically gel together, but I was digging them all so much that I would have loved to see more.

New to the series with Octopath Traveler 0 is the ability to build up a town, which is the main focus of the story quest that sees your character try to rebuild Wishvale. Each party member you recruit can become a resident of the rebuilt Wishvale, and they usually have some sort of bonus perk that lets them help the town in some way, such as the Hunter Delitia allowing you to regularly receive a delivery of meat or Margot and Basil having skills that raise production speed and crop yield at the farm, respectively. These perks come in super handy as you build up Wishvale, so it’s to your benefit to recruit as many as you can, even if you don’t plan on using them to fight. As I’ve mentioned several times, I loved recruiting a ton of characters, and a small part of that was getting excited to see exactly what they’d bring to the table once we got back to Wishvale. You’ll start small, initially building up a few houses and a tavern, but things will expand to building out a farm, a ranch, a church, and more. It’s not the centerpiece of the game or anything, but it harkens back — at least a little — to what I love about games like Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, Rune Factory, and Stardew Valley. Rebuilding Wishvale is a fun little diversion from fighting, and helps you feel just a bit more connected to each of these characters and the story unfolding in Orsterra as a whole, and it’s great to be able to customize what this place looks like and build it into a bustling hub.

 

 

As far as looks go, Octopath Traveler 0 is in a weird place. It’s remade from a mobile game, and looks leagues better than the mobile game does, but it also doesn’t look quite as breathtaking as its predecessor, Octopath Traveler II. Areas seem a little simpler, textures seem a touch muddier, and nothing seems quite as vibrant as the other console entries in the Octopath Traveler series. This last bit about the vibrancy was especially true of the big, detailed boss sprites. In other Octopath games I often looked forward to how detailed and lively bosses looked compared to other enemies, but in Octopath Traveler 0 I found myself disappointed that the boss sprites often looked messy, dull, and simple. It’s not a huge knock on the game, it still looks great, I just expected it to look better. I did really appreciate seeing the variety in the locales and dungeons, especially a lot of the early snowy areas around Emberglow (even the name sounds cozy) or the sunny and relaxing seaside town of Rippletide, even if a lot of the dungeon designs seemed pretty simplistic. 

When it came to the performance, for the most part, things ran smoothly as I explored Orsterra, though in battles with a lot of flashy moves happening or when doing construction and editing in Wishvale the frame rate started to get a bit choppy, especially as Wishvale got bigger. I also noticed fairly long load times every time I’d boot up the game or had to restart from a previous save due to a game overs against the game’s tougher bosses. Put simply, there are a lot of ups and downs in the visual department, which kind of tracks with the rest of my overall feelings about the rest of Octopath 0.

 

 

It was hard to parse out my exact thoughts about this new Octopath entry. I had tried and failed to get into Champions of the Content a few times, and was excited to see that content make it out of the mobile game — more so when I heard that there would be new content added on top of that. I was also aware that it would be wise to temper my expectations – how could a mobile game remake live up to the highs I experienced when reviewing the incredible Octopath Traveler II? After getting my hands on it, what I found was indeed more Octopath Traveler to experience, which is definitely a good thing. Though what I also found was that the experience was inconsistent; I definitely discovered things to love, like the additions to the combat, though alongside those I couldn’t help but notice a few disappointments, like the way the main character sometimes felt shoehorned into story quests. I haven’t quite hit the end of my journey with Octopath Traveler 0, but I’m enjoying it so much that I can decidedly say that I will see it through to the end, and look back on both the highs and lows of the experience fondly.

 

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