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[This is Part 2 ~ PATH. This section is all spoiler and story talk. If you have not played Octopath Traveler II and do not wish to be spoiled, don't read any further.] [Previous Part]

Pathways ~ Stories

Time for one of the meatiest sections of the review! This section will feature a ton of topics, starting with the main character stories, followed by the Crossed Paths, and finishing with a small discussion on the side quests. Let us begin.

Ochette ~ さぁ！行こう！ Juvah sent her on her way, to find the other Guardians to assist in the coming of the Scarlet Moon. This story is very simple and is not that complex, ultimately. I mean, she goes to three locations to pick up Cateracta - who left her offspring, Acta, Tera and Glacis, then heads back to her island. I think this story is more interested in its themes because in each chapter, there seems to be this running discussion of the morality of hunting. H’aanit from the previous game would also occasionally bring mention to it, but that story was more so to rescue someone. So having Ochette a bit more deeply discuss this theme is interesting, though it mostly boils down to the cycle of nature, and how creatures live and survive. Ochette is a very pure young lass, so she doesn’t entirely know the nuances of human emotion or why they do what they do. For example, this human in Glacis’ chapter has Ochette wonder why this human is so eager to defeat this mourning creature. She almost seems angry, and I’m sure she is, but her nature seems to prevent her from going towards the direction of outright yelling or something. Tera and Glacis aren’t terribly interesting as characters as they barely have any dialogue. Acta too, but I guess as a child, the guy literally can’t say anything. Though at the end, the guy digi-volves and um… yeah, it was a thing. Also, at the end, Ochette gets basically the blessing of the sacred flame because of the blue fire, but it occurs at a very strange time. I thought this flame was like Acta’s aura at first, but no. I’m not entirely thrilled by this story, sadly, but I will give it this: the final boss was pretty cool and creepy. Whoever you didn’t choose as your partner in chapter 1 was now the final boss and as the fight goes on, the creature transforms and it’s kinda disgusting. Since I chose the owl, I got the jackal as the final boss, where the transformations weren’t as creepy, but still daunting. The owl though? As it morphs, that neck reeeeally elongates and ew. I’m so sorry, but I’m gonna have to put you down. Ochette’s travel banter doesn’t really further the plot in anyway that adds to the imagination. It tells us a lot about other characters like how Throné REALLY likes fluffy things. Castti finds out Ochette has nothing where the human ears would be. Ochette herself has a fearsome roar, she has a habit of giving everyone nicknames or calling others mum and dad essentially. Also, when she’s drunk, she goes absolute beast mode.

Castti ~ どうしおかしら

So, in Castti’s journal, it lists various important locations she has to visit. There, she might find the important details so she can finally find out… JUST WHO SHE IS! I’m gonna get this out of the way right now, the Eir’s Apothecary thing being a bad group is dropped very quickly and only briefly mentioned in the Sai route. It was dropped for most of her story that I forgot that it was even a story beat, which is why I never brought it up in my re-imagined rewrite. But this, and minus some sense of time nitpicks, is my only real critique with the story because I think this is the best in the game. Castti’s travels do a few things: to gather support, and with her commanding and motherly nature, this succeeds. And of course, to gain more of her memories back from people who were affiliated with Eir’s Apothecaries in some way. Through these people, she remembers the a man with a strange mask and a man named Trousseau. After finishing up your business in Sai and Winterbloom, Castti can now access Healeaks. Where’s Healeaks? Well, you remember that one abandoned village you may have run into? Yeah. That place. Some prick poisoned and killed everyone through the use of rain. This man, is Trousseau, who’s also the man with a mask. Apparently upon meeting a certain guy on one of their trips out, had changed his outlook on the entire world. Once gentle turned into an insane soul who wished to kill the entire world. The last chapter takes place in Timberain where Trousseau planned to use more potent poison rain to kill everyone there, and he nearly succeeds. But with the help of people she met along the way as well as her own apothecary skills, she made a medicine that could heal the poison. And she uses this same medicine on her deceased partners, even if it was in a dream, so they can finally rest. The special thing about Castti’s story is how much emotion it stirs within me. Winterbloom and the Healeaks chapter are my favourite chapters in the game. The Winterbloom one is really saddening where this ill mother wants to see her daughter take her place, but she’s not old enough yet - though very close. We nurse her until the time comes, and the conversations between old friends is really sweet. Bittersweet when the woman perishes, but she has a successor. Likewise, the Healeaks chapter is just filled with raw emotion. You get to see the horrors of everyone die in the village and what looks like a sudden transformation in personality on Trousseau’s part. I’ve mentioned Castti’s Japanese vocal performance there being absolute peak - it genuinely sounds like she’s crying in desperation - but I also have to give props to Trousseau. I sort of misread him, but while I knew he was insane, it’s more so someone who’s become so stunned by whatever he saw back then, that he wants to end it all - it’s like he wants to cry with every line he says, which is further enforced when you look at his battle sprites. But um, yeah, she has everything in her possession. A motherly soul who wishes to heal whoever is in need, and also maybe kill those who stand in her way. THIS IS WHO SHE IS! Castti’s travel banter doesn’t add too much to the story, though I like to think the simple act of being around a merry group lets her feel less lonely. With that said, there’s the occasional banter that implies her old friends are watching over her - showering her with luck - and also that she actually doesn’t realise that Malaya is dead until chapter 3. So sad is Castti’s story that it’s even made the imposing Osvald shed a few tears. Being one of the oldest members of the group though, most of her banter comes down to some wisdom and motherly care of the group. Oh, also, very important, but one of the tavern banters shows that Castii’s a giggly drunk- oh wait, no, in the Japanese script (and other scripts, I think), she acts “more sexy”, then proceeds to strip. Sheesh, calm down.

Throné ~ 出番だ

Throné has a ton of chapters mainly because it’s split between her Mother and Father routes. In a way, it’s two stories from the same strained family(?), but Throné just wants her two keys to freedom. Considering Mother and Father go completely different areas, it makes me wonder what the point of New Delsta’s location is in the long run. Although, I guess I have one idea. Mother’s side has us go to Wellgrove and take her out. Easy as. There’s not much in the way of sympathy for her because she’s a piece of crap anyway. What there is though, is the place Mother is manning: an orphanage. Most of them seem to be trained in the way of thievery, like Throné. This leads us to Mira who despite the abuse, doesn’t want Mother to die because she’s never had a loving family before. Throné obviously goes in for the kill anyway, going as far as telling Mira to remember her name and to hunt her down when’s he’s ready. This is mildly interesting, though not exactly strongly elaborated on. And even then… kinda means nothing at the end of the day. Father’s side shows us that he and Throné’s mum, Marietta, got married in Montwise. So… Father is the biological dad? No. Marietta seemingly cheated on him and a shame too. He was so ready to move on with his life and ditch his assassin upbringing, but this caused him so much grief he raised Throné so that one day she can finally kill him. This doesn’t sit with Throné well and reluctantly kills him and calls him dad for the first time. While I find this okay and the voice acting great, I’m not really fond of it. Not because of the moments, but because it’s kinda unearned. Like, just moments ago, Throné was ready to just dice him up, and suddenly, she’s about to break down. Maybe if the parental relationship between these two was teased in chapter 2, then maybe it’d be a good hook for chapter 3. But these two paths don’t end her story. The two keys aren’t for her collar. It’s for that one locked door in the sewers of New Delsta. We return in chapter 4 and find this odd town, Lostseed. Tons of bizarre people with bizarre inquires and it’s pretty scary. What we also find out is that there’s this creep called Claude and he has been getting, uh, busy with a bunch of women to make kids and have them essentially fight each other. Or adults. Because his guy is immortal. Oh and also, basically every important character related to Throné in this story is her sibling. Pirro, Mother, Father, etc. all siblings, and Claude is the father of them all. WTF? Take this Hastening Hammer and go to sleep. Please. By the end, Throné gets the keys to her collar finally, and she’s free. But it’s bittersweet, it’s still stained with the blood of those she had to kill up until now. I get it. This story is going down the route of breaking out of fate, which is a theme I enjoy. But man, they really went by it in the weirdest way possible. I guess I wouldn’t mind it as much on the whole if I thought scenes were allowed to develop a bit more. It gets so close to being emotional, but it misses the mark in my opinion. As a result, Throné’s story is one of my least favourite in the game. Throné’s travel banter reveals a few things. The main thing is that her collar is filled with poison and attempting to force it off will cause it to leak and kill her. It also occurs to me that she’s slightly lost when it comes to her reason to live. She killed as a job, but now it’s for freedom. Typically, she doesn’t like to kill, but she does make a surprising amount of ‘kill them’ comments, which occasionally comes off less as a joke. Otherwise, she’s good with fashion obviously. Like Castti, she prefers to have little smell disruption, and she seems to get quite embarrassed when trying to act like someone she’s not. It’s also in Throné’s banter where we find out where Eir’s Apothecaries went that made Trousseau go insane. Hmm…

Osvald ~ さって… A mission to kill the one who not only killed his family, but also ruined his whole life, Harvey. Let’s eff him up! To be honest, this story is pretty simple, but I actually quite like it, even if it has a few snags. Some more major than others. It gets a lot more interesting when Osvald arrives at Montwise where that giant library is. It’s also a place for scholars to teach, so it ends up as a predictable place for Harvey to be, and lo and behold, he’s right. What is also there is a lab where he conducts experiments. The creatures we fight are infused with some strange magic - a prototype One True Magic, I suppose - but it seems that one tube houses… a human? Honestly, it wouldn’t be a surprise to me. This man would do anything to get what he wants. I find it interesting though that Osvald’s scholar brain is thinking “I should be mad, but I have to admit, I want to know how he did this”. Priorities. But it seems we weren’t given the truth to the whole story. Rita, Osvald’s wife, was experimented on due to her blood being important to finding the One True Magic. So he experimented on it and her until her soul essentially became his golem. Poor her… But wait, if her death by fire was a lie, then what about the child, Elena? Well… here she is. But her memory’s been tampered with to think Harvey is the father, I guess as a way to manipulate her and more easily gets her to use her special blood, as the biological child to Rita. I enjoy this scene a lot because of the emotion Osvald lets out as his daughter is just so close to being saved, but now there’s another force stopping him from reuniting with her. Not only that, his mentality completely shifts from ‘Kill’ to ‘Save’… and also kill, I guess. Now the final chapter can be iffy to some because Harvey gets Elena’s blood and the One True Magic seems to be complete - this dark energy thing - which he actually worked to get. But then Osvald, after saving Elena from a beam blast, gets his own One True Magic, which is a bright beam. Very DBZ with those lasers, huh. But it does come out of nowhere. I guess you can see it as Hate vs Love, Logic vs Instinct, I don’t know. I agree it kinda comes out of nowhere, but I just enjoy this energy to save the one he loves the most. “HARVEEEEY!” Osvald shouts at Max Boost. Love it. Harvey is killed, I think, and Elena is still unconscious, but living. Time passes and she’s returned home and under the care of some of Osvald’s old friends. Elena herself is sure that the man who saved her was her real father. Unfortunately, Osvald decides not to see her proper yet until he finishes the job as it’s clear to him that there are other forces at work and he couldn’t have done it alone. Sharp man. I like this story as simple and probably flawed as it is near the end. Osvald’s travel banter is quite good, I think. the most interesting one is the ‘Waste of Time’ trilogy that’s had between various chapters. Osvald really comes off as he kind of guy who’d use the other Travelers as a means to an end, but eventually warms to them and also the ‘pointless’ banter they have serves to remind him he’s not alone in this journey. And this is a major reason why I like him so much. It’s a very rare instance where I think travel banter greatly adds to a character’s story. The other main one I can think of that adds to the story is Castti vowing to help Elena when she’s gotten back to safety. Simple, but I like. The rest talk about his revenge mission, even going as far as telling us why he still has that chain around is neck - a prisoner of fate. The last thing I’d like to mention that really saddens me is how much Osvald really thinks he’s a bad father. Characters like Agnea and Castti have reassured him that he’s doing great and when the time comes, he and Elena will be together again and have a great life together.

Partitio ~ 行くぜ！ It’s time for the most charismatic lad! This is the other story with the least amount of stakes as really, it’s just Partitio trying to rid the world of poverty. This starts off in Clockbank where he’s to reunite with his old master, Roque. The old geezer though, is pretty stubborn, getting his bulldog to attack you, but after that doesn’t work, the two strike a deal so that Partitio can buy the rights to the Steam Engine, which is what Roque is working towards. But this comes to a sum of um… 80 BILLION LEAVES! I didn’t even think a number this high was possible in the game’s counter! Thankfully, Partitio is so good and smart with his work, he got the respect of a rich man by the name of Lord Alrond, who had posed as a commoner for the time being. A rare instance of a rich guy in… well, any video game, that’s not a jerk. By making something as novel as a department store, he got a cheque from Alrond and now he has 80 billion leaves. So, off to Roque island he goes. But Roque changed the terms so that first Partitio must beat him in a fist fight to, uh… no that’s not right. *ahem* But it turns out that Roque’s still hellbent on keeping something like this only for the wealthy, which is something Partitio disagrees with. Even with the help of Alrond, Roque doesn’t buckle and so a clash happens. Man vs… Steam Train. Huh. Cool. I mean, it’d be cooler if Partitio could suplex it, but tragically, melee attacks don’t exist, unless you’re Agnea. Roque loses the bout (somehow) and gives in, but he seems to have misunderstood Partitio’s mindset. After all, he’s a man that WANTS people to thrive and be wealthy - a place where no one has to be poor. So he hires Roque to continue his work, but under Partitio. It’s a complete win and the Steam Train is now in the works to be constructed all over Solistia! It really just is as simple as a misunderstanding and differing ideologies, but I really like this story. Partitio is an excellent protagonist and he has such an energetic personality and voice. Even when faced with unfamiliar surroundings or concepts such as business cards, he’s always so eager to learn, and I swear his theme plays more often than everyone else’s, which is not a bad thing in the slightest because his theme is amazing and just adds to his character. Such a strong character, it can change even the cruelest of people. Partitio’s story is also the only one that has the 4-chapter structure with no extra sides - a bit like an OT1 story. …But there’s a twist. In order to complete his chapter 3, at least one of the scent of commerce’s needs to be complete. There’s 3 in total, but the most important one is the ship you can buy off Terry as this will actually progress the story into his chapter 4 too. The rest are for music to be listened to in taverns, while the other one lets you read up on the lore of this world, like Leaves or Caits and the like. And these stories are fine. Terry’s is the best one just because it’s someone who doesn’t think she can accomplish her goal to finish a ship, but she now has funds and courage. Partitio’s travel banter is fine. Not much is added to the story, HOWEVER, I feel like Partitio ends up like some sort of punching bag. All in jest of course, but there’s instances of characters like Ochette coming up with a weird nickname because she can’t say his name properly, Temenos going in with some puns, and even Castti gets to unload all of her teasing power onto him. Teasing Castti is a treasure! This does add to the chill nature of his story though. The only one that really comes to mind that adds to the story is that Throné tells Paritito to keep that cheque very safe because it’s easy for thieves to get their hands on. So he lets he hold on to it. Smart… I guess.

