Octopath Traveler (Nintendo Switch 2018)

I like how guessable a lot of the weaknesses are once you've seen enough of them - bow or lightning against flying enemies, fire against plant enemies, holy against undead, lance against armored stuff, etc. it's pretty consistent at meeting my expectations, and then they always are sorted in the same order so the remaining ones get progressively easier to guess

don't quote me on these but I think the sort orders are:
sword lance axe dagger bow staff
fire ice lightning wind light dark

more confident on the elements than the weapons

I've been using a core 2 and rotating the other 2 slots such that I have good coverage of weapon types and buffs/debuffs

yeah this is me too. Theroin/Cyrus are my mains. Cyrus elemental magic just too powerful, at this point he can one-shot many random battles in the areas surrounding Chapter 2s. did Cyrus's Ch2 last night, thought it was pretty great (levels in 30-35). the evil sorcerer capturing people & making blood crystals makes a great villain.

Ophelia's is next. i would have done that last night too but i stumbled on a random dungeon and spent some time in there. i like how this game has so much optional explorable territory. almost feels closer to Secret of Mana or Zelda w its explorable open world.

finished Alfyn's story last night. it was fine. so far there's still only been one truly unexpected story beat in the game.

I now find all the complaining people did about how the stories supposedly don't link up at the end pretty funny, given that the first 2 that I finished kind of did

cool! thats nice to hear. tbh i am enjoying the smaller scope.

the game really does things in a cool unique way. it is like going to one of the towns in one of the older JRPGs and playing as all of the different townspeople. you have the thief, the shopkeeper, the mage, the apothecary, etc.

you can follow the storyline of the hunter, someone who would probably introduce a dungeon to the main hero of a Final Fantasy game or something. you can follow the storyline and fight 4 bosses for the shopkeeper who sells the main hero his newest shiniest sword. this is a more democratic approach to storytelling.

it's not like the stories explicitly connect but the game makes it pretty clear there's something mysterious going on behind the scenes that relates to all of them in various ways

perhaps all the characters sense that they were all created by the same "company", and everything they choose to say seems like it was already chosen for them, somehow

which is kind of more interesting honestly since it lets each one still play out in its own way rather than swerving into the same lane suddenly at the end

would play a jrpg written by Larry David

You level up but nothing actually happens to your character?

Oh wait that’s Crashlands

So Primrose has this skill called Bewildering Grace that is essentially random, something good might happen like health restored, or something bad like losing SP. I was fighting this boss that was a few levels higher than me, slowly whittling away at its health. It was taking a long time. So occasionally I cast Bewildering Grace just to break up the tedium of the fight, and I was usually getting something good (JP x 2! EXP x 2! Fully restore party SP!). Finally the boss description turned red, I was on the verge of beating him. Let's do Bewildering Grace once more for luck I thought. Primrose summoned a giant mushroom thing that fully healed the boss and buffed his attack and defence, knocked all members of my party's HP down to 1 each and cast a mist that poisoned everyone. Served me right, really.

lol. yeah BG is alot of fun. i have gotten JP X 5 and full restore, i have also gotten the full restore for the enemies. take me back to the Cait Sith gambling wheel

had to take a break from Olberic's chapter 2 (thank u backstage at the Colosseum save spot). it is very cool! i love the Colosseum stuff, the bit where they introduce all the people you will be fighting, and the crowd is yelling for their favorites. didn't realize there were going to be so many battles but this is really cool.

that's the only chapter in the game that breaks the standard structure. i liked it. the promoter girl is my favorite side character

lol I gotta grind so bad apparently

Holding out longer against my first chapter 2 boss but still falling to AoE eventually. Might swap out Alfyn for Ophilia for this boss because she can heal the whole party without me having to find ingredients for Concoct but she’s not even close to my MC’s level since I picked her up last. What to do.

can always make someone in your party a cleric, i can't imagine getting through most of the later bosses without Heal More

i've finished 5 of the 8 stories now, will finish up tomorrow and then probably bail on the postgame stuff because 50 hours is enough for now

I haven’t gone around poking at all the chapter 2 areas, just this one, so I have only gotten the thief shrine so far. I may need to go shrine hunting.

ciderpress is one of my favorite posters right up until he gets way ahead of me at every video game ever

whoops sorry

its only rpgs that i get obsessive about really

I’m just jealous of your spare time. Grass is green and brown everywhere

I have made a terrible mistake and chosen H’aanit as my second party member. Would you have guessed the only people more pretentious than the frostbound flame-worshipping priests were the hunters who live in the woods and keep leopards as pets? I would not have made such a guess.

