Legendary RPG specialist Square Enix launched this new IP in July 2018 on the Nintendo Switch and PC. It’s now also available on Xbox and PS4/5.
Square developed the game with help from smaller Japanese studio Acquire, but this is a AAA game. One boasting a beautiful, distinctive HD-2D voxel-style visual style. Packing in some 60 hours of gameplay, it’s a very fine modern role-playing game and well worth your time. Innit.
Novelty and Nostalgia Lead the Way in Octopath Traveler
As a Switch exclusive when it first launch, it was reminiscent of the period where Squaresoft (now Square Enix) and Nintendo had a close partnership. That led to classics such as Final Fantasy III on the SNES (1994), one of the console’s many masterpieces.
Square then worked with Sony for a long period and didn’t go near Nintendo’s consoles.
Happily, the days of partnership are back (not least with Octopath Traveler II that launched in 2023) and this is a shining homage, and modernisation, of classic SNES era RPG territory.
As a lot of people who follow our blog aren’t gamers, we should note how an RPG functions.
It’s kind of like entering a fantasy novel and becoming part of the narrative and engaging in the story. This can work phenomenally well, not least with classics such as the iconic Final Fantasy VII (1997). As an RPG progresses, your character powers improve and you immerse yourself further into the story.
The games in this genre tend to be complex and long—again, 60 hours here in Octopath Traveler. Here’s a demonstration of that typical genre complexity.
The story here is set in Orsterra. One of the world’s gods, Galdera, has been sealed in an afterworld by 12 other deities. You can choose between eight playable characters for this one, all of whom have a different story arc to follow.
This means there’s no set story, as such, more you can play the game in eight different ways!
Full credit to Square Enix on that one as it adds an enormous amount of longevity to Octopath Traveler. We chose the merchant Tressa Colzione for our adventure—she wants to move out of her parent’s sleepy town and explore the world.
Ultimately, all of the stories are merged together. But it is all about restoring equilibrium with the standard RPG levelling up, defeating bosses, and seeing the many sighs.
We do think this is an often brillliant RPG. It met with strong, if occasionally mixed, reviews in 2018 but maximum credit to the developers here for trying something different.
Not least with the game’s distinctive appearance, which is called HD-2D. Square Enix classed it as a Super Nintendo look merged with polygonal environments (a voxel style, kind of) complemented by HD effects.
It looks amazing and the score (more on that in a moment) by Yasunori Nishiki is fantastic.
We must note, though, that the game’s voice acting is really quite awful. At least with the English dub… just, terrible. Yikes.
Anyway, the soundtrack from Nishiki helps to drown out the terrible voice acting—there’s a massive orchestral sweep to this one and it has some strong highlights.
Again, the game met with solid (if not exactly spectacular) reviews in some quarters. Some raved about it… others did not.
And more recently classic style RPGs such as the outstanding Sea of Stars (2023) have really advanced the formula on a great deal. We mean, that one consistently had us in awe of its brilliance.
That’s the standard setter, then, but Octopath Traveler is a worthy attempt to reinvent classic RPGs for a new era. This one is worth it alone just for the constant brilliance of its visual appeal, even if some of the gameplay mechanics (and voice acting) feel a little rusty.