Agnea ~ あたしの番～ And now for a special star! Agnea’s story with a tone even more relaxed than Partitio’s. It really just amounts to her travelling and experiencing new places, with some of them being of importance to her directly. The first important location is in New Delsta, which houses a massive theatre where a star known as Dolcinaea dances - she’s like the top of the top. She seems alright as a person, even going as far as stopping the manager, La’mani, from wrecking smaller dance parlour as they’re of no danger to her own reputation. Ah. Thanks, but we might have our antagonist. The third important location takes her to Sai where it’s revealed that this is where Dolcinaea first grew up and learned to dance by Cuani herself, but it’s a desolate wasteland and wishes to replace it with uh… “Dolcinaealand”. Very creative. But no, let’s get past her buff bodyguard, Veronica, and then we stop this plan. Throughout these travels, Agnea meets new people she becomes friends with, all of which have some connection or grow to enjoy music and/or dance. Gil, Laila and the Giselle troupe in the second area, which I didn’t explain because that chapter is really only there to establish this encounter. Though these travels also serve to teach Agnea something new about the joys of traveling, dancing, what it means to look to the future. And this last part is the most important part of her story. Going into her final chapter, she arrives at Merry Hills where a final fight between Dolcinaea and Agnea is to take place… after she can get past an angry La’mani and his henchmen. But everyone’s here to help Agnea try not to be late for the stage by blocking off thugs with a crowd of people observing a pianist or Veronica going in for the save in order to make sure Agnea arrives on time. It’s pretty funny. Funnier for La’mani when prelude boss music starts, but never transitions. Even I was thinking, “Are we actually gonna fight…?” This finale is pretty special, in my opinion. At first, it seems pretty strange to have a fist fight on stage, but no, after the first fight with Dolcinaea, it’s revealed it’s all a dance off. Makes a lot more sense, but it’s cool and slightly funny that it’s represented by an actual fight in gameplay. Even all of her attacks are based on dances or her singing… or her calling the audience to the stage??? I laughed my arse off when this crowd just shoved Ochette off the field. The two-part fight is amazing. But what’s even more amazing is when the second fight starts. Not so much the fight itself, that’s not got a lot to write home about in my opinion, well, except for the gimmick of literally taking a party member and having them fight at her side for a few turns. My poor Castti, come back to me! But no, it’s the music. Every final boss second phase music is ‘For the Dawn’ with the character’s main theme playing for a portion of it, amongst other things. But Agnea? It’s a remix of her theme and now with vocals and this alone makes the fight super memorable. The dance got serious and Agnea’s gonna teach Dolcinaea what it means to find joy in life and dance - the Song of Hope. And all of this would not be possible without the aid of her friends that she made along the way. Not the other seven Travelers, they don’t matter, but the others? Hell yeah! Even La’mani has become a fan. But none of this wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Agnea’s mum, Cuani. The legacy Agnea wishes to carry on makes this story really warm for me. Agnea’s banter doesn’t add a whole lot to the story, though the various banters she has in general seem to reveal things about herself or her home town of Cropdale. Like, Agnea enjoys sweet coffee, she refers to Castti as ‘mama’ once, she reveals how her parents even fell in love and Cropdale is known for raspberries, which perks up Throné immediately. But the funniest one is in Partitio’s story where he wants to feel some peaches that Agnea’s carrying. No, literally, she was given a basket of peaches and uh, yeah. Would’ve been funnier if they didn’t censor that one cutscene in Agnea’s chapter 1 though…

Temenos ~ いいでしょう We’re back with the more deep stories. And this one is probably the most important to the greater narrative OT2 wants to tell. And this starts with this organisation called the Moonshade Order and it’s highly likely that someone or some people have infiltrated the Church to get whatever this organisation wants to fruition. And to be fair, the Church really doesn’t want Temenos in on it because… he’s a pretty smart guy. Every other smart person who suspected the Church has been offed, including one of Temenos’s old friends, Roi. The two-part chapter 3 reveals other heinous things the Moonshade Order did such as murdering an entire group of people related to the Sacred Flame in Crackridge or internal tampering with discussions with higher authority in Stormhail, ultimately leading to a two-party investigation with Temenos and Crick, with the latter dying as a result. And just when he had seen the ways of the truth… But now thanks to him, he has the Book of Night, and now to make his way to the Nameless Village. North of the Nameless Village is where Captain Kaldena plans to envelop the world in darkness, and her reasons is simply revenge on the world for wronging her. More specifically the fact that the Scared Flame never helped her. Too bad though because in an attempt to ruin the world, she lost herself in the process, becoming this beast. I like how Octopath is able to hide these really grotesque transformations because of the pixel art format. And I myself, would not want to see the bones crack and flesh rip apart as they transform. But with this taken care of, Temenos and the rest of the Church strip the power of the Sacred Guard. Of course, the Moonshade Order is still out there and needs to be stopped. But for now, the job’s done. I’m missing out a ton of detail here because most of this story is investigating and ultimately leads from one place to another after finding the important item of relevance. The most interesting part regards Crick and his transformation from a squire who’s naive to the world’s ways, to learning, but it’s sad he had to perish. It’s a simple side plot and it’s done well, especially because it elicits a rare strong reaction out of the cleric, but otherwise, this story isn’t necessarily amazing to me. Temenos’s banter is interesting. There’s nice comments like how the enemy faction of this story are probably a bit more incompetent than we expect with the amount of evidence they just let lay about, and if Ochette and Osvald were main characters in this story, they’d immediately weed out the scum. Quite a number of Temenos’s banter can feel like it’s a group of people in a detective agency and I kinda like that about them. Either that or they take a page out of Temenos’s book and chill with him so that minds can be cleared before continuing.

Hikari ~ ここからだ Accepting his father’s dying wish, Hikari sets out to the rest of the continent in hopes of finding allies to help in the defeat of General Mugen and Ku’s attempt to rule over the world. To start, we have to find this man called Yusuke Kitagawa- I mean, Kazan. He resides in Montwise. Hikari already seems to have Kazan’s trust, but what about the others who hope to follow the prince? That needs a bit of extra work, but it’s fine in the end. The interesting chapters though, are in chapter 3 and 4 where Hikari meets up with his old allies, but both are under the thumb of General Mugen, and ordered to kill the traitorous prince if he shows his face. However, even before Hikari tries to convince them, some already show signs they wish to defect. In chapter 3, he tries to reason with Ritsu, but fails, however, he’s able to get weapons from General Rou to supply his other allies. Then in chapter 4, he requests aid from Rai Mei, but she’s reluctant, even hoping Hikari will end her life for her failure. But we all know this isn’t who Hikari is. Besides, Rai Mei’s retainer, Kunzo wouldn’t want that - he completely supports Hikari’s cause. And of course, the story ends back in Ku where you have a freaking gauntlet of enemies. Ritsu, Mugen phase 1, Hikari’s Shadow and Mugen phase 2. Then finally, the day is saved, all with the help of Hikari, Rai Mei, Kazan and all the other allies. But wait, Hikari’s Shadow? Um… it’s a thing, alright. This stems from his cursed blood, and this effect looks similar to other things such as the Moonshade Order’s aura amongst other things. But this Shadowself makes Hikari go berserk. He’s done a good job at putting it at bay, but it gets pretty close to consuming him. It doesn’t amount to much in the end though except for a few interesting senes where it’s caused immense grief to a select few characters. But otherwise, I think this story’s good. Nothing amazing, but I was pretty hooked, especially with how his old friends would interact with him. Would they even side with him, was something on my mind. Hikari’s banter is pretty good for the story. With the amount of war talk in this story, it stands to reason numerous talks are about the amount of blood being spilled or commenting on certain individuals - whether the group can trust Kazan, Clan Mei is actually well respected for even assisting the Sacred Order, etc. But there’s a lot of more sentimental and humorous banter too such as one regarding Hikari’s mother or Osvald hatching an escape plan, but that’d take years and besides, he has magic unlike on that prison island. The last chapter is full-on support, no more messing around, and I like this because it feels like Hikari not only has who he recruited in this story, but also the seven other Travelers he’s become friends with, even if they’re not in cutscene.

And that’s all the main stories. They vary in quality, but on the whole, they’re all better than almost any of OT1’s story. Most of them have more stakes or the message is stronger, and each story also seems to hold more importance in the over arching plot, namely because again, this game has a final story. My favourite stories are Castti, Partitio and Agnea’s. Now the Crossed Paths. These are always split in two with the second part normally happening after the end of the characters’ chapters, but not all the time. This shouldn’t take long.

Osvald & Partitio In New Delsta, Osvald and Partitio find a fellow named Regulus. He happens to be an old friend of Osvald’s, although that doesn’t matter too much in the long run. What matters is, is that he’s trying to make a telescope so he can get a good look at the stars and constellations. It’s a good thing that Partitio’s here for funds. In due time, they get the funds and we wait for the completion of it. Fast forward, we meet Regulus again at Montwise and… he sold the telescope. Thanks. Well, more like he was duped and we got it back after beating them up. Now the three men can gaze at the stars freely. Nice. It’s not much to be honest, although the talks between the men are nice and their clashing methodology regarding how to deal with certain situations, namely getting items off people is interesting. Obviously Osvald is on the side of just mugging them while Partitio typically prefers a less violent approach as a merchant. Not that he’s opposed to beating people up if they do wrong, and this is an example. It’s fine.

Castti & Ochette Both parts of this Crossed Paths take place in Cropdale. The first time around, Castti and Ochette go north-east of Cropdale to find that something amiss is going there. We don’t know what yet, but some animals have gone a bit berserk and freak out as a result, even going as far as hurting anyone who dares approach them. For example, this Boar, who after knocking it down, they affectionately name, Wooly-Ooly. They patch him up, but with not much else they can do, they go on their merry way and hope they’re safe. Later on, they return and the situation’s even worse than before as purple smog envelops the entire area. Ochette notes that all the animals have vanished or gone into hiding, and things that are here have absolutely zero scent. Worse, Castti is not feeling good, but Ochette seems null to it and takes care of the initial problem they find. However, continuing further in, it gets worse as Ochette seemingly vanishes from Castti’s sight. Woozy and stuck in an endless loop of darkness, she starts hearing voices of a family that she was previously unable to save. She actually nearly falls for the darkness and allows herself to be consumed, that is, until Ochette comes in and saves the day. Defeating this weird Shadow creature restores the forest to normal and the animals return to their normal habitat. Another Castti W, I’d say. I love how this delves a bit deeper into Castti’s profession. We already know from cutscenes and banter she takes her job and position very seriously, and obviously there’s going to be screw ups somewhere, especially ones from Healleaks. So her falling into the darkness is very reasonable for her. And Ochette? She does good as a partner, but she definitely pulls her weight in the second part where she - as the light - protects Castti from anymore harm. It may look like a cop out until you read into a bit of the lore, which is explained in optional side-quests. But this is definitely slanted towards Castti.

Agnea & Hikari Starting off in Ryu, Agnea and Hikari meet a lute player called Yomi. The tune she plays is recognised by Hikari. They request she plays a certain song that Hikari recognised from one of his deceased friends, Tsuki: ‘By the Light of the Heart’. That is, after a few in-game days of preparations and fixes to a broken lute. Later on, when Ku is finally back to normal, there’s a suggestion of doing a celebration for their victory. It takes a bit, as in Hikari’s mind he finds it disrespectful, but nothing like a bit of logic to change the mind. Still, they need some music and maybe a dancer. Dancer’s easy, we have Agnea, but music? How about Yomi and her lute. She’s somewhere in a cave to the east of Ku, but here we find out she actually holds a bit of a grudge towards Hikari as Clan Ku was the reason for Tsuki’s death - her sister. Hikari accepts blame and a short fight to ease her pain. After the matter is settled and peace is made, she’s invited back to Ku for the festival, all while ‘By the Light of the Heart’ plays. This story is… a thing. I don’t want to say it’s bad, Yomi’s short story is sad, but that’s kinda all it is. It only works because we know that there’s plenty of characters that hold grudges towards Ku and especially when they were ruled by General Mugen. The main issue though is that Agnea really doesn’t get anything to do. She’s the dancer and that’s about it; she could’ve been removed from this story and nothing really would have changed.

Temenos & Throné At Flameschurch, there’s rumours about this Alpates… thing. Obviously as the home location of Temenos, he finds interest. Throné herself, finds interest in it because of a bet she made with her late friends. After exploring the cathedral for a bit, they find the room this Alpates thing is in. This thing… is a young girl. This young lass, gives the two a cloudy mirror and leaves. Later at Conning Creek, they find that Alpates was unfortunately murdered. On the note in her hands had a hint for something in a cave to the west and after examining the floors, they find another piece of the mirror. There’s a short story regarding the origin of Alpates and Throné vows to protect the mirror. A bizarre short story, this is. The pontiff of the cathedral holds this girl in a secret place, I suppose to keep her from danger - I hope she never starved - and then later on she’s murdered with no resolution, but her legacy stays with Throné and Temenos. Hmm. I was more interested in the relationship between these two Travelers as it’s kinda clear Temenos isn’t too fond of the thievery angle, but comes to enjoy her as an assistant and just general company. There are moments I like though. For example when Throné reminisced about a conversation she had with her late friends about the Alpates rumour - she didn’t believe it was real, but it was. So she threw away the coins she had as in accordance to the bet. But she can’t say it to their face anymore. This story is pretty even between the two Travelers, I think.

And that’s all the story stuff you need to know before going into the Final Chapter. Oh wait, I have more things to discuss! WOO! Not that it’s important and I don’t intend to talk about everything in the Side Quests or even the stuff in the next segment, but I thought it was worth talking about because… well I liked what I played and read, so let’s go a bit further.

The first ones I’d like to talk about are the normal variety - the ones you get just by finding a townsperson or something in a location. Most of these are nothing to write home about, nor are they particularly memorable. But here’s a few I kinda remembered or liked. There’s a series of ‘Proof of’ quests in the Leaflands and it basically gets you to do this tiny legal case to help find certain accused people innocent or guilty. Turns out, the original guy you were talking to was the guilty one all along and it was an attempt to divert the blame and have himself get away. Simple, but I just like that during this whole thing, in the courthouse, you can see the trial going on with dialogue boxes appearing too. My favourite one though, starts in the Crestlands where this possessed man holds a music box. Take it off him and the quest can start proper, and you have to take it to this haunted manor to the far west of the Leaflands. The Quest needs to be finished at night, there’s zero music in the manor, even in battle. Occasionally, you see ghosts or hear sudden noises and simple as it may be, I loved the atmosphere. You finish it by giving the music box back to a young deceased girl and she along with the rest of the deceased members of the manor fade into the afterlife. Two bonuses is that not far out, there’s a lake with a structure in the centre. Prior to completing it, you’ll find a ghost by it at night (which I found out after), and after completing it, you find a diary entry further explaining the details, and it’s actually quite sad. Completely inconsequential to the overall plot, it’s just a side story after all, but I loved it. But really, spooky mansions like this, I don’t often see it in Octopath. Like this is something I expect in Pokémon games. But here we are.

