Console commands my friend, look at the trophy list and you'll see it's impossible to max out every skill and do everything even if playing around the clock in a few days, also he gets copies before release
Nice review. A few notes though (spoilers for others): 1. Warmaster is not a better version of Warrior. Saying that diminishes the roles provided by the 2 jobs. Warmaster is more about the utility of the divine weapons. For example, Temenos is a great Warmaster, as Temeno's Latent Power synergizes well with Sixfold, and Temeno's EX skill (no spoiler) greatly synergizes with Spiritlord's Staff. Warrior on the other hand provides you with Learned Skills (Hikari) and or access to the most powerful Physical Attack (Warmaster doesn't have this) or access to incite, if you want to build a defensive character that will eat up most enemies' attacks. 2. The actions of the characters, I agree, can seem overlapping, but the devs did that so you can build at most 2 groups (east and west continent groups actually) such that your group has access to ANY action for ANY time of day. And giving characters overlapping actions frees up players from going back and forth to the tavern to switch characters just to do actions in the overworld. I personally think this is a great change from the first game where getting an is just from thief/merchant. 3. I do agree though that Merchant is the strongest job. And the strongest Hired Help is unlocked later on where you have access to an assassin that hits a TON of damage, heals HP, AND SP for your entire party.
In depth review from someone who actually fully played the game and not just spent 4-5 hours on it. You covered most all of the topics someone looking for a review would want covered and clearly put a good amount of time and effort into not only completing the game but doing this review. Thank you. Subbed.
This has been my airport game on Switch and I finally sat down this week to beat it, and as somebody who enjoys grinding I agree with you about the grinding in this game. The money grinding for equipment mid-game pretty much halted my progress between chapters 2 & 3. Needless to say, I just parked it in one area for a day and grinded until I was lvl 40+ for my characters and deep six figures with money and I think I’m set until the end of the game lol
I'm glad you liked it. When I watched your preview vid you mentioned that for you it might come down to if the 8 disparate storylines come together, which had me worried. I still haven't finished it, but I heard that they kind of do, but it's not a main focus of the game. Regardless it is super super fun, and I agree that it is stunning on the steamdeck. These days I rarely start a new game and continue playing it to the end without switching to other games, but OT2 has its hooks in me for sure.
Hope I can check this out soon. Really liked Octopath 1 but Octopath 2 came out like 3 days before Lightfall so I didn't wanna get too invested knowing I'd just drop it for a month. Really good review again my man.
The characters and stories were amazing, along with the music and voice acting. The improvements to combat were sweet too. If there's one thing I have to critize is still the fact that it's missing TRUE party feeling. They should have chapter 1's solo and then force you to gather the rest of the party to then have them all react to the main story content before progressing. But they did have a lot of good moments with joint chapters and especially the ending bits. So I hope there is a 3 and its truly joint.
Pros: - Fun gameplay, Boost and break is satisfying, character abilities are fun to use in battle and outside of battle, secondary jobs and latent power adds to the strategy. - Good graphics - Amazing soundtrack - Details (almost every NPC has a description when inquired, side missions have unique solutions) - Unique Stories (all of them start off great and hook you in) Cons: - Balancing issues (a lot of the bosses feel too easy and can be cheesed, some skills are useless like Teach, etc) - Story outcome (although all stories start out amazing, some ended better than others, and some ended really bad) - Banter could be better. Lot of times it feels disjointed, unnecessary, and forced. Overall it’s a pretty fun game. The overall issues I had were with some of the stories and balancing issues. Other than that, it’s great JRPG with a lot of fun mechanics and a detailed world. 9/10
I really enjoy this game. It is a massive improvement over the first Octopath visually and through storytelling. I am not big on the grinding though. I always feel behind on money and there is always at least one character that has to be brought up to speed just to do their story and that slows it all down.
For people worried about the grind aspect, I myself never really had this problem by doing each chapter by it's recommended level and making sure I sub in my lowest level characters in every new chapter and honestly by the early mid game around lv25 you can probably be under leveled by like 5 and still be good (just put your best defensive gear on your more frail characters if they're dying) as your starting character will be way over leveled to compensate because you can't switch them out until you finish all their story chapters. Even if you're struggling to beat certain bosses you can cheese them with hired help like Mortismal mentioned that shit is so broken lol.
If it's anything like the first one,the recommanded LV is a straight up lie, in the first one I litterally never met the recommended and was like 5-7 LV behind, and I only got like 1 Game over outside of the true final boss.
