LogFAQs > #905013467

For a little bit of background info, Octopath Traveler is a game of 8 characters with 8 stories. It is not the type of JRPG where they're all on a singular mission to save the world from Darkgod Evilman, instead it chooses to focus on telling smaller, mostly standalone stories of the 8 characters. The playable characters don't interact with each other during the individual story scenes (they're just there for battles), but there are various "party banter" scenes that are kinda like the skits from Tales or Disgaea games, so the party members do still talk and bond to a degree. But even though the characters don't get involved in each other's stories, the 8 stories do still intertwine in a world-building sort of way.

The game is pretty open and gives you an unusual amount of freedom for a JRPG. You choose your starting character, and they're your main character locked in your party until you complete their personal story. After finishing your main's initial chapter, you then can go out and explore the world and recruit the other 7 characters in whatever order you like, or you don't even have to recruit them all if you don't want to. The stories are broken down into chapters, and you can tackle them in any order you like. But the recommended levels go up a lot between chapters, so there can be some grinding necessary depending on how you want to play it (though the game does feature a Metal Slime-type enemy that can make grinding less obnoxious).

Each character has their own job class, their own unique talent, and a path action that let's them interact with the world. There's a sub-class mechanic where the characters can be any of the other available classes in addition to their main, and you can swap between any of the ones you've unlocked whenever you like. There's a ton of side quests and optional dungeons to explore, and many of the quests have multiple ways of completion with different outcomes based on the path actions you use.

The battle system features a Break mechanic, where enemies are shielded and you have to discover their weak points (like attacking with swords or using fire skills) to break the shield and leave them momentarily defenseless for big damage, as well as a boost system where you can stockpile BP and strategically boost your moves to gain various bonuses. Reviewers seem to unanimously praise the battle system as the game's highlight.

That's the gist of it, anyway. There is a demo of it available that lets you play for 3 hours of the game's various Chapter 1s, and all progress carries over to the full game.

Now because of the game's open-ended structure, everyone's going to be playing through it in different ways, so definitely mark and label your plot spoilers if you want to talk about it.
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BK_Sheikah? More like BYIG_Sheikah.
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