Octopath Traveler
Octopath traveler is an upcoming HD 2D RPG for the Nintendo switch. A week ago a demo came out for the game and everyone was talking about it. In octopath traveler you can play as any of 8 heroes. Each hero has their own adventure to take part in and story to uncover. In the demo you could play as 2 of these heroes. A knight named Olberic that has lost his way and sets out to learn the truth while finding himself, and a dancer that is on a quest for revenge called primrose. The game was so good that I actually played both stories just because I could not get enough. My first play through was with Olberic.
Olberic
For each character you get a small intro cut scene so that you can learn who they are and where there at in their lives. We learn that Olberic was once a great knight that served the kind as his personal protector, but one day during battle another knight that was sworn to protect the king betrayed and killed him. Olberic ashamed left his life as a knight and now he spends his days as the master at arms of a small mountain village.
Art
As the game begins and unfolds we get a beautiful look at the highly stylized art of the game. The game looks absolutely amazing and the creators describe it as HD 2D. To give you a better mental image, imagine a classic pixel art game like Zelda where everything is 2D sprites but the world is in 3D. The art is so good that an entire article could be written about it. I would highly recommend to look the game up just to see the art. The environment looks colorful and the lighting makes the world pop. This is a beautiful natural progression of pixel art.
Gameplay
In the game you will be exploring and battling. The world is open so the game lets you explore freely. At the beginning of Olberics story you are training some young lads to fight but bandits come and kidnap one of the boys. Once you leave the village the game really opens up more. In the village you get a taste of combat, exploration and hero skills.
a) Exploration
While going around the world there is tons of chests and npc’s of interest to encounter. All of this perfectly plays into combat and hero skills.
b) Hero Skill
Each hero in the game has a unique skill that they can use to interact with the world around them in fun ways. Olberic is able to challenge anyone and its cool how this plays out. Defeating npc’s can yield some of the best rewards or even access to rooms they were guarding. It’s really cool how these skills play into the side missions. In one instance a man was being harassed at his shop so I challenged the leader of the thugs and beat him down. Next thing you know the other man thanks me and I have completed a side mission.
c) Combat
Let’s talk about combat because it fun, tough, and promising. The combat is turn based like classic RPG’s but it features its own cool elements. During combat you face off different types of enemies and all enemies have weaknesses. It is up to you to figure out those weaknesses but it’s actually really important that you do. That’s because each enemy has a guard counter and every time you hit them with what their weak against their guard counter drops. When it hits 0 they get guard broken and that’s your chance to really wail on them.
In combat you can attack, defend, or use unique skills to buff you or deal massive damage at the cost of mp, but that’s not all. You also stack power. Every turn you gain one power orb and the limit is 5. These orbs let you supercharge your moves. Whats really cool is that all moves can be super changed up to 3 times which make it an extremely powerful attack.
Now combat is tough especially during the big encounters and its really fun to plan your changes and attacks to maximize damage and break the enemies guard. In this game one bad move can you’re the battle. This made the fights exciting and thoughtful. During battles the game shows the beauty of its art again with the particle effects and the boss art (don’t want to spoil it but what they do for bosses in battle is really cool).
Naturally after battles you gain xp which helps you level up and get stronger, but you have to be careful and save often. I like that save points were always spaced at a good distance so it felt very fair and fun. Healing your characters only happens when you level up or when you rest at an inn so saving really is very important.
Sounds
All of the tracks in the game were really good and fun to listen to and one thing that this game had that I did not expect was really good voice acting. When I first heard it I thought “Oh no this is going to be bad” but it was actually really well done. Characters would even throw out phrases to sell what their thinking and I found that real cool.
Primrose
By the end of olberics story I wanted more. It was so good that they decided to let you try out 2 of the characters because I immediately jumped into a new playthrough as Primrose.
Primrose was the daughter of a great lord, but one day 3 cloaked men break into her home to kill her father. A young Primrose witnesses all of it and she is heartbroken and angry at the 3 men with the crow tattoos. Primrose swears to find the men and kill them no matter the cost and she does just that, even becoming a dancer to get any lead she can.
Primrose’s story was fantastic and I was so disappointed with how quickly I consumed it. It was that good and engaging. Primrose’s unique ability lets her enchant fans so that they aid her and battle. In combat primrose fight with dark magic and a dagger. As the story unfold it build to an awesome final boss battle.
Party
One thing that was really cool to see was that the game was not afraid from using adult themes and showing real problems for these characters. Everything in the demo was done so well and it’s hard for me to find any negatives really. The only thing that I wondered about was the way you recruit the other member of your party. The other members are actually the other main characters but in the demo you would just go up to them and they would join you without any build up or exchange. I really hope that this is not the case for the full game because I found that to be the only thing that was very jarring and it would break the immersion.
Conclusion
All in all his was a fantastic demo that left me wanting more. This demo did exactly what a good demo should do. I highly recommend you guys check it out. Its free so there no harm in trying it. My Final Score For This Game is a “Very Good”!!!
