Why did Octopath Traveler have such incredibly varied reception?

[Havok]

People like different things.

For me, it just doesn't have enough going for it to counter everything that it does poorly. It's an RPG with a character-focused story. That would be wonderful, except there is no interaction among these characters you are supposed to care about and be interested in. The quality of the writing in general is also incredibly poor. Everything is presented like the characters are in a middle-school play, but none of the actors know there are other people around. It's absolutely bizarre. Having a cool look, good music, and a somewhat interesting battle system isn't enough to save it from being one of the most boring games I've ever played.

 

[King_Moc]

Only a few of the characters are actually good, or have good stories, yet the structure ensures they all have equal focus. Some of them are just flat out boring. The gameplay loop is really repetitive as well. I guess some people can look past that stuff. I'm just not sure how.

 

[Moltres006]

I really liked it, but its definitely inferior to other jrpgs on switch like YS VIII or XC2.

 

[Alent]

I enjoyed it a lot but it does that thing i really hate and that's not giving characters who are out of the party EXP. I guess it ultimately doesn't matter much because equipment is much more important but i'm neurotic about levels being equal i suppose. Also it would've been nice to have more story and character interactions. The characters are goofy af and i love but they feel so wasted sometimes.

 

[mockingbird]

Starts off well then becomes too repetitive. Annoying if you have to repeat something 8 times.

 

[Sander VF]

It's a pretty enjoyable game as far as I'm concerned, but there's a lot of room for improvement for a sequel.

Chief among them, the structure of the chapters. Remember Olberic's chapter two? The one with the coliseum? If the entire game had this kind of variety, it's stock would shoot way up. Something to dwell on if there's gonna be an OT2.

As for the narrative set up. No, I really do not want a follow up to be yet another story about a rag tag group of adventurers confronting some grand evil. I like the idea of an anthology of sorts. Especially one that's about more personal stories.

Instead of reverting to rote stuff, they should do one of two things: either contextualize it as the travelers literally telling each other tales in a tavern, and maybe even give each one of them their own supporting cast in the story (I) or have the travelers form a party, but merely participate in each other's journeys, with more narrative involvement this time around (ii).

I do realize that the second option could actually be daunting for the developers, with so many possible permutations to deal with.

 

[Thatguy]

I hate it because they traded on the FF6 name and charged $60, but the actual game was incredibly inferior. The game looked great in a screenshot and while walking/running, but that's it. They barely animated anything else. FF6 had this huge variety of emotional animations, action animations, and they actually bothered to hand script and animate tons of epic set piece moments. FF6 music is a timeless masterpiece. Not 1 track from OT stuck in my head. There was no story besides just individual personal stories, so there was never a driving impetus to move forward. Also every chapter had the exact same structure town>dungeon>boss with no changes to the rythem. Once I played my first chapter 2 I was completely done with the game because I felt I had seen everything the game has to offer 9 times over. I wouldn't be so harsh if they had asked a non predatory-on-nostalgia price of more like $30. The visuals are nice at times but not THAT nice.

Hopefully they remake FF6 with the engine and put some budget into the animation this time.

 

[donkey]

Loved it. I didn't mind the grindy nature of it and blasted through the entire game (true ending and all). Yeah, there's a lot to improve in terms of story and flow, but the overall foundation stuck well with me and dug the battle system hard. Might be because I played it while I was recovering from surgery, so maybe it was little right place, right time for me with this game. I can definitely understand why people would dislike it.

Also I can listen to the soundtrack over and over again:

 

[Aexact]

Given Disclaimer's post and people commenting about the lack of suspension of disbelief, I think that's a strong component of it. Buying into that conceit seems pretty important and that persistent distraction is too much a line to cross I suppose.

I found the gameplay loop really rewarding. Boost and Break felt exhilarating to pull off and the dungeons were an outdated but nostalgic setup to get into more battles. Adding the Break mechanic is a welcome addition to the Bravely Default system.

 

[storophanthus]

It's just one of those games that takes time to click. I felt it getting a bit repetitive until I started getting secondary classes, then it really opened up the battle system and I enjoyed it more. The game doesn't really hold your had in terms of what you can do and how to improve your job system so I can see people being turned off by that.
Some stories were meh while others were fantastic but the OST was straight up amazing. Decisive Battle mixed in with character song intros is awesome.

Overall I had a great time with the game after I gave it a second shot, you just have to be in the mood for an old style rpg.