Thanks for another great and fun review! Have you considered playing either Enderal (Skyrim mod with incredible storytelling) or the Trails series (JRPG series with the best world building I’ve ever seen that develops from entry to entry). They’re super different recs, but I think you’d really love them both if you have the time!
Just beat the final boss and I loved it. The 8 characters fighting together was amazing to experience! I honestly wish they gave you the option to switch parties on the fly from the get go though. It was pretty annoying to have to keep going between taverns all the time (though I guess it made it so places were worth revisiting so I'm kind of mixed on it).
I'm always excited for the steam sale time to come around because i get to catch up on your incredible reviews! Just picked up Octopath Traveller II and a few others I had missed after watching your videos! Great job as always Mortem, cheers!
Two words: Bewildering Grace! If you get lucky, it makes the level grind a lot more fun when you make Partitio a dancer and use his latent power to boost BP at the start of the battle. I had several 100x JP and 100x EXP bonuses throughout my playthrough! Fun times.
Thanks Mort for another great review. As a fellow steam deck owner I always appreciate your quick reviews of steam performance and this game in particular just suits that platform so perfectly.
When gaming is your job, 100% a game is quite easy. Though I'm not a professional gamer, I'm currently between jobs and wanted to catch up on some games I've missed. In the last month I have 100% a bunch of games. I put 110 hours of playtime into Elden Ring and that wasn't even two weeks. He also gets paid to do it and with each new game brings a level of something new and refreshing. I'm just curious if he ever goes outside. haha
Finished it a few days ago as well. I did a few hours of grinding. But that was more for convenience than actual need. I did get all the bonus skills and items for exp early on, which may be the reason why I didn't have to. But party rotation is highly recommended.
The shrines imply that each of the 8 travelers were chosen by their respective patron gods, so I don't mind handwaving it away as "they were destined to come together"
Still absolutely plodding through this but I’m also really, really enjoying it. The first time I’ve fallen into a traditional JRPG since, like…FFXII maybe? It’s amazing.
Dammit I can't decide if I should play this game or not, I didn't really like the first game and some reviews say 2 is "basically the same" but Mortismal here seems to be showing some significant improvements to where I had my issues...I don't know...
Bought this game from a combination of a Steam sale and your review Mortim! Just finished the game and I have to say this was a lovely JRPG. Pro tip guys, Temenos is straight up bonkers strong.
Huh, I never had to grind levels for this game, but I also started out with the scholar and picked up the thief not long after - both of which have stacking (I think) support skills that boost XP. You can also pick up the XP augmenter, which increases XP, relatively early in the game (low 30s).
Personally I didn't have any problems with the pacing I didn't have to do any grinding at all until the final boss cuz it wiped the floor with me U can look at the chapters recommended levels and do them in an order that sortof fits them and you will get through the game on a very smooth pace
Okay, so I skipped most of the stuff containing spoilers, but I like that class system and that the world is very open, I know now, that I need to buy this game, thank you for the great review!
I think this video is the final reason I need to pick up the game. I haven't really played a JRPG since the SNES and my teenage years and I never quite found one interesting enough on the switch. Now that I have more time (kids older) and a steamdeck I think this might be my jump back into the RPG genre. Dipped my toes with 13 Sentinels (fantastic) and now I want more. Glad I found your channel, cheers!
The jobs system in particular sounds pretty cool as I just finished yakuza 7 and found that to be incredibly fun! I may be buying both octopath games in the future based on this review
I think by adding some in battle banter and cross class combos they could have added alot to the cohesion between characters. A simple fix for OP3. Out of all the heavy hitters released, eldin ring, GOWR, HFW this was the only game to help with my obsession with Ghost of Tsushima: Legends. Best game I've played in years.
Stellar review. Thanks man. I think I'm going to dip into this one. Played and really enjoyed the first but never really went deep with it past the demo and a slight file on my pc. Let's see what happens once I complete TLoU2 and Final Fantasy XVI.👍🏽
I do feel like this game was absolutely an improvement over the first game and I think it is a great example of a developer taking community and critical feedback to heart and producing a greatly improved sequel. With that said though, I still feel like this game falls a little short of greatness and there was definitely more grinding than I could stomach and I ended up setting this one aside around 60 or so hours in just because I didn't feel like putting in the grind for the end of the game and I just wasn't sure the plot payoff was going to be worth it as several of the 8 stories fell pretty flat for me though admittedly some of them were enjoyable.
