Octopath Traveler (Switch)

The Traveling Party

The biggest RPG release for the Switch last year was Octopath Traveler, a new IP from SquareEnix where all monsters and characters are made of pixels instead of "modern graphics". It's beautiful, the 2.5d perspective make it look like a pop-up book which they incorporated in the special edition by having it look like a book with 8 different scenes, one for each of the main characters. 

Well worth the money

It has a bit of a unique set up in that you one of the 8 characters and start from there. You can choose whichever you want which have the problem that if you choose a character you don't like, you are stuck with that person until you finish that persons chapter 4. By looking I choose Cyrus, the Scholar since I'm drawn to the bureaucratic knowledge seeker. It was a good choice since a wizard is always a good call. Mostly due to the battle mechanics where you use the right sort of attack (magic or physical) to push the enemies to break and then hit them with all your attacks. A bit like Bravely Default actually and it is rather fun and strategic. The scholar have 3 spells and an ability to see the weakness of the enemy, and Cyrus auto-uses it at the start of the battle. His story is that he is a tutor to the local princess and her cousin Theresa. While looking for a certain book in the royal archives he notice one book missing and since it's a book called From the Far Reaches of Hell you know it's some demon summoning instruction manual. He is forced on a sabbatical by the headmaster Yvon when Theresa spreads a rumour that Cyrus is having a relationship with the princess (apparently Cyrus is so good-looking that he turns the head of all women and have such a silver-tongue that charm all persons, without him being aware of it) since she wants him for himself. He enjoy it though since he can hunt down the book instead. He travels and meet an old classmate and help her investigating disappearances in town and they find some necromancer that uses human sacrifices to create bloodstones. Defeating him and getting the copy they discover that it comes from the town of Stonegard where there is a famous bindery. Cyrus travels there and discover that it's the hometown of headmaster Yvon and when the headmasters assistant arrives and takes him there, she knocks Cyrus out and throws him in a cellar. Yvon and the assistant are the ones stealing the book. While being locked up, Cyrus is rescued by Theresa that had overheard Yvon and decided to help, put Yvon kidnaps her and while Cyrus confronts him, Yvon uses a bloodstone on himself to mutate into a monster. Defeating him he rambles on that he was supposed to be immortal, that his assistant betrayed him. Theresa reveals that the assistant headed for a town in the north. Following the trail Cyrus finds some ruins with murals of some power sealed away behind a gate and a hidden library that Yvon and the assistant created by stealing knowledge they deemed valuable. Cornering the assistant she gives Cyrus the opportunity to join her since with his genius he must understand the importance of the knowledge she accumulated. Cyrus disagree since obviously knowledge should be attained by all who wishes to learn so that they can surpass their teachers, not hoarding it to keep everyone deemed unworthy in ignorance. She uses a bloodstone and fight him. After the battle Cyrus looks through the library and starts to decipher the murals and the book he searched for and discovers that the gods locked away a power beyond a gate and that it warns everyone who tries to get it. Now, the structure of the story is that it is divided in 4 chapters and each town is one chapter. You do them in order of 1-4, but you can chose to do another characters story in between. Which I did by gathering all characters and then going lowest level chapter to the next in circles until I beat it.

Ophelia and Cyrus

Next character I got was Ophelia since I looked on the box and saw the characters in a row and decided that was a decent way to go around. Ophelia is a cleric who is adopted by the local bishop of her town together with his daughter. The daughter is supposed to go on a pilgrimage with an ember of flame to different churches to rekindle the flames in a ritual to the 12 gods and keep the 13th and evil god trapped in his prison. Hmm, I sense end boss potential. Ophelia takes over the duties of her sister when their father gets sick so her sister stays at his side. She travels to different towns where she help children and is pretty much a warrior cleric that blasts the living daylights out of monsters and people that tries to hurt them. Before returning home her sister meets up with her with the news that their father have died. She then promptly drugs Ophelia to steal the ember on the behest of a person she met all around her journey, traveling as an arms dealer. He is known as the Saviour and leads the cult of the dark god and wants to use Ophelias sister as the vessel of the dark flame that will kindle with the ember. Ophelia of course kills the saviour and saves her sister with the word of their departed father and then returns home, completing the pilgrimage. 