Click to shrink...

This. Exactly this. For me.


The advance jobs (Starseer, Warmaster, Sorcerer, Runelord) and secret bosses made it more interesting for me.

 

[BlueKoopa]

I haven't played it much so I can't really weigh in personally but before this thread I only knew one person who played it and didn't like it. Everywhere else I saw constant praise. I feel like general opinion is high while some people don't like it (so basically pretty standard for a game like this. I consider BOTW a complete and near flawless masterpiece but I know people who didn't like it).

 

[Fat4all]

i wanted sommit a bit closer to Live A Live

 

[Haze]

I was just very mediocre and hugely disappointing. They kinda hurt themselves marketing it as a sort of FF6 spiritual successor.

It had really good combat, an excellent art style, and good music. But everything else was very poor.

 

[Wispmetas]

I can't remember the last time a JRPG was able to grab me the way this one did, I LOVED it's battle system and the classes abilities outside of combat, made me enjoy exploring too.

But I can understand why people didn't like it, it is very repetitive in its design, the dungeons, chapter strucutre and lack of narrative thread linking it all together can and did pull people away from the game.

In itself the game's quality is varied in terms of it's various design choices, and depending on what you preffer in JRPG's it will make you enjoy or dislike the game.

 

[Abdiel]

Battle system had some cool mechanics, but the game's design choices around experience gain, the way the party has to be juggled in ordered to see the small interactions you can get between party members, and other issues just made me lose my will to finish the last few chapters of everyone's ch 4.

It's a solid 7 in my book. I'll never finish it, but it's not a bad game

 

[Kamek]

This is one of the few games I regret purchasing, the other being Call of Duty black ops. FWIW I'm 30. I should have played the demo or done more research, but the clickbait headlines and hearsay of being a "spiritual successor" to FF6 had me get it. I played it for a bit, but the gameplay was just too repetitive, I didn't find the story particularly compelling, and the game took way too long to get going.

 

[leng jai]

Seems like everyone was hyped with the music and art style in the beginning but the story/character interactions didn't end up delivering.

 

[Alastor3]

Because it's an incredibly uneven and repetitive game that shows its entire hand an hour in and never does anything to change up the formula in any meaningful way.

It's just extremely, extremely bland and the graphical style isn't good enough to buoy the uninspired storytelling and staggeringly repetitive gameplay design.

Click to shrink...

Boom

 

[TaleSpun]

It's gorgeous and plays wonderfully, but it's so woefully, literally disjointed narratively. That really killed it for me, sadly. It's jarring enough for a JRPGG, but even more so when it's evoking SNES-era FF.

 

[Thizzles]

Personally once i heard there wasnt much of a story i was turned off. Played the demo and the gameplay wasnt enough to warrant a purchase

 

[ghibli99]

I think most will agree that the combat, sprite art, and music are great. It's the other stuff (story, 2.5D look/30fps/DOF, repetitive path abilities, job system implementation, pacing, map system, exploration, etc.) that are more subjective and polarizing. Some loved it, some hated it, I was kinda in the middle somewhere, but ultimately the good didn't outweigh the bad. It's a 7/10 for me; a very average game.

 

[Chainshada]

I loved the art style, music and battle system. I felt the stories were decent, but having to do them in bite size pieces took me out of it a bit. I avoided spoilers for it and was still expecting some great event that combined them all in the end, and all I got was some loose connections in a dozen or so text walls.

 

[Mechaplum]

I literally fell asleep with the demo playing the priestess or something. Love the music though.

The music, pallid dialogue and the vignette effect makes for a very effective sleep aid haha.

 

[Oaklight]

I loved many things about Octopath Traveler such as the concept of 8 playable characters with their own unique stories, the music, the battle system, the visuals, the characters, really I love just about everything about the game except for the repetitive narrative structure.

It was this repetition that ultimately led me to cancel my playthrough about 30 hours in because I felt that I had experienced everything the game had to offer. Honestly, I hated that I got bored with the game. I love everything about this game, but its one glaring flaw was enough to turn me away. The potential for a sequel that omits this flaw excites me greatly.

 

[SmittyWerbenManJensen]

It's one of the most gorgeous games ever, and the music is 10/10. However, for a game that appeared story-focused, the stories were very shallow and predictable, which was highly disappointing. Also, the grinding was a bit much.

 

[Griffith]

To some people Octopath was an oasis in a desert filled with derivative and uninspired open world games and shallow jRPGs with mediocre graphics and poor to occasionally-decent stories and mechanics.