The next set are the Next Chapter variety. These are of specific characters you meet from playing the main story. I greatly like this addition because it’s just nice to see what they’re up to after. One of the ones I really liked was Lady Clarissa’s where you take her to the Beastling Village, not only to meet up with an old friend, Cohazeh, but to also get some information on the Beastlings. Interestingly enough, Beastlings WERE Humans, but mutated due to some magical force. But as a result of this, Beastlings also lack darkness in their hearts. It would certainly explain Ochette’s null negativity as well as why the Beastlings at large, just speak in very simple sentences. Mira and the Elderly Guard from Throné’s story is also a good one. The Eldery Guard finds Mira in Lostseed. Don’t ask how she made her way there, but oh well. But she tailed Throné for revenge, but along the way, found out the truth about herself too. She’s also one of Claude’s and with him gone… her life’s lost purpose. But with a bit of talk with the old man, she gains back her spirit and doesn’t let her origin define her.

The special one though, is the ones that involves the Far Reaches of Hell. Anyone familiar with OT1 will know about this because these books were all in reference to Galdera. But… evidently, nothing in Solistia seems to point at Galdrea. So what gives? In two or three Side Quests, you help a man called Al, to decipher some books that’ll help him get closer to knowing the truth or at least just knowing more about this book at all. And after a while, you find him on this island on the south-east of Solistia - this ??? island. On it, you’ll find an open gate. Enter, and you’ll find yourself the “Gate of Finis” (though here, it’s written in the ancient text). You’ll also find Al collapsed on the ground. Up ahead, is the most challenging boss in the game: Galdera. I’m gonna be talking gameplay for a good while here. Like OT1, Galdera is a two-phase boss split between two groups of your party and man, are they gauntlets, especially the first part. I needed quite a bit of assistance from online and friends… and some moral support too - my successful run was on a call with others. They couldn’t see me play, but I radioed the events. My first party consisted of Throné (Inventor), Ochette (Warrior), Castti (Scholar) and Agnea (Arcanist). The second party was of Partitio (Dancer), Hikari (Armsmaster), Osvald (Merchant) and Temenos (Thief). I only found out after that I had all the women on phase one and the men on phase two.

Phase one of Galdera is the Omniscient Eye that’s guarded by three Souls that will constantly return until all of them are deleted in the same turn. But even when they’re deleted, they’ll come back with different properties, including a cycling elemental weakness and soon a counter that causes some horrendous effects on your team. But here’s a trick: Provoke EX with mass Dreadwing. Dreadwings have an AoE wind spell that can cause insta-kill, and guess what all the Souls are vulnerable to. Whenever the Souls are active, the team solely focuses on making sure Ochette has enough SP to use Provoke EX as well as keeping her BP high so that she can get the most out of it. Once the Souls are gone and I can actually attack the Eye, but it still needs to be broken. So what now? Well here’s a thing: Provoke EX with mass Scourge of the Sea. Ochette is actually the MVP for this phase because one thing that the devs forgot to test was making sure that you couldn’t use boss Monster more than once, let alone used multiple times in a row with Provoke EX. Scourge is an Almighty physical (using SMT terms for this, sorry) that does SIX SHIELD DAMAGE EACH HIT. So blast 3 of these out to Break it and let the other Monsters be I don’t know, Dreadwolves to debilitate it or the Battle-Worn Shark to refill HP, SP and BP. The rest also have access to their strongest moves such as Throné’s Aeber’s Reckoning or Castti’s Drastic Measures. Bonus if Drastic is done as the last attack to remove all the debuffs that enhance its damage. And Agnea… actually doesn’t have anything to do. She’s mainly item bitch and also a bit of magic reflect support. She has a role though, so that’s fine. The main issue with this boss is that the Eye has a ton of HP. It has 600,000 HP compared to OT1’s 500,000 HP. Not much of a difference, but it does add up in the time.

Once phase one’s done, immediately phase two starts where your second party will face off against Galdrea, the Fallen. So… a lot of set up was needed for this one because before you can even directly attack Galdera himself, you must defeat the Abyssal Maw, Blade of the Fallen and Sundering Arm, all of which have 150,000 HP. But getting past them is hell because they all do so much damage and probably will target all the whole team. My only real choice was to mass damage with some of Hikari’s most powerful Learned Skills - particularly Last Gasp and Limb from Limb, but even that has caveats. On my first free turn with A Step Ahead, Osvald uses Donate BP (or an item) to give Partitio the ability to use Sealticge’s Seduction on Hikari so all his attacks will do AoE damage. Temenos also needed to give Hikari BP via items to make sure Hikari can do the most amount of damage. Hikari (at 1 HP) otherwise just has to use Abide to up his own attack, combined with the Passive that deals more damage when at low HP along with a few other equipment that increases is overall damage, and lowers SP cost. And the result? …The blade was still alive. We were pretty close to falling right there, but a few weaker hits managed to down it and now on the 3rd turn, we can now attack Galdera. Do not bother with its Shield because there’s a good chance you’ll never break it with all its stalling attacks and it regenerating 3 points per turn. It also has FOUR MOVES PER TURN. At least it only has 250,000 HP, but man, this fight took a while. To ensure less attacks will hit, I always had either Osvald or Temenos - who was this team’s item bitch - to throw out Nightmare Bottles which can either poison or blind, which Galdera is thankfully susceptible to. This ensures that physical attacks are less likely to hit, but we still had lots of KOs that ate up tons of our items and resources. There were many instances where I would think on what to do for minutes at a time before going through with a plan because I knew a mess up would probably mean a game over. In fact, one mess up caused half of our team to wipe with the remaining ones with little to no proper way to just revive the entire cast. Even if Temenos got up, he’d probably be hit again before he can do his own revive. But thankfully, an AoE revive and full restore was in my pockets. The only one. Around 2 hours later, it was done. The poison I slipped into Galdera’s tea finally took hold and he died. I was so happy, especially considering I actually never beat Galdera in OT1. Now granted, that’s partially because of the Ochette oversight in phase one, but also I’m a lot less mentally drained as the Gate of Finis in OT2 is just the Galdera bosses as appose to a bunch of boss refights with no save points.

After all was said and done, Al, in surprise, thanks us for beating Galdera and now he can return home. But before he leaves, he gives us his real name: Alfred Hornburg - the last king of Hornburg. But wait, he looks pretty young here. So… when does this game take place? Alternate reality? Time travelling? In fact, why is the Gate of Finis here? Is it multiple doors that lead to the same place? What’s this? We’ll never know, I guess. However, I’m sorta interested in the timeline part. Maybe ‘Champions of the Continent’ will tell me if OT2 is a prequel or something to OT1, but I have to wait for that update to come in English first.

A Pleasant Group ~ Characters

NOW we can go to the final chapter… um, but before that, I actually want to briefly talk about the characters. It gives me a chance to talk about them as people and also how I tended to use them in gameplay.

Ochette ~ いっといで Agnea may be the youngest age-wise, but in terms of personality, no, that title goes to Ochette. To be fair, the Beastling race matures slower than humans, and like I said earlier, they’re much more pure. But still, that can’t really get past the fact that in my opinion, Ochette is kinda… dull. I like her, but really, her personality can mostly come down to she’s energetic, kind and likes Jerky a lot - that’s most of her banter, I swear. To be fair, a lot of Beastlings enjoy Jerky. When it comes to her part in her story or banter, it really only goes to exemplify how young-minded she is. Though I will say this small thing about her: It occurred to me that only she could talk with Mihana/Alaka. Like, here I was wondering why the other Travelers never talked to them in banter or in the Crossed Paths, and then it turns out… it’s because they can’t. Simple as, lol. Please tell me I’m not the only one who didn’t catch that. I mean, this is a world where Caits can talk, I think. So, what’s saying this Owl or Jackal can’t speak human? In terms of battle, Ochette has remained pretty useful throughout the game. With no limits on how much I can use most Monsters, Provoke is actually useful, even though I only really got use out of it at endgame. Part of this though, is admittedly because of that oversight with Provoke EX. I only ever used the Latent Power that does Almighty physical damage to a single target because it’s the most powerful. With it, I got 96k damage, once.

Castti ~ さ…おやすみなさい

This should come as no shock that I love Castti, even separated from her own story. I mean, what’s not to love about a blonde beauty that’s motherly, commanding and caring, even with her own memory issues at play? The fact these traits of hers maintain even when she had no memory of who she was tells me that these personality traits are very strong. Stronger than her remembering her own name, heh. She’s one of the more serious characters in the cast, so it’s legitimately surprising when she is not that on occasion. She makes fun of Partitio a fair bit, and she’s just like “yeah, I don’t mind kicking back and getting drunk on occasion.” Just make sure someone is monitoring her in before she just walks out randomly or uh… strips. The other reason why I like Castti a lot is her Japanese voice, and in battle she’s just too cool… somehow. In a way, it makes her sound like a really aggressive other figure who won’t let her patients in any harms way, which… I suppose isn’t entirely out of character. She’s one of the more well-rounded characters in the roster. Although that’s partially a lie because I mainly used her for damage instead of her profession as you know, an apothecary - a healer. Yeah, I used her to heal as well, especially with her Latent Concoction to use ingredients for free and all that. In terms of attacks though, it helps that her kit is just so useful. One of the few characters to have an AoE attack and some solid single-target attacks. But nothing compares to Drastic Measures. Since it’s not a Divine Skill, it doesn’t need to be a max boost attack and considering she’s one of the slower characters, having her act last is a great chance for her to finish a Break with this move, especially after a ton of enemy debuffs. I’ve affectionally named angry Castti, Drastti Castti for a reason. Considering how useful she is, it’s unfortunate she got basically none of the many JP and EXP x100s I rolled. So when Throné wasn’t in the lead anymore, Castti was. Not a bad trade off.

Throné ~ ふふ～ Despite me not liking Throné’s story much, I’m quite fond of her character and is one of the reasons I do not regret choosing her as my main. It should also be noted I like characters with darkness in their hearts, which is similar to why I like Primrose from OT1, who also happens to be the most comparable character. Throné’s surprisingly fun to be around with her flirty and teasing nature as well as just relishing in the joys of life, freedom… and being around dogs. But she also knows how to be real with talks to Osvald and Hikari who share similar goals of wanting to end violence. Though I will knock this about her character: I can’t tell when it is okay or not okay to kill, exactly. She states she hates unnecessary bloodshed. Okay. But what’s with the occasional banter where she talks about thinking to kill. Sometimes, it’s an obvious jest, but other times I’m thinking “…was that a serious threat?” She’s also a woman who doesn’t like to be looked at for the sake of sex. Respectable. Likes fashion, likes being sexy, but doesn’t want anymore attention then that. Though I also respect that this isn’t a sure fire way to lose a friend as some of her close friends have made advances, but still are close regardless. In terms of fights, she’s one of the less useful characters. In fact, in my run, the main reason she was consistently useful was because I always had Inventor on her, which houses some very potent skills. Not that she doesn’t have any good Thief skills because some of her exclusive skills are great. That AoE dark attack, Aeber’s Reckoning amongst other things. But I feel like most of the time, I was applying armour debuffs to make way for the eventual Drastic Measures or something.

Osvald ~ 有益だ The thing I like about Osvald is how his personality shifts depending on the context. He is a man of many faces where ordinarily, he’s the stern guy who wishes to kill Harvey for making his life hell, but he’s good at not directing that hate to anyone else. He won’t even kill those who pose no further threat to them, though he might do something like burn the money. More importantly, he never raises his voice towards any of his fellow Travelers, especially the young crew. Now, he’s probably thinking “what am I doing here” on occasion, but he’s a good man. Furthermore though, the shift in demeanour once he realises Elena is alive is great. Only further proves to me he’s a good man, and more over, a good father. It’s weird to think that he’s a bit… daft when it comes to love or anything outside of studies. Even Throné’s confused. Like I mean yeah, he’s smart and all that, but how he got a wife? Now that’s an equation for the ages, but it did go well. I mean, the relationship part, not the, um, yeah. Osvald is… I used him a lot as one of the few jobs where he houses multiple elements with AoE nonetheless, however, I don’t think I used him much late game and especially during the endgame. Like I said, magic gets kind of useless as time goes on. Not that it can’t rack up damage, but if I’m going to do damage, it’s with physical, which over half the roster can do. So, without magic, I had him normally use the secondary jobs to give him use, or maybe to reveal weaknesses with Analyse.

Partitio ~ よろしくね Partitio’s actually a very simple guy since really, his personality just amounts to a forgiving, but aggressive to those who oppose him or do something bad, such as hurting a stray dog. But obviously, it’s his charisma that carries him which allows him to be a major influence to others and also easy to root for. He’s much more interesting than Tressa, who is really just the merchant girl who’s cute. I like her, but she’s also quite shallow. On top of his charisma, Partitio’s just really creative and smart. I guess to us modern folk, it’s kinda like… duh. A department store, but I’m sure besides a ton of stands, this was unheard of back in the day. (Wait until I’m wrong about that…) This isn’t even to mention his know-how on the business side of things. …And this is also mostly what he knows at first because he’s one of the few Travelers in this game who knows little about the world outside his hometown at the start. Partitio’s always at least somewhat useful due to some of his decently strong attacks and also his potent support moves like Donate BP. But he got very useful at endgame when I had enough funds to just buy myself some victories. I never used Hired Help in OT1 because it cost money, and in a game where money, EXP and all that were kinda hard to come by, yeah, I never wanted to use it. Overly cautious, but that was me. But in OT2? I had a lot more money, and even after beating Galdera, I was swimming in it. I should’ve been more reckless because Hired Help with Veteran Soldier is busted. And later on with Foreign Assassin, it’s even better. Obviously it’s pricy as hell, but come on, that’s useful. Also, tangentially related to Partitio, but he was also the only guy I had that could reasonably get Alrond to come along after he became available to join. Alrond is important because despite his price, getting him to just give free EXP and/or JP multipliers is insane.

