During the last Nintendo Direct, Square Enix pulled a fast one on us when the “one more thing” was an awesome-looking HD-2D RPG, but it wasn’t what anybody thought it was. It was an action game called The Adventures of Elliot. To be fair, the game actually looks great (and there’s an awesome Switch 2 demo available for everyone to try), but it wasn’t what people expected, so when Octopath Traveler 0 got revealed, it felt like a great troll job, but to sweeten the deal, it’s actually due out this year.
SmashPad was lucky enough to be invited by Square Enix to get hands-on with Octopath Traveler 0 behind closed doors, and despite the nature of some features that fans might scoff at, it still felt like the Octopath we’ve become familiar with.
For transparency’s sake, I absolutely adored the original Octopath. It was my Game of the Year in 2018. Despite this, I unfortunately haven’t had the time to play Octopath Traveler II, so it’s been a while since I’ve been in this world.
Yep, there’s eight characters available for you to fight with.
Luckily, none of the console games are really connected. It’s worth noting, though, that 0 was actually built on the narrative and ideas of Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent a gacha-style mobile game that came out in 2022. I don’t have any experience with that game either, so I figured diving in wouldn’t be too difficult, and I ended up electing to demo the Switch 2 version.
I was wrong there. The demo was pretty hard.
Immediately you’re dropped into a town that you’re responsible for building. Despite being a cozy gamer who enjoysAnimal Crossing from time to time, this isn’t something I’m enamored with. Octopath, to me, is about playing as eight characters with profound stories to uncover as they join up for the betterment of the world. I don’t see how building a village has any relevancy to the epic journeys that unfold in an Octopath game, so I’m assuming this is an evergreen aspect from the mobile game they tried to make work in a AAA title.
Townbuilding in Octopath Traveler 0 is one aspect that doesn’t seem all that thrilling to me.
We were advised to spend no more than five minutes town-building, so I was more than happy to ditch that. Eventually, we found ourselves in the overworld making quick work of random battles before being told that for purposes of the demo, going “the long” way to get to our destination wasn’t the way to go, so we used the Quick Travel to quickly end up in a cave for us to get back in tune with the battle system before getting into a boss fight.
Octopath 0’s battle system uses the same mechanics the other games are known for except with one major caveat: you actually have access to “all” eight characters in battle. Traditionally, you’d only have four, and it’s sort of the same in Octopath 0. You have control of four people in battle at a time, but at anytime during a fight, your active character can tag out and have another character replace. This adds a wealth of strategic depth simply due to the fact that every character should have different roles when it comes to battle depending on their job. I didn’t have a lot of time to look into the menus, stories, and jobs that all the characters had, so the boss fight was pretty chaotic. I actually ended up getting killed because I used the wrong healing items when push came to shove and I just wasn’t paying attention what I was doing.
I would’ve done better had I understood each of my character’s abilities and weapons. Again, Octopath Traveler‘s combat system is about breaking the guard of enemies by hitting them with the right moves. There’s no actual way to tell what an enemy’s weaknesses are outside of trial and error, and when you do that with a demo–especially one that felt more difficult than usual demos–it’s usually a rough time. It was tough, but I was able to get through that demo and advance the plot a little bit.
Creating your own protagonist sounds cool though.
Octopath Traveler 0 is currently being planned for a December 4 release this year on the Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S , capping off what’s been another exciting year for JRPGs.
During the last Nintendo Direct, Square Enix pulled a fast one on us when the “one more thing” was an awesome-looking HD-2D RPG, but it wasn’t what anybody thought it was. It was an action game called The Adventures of…
During the last Nintendo Direct, Square Enix pulled a fast one on us when the “one more thing” was an awesome-looking HD-2D RPG, but it wasn’t what anybody thought it was. It was an action game called The Adventures of Elliot. To be fair, the game actually looks great (and there’s an awesome Switch 2 demo available for everyone to try), but it wasn’t what people expected, so when Octopath Traveler 0 got revealed, it felt like a great troll job, but to sweeten the deal, it’s actually due out this year.
SmashPad was lucky enough to be invited by Square Enix to get hands-on with Octopath Traveler 0 behind closed doors, and despite the nature of some features that fans might scoff at, it still felt like the Octopath we’ve become familiar with.
For transparency’s sake, I absolutely adored the original Octopath. It was my Game of the Year in 2018. Despite this, I unfortunately haven’t had the time to play Octopath Traveler II, so it’s been a while since I’ve been in this world.
Yep, there’s eight characters available for you to fight with.
Luckily, none of the console games are really connected. It’s worth noting, though, that 0 was actually built on the narrative and ideas of Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent a gacha-style mobile game that came out in 2022. I don’t have any experience with that game either, so I figured diving in wouldn’t be too difficult, and I ended up electing to demo the Switch 2 version.
I was wrong there. The demo was pretty hard.
Immediately you’re dropped into a town that you’re responsible for building. Despite being a cozy gamer who enjoysAnimal Crossing from time to time, this isn’t something I’m enamored with. Octopath, to me, is about playing as eight characters with profound stories to uncover as they join up for the betterment of the world. I don’t see how building a village has any relevancy to the epic journeys that unfold in an Octopath game, so I’m assuming this is an evergreen aspect from the mobile game they tried to make work in a AAA title.
Townbuilding in Octopath Traveler 0 is one aspect that doesn’t seem all that thrilling to me.
We were advised to spend no more than five minutes town-building, so I was more than happy to ditch that. Eventually, we found ourselves in the overworld making quick work of random battles before being told that for purposes of the demo, going “the long” way to get to our destination wasn’t the way to go, so we used the Quick Travel to quickly end up in a cave for us to get back in tune with the battle system before getting into a boss fight.
Octopath 0’s battle system uses the same mechanics the other games are known for except with one major caveat: you actually have access to “all” eight characters in battle. Traditionally, you’d only have four, and it’s sort of the same in Octopath 0. You have control of four people in battle at a time, but at anytime during a fight, your active character can tag out and have another character replace. This adds a wealth of strategic depth simply due to the fact that every character should have different roles when it comes to battle depending on their job. I didn’t have a lot of time to look into the menus, stories, and jobs that all the characters had, so the boss fight was pretty chaotic. I actually ended up getting killed because I used the wrong healing items when push came to shove and I just wasn’t paying attention what I was doing.
I would’ve done better had I understood each of my character’s abilities and weapons. Again, Octopath Traveler‘s combat system is about breaking the guard of enemies by hitting them with the right moves. There’s no actual way to tell what an enemy’s weaknesses are outside of trial and error, and when you do that with a demo–especially one that felt more difficult than usual demos–it’s usually a rough time. It was tough, but I was able to get through that demo and advance the plot a little bit.
Creating your own protagonist sounds cool though.
Octopath Traveler 0 is currently being planned for a December 4 release this year on the Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S , capping off what’s been another exciting year for JRPGs.
by Danreb Victorio
