Octopath Traveler Demo Impressions – It’s like a dream come true…

And yet, looks are not the only place that Square Enix is turning to for inspiration. In this demo alone, the 16-bit inspirations extend to Final Fantasy VI and on a more obscure front, Square’s classic Romancing SaGa series. The game stars a huge cast of characters, eight of which are potential protagonists.

Eight “octo” paths you can travel through in the game. Get it? Don’t change that title, Square Enix. We love it!

You as a player are tasked with choosing the one who will be the star. Who you choose will affect the path you take through the game and the adventures you’ll uncover, but the twist is that all eight stories take place in the same world.

This is the classic SaGa formula down to its very core. Octopath Traveler takes place in a 16-bit open world setting, and it’s up to you to find your way through it while occasionally returning to the central plot. Pretty standard in this day and age, but in the early 90s, SaGa was the only one doing this. Nice to see something else catch up.

Luckily, Octopath Traveler isn’t as obtuse as the SaGa games, meaning you’ll be able to navigate through the world and conduct yourself in battle at your own whims, not the whims of randomly generated numbers and fuzzily designated rules. This takes more from Final Fantasy in that it has a very classic approach to character progression and combat. Nice, simple, cut and dry.

Only, it isn’t without its own ideas. This is a “modern” JRPG after all, masquerading as a classic title, and it has to do something to show some evolution from the classics of yesteryear. Hacking away with normal attacks might have worked for Final Fantasy VI in 1994, but it won’t cut it in 2017.

The combat is another area Octopath Traveler shines, and it is here that we find Tomoyo Asano’s influence on the game.

While that’s a name from the gaming world you might not recognize immediately, you’ll definitely recognize his most famous title, Bravely Default, another marvelous gem that worked along the same lines of retooling classic tropes for the modern age. Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default share a lot in common with their combat thanks to a system that lets players “Boost” their attacks.

Atlus’ Persona games show some strong influence here, as well. If a character hits an enemy with an element or weapon it is weak against, it will “Break,” meaning its defenses will be lowered and it will be stunned for a turn, a classic Persona mechanic. The difference here is that players will have to hit enemies an indicated number of times, where as Persona only requires a single hit to stun enemies. Much like in Persona, Octopath Traveler then allows players to use that time to heal, buff stats, or just lunge to get in a ton of damage.

Blindly hacking through fights is a one-way ticket to tedium and inevitable death. You will not have enough healing items to survive the bosses and dungeons if you don’t learn rhythm and flow of Octopath Traveler’s battle system. It’s thinking man’s JRPG, and the fun comes from learning enemy patterns and pinning down a group without taking a single hit.

You’ll feel like a genius before the end of the two-hour demo.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/09/16/octopath-traveler-demo-impressions-its-like-a-dream-come-true/