Agnea ~ 大事にするね I feel like I don’t have much to say on Agnea. She’s the nice girl who helps out a lot and is a great dancer. She’s also the party member to probably keep the darkness in their hearts relatively low, so to speak, since she’s also the optimist of the group, unlike Ochette who’s just the child of the group. She’s also another character who doesn’t know much of the outside world besides her hometown. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because she was probably too young to even go out her village until now, unlike Partitio where he always had business to attend to, and that’s after his town even got built in the first place. Agnea is mildly useful until mid-game. AoE dagger will always be mildly useful and also the AoE wind, that… I admittedly never used much, but it’s an option. She also has the Almighty physical kick attack that will always lower a shield point, which was useful early game, but because useless later - she just has a lot of moves that I feel aren’t particularly useful in the long run. She really was mainly a support character by the end. Tangentially related, but I love that Bewildering Grace has a different animation depending on the user. Agnea hops and then does a heart sign, Hikari does fighting poses, Osvald dances ‘like a dad’, Partitio does a Michael Jackson!? it’s a really cool attention to detail that adds to an individual’s character. Last small thing to bring up, I like that in the Japanese dub, Agnea’s “One… Two…” dance lines are in French. Not sure why they did this, but they did the same thing in ‘Sonic Adventure 2’s English version (replacing ‘Adios’ with ‘Sayonara’).

Temenos ~ 暴かせてもらいますよ Honestly, the main reason why I like Temenos is because of his doubt everything mindset. It gives me this slight feeling of chaos that I enjoy in my characters, but he’s still completely lawful. Otherwise, he seems fun to be around and likes to poke fun at those around him because they’re all such good friends. He sticks to his morals and beliefs quite strongly. Obviously he follows the Sacred Flame, but also like, he only heals when there’s like a bad accidental wound, I guess like to a beast. But if someone gets hurt on their own accord and for maybe dumb reasons, he won’t help, like how he refused to help Partitio because it was him who let himself get in a fight with people, all for a dog he doesn’t even know. Temenos will always be useful because he has an AoE heal and obviously, lots of attacks in this game like to strike multiple people at once. He’s also the only magic user to have an AoE spell that is NOT an EX move, automatically making him useful with a crowd of enemies weak to light. Still though, by endgame, it was kinda difficult to use him because the attacks started becoming very situational. So he’d just be for healing and also some enemy debuffs since I put him on the Thief job too.

Hikari ~ 勝負だ Hikari falls into the nice and noble side of things, but he also fights for his friends and the country he serves. If the option is given to him, he’ll avoid violence. Strangely enough, he’s also one of the two people in the group who’s outwardly said ‘no’ to Throné’s thievery, the other being Castti. But I enjoy that if just for one mission where it’s to restore reputation to another guy, he decided to go in on a plan to ‘steal’. He really prides his own kindness and it’s an unshakable trait of his. There’s also his inner demons, which is due to the cursed blood, but really, it doesn’t show itself much, if at all, outside his story. So I don’t have that much to say on it. Maybe if it was written off as a more normal personality disorder, maybe it would’ve been better, but I don’t know. Overall, Hikari’s fine, though I’m also not exactly thrilled by him just because he’s… surprisingly simple. But in gameplay, he’s always quite useful because he’s just a strong guy. His Aggressive Slash is a semi-AoE and that’s useful, and some of his single target skills are great. Likewise, his Latent Power is great at deleting enemies and bosses, but unfortunately unlike Ochette, they are tied to specific weapons which lowers its overall usefulness. Hikari’s ability to learn skills from people he fights in the overworld is useful, but also expensive. So I honestly never used them much until endgame where they were basically mandatory to comfortably take down threats like Galdera… and only Galdera.

So my favourite characters are Castti and Partitio, but my favourite to use is probably like Castti and Ochette.

To The Darkness ~ Final Chapter

It’s time. The Final Chapter that caught me off guard when I first played it. But before I continue, I should say this: The game recommends you make another save while you do this chapter because once you start it, you must finish it before you can do anything else. So if you wanted to, say, bring along someone before this but you saved in the same slot, then tough luck. That was me. Don’t do what I did. Save in another slot.

Before you even start this chapter, it’s possible you’ve come across or seen some oddities. Very occasionally in the overworld, you’ll run into a room of complete darkness with ominous music, and when you enter battle, you fight these bizarre creatures covered in purple. But then once you defeat it, everything’s back to normal. Huh…? Also, as you complete stories, you notice the lights on the loading icon go out. I noticed this myself, but I assumed it was just a signifier that you were getting close to beating all the stories, and this was still me assuming that was gonna be the game. But it becomes clear that those lights on the loading screen aren’t just ‘lights’.

Upon starting the chapter just south of Cropdale, everyone’s getting ready for one last camp and hang out before they all go their own separate ways. Everyone talks about their time together and what they have planned for the future, such as Ochette deciding to fulfil her duty as guardian of her land, as is Hikari. That night as everyone’s asleep, they all get a vision of these flames going out. Not only that, but when everyone wakes up, instead of finding a nice blue sky with a sun high in the sky, they’re greeted with nothing but darkness and monsters emerging from said darkness. After a bit of discussion, they conclude that there’s something wrong with certain locations on Solistia. The locations in question all hold a blue flame - the Sacred Flame. They’ve all been put out. Those lights on the loading screen? It’s those.

This might sound strange to say, but I was really happy a chapter like this existed. One of the main reasons is because it was a ‘Sonic Adventure 2’- like finale where all the pieces you’ve seen passively or directly in other stories are now being answered. A vast improvement from OT1 where the main antagonist, Galdera, was relegated to side content and a super boss, NOT the main final boss as that game didn’t have a final chapter. The second major reason is because all the characters are now on the same screen and talking to each other. It’s one of the main things I’ve wanted to see. And though the execution isn’t perfect as some of the revelations shown aren’t given the kind of attention I wished by certain Travelers, what I got was more than serviceable. But these revelations? Let’s see…

If you look on the world map, you’ll find four locations have dark aura emanating from it: Hinoemua, Toto’haha, the Wildlands and the Crestlands. In each location, you’ll find a broken mural and/or a torch that would otherwise house a Sacred Flame and with certain characters, you’ll be able to rekindle the flame. You can tell which ones are needed by the statues close by, which also happen to correlate with all the Crossed Paths’ pairs. Each location also reveals who put out the flames and replaced them wit the ghastly aura with each one. Each one required a sacrifice and the characters will react accordingly through banter.

Going in order of which ones I did, we start off in the Toto’haha mural where we first started Ochette’s story. It seemed that the animal Ochette didn’t take along, was being corrupted by Pertichor, and furthermore during the Scarlet Moon. Yes, this happened right under Ochette’s nose. Killing herself to not only be the sacrifice for the location and for this person named Arcanette, but also to make the beast never come back to sanity. Ochette and Castti are the ones to light this one, and this makes the blue flame from Ochette’s story make a bit more sense. Not the most ideal way to write it, but yeah, that’s the reason for it. It’s proof that she’s worthy.

I then went to Hinoemua’s, the same place where we found Yomi, which I had completed like, just an hour ago at the time. This time, it’s Kazan. That slimy tactician! Played us like a fiddle. In fact, he did more than just that, he hid his true name to further hide himself from Ku. You might’ve found a letter at the beginning of the game in Ku where this guy called Oboro talks about how he’s lost all hope in the world and thus, joined the Moonshade Order. But Oboro isn’t going to sacrifice himself. Not yet. Instead, he uses Mugen’s second in command, Ageha, as the sacrifice. A sacrifice is a sacrifice, I guess because the flame is now tainted purple. Agnea and Hikari are the ones to rekindle this flame. To think that Mugen’s rise to power, Hikari’s ascension to the throne, all that was planned by Oboro from the start to get to where he is now.

Next up is the Wildlands, and man this is gonna be a long one. To start with the simple stuff, the one to be sacrificed, is Ori. There’s been a pretty crucial character you might’ve noticed I neglected to mention. Ori from Partitio’s story. The ‘cruelest of people’ line I noted was not directed towards Roque. When you meet Ori, she’s introduced as a scrivener for the New Delsta Times and throughout Partitio’s story, she’s upbeat, cheerful and seems to be super helpful to him. So… what’s the deal? Throughout your run in the cave towards the mural, you find tons of diary entries littered around and these tell us a LOT about the events going on in the game. It is probably the only way one can feasibly make a timeline of events regarding the game’s story, which up until this point was not important and super vague. There’s 17 entries in total.

I somewhat like to view these journals as a chronological order of events in OT2, but at times it makes no sense. For example, her brother is Kazan/Oboro, who we know has ties to Ku and Hikari. So they know each other, and in the journals even mentions how she found him with Rai Mei later on. Okay. But then we get journals like how she knows about Osvald’s situation and was apparently there years ago. So, unless she’s reminiscing in the journals which makes little sense, then the chronology shouldn’t be gospel. Still, to think that she was sneaking around this whole time, in cahoots with Harvey, and followed Kaldena to get the Book of Demons and Darkblood Grimoire. She kept her eyes on Trousseau and Mahina/Akalá when they were in possession of Petrichor’s, and many other things. The only character Ori never interacts with at all, is Agnea - including any characters in her story. She really didn’t get much to do, huh. Paritio is obviously the interesting character because he’s the one that completely flipped her world view, even getting her to say things that were actually beneficial to the world with zero intent of malice. Ori probably also directly met Castti, but she wasn’t named, however she had the same attire.

I’d sorta prefer it if the journals were just scattered throughout towns as you played through the game, but that’d mean they’d be missable, not to mention it wouldn’t make sense, but oh well. Anyway, Ori goes through with the sacrifice, but in turn of events, Osvald tells a heartbroken Partitio that a girl was found in an inn where Crackridge is, unconscious. Osvald says that it’s likely Partitio that made her second guess her actions last moment.

Let’s bring things back down. Flameschurch. One of the few areas with an actual cutscene and everyone’s not feeling good with the fact that the whole town is dead quiet. Only one person resides there right now, and it’s Sister Mindt - or rather, Arcanette. The leader of the Moonshade Order, one who lived long enough to arrange the massacre of Kai back in the day. She was even found by certain members of the church and immediately went to delete them, including Roi. But wait, she’s alive. So… who died to put out the flame? That would be Tanzy. Tanzy, you know, a member of the Giselle troupe from Agnea’s story? (The only thing that links her to this greater story.) Tanzy had a pretty hard love life and she turned to Sister Mindt and eventually fell head over heels for her. I don’t know? But this ended up being a horrid choice in the end as Tanzy would then be the sacrifice. Poor her. And I don’t think the Giselle group ever found her or even mentioned her disappearance for that matter. Temenos and Throné rekindle the flame. The directions seem to point at Vide, hence this eternal night. Throné reassures they can win back the dawn. After all, the kids here are expecting a concert the next day, hosted by Dolcinaea herself.

Fun fact: all the main members of the Moonshade Order, the first letter of their names will spell out OCTOPATH. So you could all them the anti-OCTOPATH or something. Also, Arcanette's scrutinise text says 'This is all lies' in the Japanese version. It's somewhat hidden. I didn’t know where else to put this bit of trivia.

With all four flames rekindled, Vidania appears in the middle of the sea and the group makes a bee line for it. Up there resides Oboro where he intends to use his own body to reawaken Vide. And now, we can start. Few things before I go into it: before starting the fight, and a few more cutscenes after, your main character will be the one taking lead. In my case, it was Throné. So she’d be all like, “finally something to take my mind off things”. Also, I actually beat this boss twice. My level 80 team versus this level 60 boss, I wanted to try and get more than the 5000 EXP out of it. So backed out to try and get Alrond again for it. …Only to find out that I couldn’t as he wasn’t around - it was considered the ‘daytime’. Ah, the tragedy. I wish I had saved in another slot… Anyway, it’s time to steal back the dawn - for the future of the land and its people!

The fight begins against ‘Vide’ and similar to the much-harder Galdera fight, he spawns arms that must be defeated so that you can attack the core, though I don’t think the arms regenerate until you delete them all in one turn, thankfully. They will reappear at some point though. Also like Galdera, Vide is equipped with a magic reflector and buff nullifiers on your party. The main difference otherwise, besides difficulty, is that Vide has an AoE spell that can potentially blind, and has shifting weaknesses. But that is of no concern to me as like many of the bosses prior, I… broke it, Hastening Hammered, Drastic Measures. Have a nice day. After reaching a certain point, Vide summons a void “All shall be mine!”. Your current party is sucked in with the back up four party entering the field. Now they have to finish the job, just like Galdera. Already, this is a climactic fight for OT2, but this… is only phase one.

Once ‘Vide’ is downed, ‘Vide, the Wicked’ begins. The four members previously sucked into the void return and now it is a fight where you can fight with ALL EIGHT TRAVELERS AT ONCE! This was actually the coolest thing in this game and is one of the main reasons I want the ability for rematches after. Even the ability to use all either in regular encounters would’ve been a nice bonus. But anyway, though you have all eight members out, it’s not like CotC where you have rows and can switch out an individual row; it’s either you play with this group of four, or you play with this group of four. With that said, things like AoE skills will target your entire party, but the enemy can’t do the same thing. At least, not from my experience. Like the first phase, you have more extra limbs to take down, but they will come back stronger later on. Furthermore, if you’re not careful or quick enough to finish this boss, I imagine it can get troublesome. There’s moves that deny revival for example. I guess I didn’t worry too much because I was overpowered, and it’s not like The Wicked has less health than Galdera, the Fallen - they both have 250k HP. Once again, nothing Aeber’s Reckoning or Drastic Measures or Ochette’s teeth can’t handle. In a way, I’m thinking about how hard this fight would normally be. Provided that everyone has like, ‘Deal More Damage’, I could see this fight ending quickly. You have eight people to play as and over half of them can deal well over 15-20k damage per hit, and that’s me low-balling.

In due time, Vide is once again defeated and with the eternal night over, the sun rises over the horizon.

Once that’s done, you unlock the Epilogue, which starts in the same location as the Final Chapter. Once you start this, then the final cutscenes and credits will play. Everyone looks to the sky as it’s a brand new day for not just our fellow Travelers, but the whole world. With no more interruptions, a formal goodbye to everyone is in order. One by one, everyone will give their thanks and a farewell as they leave the group and screen. All until it’s just your leader. “さてと…これから、どこへ行こうか”

After the credits roll, you find yourself back in New Delsta, probably a few months, maybe a year, after the events of the game. I thought for a moment that it was us going back to our home location because Throné’s starting area is New Delsta. You’re simply asked to find all your fellow Travelers, Castti, Osvald, Hikari, etc. Pala is in replacement of Agnea because she is the one to play in the theatre. But as you look around, you’ll find many other characters that you came across from the various stories - Dolcinaea, Thurston, Rai Mei, and so many others. It’s a reunion of not just your close friends, but everyone involved in the story. Once you head into the theatre, then everyone gets in their seats - including Ori in the far back - and is greeted by our new star, Agnea. She reminisces on her time with her fellow Travelers and what’s she’s learnt over her time out and how it’s shaped her worldview, and she wishes everyone a bright future no matter what may go on in their lives. It’s on the nose and her ending it off by literally saying the series name, “オクトパス トラベラー!”, is a bit cheesy, but screw it, I love it.

