Tag: Octopath Traveler

Not all chapters are equal. Primrose Chapter 2 is far easier than Therion’s. It’s curious how they directly reference Godfather opening scene in her chapter too. Also, it’s again of a darker tone, as her target is the owner of a brothel.
Mage’s chapter is as bad as Therion’s, with the same type of boss that’s invulnerable until you take out both minions.
Merchant’s chapter is easy, but it’s more of a filler side story, where she chases a corrupt magnate out of town.
One nice touch about the game is that different towns sell different equipment: one might sell better swords, another better staves. And equipment is relevant for longer.
The less nice bit is that although there is sidequests journal, half of the quests are still untracked. There’s one quest in the desert town, where a dancer tells you she wants to dance in a blue dress, and a sick girl tells you she wants to see a dancer. So I thought that first you give dancer a dress, then take her to the girl. But no, it’s either you give her the dress or take her to the girl.
Out of all 2nd chapters, Huntress is the most difficult. Not because of the bosses, but because it forces you to utilize her “Pokémon” mechanic, beating an enemy using only the captures monsters. The most fun 2nd chapter is Warrior, as unlike everyone else, he doesn’t have a dungeon to complete, instead it’s just arena with 3 bosses.
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Unlocked healer Alfyn, despite his class, he actually is very sturdy and hits pretty hard as well.

Thief Therion chapter was objectively one of the easiest so far: boss had only one minion, and it’s pretty useless, and the boss doesn’t inflict any statuses, while the snake boss in clerics chapter poisoned the entire party. Starting quests for cleric Ophilia, who’s actually the stronger healer and the only one with Light magic and ranger Haanit are also easy. Finally, the party is complete, and I can start with the second chapter.

The game has a few interesting “lessons”. In towns, you often get sidequests to acquire some item. Usually you can either buy or steal it. If you steal it, there’s a chance to ruin your reputation, so nobody would talk to you until you pay a fine. But that fine is less than if you’d buy all the items honestly.
Also, at first I didn’t pay much attention to NPCs blocking some buildings. Turns out, if you provoke them, beat them unconscious in a duel, you can then steal valuable stuff from their house.
It’s still a slog, though. I went for Therion Chapter 2 first, because it had the lowest recommended level. Still, Therion is greatly underleveled, and I had to grind for hours just to level him enough so he could steal the items required to progress the quest. And even after that, I couldn’t beat the boss, so I had to switch to other character stories instead.

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Primrose arc is the best one yet, because it has gravity to it, which most JRPG plotlines lack. She is a disgraced daughter of an assasinated noble that works in a brothel.

Her friend helps her escape only to be killed by their owner.

I had a lot of trouble with this boss fight, mainly because I didn’t care to level up my characters much, while the bosses scale with number of members in your party.

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I haven’t played SNES era RPGs for a long time. But I do remember Seiken Densetsu 3 did that thing where you could start the story with any character, they would have their own prologue, and then you would slowly gather other party members, which was mind-blowing at the time. And the visuals are clearly Final Fantasy 6, with chibi protagonist, but normal enemies and bigger than life bosses:

(Like here, they all supposed to be normal humans of the same size)

The problem, and why I dropped the game once already, is starting any JRPG is extremely boring, with how little stuff you can do besides hitting your enemy in the face. It becomes even more so when you have just a single character.
The main battle mechanic is exploiting weaknesses, just like in Persona series. But in order to stun the enemy you need to exploit a weakness multiple times.
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