There’s nothing fairly like breaking the again of a job enjoying recreation’s development, and Octopath Traveler is completely constructed for simply that.
Over on our definitive VG247 Final Fantasy ranking, I listed Final Fantasy eight as my fifth favorite entry within the collection. I can actually take or depart a lot of that recreation, however one explicit aspect of FF8 stands out: how totally damaged it’s. The first time you play FF8 you’ll in all probability play it because the builders meant, however as soon as you already know somewhat concerning the ins-and-outs of its character development and issue, you’ll be able to deliciously flip the sport inside out inside a number of hours of kicking off a brand new save. It feels nice.
Octopath Traveler is a sometimes hit-and-miss but ultimately satisfying Japanese RPG throwback, however within the aftermath of my assessment I’ve saved enjoying – and my main purpose for doing so is to seek out methods to govern its recreation methods to interrupt Octopath’s open-ended development as quickly as attainable. This is a good string for any RPG so as to add to its bow: the story is over, however I’m nonetheless at it.
The construction of Octopath Traveler lends itself higher to those kinds of shenanigans than most different video games. It’s a massively open-ended recreation, permitting you to start out with any of the eight playable get together members, recruit them in any order and sort out every character’s storyline in any order you want. That means if you would like you can tackle all 4 chapters of 1 character back-to-back, or you can full their chapter one earlier than heading off to do some quests for different members of the solid.
Hidden amongst that is the good Bewildering Dance potential, and my complete technique for utterly breaking a second play-through of Octopath Traveler all revolved round that. Limited to the Dancer class, at first solely Primrose can have it, however later the dancer class might be geared up to a second character as effectively. Bewildering Dance is mainly Japanese RPG Russian roulette: the dancer performs a dance, and that dance has a random impact.
The Bewildering Dance would possibly kill you (so it’s prudent to save lots of usually utilizing this method), or it’d buff or debuff enemies. It may deal harm. It may summon a Cait, the uncommon enemy that drops an absolute shed load of EXP, JP and money. Best of all, it might probably multiply the assets you acquire on the finish of battle by as a lot as 100 instances – and these results stack!
This goes completely loopy locations – we’re speaking leaping from degree 10 or so to degree 30-something in a single leap, gaining tens of 1000’s of EXP and 1000’s of JP for purchasing abilities. It led me down a path Japanese RPGs not often handle to get me: I used to be pleased to grind seeking probably the most impressively stacked Bewildering Dance bonuses. In one of the best case situation you’ll summon a Cait, kill it, then set off an EXP or JP bonus. The numbers get stupidly huge. It’s a really satisfying factor certainly.
To come again to the FF8 analogy once more, for many who keep in mind that recreation’s methods, I used to be taken again to utilizing card on the fish on the shores of the Balamb continent to massively overpower the sport’s beginning get together. That’s some grinding I’ve extraordinarily fond reminiscences of, as a result of the top consequence – a damaged recreation the place characters find yourself with a broad vary of abilities early on that can be utilized to mainly speedrun in direction of late-game content material – is worth it.
Yes, the random likelihood might be irritating and the grinding out battles might be tedious, however it’s thrilling – particularly since Octopath Traveler’s open-ended construction means you can also make a run for issues just like the hidden superior lessons as quickly as you’re able to sort out the troublesome bosses that guard them. Those bosses are price dashing to on a repeat play, too – Octopath has a wonderful fight system with quantity of customization, so breaking the system to permit for experimentation with its eight characters and twelve character lessons is an thrilling factor certainly.
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