Octopath Traveler II (PC) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing some more about Octopath Traveler II!

Like here's a fun fact: did you know that if you press that button it tells you to press on the title screen it turns the background clips from day to night? It's like how you can change the background of the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater title screen, it's great. It also replaces the ridiculously upbeat and adventurous main theme with a mellow piano version.

I'll be playing to the end of Temenos the Cleric's second chapter, but I'm going there the long way. It'll be a bit of a struggle to get through it alone so I'll have to travel the world and assemble a crew first. I'll be vague about events though as it'd be a shame to spoil such a story-heavy game.

This is the second half of this article. If you want to go back to PART ONE instead, click the text.

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Previously, in Octopath Traveler II:

Inquisitor Temenos got a surprise visit by his boss, the pontiff, who asked him to drop by the cathedral later. By chance Temenos ran into a Sanctum Knight called Crick who was heading there too, so he offered to show him the way. Crick soon came to regret his choice when Temenos kept calling him a 'Wayward Lamb' and tried to talk him into breaking into the cathedral. When they finally made it inside they found that the pontiff had been murdered. Temenos remembered seeing the pontiff speaking to someone and decided he should go find them, but Crick got a new assignment so he'll have to travel alone. 

And now, the continuation:

Aha, the mystery of the JP I've been collecting from battles has been solved! They're Job Points that I can spend to learn skills. Unfortunately the cost goes up every time and there aren't that many to pick from. This light-based spell that targets all enemies sounds handy though.

Temenos' second chapter is marked on the map, but it's not on this continent so I'll have to find a port. I'll also need some allies. Fortunately there's a coastal town in the south and Throné the Thief lives there, so I should be able to kill two birds with one trip. The thing is, the game doesn't seem to have an overworld, so I'll be walking through levels the whole way.

I've found a side-quest! This person has had their bag stolen by a thief. I'm headed to see a thief right now, so maybe they know each other.

Personally I think their first mistake was hanging around in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. It's probably also a mistake for me actually, as enemies are tougher at night. Fortunately I can switch back to day time (and vice-versa) with a single button press! A single horrifying button press. Hit that button just 730 times and you've lost a whole year of your life.

Travelling at night is probably a good idea for players who've levelled up a bit and are re-treading old ground, as the experience you get increases. I think I'll stick to easy mode for now though.

Yeah I think I learned the right skill. Those poor birds didn't know what hit them (mostly because it's blinding). I'm feeling kind of vulnerable without a second character though. Maybe I should go back to town and grab an NPC as a summon. I'm sure they won't mind being dragged away and forced to fight monsters. It'll be an adventure for them.

These random encounters haven't been giving me any trouble so far. Especially if there's only one enemy. I start off with a single Boost Point, which I can spend to gain a second attack (or a more powerful spell), so if I come across something with two shield points and a weakness to staves I can leave them stunned or dead in a single turn. I'll even get bonus EXP for it!

I found a dock so I'm just sailing around a bit in my boat, looking for other docks with treasure chests to grab. There are random encounters when you're in the water as well but they're no more trouble than the ones on land. Even on my own I'm tough enough to deal with anything the game's been throwing at me. In daytime anyway.

The world is split into different maps and you move between them by reaching exits. The screen stops scrolling and you walk off into an adjacent area. Or float off, as it turns out I can go to different areas in the boat as well.

Holy crap, they just took me out with their first move! They hit me with 714 damage, and I only have 423 hitpoints maximum! Enemies usually only hit for 35! Okay, lesson learned, the game's doing the classic Dragon Warrior thing with different areas. It's open world to an extent, but If you stray too far out of your depth you're going to be one-shotted. It does tell you the danger level of an area though, so it's not like you can't see this coming.

Well now I know what the game over screen looks like, so I never need to lose another fight again! Fortunately the game autosaves when you move to a new area so I didn't lose much progress at all.

