Octopath has been one of my favorite new IPs of the last decade and this is mostly more of the same. If you like the previous games primarily for their gameplay you’ll probably enjoy it. The town building and trade shop are decent additions.

Other changes are mixed and some make the game worse. Having a second row of party members feels good but the removal of advanced classes feels bad. Most of the extra characters are redundant or useless fluff. The vast majority of players are going to choose their party from the same 1/3 of characters who actually had design effort put into them, given that classes are baked in.

90% of the music is recycled, much of the world is reused. The main story becomes a complete slog and is padded to hell. There was a sharp drop in my enjoyment because of it, but the real truth is I can’t encourage releasing what is essentially the same game for a third time. It’s all around inferior to Octopath 2 for me and, if you’ve played both previous entries, stale.

It saddens me to give this a negative review but i couldnt justify giving it a thumbs up. So the question is why?

*Story
i don't know why some people think this game has the best story in the series so far, maybe its the wars breaking out between kingdoms? If its about scale and how much is on your shoulders then yeah its bigger than other OT games. But when I get to a boss I don't want some childish villain monologue about how his going to kill me or how his going to drink my blood or some such silly nonsense its so damn shallow (not every boss but a few). Not to mention the old cliche of "humans are the real monsters" is so beyond a cliche, that the beaten horse has been so beaten its literally dust, your not even hitting the horse anymore your hitting dirt. Which is why the whole story being centered around that and "humans and their desire bad!" just got old so fast that being repeated constantly. Not to mention the missed opportunity that the Wealth,Power, and fame routes could have provided. Like perhaps if you chased power you'd become a duke or something, wealth you become able to use money to manipulate politics or something, you get the point. All in all the only real awesome parts of the story was watching the kingdoms war with each other.

*Gameplay
One thing i really don't like about a common choice game devs make is they take out things that work just fine and change it, adding a different system to compensate, and then in the game after that throwing that system out and doing something else. And that's what we see more of here in 0 just like in 2, for example scholar was great in 1, more annoying to use in 2 so not as fun, but the hunter was given the capture monster system which frankly made them overpowered. So in 0 the monster system is gone but magic and hunter is just meh. As the old saying goes, if its not broken don't try to fix it. Scholar was fine in OT 1, just like the hunter system in 2 could be overpowered but was still fun and didn't really take off until late game anyway.

*Extras
Building your own town was a nice touch, but i feel like they could've done more to make it feel more worth to manage like linking it in further to the story by becoming a duke or creating your own kingdom after one fell, you know something cool. But instead its just used as a hub to give you passive bonus's, tell a little bit of a story, and cook/farm. Which frankly felt like the most boring part of the game was trying to chase down certain ingredients to cook meals to either buff you or raise your rep with one of the npcs.

*8 vs 4
Having 8 characters with 7 only having access to their single job wasn't as fun as having four characters with two jobs, not to mention having only 4 turns making you pick between should i use front row or back row.

*The mastery system
I think was a step in the right direction but id rather be able to collect skills for specific classes and equip them all, like for example, your a scholar, you start off with basic spells, you track down the books to learn all of the advanced spells for each element. I think that would be more fun then pick three skills you can equip to your character and miss out on one element. and two slots only for support skills? ugh please no.

*Final point
The advanced classes werent in this game some of the skills were like the 3 times hitting light spell lux something, and others like it. But i think that was a really nice part of the game where ot games shined earning that next level power, maybe for octopath traveller 3 bring back the monster capture system, but make it a 5th advanced class called tamer. Oh and not a fan of the change of how to take down caits why does a soulstone work 100% but magic cast by your party does 1 damage? Please take it back to how it was in previous games.


All in all I don't regret buying it but that being said this game should have been so much better especially considering the quality of previous titles. If your thinking about getting it, wait for a sale.

I've played for over 60+ hours and plan to complete it 100%. After spending a good amount of time with this Octopath and comparing it to Octopath Traveler I and II, I honestly feel that Octopath Traveler II is the higher-quality game, especially when it comes to the story, which is much better. Before buying this one, I strongly recommend playing Octopath Traveler II if you haven't already.

I really enjoyed the village/housing building system; decorating them with objects and NPCs is very rewarding. The combat system is largely the same, but having 8 characters instead of 4 can make it feel a bit unbalanced if you know how to use the mechanics properly. It might even be the easiest Octopath game in the franchise. That said, it's still very satisfying if you build your team well, especially when you're hitting 9,999 damage before level 40.

Just to clarify, this entry is based on the mobile game OCTOPATH TRAVELER: Champions of the Continent (CotC). It shares the same story and feels very similar in terms of quality, which is why it falls below Octopath Traveler II.

The only thing I would have liked is support for additional languages, like the previous entries in the series.

7/10 Good