There’s no denying that last year’s Octopath Traveler was a success for Square Enix, and the promise of more JRPG goodness came from the dev team. Yet nobody expected we’d see the follow-up so soon – though there’s good reason why, as the newly announced Octopath Traveler: Tairiku no Hasha (“Champion of the Continent”) is not for the Switch, but rather mobile devices.
Before you grab your torches and pitchforks, there’s actually a lot here to be interested in. It takes place in the same world as the first OT game, but before that game’s events, and featuring a whole new batch of eight characters alongside familiar ones. It’s wholly single player (suggesting no gacha elements), and the story will have a proper end point for each character with additional content added after launch. Both the aesthetic and the gameplay seems much like the Switch release, with the now-iconic “HD-2D” graphics and quality turn-based combat alongside Yasunori Nishiki’s fantastic score. Even the story structure of following eight different characters at your own pace is the same.
Currently the game has only been announced for Japan, and given the slow rate at which Bravely Default content has trickled to the west localization remains a dubious prospect. But Octopath was quite popular upon launch last year, so with a little bit of begging we may be back in Orsterra before we know it.
Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