The map starts off blank, but I've been filling in areas as I go. It does mark the major towns though, like Canalbrine on the left, where Temenos' second chapter takes place (and Castti's first chapter). And I'm at New Delsta, where Throné lives. The game features a fast travel system that lets you jump straight to a town, but unfortunately it only works on places I've already been,

Alright now that I'm here I need to find a port and a thief. Two thieves actually, because I want to get that side-quest done. Main quests and main characters are marked on the map, but for side-quests you're on your own, so it might take a while.

NEW DELSTA

Holy crap, what's up with this city? These two are talking about testing their knives on a dog!

It's a nice looking place though. Especially when I go somewhere with puddles and I can see stuff reflected in them. But if I ever said they'd toned down the bloom effect for the sequel, I was obviously wrong. Temenos' face is casting some powerful light magic right now.

The game finally offers me a choice, and it's this?

I got here by following the marker on my marker pointing to Throné so I'm thinking it's in my interests to say 'yes' here. Unless she's pro-puppy murder, in which case I don't even want to recruit her.

Saying 'yes' gave them an opportunity to test their knives on Temenos in a battle, and I think they should probably run off and get a refund. Though it turns out that Throné's fond of the dog and she's impressed. When she hears that Temenos is a traveller she asks to join up.

Ah okay, so I can continue on with my quest or play her backstory, and even if I say 'no' the option's still there.

Just out of curiosity I decided to select 'no' just to see what happens. Turns out she joins the party at level 1, so it's worth playing their first chapter just to get some extra levels and items. Also because it's the beginning of their story, and stories are what this game is all about.

It's always weird seeing tiny pixel characters smoking. It's not very Nintendo.

Throné's from the same continent as Temenos, but she's from a very different world. Her story starts at the end of a crime gone wrong, with her team barely escaping through the sewers. It seems like one of them is a traitor and Scaracci's combat skill set is so self-serving that he's practically wearing a sign saying 'I will stab you in the back'. 

Her chapter's very cutscene heavy, but I'm into it. I think it helps that I chose to inflict this on myself. The game didn't trap me here against my will, I opted in.

Prostitutes aren't very Nintendo either.

Throné has her own pair of Path Actions, which let her knock people out or steal from them depending on the time of day. And stealing is the daytime skill! Her story requires her to acquire a disguise and she's so damn good at it that she can steal the clothes off someone in broad daylight without anyone noticing. (It's fine, the Brothel Girl must be carrying a second set of clothes in her pocket).

The plot eventually took her into a mansion on a mission of assassination and right at the end of the trail of dead guards I found another peddler offering healing items and gear! Hey, I'm not going to complain about convenient merchants.

Okay that boss just looks ridiculous. I mean the art's good, but there's a bit of a size and art style mismatch there.

I thought I was doing really well in this fight... and then I lost. I wasn't holding anything back, I was even using up my items, but I guess I just didn't have the right strategy. Though I guess it couldn't hurt to hang around the mansion a bit and gain an extra level. It won't even take long, I'm like two battles away and I can double the battle speed with a button press.

Yeah, having 471 health instead of 356 made a big difference and I was able to make it through the chapter with a properly levelled Throné, a bag full of stuff, and a mission.

The timer on the top right tells me that Throné's chapter took about an hour, so roughly the same as Temenos' chapter. I'm not keen on this option on the left though. It kind of breaks the immersion!

I still can't find the side-quest thief or the docks though, so New Delsta has been a bit of a dead end for me.

Oh duh, the sailing routes are drawn on the map as dotted lines! My brain didn't even register them, as I assumed they'd been drawn on to make it look more maplike, like the rhumb lines. Alright time to go north and get myself a ship then.

Completing Throné's first chapter has unlocked two new chapters, one recommended for level 7 and the other at level 16. Temenos' second chapter has a recommended level of 14 so it'd make sense for me to do Throné's chapter first, but I can do it any way I want.

SOON, ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT

It's nice having a second party member again. For one thing it increases the amount of vulnerabilities I can hit, as Throné can switch between swords and knives. She can also steal, which is how I just swiped a healing grape from a dog.