I do like that my two options when meeting people are 1. force them to fight for me 2. sic my animals on them

i liked h'aanit fine but she's probably the weakest link in the cast yeah

you should backtrack and go in the other direction, cyrus and tressa are the best

Too late, I am committen to followeth a counter-clockwise octopath

you're the ohtapotc traveller

arrow rain is always nice to have around. it can help you break enemies quick

yeah i meant weakest link character wise, the 8 base classes are really well balanced imo

dunkey hated this and he is right what a generic boring jrpg

dunkey hates all jrpgs so thats not surprising

your excellency

i warned you guys it's a game with random encounters, grinding, and a terrible story/characters. maybe you've all found some value in the combat but i couldn't figure out why it was worth my while.

also dunkey liked persona 5 iirc so dude isn't just a hater

everyone likes persona 5 though. its like the rock critic with a kendrick lamar album in their eoy list. if you're only engaging with the most acclaimed thing in the genre then you're not really engaging with the genre

it's a very well designed game, particularly the map and locations and the ways of interacting with people, and that alone puts it beyond generic/boring. the characters and story are for the most part fine (outside of the cleric), above average for the genre ime anyway. the combat system is the most generic thing on the surface but they really hit a sweet spot, i'm still thinking about just why it does work so well. but there's something about jrpgs where, for all that they cleave to formula, personal experience varies wildly from game to game and if someone doesn't get a good feeling off the bat it's a fool's errand to try to talk them round.

fwiw i thought the dunkey video was uncharacteristically low on substance and lols and definitely came over as someone wanting to pull out an old axe for a fresh grind

dunkey is funny but his inclinations are basically the opposite of mine.

it's a game with random encounters, grinding, and a terrible story/characters

That is what I paid for. You may also know me as the guy who paid for Cat Quest, Lowlander and Lowlander 2: Lowerlander for the iPhone and enjoyed all of them.

i guess my final review of this game would go something like this:

excellent RPG system (both combat and the npc interactions)
excellent music
good presentation
characters and stories are a mixed bag, i thought tressa's was the best overall despite (because of?) having the smallest scope, h'aanit and therion were the worst, the rest were fine but only had a few great moments
i didn't burn out on the repetitive structure but i was playing in short sessions of 1-2 chapters at a time, i suspect this falls apart more if you marathon it. it lays its bones barer than most RPGs
i say this about most RPGs but overall the game is a bit too long for its scope, i think 6 characters would have been better for the structure/length though the combat system gets a lot of mileage out of those extra 2 jobs

the combat system succeeds because:
- it moves exactly as fast as you want it to, without any ATB shenanigans
- putting vulnerabilities on the HUD lets “System 1” thinking handle almost all the work instead of making you apply “System 2” mnemonics and deliberation in a fight
- as Silby noted, a successful boss battle with properly sequenced breaks and some fortunate RNG can be just as satisfying as maximizing your tax refund
- the sound design is top notch

breaking enemies and boosting abilities are both really satisfying mechanics and become exponentially so when you combine them. the presentation for them is great too, the HD rumble when you break a bunch of enemies at once...

fyi most of the ATB games let you turn real time off which i always do. which just turns it into a delay system where you can't see the turn bar, which is better than nothing

you're the ohtapotc traveller

- it moves exactly as fast as you want it to

yes i love how fast it is. i remember FFIX taking so long to just have the camera pan up to your character in battle. here you can instantly cue/commit to actions, it remembers where your last cursor was, and if you have to go answer a phone call or something you can just walk away and come back w no problem.

i really like the vulnerabilities & the break system, there is so much strategy to every fight: when to spend your BP, when to break (who to break/what order), on top of maintenance/buffing and discovering the vulnerabilities for new encounters. sometimes i fight a tough new enemy and think i may be under powered, but give it another shot w what i have learned, inevitably winning with the more strategic approach.

Octopath Traveler’s battle system is like a cross between Magic the Gathering and TurboTax.

I know you corrected this to Quicken but this is hilarious, and a perfect description of why I don't have the patience for games like this anymore.

In retrospect, either works.

(it's more that I've never used Quicken but am intimately familiar with Turbo Tax hell, also sounds funnier)

closing out everyone's Chapter 2 with Alfyn, who is kinda my clean up hitter. during battles he tends to hang back and mix SP/HP curatives for the others while they do elemental damage, then when BP is built up and all is broke, Amputation comes in for the home run.

Having added the thief, I am not sure my party could get much more morally compromised. If you are a townsperson on this continent, you should run as soon as you see us coming, because you are about to be:
* attacked by beasts
* robbed in broad daylight
* press ganged into God's army, or
* all of the above
This is easily the worst batch of murderhobos I have ever led on any journey. If you don't see the fun in that, I'm sorry.

The actions that let you beat people up are great, everyone’s very upset about it.

I am planning to say why. However i've been playing more, and Tressa's story has turned into Karate Kid but where the karate is replaced with "selling geodes". well, i'm not so confident anymore.

hahaha