It's a shame Octopath Traveler 2 hasn’t branched out in this respect. Square Enix's HD-2D visuals and extreme bokeh effects are a real feast for the eyes. As in the first game, you've got your standard sword and polearm-wielding warrior, your dagger-y thief and dancer, your axe and bow-carrying hunter and apothecary, spellcasting scholar and cleric, and the slightly useless merchant, who prefers to chuck money (and other hired muscle) at their problems rather than contribute anything themselves.
They don’t fundamentally change the rhythm of your battle tactics per se, but they’re enough of a trump card to turn the tide in large boss fights, and crucially add some much-needed variety to what are essentially the exact same eight character classes you've probably played before. They're essentially limit breaks by another name – special abilities that trigger once each character's been hit enough times to fill up the tiny circular meters above their HP bars. Octopath Traveler 2 builds on its predecessor’s excellent battle system by adding new 'latent powers' for your cast of heroes. Plus, when each battle is accompanied by the soaring battle themes from returning composer Yasunori Nishiki, you can’t help but look forward to each and every encounter. The way characters pulse with energy as they boost up to their maximum turn count, gusts of wind and glowing light billowing out from under their tiny pixelated feet, delivers an exquisite power curve that even the best Final Fantasy games can struggle to match these days, and it manages to do it all without the aid of screen-hogging summon monsters, too. This process of identifying and narrowing in on an enemy's vulnerabilities, bringing down their defences one notch at a time before finally timing their 'break' point just right in order to 'boost' your party's attacks in the next turn when they're too stunned to move remains Octopath Traveler 2's greatest strength. Players of Square Enix's Bravely Default games will immediately recognise the glee and satisfaction of storing and saving up turns to unleash in an almighty burst of powered up pain, and Persona fans will continue to revel in the way you can break and daze enemies big and small by exploiting their very specific crop of individual weak points, which are meticulously uncovered by whacking them with every single weapon and spell at your current disposal.īattles continue to be the best bit of Octopath Traveler 2, and working out an enemy's weakpoints is a captivating puzzle in its own right. In some ways, I'm glad that Square Enix and fellow co-developers Acquire haven't forgotten what makes Octopath Traveler brilliant: its turn-based battle system continues to be a compelling centrepiece in this enormous undertaking, propping up its eight individual storylines with moreish, climatic setpieces, even when the fuel powering its plotlines has long since run dry. And also like the first game, Octopath Traveler 2 doesn't properly end until you've finished all eight character stories and unlocked and completed the secret 'Final' chapter that ties it all together.
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There's some evolutionary work at play here in how its battle system operates and the way its character stories have been given a bit more connective tissue this time round (more on that in a sec), but the basic nuts and bolts are fundamentally the same.Īs before, you get to pick one of its eight heroes to serve as your main (and permanently locked) protagonist in order to kick things off, and once you've completed their opening chapter you're then free to travel in any direction you want to pick up the rest of the crew, and pursue their own four-chapter story arcs in whatever order you like. The big one is that Octopath Treveler 2 is set on a completely different continent with eight fresh traveller stories to pursue, meaning you can come to this without any prior knowledge of the first game and still have a great time. But alas, here we are in 2023 with another Octopath Traveler game that is, bar a couple of very light tweaks and additions, exactly the same game as what came before it, for better and for worse. You know that famous saying about those who forget the past are forever doomed to make the same mistakes? That's Octopath Traveler 2 in a nutshell, a JRPG that follows so precisely in the footsteps of its predecessor that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was suddenly 2019 again and that the last few pandemic years were nothing but a terrible existential nightmare. Square Enix's gorgeous JRPG returns for a second outing, but bar a couple of very minor evolutions, this is effectively the same Octopath Traveler as before.
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