Plus both characters inflict status effects at night, with Temenos lowering their physical and elemental defences while Throné boosts our physical and elemental attacks. Status effects are indicated by cryptic little icons, but I can bring up a reminder of what they all do. The game also lets me toggle the descriptions of what my skills do, which is handy as I've got a lot of them.

I still need to get the rest of my team together, so I'm heading south to recruit Partitio the Merchant as my third character.

Hang on, how did I end up playing Hikari the Warrior's chapter? I thought I was heading to pick up Partitio. The roads are a bit twisty sometimes so I guess I must have taken a wrong turn.

This scene cool though, they've really gone all out with the sprites in this battle. It's just a shame that the cloud shadows are a bit distracting with how fast they zoom by.

Hikari is an honourable warrior with a good heart, though for some reason his Path Action skills are challenging people to a fight during the day, and bribing them for information at night! Temenos also has the ability to get information at night, so there's a bit of overlap there.

Oh right, Throné's second chapter is in the same town as Partitio. I can put the cutscene on pause for a bit though and come back to it later by visiting a tavern. I think that'd make more sense as I want to recruit my fourth party member first.

It turns out that Partitio's from a Wild West town, with an accent to match, so there are samurais and cowboys living just a few miles away on the same continent. This definitely isn't a medieval world.

Partitio can recruit people like Temenos, but his hired sidekick has the bonus effect of getting us discounts in shops. He can also get items from NPCs like Throné, except he pays for them instead of stealing. I may have underestimated how complicated this game gets.

Now there's three different scales of people in this fight, and one of them's brought a desk! I've played RPGs before though, so I know I should take care of the weaker guys first.

Alright I've brought a whole team of heroes together and raised them to level 14 (more or less), so I'm finally ready to start Temenos' second chapter! I wasn't deliberately trying to grind, you just fight a lot of battles as you're travelling the roads.

One thing I didn't expect is that the characters will praise each other in battle if someone does something impressive. It's nice to get a bit of camaraderie from them, considering how little they get to talk in cutscenes. In fact they've never talked to each other in cutscenes, besides 'Are you a traveller? Can I join up?'

Oh the plus side Crick's come back! I wasn't sure I'd ever get to see him again, but I guess detective Temenos needs his long-suffering longsword-wielding Watson as he pieces together what happened here. Temenos came to Canalbrine in search of a man he'd spotted talking to the pontiff. But what he found was another murder.

This means I get to do his investigation thing again, where I walk over to stuff in the room and press the button. It's more of a 'cutscene with pauses' than actual gameplay, but hey I like cutscenes... as long as there's characters like Temenos and Crick in them.

When I stepped outside I noticed a message saying I could press a button to hear travel banter. So I did, and got a silent skit, like in the Tales games.

So the characters do actually talk to each other sometimes. It just happens in this blurry dimension outside of reality where no one in the actual plot can see. Crick's given me no hint that he's aware of the other three people in my party.

Anyway I chased my suspect onto a boat so now it's time for another short dungeon followed by a boss battle. 

I don't think I like this boss battle one bit. I've revealed most of his vulnerabilities, but he keeps summoning elementals that I can't figure out how to break. They don't have to be stunned for me to deal damage, but it takes longer, and if I take too long he starts throwing them at me like a magic spell! Then he pulls out a replacement set.

But the worst part is that I don't know how many hit points the boss has, so I can't estimate how long this will take. It makes it feel like I'll be stuck here for hours, it's really demoralising.

Well, fuck. All that work for nothing.

Even using my items he utterly whooped my ass. I had to use up healing items and phoenix downs every turn just to stay in the fight, which means that I wasn't spending my turns hitting him. I'm at the recommended level, but that disaster wasn't the recommended way to have fun.

I know what to do though. I'm going to go somewhere else! I can just turn around and walk away from a chapter, then continue where I left off later.