The Merchants Merchant

Next character was Tressa, a daughter to two merchants in a town beset by some local pirates. Tressa meet a captain of a merchant ship, but she is robbed on her things by the pirates. She drugs them and beats them up, but when they are about to regroup the captain turns up and it turns out he is one of the most famous and feared pirate captains in the land, but he just brushes it off and brush the local pirates off. Returning he gives Tressa whatever she wants from his treasure hold and she picks a book. Reading it she gets the thirst of adventure and heads out in the world as it is a traveling journal and she continues it on her travels. In one town she meets Ali, another merchant who goes from rival to friend, and when they get harassed by a local lord that embezzles the miners of the town of any valuables Ali gets kidnapped by him. Rescuing Ali they decide to meet up at the biggest merchant fair in the land after finding some treasure to show off. Tressa wanders until the finds a map to a treasure from another famous pirate captain. She also meets the captain from before and it turns out he was friend with the other captain and after Tressa gets the map and wants to give it to him, he decline and tells her that the treasure is hers. She follows the map and finds one of the most unusual stones and a letter. She returns to the captain and he keeps the letter since it is addressed to him. She goes to the fair, meets Ali and get her book stolen by some women. Ali and her gets the book back and at the fair she showcases her book as the greatest treasure she has due to the memories of adventure. The lord who holds the competition listen to his sickly daughter and award the book the winner since that was the only thing she has ever asked for. Leaving town Tressa then finds out that the book belonged to a Graham Crossford.

One of the demo characters and the one I played through.

Olberic Eisenberg is a warrior that lives in a mountain town protecting it from bandits. 10 years ago he was one of the most famous knights in the kingdom of Hornburg, but it fell when Olberics friend Erhardt betrayed them and killed the king. When a bandit group kidnaps a kid who looks up to him he quickly despatches the bandits, but they reveal that Erhardt still lives and he need to talk to a man named Gustav who fights in an arena. There Gustav tells him about Erhardt and how he trained him and tells to find him in a desert town. The town is currently under attack from lizardmen and the villager praises Erhardt for protecting them and as Erhardt have disappeared on a solo mission in the lizardmens lair Olberic set out to confront him. Defeating the threat he stands face to face with Erhardt that regrets his action. Actually Erhardt mimic Olberic since Erhardts home town was destroyed as the king did nothing and only having the sense of revenge led him to the arms of a mercenary that for 15 years planned the downfall of Hornburg. After getting his revenge Erhardt drifted the land until he finally got purpose in protecting the people. Olberic spare Erhardt and find a new goal, to find the mercenary that toppled Hornburg. He finds him in a town wear the mercenary had taken over and rule with dystopian fear. People against him are burned at the stake, you gotta bribe the guards to look the other way and there is an underground resistance by the son of the former lord. Joining them they try to sneak in the castle, but the mercenary figures it out and while Olberic tries to protect the rebels from the rain of arrows and feeling that he failed once again Erhardt shows up and together they break through the hordes of soldiers. Olberic confront the mercenary and learns that he did this only to get his hand on the Gate of Finis, and then he perish. Olberic returns home to protect the village once again and beliefs in his new purpose to protect the weak.

The second of the demo characters

Primrose Azelhart is a dancer that used to be the daughter of one of the most important nobles in Nobelcourt, but her father was murdered by a group called the crows and now she looks for revenge. So basically a revenge plot. She finds the crows one by one, first one being just someone who acts like the godfather avenging people who come seeking help, and handing out prostitutes and what not. Really, this has a lot of forced sex slavery and human trafficking in it. The next crow was the former commander of the city watch that uphold the law in Noblecourt under her father and the ringleader was Simeon, their gardener and poet that I believe Primrose had a crush on. You defeat him and that's that. 

The other healer

Alfyn Greengrass is a apothecary that travels the world to become as good as the role model that inspired him by curing him off an illness in his youth. First he saves his best friends sister, then bust a price gouging apothecary that inflicts sickness upon her patients to force them to buy a much more expensive healing cure, then he meets Ogen, a fellow apothecary that only treats the ones he feel worthy. It boils down to Alfyn taking care of one of Ogens discarded patients that is a murderer and he ends up kidnapping a child so Alfyn blames himself and frees the child. He meets Ogen again in a town struck by the plauge, but Ogen himself getting sick in the same disease that Alfyn had as a kid so he recreates the medicine and Ogen reveals that he knew Alfyns role model, a Graham Crossford... hey wait a minute? That's the one that wrote Tressas diary!

