Octopath Traveller 0 Preview
I recently had the opportunity to play through the opening first few hours of Octopath Traveller 0 and have the privilege of telling you ‘wot I fink’ thus far, ahead of the inevitable review I will also be writing ahead of its launch on 4th December.
With that in mind, it’s preview time, baby!
The first thing fans, who haven’t played the mobile game, will notice is that Ocotpath Traveller 0 essentially flips the series formula on its head. Instead of following an octet of adventurers across a series of overlapping tales, you are instead presented with a lone player-created protagonist that can travel down eight different career paths.
Those who have played Champions of the Continent, though, may wonder whether this is a remake of the aforementioned mobile title. The answer is kind of.
The initial setup is the same. You’re on a quest to vanquish three cartoonishly evil villains, after they rock up to your picturesque town and burn it to the ground while hunting for a magic ring.
You then spend a lot of your time rebuilding that town brick by brick while off on a more traditional adventure..
However, since Octopath Traveller 0 is a full-fat, pay-to-play console version in the traditional sense, thankfully, the obnoxious mobile elements have been binned, and the solid foundations of the surprisingly solid mobile game is shaping up to be another decent, albeit slightly different entry in the series built on top of them.
The first thing you do is make your character from a fairly limited selection of hairstyles and voices to make your androgenous anime protagonist. You’re then asked to come up with your favourite food, and the buff it’ll give you when you chow down before a battle.
Finally, it asks you to pick three items, though in a Soulsy twist, it doesn’t tell you what half of them actually do. I’m sure I’ll find the lock this key fits in eventually.
Octopath Traveller 0 returns to the land of Orsterra before the events of the original game, with your character living in the idyllic town of Wishvale, and training to join the village watch with their father (who also happens to be the head of the watch). After being moaned at by your mum and giving your dad a swift kicking, our young protagonist spends most of the opening checking in on the residents of the village and helping them get ready for, and then enjoying the hamlet’s annual festival.
However, as is always the case with these happy little openings, it ends with a group of zealous soldiers from the Crimson Wings sect, attacking the town, burning it to the ground, and their leaders murdering your parents and pretty much everyone else, aside from a few lucky survivors.
Thus, our party of homeless heroes sets out on a journey to avenge the deaths of their fellow villagers and rebuild the cosy hamlet one home at a time, and that’s your lot storywise. For the time being, anyway.
Even though the main conceit has been flipped, with the story following a single protagonist who has access to eight career paths instead of the interwoven tales of eight distinct travellers, combat remains mostly unchanged, and just as engaging and unique as it ever was.
Essentially a cross between Persona and Bravely Default. The turn-based combat sees your team of eight adventurers chip away at the shields of foes by discerning which weapons and elemental attacks they’re weak to (though, admittedly, it’s almost always a sword, an axe or both) until they’re stunned, at which point they take a lot more damage from anything you want to throw at them.
It’s a slick, yet deep and surprisingly engaging setup, which demands that you think about not only the best combination of characters to send into the fray, but also the best spots to put them in to do the most damage and keep the party alive. However, once your squad is firing on all cylinders and cutting through the enemy defences like a hot knife through butter never fails to satisfy.
The presentation also retains the lovely HD-2D look that Square pioneered with the original Octopath and was last used to brilliant effect in the recent Dragon Quest remakes.
If you squint, you’d swear it was an HD remaster of a previously Japanese-only JRPG for the Saturn if you didn’t know any better, as the gorgeously animated pixel art brushes up against the basic 3D shapes coated in high-quality textures that make up the world of Orsterra.
Likewise, the audio presentation is wonderful. Mixing solid vocal performances from a huge cast, with another delightfully epic score by Yasunori Nishiki and his team, the battle music in particular does a wonderful job of keeping you pumped, while major moments in the plot are punctuated with suitably cinematic stings.
With just under two weeks to launch, Octopath Traveller 0 is shaping up to be another fine RPG in an absolute banner year for the genre.
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