SOME EXPLORING LATER

I ran into the thief who stole the dude's stuff while I was roaming the roads! So ends the tale of "The Traveler's Bag." I got 1500 leaf (money), 1 slippery nut and 3 healing grapes for my trouble. Nuts are good because they're permanent stat increases, but bad because it's making me choose who to use them on. There are eight characters so I could spend them on a character I don't end up using much.

An Octopuff Traveler, hah!

It's taken me this long to notice that the colour of the enemy's name indicates their health (white - unharmed, yellow - wounded, red - near death). That could've helped my morale during that boss fight. It's helpful to let me know how effective my attacks are being. And they generally aren't against this guy, as he's way too slippery. I think he's one of those weird rare enemies that pops up and torments you for a couple of turns before vanishing.

But I apparently defeated the guy somehow as I came out of the fight with a ridiculous amount of experience. Enough to take Castti from level 8 to level 13! Oh, she's my new apothecary by the way. She's good at mixing up herbs to heal or harm, and if she hits her limit break latent power it doesn't even use up any items.

I've also picked up a Scholar called Osvald, who's basically an old school mage. By that I mean I get to fire off a few good fire, ice or lightning spells that hit all enemies, and then he's practically useless unless I spend a turn munching on whatever fruit gets me some SP back. It costs 14 SP a spell and he has 91 SP max, so that's just 6 attacks!

But he has a particular ability that's likely earned him a permanent place in my party: he can analyse enemy weaknesses. That means I don't have to work it out through trial and error anymore! I have to hit with something they're weak to in order to break their shields for a turn and deal some proper damage, so this is a massive help to me. I just have to hope they're not weak to fire, ice or lightning, as like I said, he can only cast them 6 times.

My seventh party member is a beastling hunter called Ochette, who has the power of Pokémon.

She can capture monsters and use their skills as her attacks! This is bloody useful as their different skills count as different weapon types, so she can hit a lot of vulnerabilities. And it doesn't even cost any SP! Plus she lives in a town where people pay for stuff in jerky, which is kind of weird.

One thing I noticed is that I've been buying a lot of stuff from merchants. Most of my new gear is from shops instead of chests (though chests have some good stuff too).

And now I've got my eighth character, Agnea the Dancer!

The game's got a real mix of tones to it. You've got characters like Throné and Partitio dealing with betrayal and poverty. Osvald has to break out of a freezing island prison to get revenge for his dead family. Then you've got Agnea who lives in a picturesque rural town where everyone loves her and is rooting for her to live her dream to become a star! One minute it's all smiles and hope, the next you're playing Russian Roulette with poisoned cups.

I've also dragged a minstrel NPC out with me, because why not? He likes to come out in battles when I use Agnea's dance skills and play a little tune for her to dance to. Which has the side effect of casting his magic buff on my party as well. There's so much to think about!

There you go, I've finally got the full set. Shame I can only bring four out at once.

This journal's a handy feature. It doesn't just tell you what you're doing and what side-quests you've picked up, it also lets you replay any cutscene. And you can also replay any travel banter you missed by bringing the wrong characters out!

Once you've bought enough skills with your Job Points you start unlocking passive support skills, and have to decide which four of them you want to equip.

This has become even more complicated for me, because I've been doing a bit of exploration and found some secondary jobs to equip on my guys, each with their own skills and support skills! They also change the character's sprite in battle. 

I can't take Hikari's sexy Hunter sub-class pose seriously. Temonos looks dapper as a Scholar though.

I've been exploring the map, looking for chests and jobs and shrines and stuff, but when an area's danger numbers are higher it becomes a real drain on my resources. I get my HP and SP refilled on a level up, so that keeps me going to an extent, but Osvald's elemental spells are a real issue. He just burns through his SP too fast, and then he's left hitting things with his stick until I munch on some fruit.

Oh hang on, the Apothecary secondary job has a passive that gets me 30% health and SP back after every fight. I can give that to him, spend a few of the thousands of Job Points he's accumulated to unlock the skill, and then switch him back to another class afterwards. In fact I can do that with everyone!

