Octopath Traveler (Nintendo Switch 2018)

also equips, especially weapons, are more powerful than levels in this game, so seeking out good ones from npcs in the chapter 2 towns may be worth the time. iirc you can hand a strong weapon to an underleveled char and they'll contribute decently as long as they're not so low level that they're getting one-shot.

I tried to steal all I could in nobleville but therion's percentage for the good stuff was only 8% :(

or you can always just give one of the supportive secondaries to an underleveled char e.g. dancer or cleric and have them contribute that way

it still sucks that the game doesn't have bench exp when almost all other JRPGs have moved to having it in the past 10 years but there's enough of these ways to mitigate it that it's not as bad as it could have been

Going around the chapter two cities tonight w an under level party was good, grinding without feeling pointless as I open up map and find new cities and shrines. I found the starseer one though and holy fuck

oh yeah don't bother with the ones in the outer ring yet, those are for the endgame. i think my party was level 40ish when i beat them

I made it to the final boss last night, and it sucked. I haven't lost yet, maybe I can win it, but it's so tedious that I don't think I want to. I just put the machine to sleep after about half an hour, realizing that I have to somehow coordinate killing the dumb nodes it grows. Ah well, the game was pretty good until here! My party ended up in the 58-65 range, with Ophelia, my main, pushing 75 I think.

its more of a postgame challenge boss than a final boss. there's no dramatic conclusion or anything after it.

Cool

Any suggestions on another rpg on switch or ps4 if I dug this?

which elements of this are you looking for? turn-based? 'retro'?

turn based, retro not a pro or con really

I should add that I haven't played a Final Fantasy since II. I played Dragon Quest IV and V on DS a while back, but I don't know that series otherwise.

dragon quest XI is pretty good, its on ps4 and has a switch version coming out in a couple months

the FF games on switch are all from the PSX/PS2 era and i don't know those ones very well

FFX is turn based but very linear, FFXII is not turn based but really interesting imo
most of the modern turn based JRPGS that I liked were on 3DS, going to take a while for them to turn up on Switch

i am playing this in quarantine. the bad Middle English for the hunters is doing my head in.

is this ‘badly written’ by video game standards or is it just a long time since i played this type of video game

just went through the dancer’s prologue and oh lord everything about that was a bad idea, executed poorly. (i did actually download the demo and start with that one, two years ago? and i deleted the demo before i even made it to a battle)

(battles are tite tho. i went and did a level two quest and some random dungeons once i had a team of four because i couldn’t deal with any more inept first chapters)

i wouldn't call it a well written jrpg but a few of the stories have their moments

strength of the game is mostly the combat especially the boss fights. also the music

Imo if you’re playing a JRPG for the writing read a book

unless that book is the novelization of octopath traveler in which case play the game

Imo if you’re playing a JRPG for the writing read a book

lol i thought this was 'lamo' but i see it is 'imo' -- idk, i'm playing it for the battle system but i do wish the writing was less bad, one doesn't go to action movies for 'the writing' but the first couple terminator movies are a lot better written than suicide squad

Fair enough

the book version of the game of the novelization, though. Best in class

yeah i don't think a novelization of, say, ff7 would be very good but as a rpg scenario it lands its story beats strongly

octopath is mostly doomed from the start because the 8 short stories thing doesn't really work

idk it worked fine in dragon quest iv

i've never played any of the SaGa games w/ this gimmick or Live A Live, and i am curious now to see if they tick me off any less. the tonal inconsistency is what does it, the gross slippage from 'what if the merchant was the protagonist of the rpg?' (n.b. this is the fifth time i have seen this question answered) to the revenge thriller ft. human trafficking

I have 70 hours in this but I am doomed to never finish it

dear lord, does it get slower? i'm 18 hours in with 12 quests done

No I just “took a break” after getting crushed in a boss fight and then our daughter took over the Switch for Minecraft and Splatoon purposes. I got another Switch for the adults and moved my game over, but have been anxious about diving in again. I feel like at this point I’ve forgotten how to win and it’s not going to be like a bicycle and the boss fight isn’t going to be any easier even this I’m intellectually 100% sure of what I got wrong. And so forth. Ugh.

live a live is cool

all the other games that do this thing have you play each story separately rather than putting all the protags in the same party (or else they do that much later in the game)

And 70 hours seems like such a sunk cost I don’t want to start over. Double ugh.

My ex played this, sunk ~100 hours into it and didn't bother for full completion because... ~boring~

Me I'm gonna finally play Secret Of Mana and then Seiken Densetsu 3

most things are boring after 100 hours!

i hit full completion in 55 hours, and its not like you can rush in this game since its got random encounters..

Yeah but you’re, like, actually good at video games I think

only the ones that don't require dodge rolling

thirty hours in, about to finish my lead character's level 4 so i can swap her out. is this about when i ought to go looking for the other job shrines or are those really just a post-game thing?

you can beat the bosses for those when your party is around level 40 iirc. or maybe a bit less even but they're tough

thx. i did one of them that seemed fairly straightforward and now the game seems to have some more interesting tactical decisions available. i do feel like if i focus on clearing the rest the remaining lv 3 and lv 4 quests are going to be entirely trivial, tho

this game is super chill. i picked it up again and have been enjoying it

also, i didn't have to fight any bosses in the job shrines?? i've only just finished chapter 2 and i've found 5 of them

still slowly working my way through this every few months. an enemy just used a move called "These Nuts" on me

top 5 Switch game

before i argue, what are your other 4

and why!

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