To others Octopath was a game that felt archaic because modern standards have trivialized or simplified certain aspects of classic jRPGs.

Then there are those jRPG purists who always feel the need to compare every new jRPG with the title they most cherish who will claim that Octopath sucks because its story is not as good as Final Fantasy 6 and its combat is not as good as Bravely Default and the characters are not as good as Chrono Trigger and so forth.

Finally there are those who are younger and didn't grow up with or had a chance to experience some of the classic jRPGs that others may have played in their youth so to them it feels like a more archaic game without some of the simplifications and accessibility that most modern games enjoy.

It's a different game to different types of people and what shapes their enjoyment of it is ultimately their past jRPG experiences and their expectations.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

For starters, it's a game that unlike most JRPGs, is not terribly concerned with an overarching narrative and is largely a series of vignettes involving each of the main character's personal problems. While there actually a unifying plot point ending in a true final boss, it's more like a postgame quest than something that the game really encourages you to pursue. Some people were cool with that kind of departure and some people weren't.

The party interaction was also a main sticking point, while there were Tales-style skits featuring in-party conversations between plot advancements, those who prefer party members being more active in each others plots ended up being disappointed. I personally didn't mind since I felt I was getting a benefit in the lack of traditional interactions (i.e. the open-endedness of the game's progression).

 

[spman2099]

It came out swinging with some really great ideas, and a super striking aesthetic. However, the game ultimately had some pretty egregious problems. So, I think a lot of people were super excited, jumped in, and found themselves feeling pretty disappointed.

Obviously some people still love it, and I think there is a lot to love there, but I can see why a lot of people didn't take to it.

 

[Council Pop]

Basically, JRPGs are very repetitive games. Everyone who plays JRPGs knows this and accepts it. Sometimes it can be good, sometimes it's incredibly boring.

However, Octopath Traveller is seven times as repetitive as your average JRPG.

 

[Mugman]

I liked the sprite work in the game but actually didn't really like how it looked overall. Couple that with not enjoying much about the demo and hearing that the writing never got better and yeah, it was an easy pass.

 

[EndingE]

Game was amazing, I spent 130 hours on it doing literally everything. And then I started playing it again a few weeks ago.

People like what they like.

 

[Parcas]

It is a gorgeous game with visuals and music that really push on the nostalgia. The battle system is really fun with a lot of room to experiment and feel like you are doing cool things. But the story sucks it is a badly written rehash of cliche stories.

I suppose the big divide is people who could get over how bad the story is and how lame the structure of the game is as it is basically the most linear game ever, even if it gives you the illusion you have different paths.

 

[Asbsand]

"Because we have different tastes".

Well, because really people look for different things in an RPG, and one of the things promised by the concept of Octopath was some kind of campaign with multiple stories, and the story-savvy will look at what it really was and be disappointed because in terms of writing it's not pulled off properly for what it is. There's multiple characters but despite physically intersecting their plots so they're in the same party there's no plot or overarching theme bringing them together. It's a very flat, uninspired and weak story at the end of the day and that is apparent even quite early on, but because the game never recovers it starts to suck. Some people who pay a lot of attention to writing will immediately see that and feel the game's quality sink. Others will feel the "sense of story" in the back of the game's mind and think that's probably good, and they're content with the visuals and combat.

Personally if a game has a lot of story in it that deliberately takes up a lot of the game's time, then I feel as if the game asks me to be invested in it, and to pay attention to it. If that aspect of the game then also isn't great, it drags down the experience. I did not think Octopath was worth shit in terms of storytelling and it ruins the game.

 

[casiopao]

It excels in some area's and is woefully lacking in others. The combat and visuals are absolutely fantastic, but it advertises itself as an old school JRPG, but the games structure is built in a way that pretty much makes it 8 individual stories instead of a cast of characters bonding and going on an adventure together, which is a stable of JRPGs.

I'll buy Octopath Traveler 2 day one, but i really hope they ditch the individual stories and go with a real cast of characters next time.

Click to shrink...

Saga is also old school jrpg lol.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

It excels in some area's and is woefully lacking in others. The combat and visuals are absolutely fantastic, but it advertises itself as an old school JRPG, but the games structure is built in a way that pretty much makes it 8 individual stories instead of a cast of characters bonding and going on an adventure together, which is a stable of JRPGs.