Alright, I think it's time to go back and finish Temenos' second chapter. Or die trying.

I went back to the boss fight with a whole army of my best troops, and also some old guy I met along the way that I bribed with some jerky. This time I have far more max health and SP, a wider variety of damage types thanks to my secondary jobs, and the ability to identify vulnerabilities! It makes a big difference. Oh plus Osvald's Analyse skill told me he has 14000 HP, so I know basically how many hits this is going to take.

The boss kept on sending out his elementals, but this time I was able to kill most of them, and finish the chapter! But the tale continues, so Temenos and Crick will team up again someday.

Alright now I'm done with this article and I can turn the game off.

Temenos the Cleric: Chapter 2

-End-

Oh hang on, this is interesting.

Up to this point the heroes have been in their own separate stories, but now it's promising me a Temenos and Throné team up. I can't turn this off now, I have to see what this is like first.

Look, they're actually talking to each other! This is amazing.

The two of them are teaming up to find some mythical treasure in that cathedral I visited at the start of the game. Step one: interrogate someone to find out where it is. Then I guess step two will be fighting through a short dungeon and step three will be a boss fight.

Nope, there's no other fighting in this chapter. It's just talking and more talking. I like the pay off at the end though. 

The game just makes me want to take screenshots of them running like this, with my four heroes and their hired sidekicks trailing behind. Man, I wish I'd brought Ochette out for this so I could've seen her owl trailing behind as well.

There they go, off on another adventure. Because I keep playing the damn game when I should be stopping to finish this article.


CONCLUSION

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I've written about a few JRPGs over the years and I think by this point I've pinned down exactly what they are. I mean besides being turn-based adventure games descended from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest with catchy battle themes and basically zero conversation options. What they are, is a pain in the ass. They keep locking me into linear story areas with unskippable cutscenes when I want to go explore and do my own thing. They have random encounters scattered around like a field covered in rakes and every time I step on one I get smacked in the face with another brainless fight I can get through by tapping the attack button.

And worst of all, they won't tell me where they want me to go. "Go visit the village elder," they'll tell me, without giving me the slightest hint where they are. A character will say "It's late, you should go back home," forcing me to play a game of 'knock on every door until I find my own house'. The absolute momentum killer is when a game expects me to go talking to every NPC in an area until I stumble across the one who'll trigger the plot to move forward.

So when I saw this entirely optional quest radar down at the bottom of the screen I started to suspect that me and Octopath Traveler II might just get along. I mean the game goes out of its way not to frustrate you. Everything has an entirely optional description attached to it to remind you what your moves do and what status effect icons mean. Tutorial screens are brief and to the point, appearing when they're relevant and then getting out of your way. It autosaves between areas. There's a run button. Plus the game doesn't just let you skip cutscenes, it lets you fast-forward them, and you can always go back and replay them afterwards! It also lets you play battles on double speed.

Funny thing is though, I generally left everything on normal speed and listened to every word, because I was interested. Which is good, as it's not enough to just minimise annoyances, a game's also got to be compelling. The original Octopath Traveler also had a lot of these quality of life features and I bounced right off it because its characters and dialogue seemed so boring. I found myself skipping lines and entire cutscenes trying to get to something that grabbed me. It didn't help that the first game doesn't have much voiced dialogue, and the rest of the time the message boxes are accompanied by voice clips saying things like "I'm sorry," or "The truth is," to set the tone. Octopath Traveler II has full voices for its cutscenes, and no voices for its NPC dialogue, which I think is a much better way of doing it. Especially when the voices are good.

I don't want to overhype the game's writing, however. The stories are fine, above-average even, but nothing incredible so far. And they definitely happen at you, rather than you getting to participate at all beyond walking between NPCs. Each character has their own storyline, which seems completely isolated from whatever else is going on, so far anyway. But that works for me, as without one overarching save the world plot, each character's story gets to be the most important thing that's happening. Whether they're solving murders, saving an island from calamity, or trying to make it as a superstar dancer.