The thief

 Therion is the groups thief that ends up in a trap set up by the butler of the Ravus noble family. The butler and Cordelia (the last of the Ravus) wants him to bring back the three missing dragonstones that the Ravus family protect. He finds one in Noblecourt where the scholar holding it mentions that they hold unfathomable power. You also get flashbacks to Therion's past when he ended up with a partnership with Darius, another thief. The next one is in a black market, but when you tries to get it the market gets attacked and as Therion follows the thiefs he ends up against Darius again. You defeat his second in command and it is revealed that Darius betrayed Therion and threw him down a cliff when he ordered Darius around and didn't follow his commands. The butler and Therion tracks Darius down as he now have two stones and you beat him to get them. The following scene is rather chilling. Darius wounded goes to the treasure chamber and order his goons to pack his treasures. They just shove him away and takes the treasure since they were only paid and had no loyalty. A bit of karmic end since Darius always wanted to be alone at the top. The screen fades to black and then he pleads that someone could help him, and we see the empty treasure chamber and Darius sitting by the wall, asking for his old partner, and then he falls over. Good god what an amazing scene. Therion returns with the dragonstones, Cordelia and the butler tells him that the dragonstones are keys to open the Gate of Finis... the one in Hornburg?

The huntress

H'aanit is a huntress that must track down her master that gone missing in search of the beast redeye. You find him turned to stone by his fight with redeye so you seek out the seer Susanna that mentions that the curse only can be lifted by slaying the monster and to withstand the petrification you need to make a brew so you look for the ingredient and fights of a dragon to get it. Tracking the redeye south to a desert town where the army got turned to stone by redeye while it chased out the monsters from a ruin and they now harass the town. You enter the ruins and stand face to face with the monster and it's redeye.

That is really unsettling

As you fight it I couldn't shake off that it looked human in too many ways, and its screams where humanlike. H'aanit slays the creature and that's that. She return for her master that have awaken. In reality I finished Cyrus last and after that credits roll. The end. And now you wonder, that's it? Yes and no. Main games over, but there's a lot of sidequests, finding all 12 jobs and such, and there is a bonus dungeon. To get it, you need to finish the game and a bunch of sidequests and true ending is revealed. I figured out the twists by just playing the ordinary game. It also tries tie everything together. There's this woman Lyblac who searches for her special someone. And then their's Kit, who's looking for his father. Turns out his father is Graham Crossford that's been missing for several years. Lyblac is... a daughter of Galdera, the evil god. She tricked Graham to open the Gate of Finis, but he broke free just before finishing it and turned into Redeye and ran away and now she needs Kit. The Crossford family is descendent to a powerful wizard that worked together with Beowulf, the first king of Hornburg and set up the dragonstones with the Ravus family. Lyblac is the one that orchestrated Yvon stealing From the Far Reaches of Hell and the fall of Hornburg. You learn this by entering the Gate of Finis after Kit and Lyblac and fighting a boss rush al a Mega Man. 8 bosses, one from each character and you get a book that tells how it all ties together. Except Primrose. She has nothing to do with Galdera or anything. They try that the Crows supplied the poison that the Saviour used to kill Ophelia's adoptive father, but no, I don't buy it. Doesn't help that the book is written from her father's perspective and he pretty much say that he learned too much, but not what he learned so it's completely devoid of connections. Anyway, Kit is absorbed into Galdera that tries to release himself and you stop him, saving Kit and it's over. Frankly, I didn't finish him since you need to do those 9 bosses in a row and the final boss battle is 1 hour. I couldn't do it so I youtubed the ending, that isn't an ending. 

Overall I liked it. Graphics fantastic, the music good, gameplay fun. The story is good enough. I figured out parts myself and the 8 separate stories are interesting in themselves. But sadly they don't tie it together that well. Primrose exhibit A. Actually, none of the characters have reasons to join together since they don't act on the knowledge that they have something in common. You don't see any banter about Alfyn and Tressa having so much to thank Graham Crossford for, or that Ophelia, Cyrus, Therion and Olberic knows important information off the Gate of Finis. I enjoyed the small scope of Tressa and Alfyn, but you need a larger overarching plot that pushes the party together and forward for whatever reason or why do they fight together? Dragon Quest is usually good at this, although they have often a bait and switch that the first threat isn't the final boss. Final Fantasy usually handles that better. Still, a fun game although it's probably a year since it was released and I was slow on the uptake. So many fun games.