So it was around 20 days ago when I completely finished Octopath Traveler 2 and already knew there was a sequel or prequel called 0. I want to have a bit of variety in my gameplay so I didn't immediately start playing it. I have been through around a dozen games since then but none of them really held my interest for very long. Many of them straight out irritated me. Some of them made me wonder how the heck they actually made it to production.
I already knew that I would like Octopath Traveler 0 because it is just the other two games with some additional activities and adjustments to the gameplay that I believe is damn near perfect.
If you have never played these games you have probably played something like it. It is a Square-Enix game that is reminiscent of traditional turn-based RPG's like Final Fantasy. In fact it feels an awful lot like FF but at least in Octopath 2, it wasn't a linear story at all and you had a ton of freedom about what you were going to do next.
I don't know a great deal about 0 because I have only logged about an hour but so far it is so much like the last game I loved that it is basically impossible for me to not like it.
The graphics are basic but also quite crisp and the music, as expected, is out of this world. The story is also something that actually has me caring about what is going on, which is something that I think most games completely fail with. I still don't want play to be interrupted by dialogue all the time but at least with Octopath you have the option of speeding up dialogue in conversations, or to just outright skip them.
You may recall that one of my big gripes with a Dragon Quest game I recently played was that you could only skip entire portions, you could not speed them up or fast play them line by line. This, IMO, is an absolutely horrible design flaw that is unforgivable. In Octopath you can put the dialogue on auto-play, you can speed it up to 1x or 2x, you can pass line-by-line, or you can outright skip it entirely. Having these sorts of options are absolutely ideal IMO.
I can also tell just by the first boss that this game is also not going to be a pushover. The first boss was actually quite tough and required some level of strategy in order to defeat it. In Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined I played over 10 hours of the game while NEVER doing anything other than basic attacks in hundreds of battles and easily winning all of them. It's just stupid to do that.
I have read that Octopath 0 has instituted city building and that is something that I have always enjoyed in games. It kind of mixes things up for me instead of just doing turn-based combat over and over. Also, your decisions that you make with the city directly effect your combat readiness and that is just wonderful.
So while I did try to branch out a bit I have to say that my attempt at other games was almost entirely a failure. I like what I like just like anyone else and there really isn't any reason for me to play things that I do not enjoy, is there?
Off the top of my head games that I attempted to enjoy but did not were as follows:
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (quite possibly one of the worst games I have ever played)
- Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined: I really wanted to like it but it's just to basic and interrupts gameplay too often with cutscenes and dialogue
- Luigi's Mansion 3: This is just too childish for me and it gets repetitive very quickly
- Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom: It's a puzzle game with far too many options most of which are useless. So it gets boring quick
- Fire Emblem 3: I admit I didn't give this one much of a chance
- The Messenger: Like I said in my writeup it is fun but after about 10 hours of playing I get bored of it.
There are many more but I don't recall the names of them off the top of my head. What can I say? I am a fussy gamer and I will not try to like something I don't.
At the moment I am in the very early stages of Octopath and it is around a 100 hour game according to various sources. So it looks like I will be playing this for a while, and that is just fine with me.