It's kind of jarring though that the stories are also completely isolated from the other characters. The game assembles an endearing group of heroes from radically different worlds and then never lets them interact, aside from the occasional silent travel banter skit or crossed paths chapter. Instead the heroes have their own casts, so when Temenos has a mystery to solve, Crick comes back and everyone else vanishes.

The game's split into chapters which fall into the same routine of talking to people, watching cutscenes, doing a short dungeon, then fighting a boss. But once you're past chapter 1 you're not locked into them and you can just walk away and pick it up later. Which works for me, as what I personally want from a game is clear instructions about what I should be doing, and the option to just ignore it for a while and do my own thing instead. And there are plenty of places to walk away to, which increases as you level up and increase your odds of surviving them. No level scaling here as far as I can tell.

This puts you in control of the difficulty, as you can do chapters the moment you hit the recommended level, or go exploring and inevitably end up overpowered. Fortunately the battle system demands a little brain power either way, as it's more effective to strip an enemy's defences than it is to just mindlessly press 'attack', and it's not always obvious how best to do this. Unless you're fighting the same enemy group for the fourth time in a row, in which case you've probably gotten the routine down and you're a bit sick of it. Not that dungeons are long enough for that to typically happen, and the random encounter rate is just high enough that you're basically paying a fee of one extra fight to collect each treasure chest along the way.

I wasn't pushed too hard to experiment with the huge amount of skills you can unlock or acquire, but I'm okay with that as the amount of options you have can be kind of overwhelming, especially once you get secondary jobs. You've also got a ton of options outside of combat, with the 8 characters giving you 16 Path Actions to try out on NPCs. You can learn combat skills, recruit them, get information, get items, or just knock them out.

You're encouraged to learn stuff about people to get secrets and discounts, which has a side effect of making you learn about people. In fact between story, skills and side-quests you can get to know half the world's population by the time you're done. The only problem is that interacting with NPCs takes just a few too many button presses for something you'll be doing to half a town. Plus it might be helpful to have a notepad handy to note down who you need to look out for to complete the side-quests, as the game doesn't hold your hand there, but I'm not really considering that a bad thing.

I have to admit, I didn't really get the appeal of Octopath Traveler's HD-2D visuals, as to me it came across like a PlayStation game with too many filters stacked on top. It's a blown out monochrome mess with tilt-shift blurring that makes it look like a tiny cardboard diorama. Octopath Traveler II is basically the same, but they've pulled the effects back just a little and it suddenly works for me. Especially in motion. The only thing I was bothered by here is when the clouds start moving too fast, putting blotchy shadows over everything. But you can turn the shadows off if you want. You can turn all the processing off. And the actual sprite work on display here is excellent, even if it's occasionally difficult to make out what the monsters are supposed to be.

Speaking of things that are excellent, damn this game has a good soundtrack. 'JRPG has good music' isn't exactly shocking news, but this had me hoping for random encounters just so I could hear the battle theme again. Plus every location has its own daytime and nighttime themes and transitioning between the two never got old for me. I haven't heard the Japanese voices, only the English ones, but I'm going to go and say all the audio in this is top level. Characters praise each other in battle with the same few lines over and over, but it didn't grate on me. Honestly it was nice to hear Throné getting some support from friends for once.

I've only played around 30 hours, and any Mass Effect fan can tell you how a game can fall apart at the end, but this is already a contender to be one of my favourite RPGs. Which is a bit of a relief really, considering it was a gift. If you're into JRPGs and don't need epic CGI cutscenes or top of the line RTX-enhanced visuals, this is an easy game to recommend. It's got a nice big three hour demo so I'd suggest giving that a try at least. Even if you've tried the first game already and bounced off it, like I did.

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Thanks for reading! It probably won't take me so long to get something written about the next game, whatever it is. If you think you can identify it from the clue, let me know in the comments. You could also share your own thoughts on Octopath Traveler II or its predecessor if you want.