Octopath Traveler 2 was one of my favorite games of all time so when I found out that there was another game released after part 2 that was a "prequel" I was super-stoked. When I found out that the game had made some modifications to the original way of playing in that you had a team of 8 people instead of just 4, I was even more stoked because this was going to add dept to your crew that you wouldn't have had before.
However, here we are and I am at close to level 30 (out of however many, I don't know) and I am bored and don't feel terribly inclined to play the game at all, and there are some very good reasons why this is the case that I will detail here now.
no clear central story
In a game that has intentionally substandard or retro graphics, a great deal of why the game stays interesting despite not looking modern, is because it needs a really good story. Octopath Traveler 2 had an outstanding story whereas "0" doesn't have a "bad story" per-se, but there is just so much going on that I honestly don't really know what the story is up to this point even though I have been paying very close attention.
In OT2 we had 8 (hence the "octo" in Octopath) characters that had their own individual stories and they would overlap with other characters as you progressed. You could proceed in any way that you saw fit and you could level up who you like playing with the most. If you wanted to defeat the game you would need to eventually power up everyone but that was no real big task seeing as how you only had 8 characters.
Too many characters
I'm not going to dive into who all these people are but let's just say there are a TON of characters you can choose for your crew in OT0. THere are so many of them that I really don't recognize any of their names and as far as their individual skillsets are concerned, I also have no idea. I don't want a college-level project as far as remembering who is best for each situation and unfortunately this means that most of the time I am entering battles or scenarios without any real strategy. I'm just putting the people with the highest levels into a battle and often this results in me having an overlap of skills with multiple characters in the team as the same time.
fetch quests are too often
In any of the many cities that are in the map, there are a number of clearly defined destinations such as weapons store, item store, pub, and the inn and there are other places that are just doors and for the most part it is completely optional if you want to even go into those.
Fetch quests are a bane to all games IMO and often they are put in there to create the illusion of a game being longer than it is. Square-Enix is no stranger to adding these to games and I would say they are one of the biggest offenders of putting them in games with Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn being the absolute worst of all time.
Frequently in Octopath Traveler 0 you are told by some NPC to run to this certain place and pick something up, then when you pick it up you are forced to run all the way back to where the NPC was in the first place, who will then perhaps make you run somewhere else to get another thing and on and on it goes. There is no combat, no puzzles, no dialogue choices, nada. All it is doing is making you run from place to place and this is F**king boring. If it happens once or twice I'm kind of ok with that but in 0 this is happening in basically every city and that's not cool.
Town building just isn't fun
I was excited when I heard about town building being a part of the gameplay until I started playing it. There doesn't seem to be any "correct" or even "good" way of building anything and the placement of buildings is either arbitrary or forced upon you. I don't see the point of getting the user involved in this process at all if your choices have no effect on the gameplay. Just do it on your own.
This was poorly designed and it could have been a lot better by having simple things like a woodcutting station or farms or ore-gathering.. you know, the basics... but instead it is just lame.
missions are repetitive and formulaic
Every single mission consists of the following
- Get your level up to close to what an area pre-defines
- go through that level to the green indicator on your map fighting a few battles along the way
- have a few senseless conversations with NPC's along the way
- Maybe sit through a confusing cutscene of sorts
- fight a sub-boss or boss
lather, rinse, repeat.
Every single step of the way has been like this and none of them feel unique in any way. While they claim the world is open-world it really isn't. The level cap in certain directions ensure that you proceed in a linear fashion and since there are so many companions none of them really have a long-standing story and it kind of just falls on the story of your main character that you named.
This is a big departure from what made the 2nd game so fantastic and I can't imagine why they decided to completely scrap that method of storytelling that was already tried and true.
It's a shame, I was really looking forward to this game and honestly, if Square-Enix has just made another Octopath Traveler 2 but with a new story, it would have been better than this.
I'm afraid I am going to put this game on the back burner and maybe I'll come back to it later, maybe I wont.