Hope Never Dies! ~ Conclusion

I guess I should’ve expected a game that’s this long and with this many main characters and stories to have such a long journal to the point that I decided to split it up, but yeah. That’s ‘Octopath Traveler II’. Probably my favourite game from 2023. Great gameplay and music, the graphics are still a treat to the eyes and vastly exceed my expectations. The story is on the whole very good, despite some of the flaws of the previous game remaining. Most of the time, other characters still feel disconnected, however with minor additions like characters acknowledging their existence and a stronger attempt to tie them all together just makes for an adventure where I can believe the group are even friends to begin with.

The game can be quite difficult at times and requires you to think and be tactical, but also, once you figure out how to bust the game, it’s not too bad. Or you just end up over-levelling yourself to try and see how high the damage numbers can go, there’s multiple ways you can find your fun in this game. I just wish I could relive those bosses and stories within them again without the need of starting a whole new save.

I honestly didn’t expect this game to get me so emotional for such simple settings, and all it needed to do was establish a good camaraderie between them, a great soundtrack and good theming. It’s a shame this game got buried under so many other just-as-good games because I wish this game was played more, especially by the JRPG crowd.

This finally concludes my review and analysis of the game. Sorry if I rambled too much, I just wanted to talk about this game I really enjoyed.

“Thank you for traveling with us!”

[This is Part 1~ OCTO. This section has no spoilers save for discussing the opening chapters for each character.]

Opening Up ~ Intro

Back in 2017 when the Nintendo Switch was first unveiled, a game caught my eye: ‘Octopath Traveler’ (OT1). Apart from ‘Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’ and ‘Splatoon 2’, this mysterious new game with an eye-catching art style - this HD-2D style - was a game I knew I was gonna buy and play. I did, played it and beat it. I thought it was a very fun game, though pretty simple. And looking back on it, HELL YEAH it was super simple - borderline tech demo.

Over the years, the team behind OT1 had made numerous other games that also utilised this same general aesthetic. Games like ‘Triangle Strategy’, a ‘Live A Live’ remake, and of course, the ‘Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent’ (CotC) prequel mobile game. CotC being a good game, but held down by its gacha elements and the fact that the game, to be honest, has no right being a mobile game. But that’s for another day… maybe. But still, we were all waiting for the next truly new Octopath game that was going to fix all the issues of the first game. For example, the characters were far too disconnected from each other, and though every story linked to each other in some way, the threads were never finished from the eyes of the Travelers, or rather, it was as if any revelations they saw were only ever for the player’s eyes.

In September 2022, a trailer for a new game dropped, and it was ‘Octopath Traveler II’ (OT2). I feel like the reaction was on the ‘eh’ side. Couldn’t tell you why, but maybe it’s because people were getting sick of the HD-2D style or people were a bit more dismissive of OT1 than I thought? But I was excited, and that’s all that mattered. Okay, so maybe not ‘all’ of us were waiting… It felt like the release was really quiet. I didn’t hear anyone really talk about the game, even after release and fairly good reception from the press, if anyone trusts them still. And even I didn’t play it upon release, but that’s mainly because I was still playing through the ‘Persona’ series.

Now that I have 100%ed the game, something I didn’t expect to do, what do I think of the game and why should you play it if you’re a JRPG fan? Well, here’s my review. To be honest, I wasn’t originally going to write this, but you know what, I think this game deserves way more praise and attention. I’ve already gushed about it, especially regarding a certain character. So, here we go.

Choose Your Traveler ~ Synopsises

Just like in OT1, at the start, you choose your main Traveler. Until you finish their story, they will always remain in your party, effectively acting as leader. Even when they’re not in the lead though, the game will eventually remind you of who you chose first, which is a very nice thing. In OT1, it felt like once their story is done, the game’s like “Alright, that’s a wrap, everyone”. Even the credits start rolling once you finish theirs. But I’m rambling. I chose Throné as my starting character, mainly for her… ‘feminine charms’, let’s say. But to be honest, she is useful in both battle and in the overworld. And even by the end of the game, I did not regret my choice in the slightest.

Whenever I discuss the characters, I will go in order of the title of the game. As in, just like OT1, every character’s initial makes the title of the game. With that said, let’s start with…

Ochette - the Hunter This Beastling’s story starts in the Beastling Village. At a young age, she was trained not only in the ways of battle and hunting, but also in speaking the human language proper by Master Juvah. Choosing either the Owl (Mahina) or a Lajackal (Akalá) will proceed with the story. Mahina is more magic-focused and who I chose, while Akalá is more physical. Upon choosing one, the other sudden gains a dark aura and dashes out of the area while trying to harm Ochette. What’s this? Jealousy already? Once that’s over, we time skip and it’s a regular day until the Master Juvah senses the Red Scarlet Moon’s arrival which is said to bring destruction to the island the village is on, as well as probably the whole world. Also these Humans who want the Beastlings’ territory too. So, that’s not good. But eventually, this Dark Entity appears and is wrecking both the Beastlings and Humans. Ochette, being the only one able to, fights and defeats it. The day is saved, but this is only the beginning. So sent by her Master, Ochette sets out to various locations across Solistia to gather the three Guardians and have them help defend the village from this Red Scarlet Moon. A decent start and I do like the general set up. Every character gets their time to shine, a nice conflict and the Human stuff seems to be solved by the end of it. Right?

Castti - the Apothecary On the sea, some sailors find this small skiff drifting out at sea. They reign it in and let the person in it rest on the ship with everyone monitoring her condition. Eventually, she gets up and after some information gathering, we learn that this woman is Castti Florenz. And it’s delivered like this because she literally doesn’t remember what happened or who she is - she has amnesia. Someone set her out to drift at sea. She arrives at Canalbrine to relax and get her energy back, only to find out that the place seems to be getting poisoned by something or someone. During this little investigation, we find out she’s good at nursing people back to health, seems like amnesia didn’t stop her second nature aspects. She also meets this fellow apothecary called Malaya. Despite trying to help around, it seems the town antagonises Castti for some reason - something to do with her group, Eir’s Apothecary, completely wiping out an entire village of its inhabitants. So what’s going on? But soon, Castti gains the town’s trust by defeating the source of the water poisoning. But still, what happened with Eir’s Apothecaries. Who are they anyway? That’s what Malaya’s for…? Inquiring her reveals that she is the one that pushed Castti out at sea. But how? That’s on the other side of the continent- Ooooh… She’s not there. Malaya’s just part of Castti’s imagination. I enjoyed this opening quite a bit. Though I think there’s a tiny flaw in the long run, I enjoy the mystery behind who Castti is, Eir’s Apothecaries, and who Malaya is. I recall having to rewatch cutscenes after because Malaya just vanishes even though I was so sure she talked to the civilians of the town. But no, whenever she did speak, she never got a response and every other time, people didn’t take note of her presence. Sneaky.

Throné - the Thief The one I chose for my adventure. The story starts off with Throné Anguis and her partners, Pirro, Scaracci and Donnie, running away from a threat after botching a mission. They try running into a certain room, but is strangely locked away with two keyholes. So, they move to the other exit, and once they do, well, they get in trouble by Mother and Father (that’s their names). Though Pirro takes some of the heat because it was mainly his fault. After everything settles down, Throné’s found on a rooftop of New Delsta just thinking about how nice it’d be to be free, using dogs as an example - they just roam wherever they want without a care in the world. But the next day, something weird starts going on where she’s informed one of her partners aren’t to be trusted and to dispose of them. It turns out, this is a farce just to weed out the weak. Throné fights Pirro and she comes out victorious, but all of her friends are now dead. This is the point where Throné’s had enough and decides to hunt down Mother and Father to kill them, then that way she can unlock her collar… and then she’ll get her freedom. This is actually a pretty simple set up. A bit depressing because she literally has to kill a friend and not only that, it was a trick just to get them all to fight. But let’s hope it doesn’t get any more depressing or messed up, ha.

Osvald - the Scholar

Here’s a wild one. Osvald V. Vanstein was charged for the murder of his family and it seemed to be orchestrated by this other Scholar called Harvey. For a few years, Osvald was in a jail cell on an island, trying to find a way out by analysing his surroundings, guard movements, etc. On top of that, he had a muzzle to prevent him from casting incantations because he’s just the top Scholar. Eventually, he manages to find a way out and puts his plan into motion. With some help around the prison ground, he manages to get is muzzle off and get off the prison island. A partner even sacrifices himself so he can’t be followed. Osvald though, is pretty unfazed. He’s the kind of character dead set on his goal to kill Harvey for ruining his own life. This is a very simple set up too. There’s a lot of other details I skim over because a lot of it is going over the daily life of being in prison as well as the atrocious conditions the prisoners have to deal with. Not like Osvald gets it better, he’s taken the piss out of even by other inmates because he allegedly killed his family. So I wanted to see how this story turned out.

Partitio - the Merchant This surprisingly young lad (Partito Yellowil’s 24 in the present day, I thought he was like… 30), grew up in a town of poverty. It wasn’t even a town, but with the help of his dad Papp, his mentor Roque and Partitio’s own skills, they were able to build it up to something amazing. The town, now known as Oresrush, flourished, everyone was happy and people were hired for work. Life was great. Until it wasn’t. Roque left for greater pastures and left behind this now-degrading town. Work wasn’t prevalent and people struggled to even eat. Worse because Papps wasn’t feeling well and not much medicine was around. At this time and even when Partitio became 20, he had to constantly deal with this higher class person who just had all the wealth, just stored money and kept for himself. And it was Roque’s plan, on top of that. Well, that’s strange. After beating this person and spreading the wealth back to the town, Partitio starts a journey to find Roque and talk with him, as well as try to rid the world of the devil called Poverty! This man is too cool to exist. He exudes so much charisma, even in this one chapter and I root for him all the time. This was clearly a very tame story in the works with little in the way of stakes, but I was invested. Not to mention that bitchin’ character theme!

Agnea - the Dancer But if you thought Partitio’s story is to be simple, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In the town of Cropdale, Agnea Bristarni is the star dancer there and she has dreams to be a star on the stage. Like, a huge stage. So she’s trying to earn 10000 leaves so she has money for her journey (though let’s be real, she might be able to survive off of just 2000 at this point in the journey), but um… she’s not earned much. Mainly because she prefers to do things for free out of kindness. She’s too pure. A festival is about to start and everyone needs to set up, but during the set up, her younger sister, Pala, went missing in a nearby forest and needs to find her in case anything tragic happens. She alongside the allured Gil- I mean, her friend (they’re friends), go into the forest and politely knock out this giant Boar. Then it turns out Pala was no where near that thing and she’s safe. She went to look for some fruits, but had to look elsewhere since the usual location had run low. The next day after the festival, the townspeople give her 10000 leaves for her journey, and her father gives her a new dancing dress. Perfect! And then with a wave goodbye to the townsfolk, she sets off to become a star. By the way, these 10000 leaves aren’t added to your money count, it’s an item called the Purse of Hope. You can sell it for the 10000 leaves, but I never did that because it’s too personal for Agnea. I felt rude just giving it away. I skimmed over a ton and it’s not because it’s bad. Though Agnea fills the role of Tressa in that she has the least amount of stakes, this story had already piqued by interest as a journey of self-discovery and self-improvement because unlike Primrose, she’s somewhat inexperienced in dancing with tripping and the like. But further more, the part where she dances for the festival and she thinks back on her mother and her legacy, and how she wishes to uphold that immediately told me that no matter how simple the story will be, it was going to be a journey to behold. I looked forward to seeing where it was gonna go.

Temenos - the Cleric This 30 year old lad. 30 years old. It looks like someone switched the ages of Partitio and Temenos. What? Anyway, Temenos Mistral is doing his normal routine at a church in Flameschurch reciting a story about how this man, Aelfric, defeated Vide which is then cut short because he forgot the lines. But it’s all in good fun, even though Sister Mindt is probably cringing. Temenos is then summoned to the cathedral located up north of the town. Along the way, he bumps into a young squire called Crick Wellsley as they go to visit the Pontiff together, after clearing a bit of misunderstandings, that is. But once they arrive, something’s immediately not right. The Pontiff is found dead and this monster makes its way into the cathedral. After disposing of it, Temenos uses his power of deduction to figure out how it all happened, and even after figuring out this was a murder, Temenos is told to be removed from the case by Deputy Cubaryi. But that doesn’t stop Temenos, and now Crick, from investigating further. A while later, the two have to split because of orders. Crick is sent elsewhere, but Temenos decides to investigate further as something doesn’t seem right. A murder mystery, hmm? Sounds intriguing to me. And though I enjoy his character a lot as well as this first chapter, I would honestly say it was one of the less interesting ones in my eyes. But let’s see where his travels takes him.

Hikari - the Warrior A few years ago, a war was raging and Hikari Ku was there to stop this General that obviously had something against the General Mugen. They beat him and everyone celebrates. A few years later, only days before the present, Hikari is the lord of the district of Ku. Everyone that had helped them before went back to their own home or just left for some reason. On one day, he got a message from General Mugen to meet him upon the Crest of Heroes, but instead, he met his former ally, Ritsu. During their fight, Ku is set on fire. This fire would be blamed on Hikari and put as the traitor. He already didn’t want to cause any more bloodshed, but this fire to put a mark on Hikari to attempt to get rid of him only meant that the war continued. His father’s final wish is to run and gather allies new and old to help in stopping General Mugen from trying to encroach his rule onto the rest of the realm. It’s actually a simple set up, but I sorta forgot the order of events. There’s a lot of characters linked and I think it’s interesting and engaging. I was mostly interested in how Hikari’s former allies would react to him in the long run, but the story is being set up is interesting and looks like a ride.

And these are the stories on offer. I was kinda expecting something like OT1 again with rather simple, mostly ‘meh’ plots with the occasional high point. Like, in OT1, only 2 or 3 of them really stood out to me, like Primrose or Olberic. But here, everyone’s had my interest, I have to admit. Castti, Osvald, Agnea and Hikari’s were the ones I was most interested. The only negative is that the game still is free enough that you don’t have to get all of the characters before progressing with the other chapters. I say this because very slight spoilers: there is a final story ‘Sonic Adventure 2’ style after all stories are finished. And like OT1, a lot of your enjoyment of the story hinges on how much you can imagine the characters interacting in and out of chapters. Although, I will say that the game is much better at it than OT1’s especially because the stories in general are already far stronger than before. Since OT2 has a final chapter, I think it’d be better to establish the characters being beside each other even when they’re not directly visible by having the game force you to get all the Travelers followed by an initial meeting cutscene before they all do their own stories. It could even be set up with a bit of conflict between certain characters. maybe Hikari isn’t fond of the idea of working with a thief or Osvald being rudely distant to everyone - seeing them as a means to an end, more or less.

But to counter-balance this complaint, there’s one vast improvement they made from OT1, and it’s that each opening chapter is solely the character’s own. In OT1, your current team will join the Traveler you’re recruiting as you do their opening chapter. Not bad, but it’s not like Banter can happen anyway, and it limits gameplay options. But in OT2, every opener can be vastly different than another. Some have only the Traveler playable throughout. Some have exclusive temporary party members, etc. It’s a very nice change of pace and it’s really good, I think. Doubly so because I think it teaches the player how to use characters that emphasise support roles.

