Title: Octopath Traveler 2
Developer: Square Enix, Acquire
Genre: RPG, Action/Adventure
Released: 2023
Rating: 9/10
Choose your own adventure in Octopath Traveler 2! Start by selecting one of the eight characters and dive into their epic story. Find the other seven characters along the way to create a fellowship of unique adventurers who help each other in this new and dangerous world.
Pros:
Improvements on Octopath Traveler
From battle to travel improvements, Octopath Traveler 2 took the many great things in the original and made them so much better. I’ll cover two of my favorites here. In battles, you now have a latent power that activates when you take a certain amount of damage or break enough shields. When it’s ready to use, your character has a new battle ability that varies by character. While traveling, you can board a canoe to access new areas. Typically this leads to a treasure chest with higher quality loot.
Day and night variation
In Octopath Traveler 2, you have the ability to alternate between day and night on command. Depending on which you pick, towns will have different NPCs to interact with, particular side story availability, certain shops will be open, and your character will be able to perform particular abilities. For example, Throne can steal from NPCs during the day and can ambush them at night. She can also improve her team’s ability to battle at night.
Character ability variety
Each character has his or her own unique abilities. In my demo, I selected Throne as my main character and she has the ability to ambush, steal, improve her team’s ability to battle at night, and attack twice with her latent power. I also sought out Temenos and he has the ability to guide, coerce, blind enemies in battles at night, and lower enemy shield points with his latent power.
On top of the character’s natural abilities associated with their job (ex: thief), you can also obtain a secondary job that comes with a collection of new abilities! For Throne, I found an Inventor who gave her the option of activating the Inventor job.
Cons:
Pokemon-like battles
Like in Octopath Traveler, when you travel between towns, you get sucked into numerous battles along the way. For me, this gets old pretty quickly. Of course once you reach a new town, you can teleport between them using the world map. But I enjoy walking around to find new NPCs or treasure chests. It’s just the battles that wear me down. I wish there was an item like in Pokemon that you could wear or eat to reduce the chance of encountering a battle. There are a couple of ways to reduce your encounter rate but they appear pretty late into the game.
Overall…
I was so sad when my demo ran out of time! I am eagerly awaiting the release date for Octopath Traveler 2. If you’re not sure if Octopath Traveler 2 is for you, be sure to check out the free demo on Nintendo Switch!
Caroline’s Library 