I don't mind a combat grind, but I really hate other kinds of grinds. The damn chests in ff12 are the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in a game.
Love those reviews. One thing I'm always curious about is whether those titles are fully voiced and if so the quality of such voice overs. I'm not the biggest fan of reading long dialog
The two gripes I have so far after starting Castti and finding Hikari are that their levels aren't the same so griding harder areas ends up being harder for Hikari. Also, during much of the dialogue, in the beginning at least, there were things that were repeated around 3x which made the pacing very slow and had me wanting to just skip the dialogue. Like I thought that was the end of the sentence type stuff, I got the point, but they say it again in a different way when you already know this information from the intro to the character. Also, this may be a hot take but I never 100% games... even ones I have 200-3k+ hours in since it just feels like work trying to do tasks an achievement prescribes instead of what I feel like doing. If I was being paid that would be a different story.
Just 100% this game today, quite a ride! One important tip: don't grind and overlevel your characters before finishing the main story quests for each character!! It makes the boss level too easy and not satisfying. The bosses usually have interestingly designed mechanics in place to challenge you, over-leveled character will totally neturalize it (except for the hidden boss). So I would highly recommend proceed with the main stories when you are close to the suggest level. I made the mistake of over leveling in mid game and that made chapter 4/5 fights very bland...
It's not just overlevelling. Equipment makes a much bigger impact than levels, so if you do like I did and beat the stories for 4 of the characters, getting all the powerful gear along the way, and then transfer that gear to new characters - you'll completely annihilate the lower level bosses. Equipping things around the power level of the area each boss is found makes the fights much more of a challenge and feel like you're playing them as intended.
The first, was great for 30-40 hours, Then the difficulty wall / grind and pace change kinda killed it for me, I'm gonna go back and try again because it was a good game, just the sudden spikes were .. not great, But I also wanna try Octo 2, even though you mention it's got grind issues as well, but everyone says the game itself is largely improved as well
I recommend playing this game slowly and enjoying every moment. You can skip a lot of dialog and even speed up combat. But I recommend taking your time and savor every second. Play with audio on if you can too.
In terms of the grind, one thing that isn't made clear to the player is that gear is MUCH more impact full to stats than levels are. You can easily clear chapters underleveled if you spend time finding better gear through shops, exploring, and path actions. I had level 30 characters easily keeping up with level 60 characters in terms of damage output solely due to having endgame gear. The main difference levels make is in HP. Also, while the secret job skills are more expensive, they don't increase in JP as you buy them. This means that it takes roughly the same amount of JP to max them out as a regular job.
It took me exactly 15 minutes into Hikari's path of the demo to get hoocked on this game. Stunning pixelated 2d graphics. I'd even say this is peak 2d graphics. Gameplay immediately got me hoocked. It was just the intro and it was already the most fun I had for a very long time with a turn-based rpg. But most oustanding ist the music. The OST ist just so epic and immediately makes you immersed in the game. This is exactly the kind of turn-based jrpg I've been looking for. I didn't even know that the first game came out in 2019. I've been missing out for 5 years. Time to get the game I guess.
Im assuming you've beat OT 1. Im close to beating it but am aware there is still some endgame things to do after. Should i engange in the endgame or move on to OT 2?
A combination of being ambivalent to the story and the sheer amount of grind to meet the level requirement of the chapter 2-3 of each character's stories was why I never finished Octopath 1...seems like all that is still there.
i never played the first game so i didn't know how the game was meant to be structured and ended up wandering around bored out of my mind for hours because I didn't know i was supposed to just progress through the chapters for each character in my party till i looked up a guide.
The game is phenomenal, the music, art and characters are all great and it has a far more serviceable story than the first that doesn’t require sidequests for the true finale. That said there are some truly out dated mechanics holding it back like Only characters in your party gain exp making a completely unnecessary grind that could have easily been solved be attaining a wagon like in dragonquest which could have been a part of partitios merchant quests. Fleeing skips everyone’s turns making it a die button thats far more dangerous than just fighting. Like if it fails just force everyone to fight for that turn, fleeing should never be riskier than fighting, that completely misses the point. Herbs of grace being so dang hard to find and bosses like behemoth having no build up for you to know that you require the herbs so you have to redo the whole dungeon because you didn’t cycle through the black market and buy a bunch of them.(its as cryptic a runescape quests and just feels cheap as heck.) No bestiary. This one is obvious. No details on the monsters or what they drop, seriously why is this missing?