Traveling Solistia ~ Graphics & Sound

Something I noticed about CotC is that even though it was heavily using the OT1 aesthetic, it expanded on it in small ways. What do I mean by this? Well, really, I just mean how they added more frames of animation to certain character actions. For example, an evil character’s laugh or a polite bow, there were always unnaturally more frames than in the actual OT1. I expected this level of upgrade with OT2. But we got something WAY more than that.

For starters, the character sprites were made taller and somehow slightly more detailed. Heads are basically the same size, but the actual body is ever so slightly less chibi… I guess. But that’s just the start of it. The smoother character animations can be seen everywhere, from Throné’s recoil from being whipped, to Ochette’s sniffing and especially Agnea’s dancing. The only thing missing is honestly just idle animations in the overworld. Especially strange considering it’s not like the outfit changes from subclasses out there, so having characters not have unique animations is pretty bizarre. But this is a very minor thing to complain about because the upgrade is fantastic, but still retains the feel of a traditional pixel art JRPG like Final Fantasy. But if those small animations were impressive, wait until you see the enemies. All of them, ordinary and big bosses, they have so many more frames of animation. Not specifically the idle, though I think some get 10 frames instead of 8, but every enemy has unique animations for specific attacks. A thrust of a weapon? You’ll see them do just that, for example, and this puts so much more life in the sprites.

The way the camera works should also be praised. I compare the Octopath series to the 2.5D ‘Guilty Gear’ games because they seemed to go for similar things. Where ‘Guilty Gear Xrd’ used a faux-2D style that really fooled the eyes to think you were looking at 2D animated sprites, ‘Strive’ knew it wasn’t fooling anyone anymore and decides to use the camera much more liberally for attacks and the like. OT2 is similar. Not that OT1 was necessarily fooling the eye, however, the game’s camera was always static with only zoom-in and zoom-outs and slight dollies in battle. Character animations were also much more limited. But in OT2, characters are way more detailed in look and animation, but also the camera is not afraid to go absolutely bonkers. Maybe not so bonkers in the overall gaming space, but for a game like Octopath? Hell, yeah. In Hikari’s opening chapter where the camera just slides down the ground and rotates to behind it to view the war was so strange to my OT1 eyes, or how in Castti’s opening chapter, you get this massive wide shot of Canalbrine from an angle and I didn’t even know this was possible for this game.

Other than that, the general look of the game is otherwise the same as OT1 with a few upgrades. Like I think the Boost effects have been enhanced to look like a torrent of power emanating from the character for example, but it’s pretty standard for Octopath otherwise. Likewise, the audio hasn’t really changed much at all. Hit, Boost, select sounds, they’re all the same. The game just has new things to add like the sound for activating Latent, which I’ll talk about later. It was fine before, it’s fine now.

As usual for me in recent times, I’ve been playing with the Japanese audio. From what I can tell, the English script is faithful to the Japanese barring some unfortunate censorship in the dialogue in at least 2 instances. But it’s not like there’s meme dialogue or something, I’m so glad I’ve not run into that crap in games I’ve played… But to get back on track, the Japanese voice acting is pretty solid and I don’t think I noticed any characters that really stuck to me as low effort. Maybe some of Hikari’s Boost voice clips can be weird, but that’s pretty minor. I did sample a bit of the English dub after my run, and it’s alright. At least Partitio’s fits in because of the obviously cowboy-western style his entire origin is (though make no mistake, he’s NOT a cowboy). I don’t think I heard anything outright bad.

Getting a small sample size from Reddit and a comment on Twitter, it seems the community either went English because they actually knew English - reasonable - or Japanese because they prefer the subs style amongst a few other small details. But one major thing I saw amongst the comments were that the Japanese voices were better at emotion. And as a quick aside, I heard that the English sound mixing is a bit wonky? I can’t say much on it, but I think I can say that I didn’t notice many issues at all on the Japanese side.

Then there’s the music. Yasunori Nishiki did it again because this soundtrack is incredible. I believe that this soundtrack, unlike OT1’s, is completely orchestral. If you listen to OT1 and OT2’s score back-to-back, you might be able to hear it. OT1’s score sounds ever so slightly artificial in conjunction with a ton of real instruments. I think so, at least. Not to diss on OT1’s soundtrack because it’s also amazing. Though with that said, I would say I prefer OT2’s soundtrack overall, and that’s mainly because I thought the overworld and town themes are much stronger here than before while I think OT1’s strongest tracks are basically all of the battle tracks. Bonus points to OT2 because of its day and night system, the overworld gets even more music to suit the time of day.

In terms of battle songs, they function in mostly the same way. 3 normal battle and 3 boss battle themes, then numerous other ones on top of it. The boss themes are a highlight, namely the final boss themes because they all come in 2 flavours. One that’s the regular final boss track, and then an alternate theme TAILOR-MADE for that character. Also similar to OT1, tracks leading up to the boss theme merge into each other creating a seamless transition, but these lead up songs are now variations of the character’s regular theme song unlike OT1’s lead ups not being that, though they have instruments that evoke their character themes. I’d say OT2 does it better, although some songs are just better suited for the character theme as appose to a prelude to the boss.

I’d say which songs I prefer between the games, but who cares because they’re all bangers. Except all the ones with opera - I’m not fond of opera and OT1 and OT2 have not made me change my mind. BUT the biggest win of all the battle songs is the Cait Battle theme because well, now we have one for the Rare Fiends… and the game making fun of us for being unable to hit the bastards. It’s an amazing track, hilarious and I love that it exists.

But while talking about battle…

On Your Guard! ~ Gameplay

Now, before I continue, I want to kinda warn you that my experience in OT2 is a bit skewed for a few reasons. First off, my experience in OT1, CotC and a few other JRPGs over the years has taught me how to be a bit better with this game and its systems considering lots of it is unchanged from before. Secondly, and the most damning part, but part way into my run I started “figuring out the game” I guess you could say, as my damage started becoming absurd - I began to utterly delete bosses. Lastly, my run… was supremely lucky in the grand scheme of things. I’ll talk about it later.

The game runs on a random encounter system and after moving around enough in the overworld, a battle may initiate. I believe if you run, there is a chance that when a battle starts, the enemy will get the initiative, but don’t quote me on that. Battles are turn based and the turn order depends on the speed stat. All characters can either Attack, use Skills - which uses SP, use Items, Defend or Flee, and just like OT1 (and unlike CotC), each character takes their action one at a time. So in a single turn, you can do things such as donate BP to another ally who has yet to move, then with the added BP, throw out a much stronger Skill.

One of the defining traits of the Octopath battle system is its Break & Boost mechanic. To tackle them one at a time… Boosting is a system similar to the Brave mechanic in ‘Bravely Default’. At the start of battles, you always have 1 bar filled and it maxes out at 5. In a given turn, a character can boost their Attack - which will allow them to hit anywhere from 2 to 4 times - or Skills - which simply power them up, although there are occasionally extra benefits. Earning meter here is as simple as not using any Boost during the character’s turn. The Break system is the other one, not too dissimilar to Downing enemies in Persona games. Every enemy has a set of weaknesses and a guard. Hitting enemies with their weaknesses will lower their guard until it breaks. Once it does, the enemy becomes immobile and you deal extra damage to it. When they return, however, they will guarantee to act first. The trick to doing well in Octopath is knowing when to converse or use Boost properly, and use the Next Queue on the top of the screen to maximise the usefulness of your current team, or maybe see what you can alter in the next turn with buffs and the like.

The other defining trait, is the characters, themselves. Each character has a unique affect on battle. Sometimes more direct and sometimes more passive. Osvald for example, can sniff out an enemy weakness or two for free upon starting the battle. Meanwhile, Ochette can summon Beasts and people she’s befriended into battle to aid. All of them tend to be useful at some point, but sometimes, they lose their purpose. For example, Temenos’s trait is to blind enemies for one turn at night upon initiating battle, but the problem is that if you have the Passive ‘A Step Ahead’, which mind you is one of the best Passives in the game, then this trait becomes useless as the blindness only lasts one turn.

But OT2 adds a new thing for each character to further distinguish them, and that’s the Latent Powers. Each character has their own unique Latent and like the traits, they are different per character ranging from attacks to passive buffs. You gain this meter every time you get hit by an attack and I think this is a fantastic new addition, but on some characters, it just breaks the game. For others, they’re simply useless. Hikari and Ochette’s Latent allows the characters to unleash super powerful attacks without any SP, and they can still be buffed with Boost. But then there’s Temenos’s, which lowers enemy Guard even if you’re not striking the weakness. And I have never used this before. Maybe they’re useful in some Coerce sessions, but that’s it.

Beating battles nets you Experience (EXP) and Job Points (JP). Gather enough EXP to level up, and JP to learn new Skills, which unlocks new Passives like raising a stat or dealing more damage. The battle system is still very good despite its simplicity, and it’s because the game keeps the challenge high. Actually, I would say this game is pretty difficult if you don’t figure it out, especially when it comes to the bosses and this game has no difficulty setting of any kind, nor does it have EXP share. The game really wants you to rotate your party to keep them up and that way, have a backup party in case your current squad doesn’t work out right now.

One of the great things about OT2’s system, which is also in OT1, is that you can easily customise your party. As you travel, you’ll find Secondary Jobs and Advanced Jobs, even right from the beginning. Secondary Jobs are simply the other Jobs your characters have (ie Warrior or Hunter) and you can give them to another so they can learn and use the same Skills and Passives, though not the unique character traits and Latents, of course. Furthermore, by completing certain tasks, you can allow up to three party members to wear the same Secondary Job. I didn’t use it much, but is a neat edition. Advanced Jobs are not the above and have a bunch of completely unique Skills and Passives. The first one you might find is the Inventor Job, which is located near New Delsta. While they can only be applied to one party member, they’re typically really good. Some of them even unlock Skills in strange ways that don’t require JP, which can help save on it because like OT1, it can still be a bit difficult to grind.

Now, I look upon OT2’s battle system very fondly, HOWEVER, it has some pretty major issues here and there. First of all, the game is very physical-focused. I don’t know if magic was too potent in OT1, but I barely ever used it here because I found it was simply less useful. Most characters did better in the physical front and it’s not like magic ever gets to hit more than once per use without set up. Furthermore, Area of Effect (AoE) attacks got severely nerfed. Magic benefitted from AoE in OT1 because its single target versions can’t multi-hit regularly. If Fire, Ice and Lightning magic was only AoE for Osvald, that’d be fine, it gives him extra purpose. But Dancer (Wind) and Thief (Dark) don’t get this treatment. Cleric (Light) has an AoE variant in its base kit, which the other two are only learned through EX Skills, which can only be used by the main owner of the Job class. This AoE problem extends to physical attacks too, but it’s less of an issue since there’s Skills that can semi-AoE like Precise Shot or Aggressive Slash, not to mention the Boosted regular Attacks.

Since this game is so much more physical oriented, most of the buffs I preferred to apply to my team were physical in nature and the opposite for enemies, and let me tell you, it worked out so well. Having Throné always on my team meant that whenever I needed to, I can lower enemy physical defence then let the others go to town… as well as Throné, herself. What tended to work on all the main story bosses, was Break the enemy, apply Armour Corrosive (enemy phys-def down), apply Lion Dance (ally phys-atk up) to some or all - OR Castti’s Latent to give everyone phys-atk up, Boost and maybe SP - , then for the current turn and the next, just throw out every powerful attack I can. Aeber’s Reckoning (or Hastening Hammer with Inventor), Drastic Measures (especially as a final hit), Beastly Fangs, and a few other attacks that just wreck enemies and bosses. I started understanding it once I got to Chapter 3s and some penultimate chapters, and it was such a shock because up until then, I was playing by the rules and fumbling about - seeing an enemy’s HP go from mostly-full to death. And some of this was before I even got myself over-levelled. Speaking of which…

How did I over-level myself if I said earlier on that grinding is difficult? Well, I said I was lucky, wasn’t I? I don’t necessarily recommend people do this, but… There is a Dancer Skill called Bewildering Grace - it existed in OT1 too - and this Skill causes random effects to happen. Some good, some deadly. Normally, there’s a chance of EXP or JP x2, but with a bit of Boost, that can be upped to EXP or JP x5, and at max Boost, there’s a super low chance of EXP or JP x100! And on multiple teams, I managed to get them a total of 6 TIMES! 3 JP x100s and 3 EXP x100s - one of which was on a boss! The only one who never managed to get much out of it was Castti… which is a shame, but she caught up eventually. Now, I don’t recommend a normal soul do this because firstly, it can potentially be a massive waste of time. Secondly, Bewildering Grace is funny and all, but it can be very deadly, so use with caution. Lastly, depending on what kind of player you are, it can ruin the experience since you’ll then be playing with god mode, basically. For me, at a certain point, I was just trying to see how high I can make the damage numbers go. Oh yeah, I was most certainly invested in the stories going on, make no mistake, but I was also looking to see how high I could get my damage - and with all this JP, I could easy put on the ‘Deal More Damage’ Passive to most of my team, which raises your damage cap from 9999 to 99999. The highest damage I reached was 96k damage. Seriously, not even the Final Chapter boss gave me trouble.

It really makes me wish the game had a system where you could replay bosses with cutscenes in tact so you can relive those memories and maybe even get an extra challenge out of them because like most other RPGs, once you’re done with a game, there’s honestly not much left to do. The only way to do it all again, is by making a completely new save file, which I don’t want to do with a 80 to 100 hour long game. I’d totally appreciate an unlockable area which houses the memories of all the Traveler that allows you to refight the bosses at a higher difficulty, like ‘Kingdom Hearts II’s Garden of Assemblage. OR revisiting the spot of the boss allows you to refight them at a higher difficulty.

Like most other JRPGs, outside of battle is your run of the mill overworld where you move around an open area, battle, find treasures, all while looking for your next destination. Or maybe on the way, you somehow stumble on another town that you only visit so that you have a place to quick travel to - that’s also an option. The maps are about as simple as OT1, I want to say, so there’s nothing particularly stand out about them. Same goes for the dungeons, though more linear as most are designed to have the beginning and end with a bunch of side paths to get treasure. One thing that is new to OT2 is riding rivers on small boats. It’s as simple as going to a small dock, going down the stairs and immediately you’re in a small boat. Nothing else changes though, except for the battles housing more aquatic creatures.

Even newer than that, is the ability to set sail on the sundering sea. At some point, you gain the ability to ride on the ocean on your very own ship, and it’s basically its own giant map that connects the two sides of the continent. On the sea, you’ll find chests and islands. The islands for the most part, only house optional stuff, but they’re worth going out of your way for, especially if you’re going for end or post game content.