I'll buy Octopath Traveler 2 day one, but i really hope they ditch the individual stories and go with a real cast of characters next time.

Click to shrink...

There have been many old JRPGs that didn't follow the traditional format that you're referring to.

 

[Manbig]

Because it's an incredibly uneven and repetitive game that shows its entire hand an hour in and never does anything to change up the formula in any meaningful way.

It's just extremely, extremely bland and the graphical style isn't good enough to buoy the uninspired storytelling and staggeringly repetitive gameplay design.

Click to shrink...

I pretty much agree with this take. It makes a very strong first impression, but it doesn't offer much outside of a few decent stories and good music.

 

[semiconscious]

Because it's an incredibly uneven and repetitive game that shows its entire hand an hour in and never does anything to change up the formula in any meaningful way.

It's just extremely, extremely bland and the graphical style isn't good enough to buoy the uninspired storytelling and staggeringly repetitive gameplay design.

Click to shrink...

seriously: you want old school? why wouldn't you just (re)play final fantasy vi? :) ...

 

[Sub Boss]

I played the demo,it's very old school but not in a good way imo

 

[choog]

The game has an openness that, unfortunately, led to many people playing it in a highly repetitive style.
I think this is a flaw in the design.

From what I can tell, most people played right into this design flaw. They played all 8 chapter 1s, then all 8 chapter 2s, etc.
The game does not require this but it certainly implies it for anyone with a completionist tendency, which is common among RPG players.

I played the game in a mixed style where I played 2 chapter 1s, then a chapter 2, then 2 more chapter 1s, then a chapter 2, 3, 2, etc...
I think this is a much more enjoyable way to play and wish the game encouraged it more in the design.

 

[Cup O' Tea?]

I was tempted to buy this game but when I heard about the way characters were written in regards to the 8 individual stories, I noped out of there and never looked back. At the very least Octopath Traveler is a good tech showcase for how to modernise 16-bit RPG's aesthetics.

 

[LordOcidax]

Old school vs new gen of players.

 

[Eros]

Having 8 separate incredibly basic storylines that don't really feature the party in them destroyed the game for me.

I only really cared to see Primrose's story to the end.

Gameplay and art was on point, though.

Old school vs new gen of players.

Click to shrink...

Are you saying it's made for old school players? If so, what would you consider old school? I started RPGs with FF7, went back and enjoyed some RPGs on SNES, and didn't like OT in the end.

 

[Yasumi]

Old school vs new gen of players.

Click to shrink...

I didn't have problems with Octopath because it was old school. I had problems because it had major pacing, writing, and gameplay repetition issues.

 

[Valkerion]

I really enjoyed it. I can understand why some who wanted a purely cohesive story between the characters would be turned off by it. I went in thinking I was getting 8 character stories told to me and that got me through it easily and enjoyably. If you were looking to save the world with 8 allies then yeah you would be disappointed.

Games a solid 8 to me. -shrug-

 

[PlanetSmasher]

seriously: you want old school? why wouldn't you just (re)play final fantasy vi? :) ...

Click to shrink...

If I wanted to replay FFVI, I would replay FFVI. I wanted a new game.

 

[cosmicspooks]

I actually really like the idea of telling these individual, unconnected stories that you can jump and skip around in. That is SO cool, I think. And the combat is neat.

But I'm one of three people who isn't really in to how it looks, the stories (while interesting) are told with no energy, and the world/dungeon design made me feel like everything was a bit of a chore.

It is the most "I want to love this" game I think I've ever played, but it ends up just being a "yeah, okay".
Still, if they could tighten some stuff up a bit while keeping the concept....boy would I be on board

 

[semiconscious]

If I wanted to replay FFVI, I would replay FFVI. I wanted a new game.

Click to shrink...

well, yeah, but did you also want a good game? because you can't always have both :) ...

 

[LordOcidax]

I didn't have problems with Octopath because it was old school. I had problems because it had major pacing, writing, and gameplay repetition issues.

Click to shrink...

Like every oldschool jrpg.

 

[justiceiro]

Op got all wrong. The ones who played for less than 30 hours are the ones most positive about it, because they didn't got tired of some repetition yet. The ones that got more than halfway through started to see the same things, like 8 times, so I get it's criticism. Just make a simple test: ask the ones who praise the game if they finished.





It's recore all over again.

 

[WestEgg]

I genuinely enjoyed every character's storyline and continued playing to see them all through. Wasn't the case for everyone though it seems.