Octopath Traveler - Nintendo Switch

One thing the Super Nintendo is fondly remembered for is its role playing games - titles like Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, or Secret of Mana. These games are story-driven and have you play as a cast of characters usually working to save the world from a great evil. The games generally had beautiful, if blocky, artwork, and unique, menu driven combat. A new game has been released on Nintendo Switch, called Octopath Traveler, which celebrates this tradition. Rather than the one epic story that most games like it deliver, Octopath Traveler is more like a collection of eight short stories, all set in the same land. You choose one character to start as, and as you journey on, you’ll come across the seven other characters available to play. Each character has four chapters, which each take an hour or two and finish in a dramatic battle which are tailored to that character’s particular strengths or weaknesses. The characters include a knight-errant who is searching for the man who killed his king, a cleric on a religious pilgrimage, and a woman who escapes slavery to find the people who murdered her parents. Just as engaging as the stories in the game is the combat. The game requires a lot of strategy in battles, but thankfully the game doesn’t hide very much information from you. When you strike an enemy with something that they are weak with, the game will let you know - and if you do this enough, the enemy’s defenses will break and they will be unable to act for a turn. Balancing this with your party’s attacks and resources is the key to victory - but it often isn’t easy. The game’s art style is an homage to the games from the Super Nintendo era - characters look like they could have come directly from that console, and while the environments are all 3D, they are layered with pixellated textures, giving the world a cohesive look that, while looking modern, also evokes the feeling of those older games. Octopath Traveler isn’t perfect - I wish the characters’ story lines intersected more - but it’s a beautiful game, in its story,its music, and its artwork.

At first i was hesitant about how good the game could be, i mean great graphics , good enough combat and nice music, i thought i have played the demo and the prologue a lot it will be the same that happen to me with destiny but no way adter playing it for around 20 hrs i am deeply in love with this game it is like FF6 but different but at the same time it brings a lot of nostalgia try it out

This game is really good. It’s almost like chrono trigger for the snes. Excellent gameplay mechanics and good story. The boss fights really make you strategize. Be ok with dying a little bit, but learn from the defeats. Must buy for any switch owner that loves jrpg’s.

This game is very beautiful. Full of nostalgia. It handles itself like an old school JRPG but with some nice indie graphics and a very smooth game play. Already put in 2 hours of gameplay and expect a good 80+ hours to come.

The characters stories are great, with an excellent visual style looks and music.

I was so happy to finally purchase Octopath Traveler. The game is awesome!

As someone who has played video games for over 25 years, dabbling with Atari as a toddler and playing on the NES from the age of 5 before moving on to the SNES and so forth, I am quite familiar with the 16-bit graphic art style. This game has captured that art style while making it high definition for the current systems. Beyond the art style, the game play is superb, combat is a lot of fun and is difficult enough to keep you on your toes but never feel overwhelming like some of the new "hardcore" genre that came back to like when Dark Souls was released. The stories of each character are above good but less than amazing, never surprising but not bad at all and never quite tying in to each other but entertaining all the same. For experienced JRPG gamers this game will probably take about 32 hours or so for the main game. For less experienced gamers it will most likely take longer,and completionists could easily spend 50+ hours on the game. Well worth the buy in my opinion.

If you grew up playing RPGs on the Super Nintendo, this is a great game that is reminiscent of games from that time period. The graphics and music are beautiful, and the battle system plays similarly to the turn-based style of the early 90s (note that the game does not have an Active Time Battle setup akin to Final Fantasy IV or VI; it's more akin to the turn-based approach of Final Fantasy or Final Fantasy X). The "HD-2D" approach of the graphics will remind you immediately of the sprite-based styles of SNES-era games, with the added bonus of enemy sprites being in greater detail than your characters, and boss sprites being both huge and very well detailed. However, there is more than just sprites and pixels. Due to the "HD" in "HD-2D", and the Switch's engine, shading and ambient effects are present too, which go well with the pixel-based approach. The game also sports a job system, with enemies awarding JP that can be used to teach your characters abilities. Between the game's unique battle system and the abilities of the jobs, the battles feel fresh and require some elements of strategy. The game was created by the team that made the Bravely Default games, so if you have played those and like the battle system, Octopath Traveler won't disappoint. The only part about the battle system that may disappoint is that the game feels grindy at points. For me, that is not as much of an issue. All in all, Octopath Traveler is a great RPG to have on your Switch. Due to the Switch's portable nature, you can take it on the go and grind out some EXP and JP whenever you feel the itch to play. If you are on the fence about the game, I would encourage you to download the three-hour demo available on the Nintendo e-Shop. If you like the game, you are able to copy over your saved progress from the demo into the full game and resume where you left off.