New to OT2 is the day and night cycle. Although you can wait around for the time of day to change as evident by the sky turning a different colour, the time won’t shift until you move to another room, however, you can also just press ZR (R2, etc) to change the time. At first, I thought this was weird, but I eventually didn’t mind it just because it saves on you wasting time. The time of day affects a few things such as the enemies you encounter, the townspeople’s locations or even showing new ones not in the other time of day. But most importantly, the Path Actions each character have will change.

Like OT1, everyone has Path Actions, but here, they’re split up in two. So now there’s a total of sixteen actions you can perform in the overworld, and this is where this feature can get a bit off. Path Actions can basically be boiled to one of three things: getting items off people, having them tag along, or knocking them down. And a lot of Path Actions are useless or are just better on other characters. During the day, I tend to use Throné and Castti for their Steal and Inquire. Stealing has a percentage chance of taking an item off someone - higher chances the higher her level. In this game, I wanted to save money as much as possible since shops are very expensive, and this worked out for most of the game. Doubly so because Throné was always the highest level of the team, as she was my main Traveler. So, damaging my reputation in a town was slightly mitigated. Similarly, Castti’s Inquire is level-based information gathering with no semblance of chance, unlike Osvald’s Scrutinise, which IS chance-based. Other good day time actions are Partitio’s Purchase which is basically getting items off people for a price. I didn’t use this anywhere near as much because like I said, I want to save money. The other is Hikari’s Challenge, but mainly to get new Learned Skills for him, which is a new addition to the Warrior class, though even then, I only used this as I set up my end-game skills.

At night, I felt like I had much less options. I mainly used Agnea’s Entreat, which is taking items for free as long as you meet the level requirements. Again, money-saving. I also occasionally used Partitio’s Hire, but more so for saving money when needing to buy stuff or getting more money for selling. I never really used the Inquire/Scrutinise equivalent because they were either tedious or required money. Maybe in hindsight, I could’ve used Hikari’s Bribe as the night time Inquire because the charge was light. But still.

The character’s Path Actions I used the least though, are Ochette’s. She has Provoke for the day, and Befriend at night. Provoke is a one-on-one battle to knock out the person with only the Beasts you acquire from battle. But the EXP is pitiful and if you want to knock someone out, then use Throné or Castti. And unlike Hikari, she otherwise gains nothing out of Provoke. Befriend is another tag-along type action, but hers is so pointless. First off, you use Jerky to befriend people. Jerky are ‘eh’ healing items you get by cooking monsters you capture. Useless, but oh well. Secondly, she gets no extra benefit from these hires. Temenos also gets a tag-along action that has no extra benefits, but you don’t sacrifice any items and I think it makes more sense for him. Not to mention that Ochette already summons Beasts. Why also summon humans (or Beastlings)? It’s redundant. Unfortunately, I think the devs kind of put too many Path Actions to a point where they didn’t know what to do with some of them. I mean I suppose this is an improvement on the whole, but I think there’s lots of empty spots, basically. Though I’m also not entirely sure what alternate Path Action I could give them - like a brand new type of action.

[Continued in Part 2 ~ PATH. Massive spoilers onwards!]

[NOTICE: This review will have SPOILERS throughout, and this review will assume you know the basic controls of Splatoon. Also, Acht/Dedf1sh will be referred to as a woman throughout this review. Put down the pitchforks, the only reason for this is because in Splatoon 2, she’s clearly given a female gender, and also, I know literally no one who thinks she’s NOT a woman. Seems to only be in the English localisation, so take that as you will.]

Intro

‘Side Order’! More ‘Splatoon 3’ is fine by me and hopefully we get some good lore deets, and GASP, is that Dedf1sh from ‘Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion DLC? Sign me up! Interesting world though. This can’t be Inkopolis Square because the Plaza is so close by. If something was wrong with it, everyone would notice. So, what’s the deal?

SO trailers got me interested in its story. I mean yeah, the gameplay will be fine, but the story? OE and S3 Main Story were so good, so I hope they kept up the pace! With characters like Dedf1sh - now known as Acht - having a relationship with Marina - a main character in S2 - I thought it’d be interesting to see how things turn out. What’s the deal with the scenario? Acht’s still sanitised, isn’t she? Can we trust her? Marina’s in danger? Let’s get her back from whoever’s holding her captive!

The gameplay was taking another turn: a rogue-like, which is a genre I haven’t really delved into, so I wasn’t sure how I was gonna feel about it. And after playing it… hmm…

One step at a time though, let’s dive straight into it.

Synopsis

When you first attempt to travel to Inkopolis Square, your character falls asleep, all while the world digitises around them. Then you awake as an Octoling, named Eight. You can style his or her hair any way you like amongst other options. I made it the standard design because it wasn’t like I was gonna use her in the main game otherwise. Except the yellow eyes. A shadow? Or the real deal? …Let’s proceed.

Eight awakes to the sight of Pearl of ‘Off the Hook’. She doesn’t know why she looks like that of a Drone, but she does know that Marina is not around and the Spire of Order right behind them is giving off noises of Marina in danger. So, the two go in and attempt a rescue. When they enter, they encounter these strange enemies blocking off the elevator they need to use to climb to the top. And then inside the elevator, we meet the DJ of the Deep Sea Metro: Dedf1sh, now named Acht. She entered this strange world and also tried to save Marina, but couldn’t because she’s not that much of a fighter. In fact, so inexperienced, she got hurt by those enemies she dubs, Jellytons. So, now she mans the elevator.

This whole section’s a tutorial and by the time you reach 10F, you fight a corrupted Marina, but defeating this saves her, and the boss we just beat, manifests itself as Order. Order forces everyone out the spire as well as making it three times taller just to stall out the run time- I mean, make it harder on us.

I didn’t see Acht anywhere though. Did she make it out- uh, yeah, she did. So… happy reunion between old buddies? No? Alright, we’re just gonna go back in and beat the story. Let’s go, then.

So… immediately, my original theories went out the window. It all hinged on Marina being the one in need of saving since the beginning. Maybe the trailers showed her doing her hacking stuff, but I must’ve missed it. But still, there could be something with Acht. What’s her deal? No idea, but maybe we’ll find out. There’s still hope of a good story with lore deets.

Gameplay

The gimmick of this mode is chips. You earn these by completing the various floors, and the chips you get vary - you could want a damage build or maybe you’d like a movement-based build. The floors come in four forms of difficulty, ranging from Easy to Rigorous. The type of mission you get is also a mix of various modes - it might be chasing down some fleeing enemies, trying to move this propellor tower to the goal or destroying enemy-spawning portals. The portals are the most important ones in my opinion. I personally detest the Splat Zones missions, especially the dual Zones because it can be difficult to keep track of both of them, as well as those annoying enemies that are designed simply to ruin your progress. But otherwise, everything is fine mostly. The enemy spawns might be overly high at times, but it's fine.

The difficulty of each floor can also depend on the weapon, kit and chips you currently have. With the wrong weapon type, missions can practically be impossible. For example, I had a run where I used a Roller with mostly damage ups, and I was doing a Rigorous Splat Zones map... with two Zones on opposite sides of the map. Enemies spawned too much and my Roller’s pitiful range meant I couldn’t delete the flying enemies well, particularly those annoying ones that sprinkle ink they move. Then I lost the run after a few attempts. Weapons come from Palettes, which you unlock as you open up the lockers. Every 10th floor nets you a key upon completion the first time round with a specific Palette. The Palettes also have their own kits, but as you climb you CAN attempt to replace certain Subs and Specials with another if you don’t like what you currently have, and there are certainly some Subs or Specials that have high usefulness. But you still need to roll the dice on those Vending Machines. I do like this feature at least, as appose to starting with only the Main Weapon and then getting Subs and Specials along the way. And usually, if one part of the kit sucks, another part of it will keep it up as good.

Every 10th floor houses bosses, and they’re randomised except for 30F. That’s always Order, itself. The bosses range from boring to tense (in some situations). The rolling ball boss is pretty annoying due to the limited weak spots and for some weapons, it just takes too long to get to the other side when it flies off into the distance. Then there’s the final boss with those damn portals and hordes of enemies. I hope you have a weapon with good object damage and/or range because if you don’t, you’ll be circling the whole map until you manage to find an opening.

My runs typically focused more on Special-based builds because some of them are really just that useful. The Ultra Stamp is extremely powerful and from the front, there’s a good chance nothing can hurt you. Killer Wail’s global range means I can complete most tasks without the need of getting close. Triple Ink Strike does good general damage. So in my runs, I try searching for Special Charge Ups and Mobility Special Charge to quickly increase my Special Meter and constantly spam them. And it worked most of the time. The main chips I avoided were the Pearl Drone ones because I just don’t think she’s very useful. Pearl can by default, let you glide by pressing B in midair, and also fire a weak beam. With chips, you can give her some Subs or Specials, but they require a lengthy charge time. You can lower the charge time by finding more of the same chip, but I don’t think I want to waste slots on a slow-to-use Drone. Sorry Pearl, but you didn’t help much at all in any of my runs. Since I seemingly got a good strategy regardless of Palette, I kinda got tired. You might be asking why I didn't challenge myself further, and it's because I was mainly in it to get all the lockers opened. So I didn't have time to just weaken myself.

If you fail a run, you’re bumped all the way back to the bottom, but you have ways to help your next climbs. The chips you acquired will turn into Prlz, which are currency to allow Marina to hack the spire. For example, giving you extra lives, allowing for continues, weaker enemies, etc. What will also help runs is simply remembering maps. While there’s a few mode-exclusive maps, most are shared between the same maps. So remembering them as well as the mission in question will greatly help in future runs. And I’ll tell you, after my first successful run, future runs would become easy as I figured out what kind of build to generally make as well as remembering how to comfortably complete some missions.

The only thing that might get in the way of my way up there are the Danger floors. Some floors house Bonus or Danger missions. Bonuses either grant you tons of chips to make the mission easy, or a chance at more Membucks - which let you use the Vending Machines amongst other things. But Danger missions are the opposite. They house extra gimmicks that prevent you from doing or getting certain things. For example, no Pearl Drone or no Item Drops. The worst one by far, is Darkness since you can barely see anything. I think it’s even worse than the Fog of War. It'd be nice if Danger missions at least netted you more Membucks by default.

On the whole, I’d say with all my runs, I thought it came to be quite tedious, having to do roughly 12 full climbs. And what do you get for opening all the lockers? New Palettes, some Prlz, Marina’s diary entries and a few other things. Really, it’s mainly the diary entries I was interested in. Maybe I’ll find some lore there or something.

Story & Lore(?)

So, with Marina saved, that means the story is actually just… beating Order and ending it there, I guess. Order is essentially trying to rid the world of the chaos and despair that seems to be going on in the world. In a way, sanitising the populous. On your first run, Order had already fused itself with the system, so it was about to execute a world-wide, uh, ‘sanitisation’. Marina desperately tries to stop it, and nearly fails, but with the help of Acht, she manages to do it. Then with another Pearl Booyah Beam that totally wasn’t Unlimited Colour from ‘Sonic Colours’, Order is defeated. Order turns from this corrupted floating circle to a tiny Mollusk, affectionally named, Smollusk. It seems quite salty though. Still, it lets you through and you can climb to the heavens for a nice view of the digital world.

…Wait, that’s the story? That’s… severely disappointing. I mean, Acht looked like she was about to sacrifice herself - the game even shows her eyes before aiding Marina, as if she was about to actually die. And even if she was, it wouldn’t be earned because she hasn’t really done anything this whole story besides man the elevator and a bit of banter. Marina has basically no reaction to seeing Acht again after all this time, not even questioning Acht’s still-sanitised appearance. I mean yeah, there’s the occasional banter in the elevator where Marina says it’s good to see her again, as well as getting to know the characters a bit more, but not really much. Acht is essentially there for the ride, and Marina is constantly fawning over Pearl with the occasional mention of their World Tour, which was still on-going during your first climb. Were these two always this clingy to each other? Even Acht was surprised.

How about the 12 diary entries? Anything there? Well… not really. It just says that the digital world, known as the Memverse, was designed to house memories of the population as well as using it to try to give the sanitised Octolings from the Deep Sea Metro their souls back via the Memcakes. This is reportedly how Acht got her memories back. Alright, neat, but HOW did she get into the Memverse? How does anyone get here? There’s probably various ways, but Marina says one way is probably through the phones the populous uses. Most of the diary is otherwise talking about Pearl, how Eight is the first test subject, and the World Tour on top of that. Thrilling.

But I soon found out that climbing up the spire with different Palettes gives more cutscenes, but it’s all talking about the Smollusk’s motives, as well as finishing up the Palettes for a complete data restoration, or something. Smollusk is basically an AI who corrupted the Jellytons to be evil and target intruders to the spire, and also believes that a world of order is better. Smollusk itself is basically a worker in the Memverse, but went rogue. Buuut Pearl, Marina and Acht (I suppose) talk some sense into it and soon comes to ditch this order idea, HOWEVER… the frequent visits up to 30F do at least make it happy despite the many losses. Okay.

Oh, but when you complete the final Palette, which is Eight’s very own, then you unlock new diary entries, but not by Marina. It’s by Acht. Let’s see here… Um, she writes how upon Marina’s leaving of the Octarian Army, the army sorta fell into disarray as they lost one of its best members. Acht clearly never had interest in fighting and just wished to… well, do anything else, I guess. But thankfully, going down underground to where the Deep Sea Metro is, she managed to find a hobby in DJ. So strong was her desire to continue music, she let herself get sanitised, I suppose, and once she got her mind back in the spire, she went to look for Marina. Not all of that was in the diary, but just telling what seems to be her side of the story, for the most part.

Disappointed is all I can say about Acht’s treatment in this story. I feel like SO should’ve been her story. Like, she was not even a background character in OE and now she’s in the forefront as well as a confidant of Marina’s. There HAS to be more to her, right? But all we get is a reunion with no impact, a bit of banter, a climax that involves her even though it’s needless added tension, in my opinion. …Yeah, I’m just not very impressed. Like I wanted to know HOW did she end up in the Order Sector? I suppose it’s possible she heard Pearl’s voice at the very end of OE because of the loud “Booyah!” and that kicked her out of her sanitised state just enough to move out of the Metro. But why did she become sanitised in the first place? The S2 description of her says she did it on her own volition, but with the added detail in her diary, what did she mean by it? Did she know she was getting sanitised, but left it be because she maybe felt like she was worthless? Maybe she knew it was happening to her while she was DJing, but by the time she realised she as losing her sense of self, it was too late? I don’t know, the game never explicitly tells us about it. Truthfully, I would’ve just been fine with Acht NOT being here and just being a tragic lore character of OE, because she adds nothing of worth to the story or Marina’s past. Like I said, I assumed Marina was the one in need of saving throughout the main campaign, but Marina may as well be the one using the elevator.

Lastly, just to be tangentially relevant, Acht has some really soft eyes under her rather aloof-looking exterior. Almost as if she’s actually super shy and insecure, hence my above comments. With cutscenes like the one where she helps Marina in the last second, I can’t help but feel the story we got was simply incomplete or rewritten to be less… depressing, maybe? But this is Splatoon. This entire series in the background is dark and depressing. Lean into it, I’d say. And don’t go mentioning “ah, but kids material” - look, a ton of this stuff would probably be missed by a ton of players young or old because they might assume the first climb is all you need for story. And even if kids get all the optional stuff and don’t understand it, teens and adults probably will. The beauty of media targeted towards kids is being able to weave in simple plots, but compelling deeper stories or themes underneath. That’s what made 2000s era Sonic popular (in retrospect), that’s how we got movies like ‘The Incredibles’ and ‘Puss in Boots 2’. The whole Splatoon series had been doing this since the beginning, and it ramped up significantly in OE and Splatoon 3’s Main Story. But in terms of SO, I think the rogue-like style hindered the writers' ability to actually write. I don't know, but disappointment is what I think of this.

Conclusion

And this sadly concludes this review of ‘Side Order’. It was okay as a game, but severely misses the mark in its story in my opinion. I can’t say much more than what I’ve already wrote.

Well, I suppose I can add that once you beat Side Order for the first time, you can now make Inkopolis Square your main hub if you so wish. Neat. At least you work for it unlike Inkopolis Plaza. Since I did 100% SO, I did at least get access to basically all the extra goodies, including an Acht banner. I’ll use that, it’s pretty. And also, the music… is fine. I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of the Splatoon series’ music overall, but I don’t think any of the tracks are bad by any means.

The Expansion Pass as a whole is £22.49 and gotta say with all the paid DLC out… not exactly worth it. If it ever somehow gets a discount, go for it, but I don’t think Nintendo really drops the prices of their 1st party titles, like, ever.

With that, I’m gonna wait until the next season drops. Until then, I’m gonna start ‘Nier: Automata’ and also finish my my long ‘Octopath Traveler II’ review. Okay that’s all. See ya.

Hey. So, I don’t often do this, but I have time to kill I guess. I got tagged by HeroofLightandDark to do one of these things: 13 favourite Video Game waifus. In this list, besides giving my list of favourite female characters in Video Games, I’m gonna talk about why I like them and why they’re good material for being the-beeg. Also, it’ll only be one character per series.

I won’t be tagging anyone else, so it’s just gonna be if you want to do one, go right ahead.

Starting from A and working our way down to S…

⁍ Aubrey [Faraway] (from OMORI)

To get it out of the way, I’m not particularly big on any of the Headspace versions of characters when the vastly superior Faraway (real world) versions exist. I like Aubrey for her story and her way of coping with loss. It wraps itself up very nicely by the end and it looks like the writers gave her a lot of focus. Obviously I also think she’s gorgeous with the nice long hair with the pink dye. I enjoy the delinquent aesthetic, what can I say? Although, I get the impression, this design is a bit of a fluke in a sense that some of her photos indicate she changes it up every now and then and, she doesn’t look as good. Or maybe I just haven’t got used to those appearances. Now, Aubrey is good for the-beeg because of the amount of energy she exudes. I like to think she wants to wreck everything, but she’ll come to her senses in due time. Just give her a hug.

⁍ Cammy White (from Street Fighter)

I feel like the reason why I like this former Shadoloo Doll is because she’s British. I like her hair style and she has nice clothes. This was only further accentuated with her SF6 design where she has more casual clothes and it really accentuates her… features. Not that the leotard appearance didn’t either, but you know. She’s also good a good story that’s still on-going, so that’s nice. It’s good to see she’s doing well in the present day. At least, I think so. Cammy White obviously deserves to be the-beeg because… well, duh. That arse is practically begging to flatten some cities!

⁍ Castti Florenz (from Octopath Traveler)

At the time of writing this, I have not shut up about this character. Considering the simplicity of most stories in the Octopath Traveler series, it surprised me how much I really liked not only the character, but also her story. In the story, she’s able to exhibit so much motherly energy, leadership and sorrow that I can’t help but root for her every time. In battle, she’s also able to be unnaturally cool, only better accentuated by her Japanese voice (and I guess some of her battle dialogue too). Perfect candidate for the-beeg because she can be the absolute gentlest giant… or the most destructive one. Depends on who pissed her off while making the growth concoction.

⁍ Ciel (from Tsukihime & Melty Blood)

I don’t know. I just like the cool nun who uses long knives (keys) as weapons. She’s acrobatic, has a rather horrifying story, and loves curry. Oh also, she has a very wide set of child-baring hips. In terms of appearance, the nun attire is simple and gets the job done. Her Powered Up form I’m less thrilled by because of the amount of tattoos (though this was changed drastically in the remake). Could you imagine Ciel being the-beeg and then accidentally hip bumping buildings because she’s just so damn thicc? I can too~

⁍ Cynthia (from Pokémon)

I don’t tend to fall into the crowd of ‘step on me’, but Cynthia’s the only exception to this. I’d let her stomp on me just for her to show off her overwhelming power. But really, I’m just super fond of her character, design and just how cool she is. Of all the champions I’ve ever faced in a Pokémon game, she’s the only one I truly remembered. Everyone else is kinda forgettable, to me. Obviously, with such power means she has very much the energy to be the-beeg and just stomp on all of Sinnoh- no, the whole world of Pokémon!!

⁍ Jill Valentine [Classic] (from Resident Evil)

I stress the ‘classic version’ (the games predating RE3 Remake) because I’m honestly not fond of that version of Jill. Forced ‘badass’ energy and some design details were lost in translation from the classic to the modern one, sadly. The things I liked about classic Jill were how down-to-Earth and motherly she ultimately was. And between games, I’m just a fan of how she grew up. In RE1, she threw up at the sight of zombies, but by ‘Umbrella Chronicles’, or hell, even in RE3, she’s shown to resist the gore and this allowed to put herself into more of a leadership role while still being herself. And of course, she’s gorgeous. I know most people prefer the RE3 design because it’s sexier and all, but I actually really like the S.T.A.R.S. uniform more. But both show off her character very well. I know she’s great with guns and all, but could you imagine if she grew super beeg and then used her hands, feet and boobs to crush everything? She does a bit of that in ‘Marvel vs Capcom 2’, minus her actually being the-beeg. How sad…

⁍ Kula Diamond (from King of Fighters)

The adorable young girl who has ice powers and a traumatic past. This is the main reason why I like her character and even in KOF15, she’s learnt to at least somewhat respect those she used to, and probably still hates. She’s grown up a lot since her NESTS days. I think I’m one of the few people who prefers her classic design, but really, both old and new are great. Slowly making her one of those overly sexy-looking ice-users… But anyway, I like the idea of her being the-beeg just to freeze a whole city. Beeg power play.

⁍ Kyoko Kirigiri (from Danganronpa)

I feel like she gets left behind in favour of gamer girl Chiaki Nanami, but that’s the main reason why I’m not that big on Chiaki. At least Kyoko is down-to-Earth and serious. I like that she’s no nonsense and also she has mystery to her and her past. It goes into how the game’s story is made, which I still think is pretty good, actually. I like her appearances in DR1 and DR3, and though I’m a sucker for the office lady attire, I have to say her detective attire is much better. A lot more distinct. Kyoko definitely fits being the-beeg because… uh… actually maybe not because it’s make investigations harder. But who cares. Grow beeg, Kirigiri!

⁍ Narmaya (from Granblue Fantasy)

Honestly, it’s just because she’s so attractive and cute. Big boobs and horns. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves, they’re hard to miss. With that said, I’d by lying if I said she wasn’t cool either. She may be very sexy, but she knows swordplay very well and it’s really nice to see her in action whenever. She’s very short though, as expected of her race. So this is why we make her grow beeger. …And beeger. And beeger. And probably never stops.

⁍ Rosalina (from Super Mario)

She’s somewhat similar to Cynthia, except she lacks any of that ‘step on me’ energy. Instead, she’s practically a goddess of the Mario universe. Travels the cosmos, protects the Lumas and whenever she needs to, she can fight, herself. Most have already said this, but her backstory is also a very big contributor to why I like her so much. Most characters in the Mario series lack this, and while it’s not much, it’s enough to add further attachment to her. It’s melancholic, and I like that. Anyway, she’s naturally huge or something. I mean, did you see the ending of ‘Galaxy’? But hmm, nah, she should be even beeger!

⁍ Sakuya Izayoi (from Touhou Project)

Both Sakuya and Narmaya are the first characters I ever came across from their respective series, and this might be a main reason why I like them so much. But in Sakuya’s case, I’m also a fan of her affiliation to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, her ability to use knives and control time. There’s definitely a massive Castlevania bias here. She’s got a simple maid attire, but it changes up between appearances. If Sakuya’s playable in a given Touhou game, there’s a good chance I’ll be interested. She was my main in Hisoutensoku and the one I played in ‘Double Dealing Character’. Speaking of DDC, Sakuya would be do great being the-beeg. Rid the world of all its filth, including that dumb, pathetic, smol Shrine Maiden!

⁍ Shamir Nevrand (from Fire Emblem)

‘Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ has a lot of really good characters. I had to choose one from this game. I considered Lysethia and Ingrid, but then I settled on Shamir because I think she’s super cool and stoic. She’s also a sniper with her bow, and I have an affinity for this class of weapon users. I think the thing I like the most about her though is her stance on religion and all that, as she’s not a believer at all. She’s one of the most neutral characters in the game, morality-wise, and won’t actively help Seiros even though she does technically owe them. Now, I know she’s a sniper, but I don’t think it’d hurt to ditch the pin-point accuracy of a bow for the large range accuracy of a BEEG FOOT COMING DOWN ON YOU!

⁍ Sumire Yoshizawa (from Persona)

A good character to end on. I love Sumire Yoshizawa because she’s such a sweet, beautiful, talented and tragic character. She embodies a theme in a story I strongly resonate with and how she comes to terms with it is inspiring, in my opinion. Her design is one of the most formal in the game as her school attire has very little in the way of pizazz. Her Phantom Thief attire is a very nice gymnastics get up and in action, it’s even better. With that said, she can be quite clumsy and this makes for a good set of scenarios of her being the-beeg. Just grows huge and then accidentally wrecks the city with missteps or her dropping her glasses on the poor city.

Before I end it off, special mention to Shanoa (from Castlevania). I just played ‘Order of Ecclesia’ and I thought she was a good character, but I think I’d need more time with her to see if she’d fit as one of my favourites. She is attractive and cool though, so there’s that. Nice back.

And that’s my list. Thanks for reading~ - GameSquid

Hello. So, this is going to be a bit of a sudden journal discussing my thoughts on the recent 'Sonic x Shadow Generations' (SSG) announcement from the latest Playstation 'State of Play'. This game was leaked a bit before the SoP and though said source was credible, I had to see it for myself.

And it was true. SSG is coming out in Autumn 2024 for all modern consoles, including the Switch which means I can play it too. Hopefully, it actually runs well on it.

Before going into the SoP, I wasn't feeling confident in a 'Generations' remake, and this was for numerous reasons: The recent Sonic releases have all sucked, from my point of view. 'Lost World' was a one-time departure that got us no where. 'Forces' was beyond disappointing in every aspect. Over 4 YEARS of no games, then we get 'Sonic Frontiers', which though I was a bit kinder to at first, I have come to quite dislike on almost every front, once again, though not as bad as 'Forces'. 'Superstars' was too frustrating and annoying, making it one of the biggest purchasing regrets I've ever made. I hear 'Sonic Dream Team' is quite good, but there's no way I'm playing it - it's on Apple Arcade. 'Sonic Boom'? What's that? The recent Sonic remakes and ports have just made me groan. 'Origins' seemed okay, but then I caught wind that it was buggy. Not to mention the smaller issues like how content was distributed. And obviously 'Sonic Colours Ultimate' with that shoddy as hell port. I was in no way gonna support a project like that. Crappy lighting adjustments, blooming, glitches, worse music - both of these remakes were hard refusals from me. Lastly, 'Generations' is actually my second favourite Sonic game (first place being 'Sonic 3 & Knuckles'). And even if it's not in your top 10 list of Sonic games, most people cannot deny the absolute quality that game had. It may have had a shoddy story (which in hindsight, is a good thing), and was slightly unstable in places, but the stages, level design and music were all fantastic. 'Generations' was a game where all the stars had aligned.

With that all said, what do I think of SSG's announcement trailer?

...It looks good. But I have to see it all for myself when it comes out later this year. Oh goodness, it's gonna be 2011 all over again.

Truthfully, I really just wanted a straight port of 'Generations' to modern consoles because my trust of Sega was just so low. And this game has quality that would suck a ton if it was tarnished by a crappy porting team. Unrealistic, I'm aware.

This trailer demonstrated a few reassuring things, I think. Such as the graphics seem to be unchanged from the original. Maybe a tiny bit brighter? But it's not like the entire game is just glowing in your face. It seems to be running on the original Hedgehog Engine because things like boost effects and textures in general look very similar to the original. Duh, of course, but you know, they probably AI upscale this stuff.

Secondly, music is left unchanged, it seems. We might get new music and remixes in this release as unlockables because why not? But the music in 'Generations' never needed a re-remix, you know? They were fantastic then, and they still rock now.

It seems the 'Generations' essence remains. I just hope that they don't decide to add much of anything to the story, let alone change it. 'Generations' greatly benefits by effectively having no story. And not that I think they'll do this if the port seems super faithful, but I don't think characters will change to suit the modern style. I'm looking at Amy Rose because her character in the modern incarnation is nothing like she used to be - suddenly not infatuated with Sonic and no longer is she the normal girl who likes Tarot Card-reading, but now she's a MAGICAL TAROT CARD USER. What the hell is this?

Obviously the biggest elephant in the room is Shadow's part in all this. I'm gonna be honest and say I'm not fully fond of this. I get that he's popular and the Sonic Movie 3 is coming out this year (I think), but I liked it more when 'Generations' was solely the Sonic and younger Sonic game. Kept it more focused. But I suppose if Shadow is gonna go through his own 'Generations', maybe 1 stage from 'Adventure 2', 'Heroes' and 'Shadow', then bosses, that'd be neat. It could potentially lead to him being suddenly a "bad guy" in 'Generations' or something. Though at that point, why isn't Silver doing the same thing? It's pretty gutsy of them to finally recall 'Shadow the Hedgehog' the game because for a long time, the only thing we got from that game was the fact that he used guns. And that was only ever played as a joke. While I think the realistic guns should be done away with, I think it was be a very nice idea to at least let him wield the more cartoony guns, or at least let the story be sinscere with it. They recently have treated Shadow with a bit more respect out of late, so it's possible, I guess. But here's what I'm concerned about: the level design. As I said before, 'Generations' has some very strong level design, but recent entries even of the same gameplay style have foregone this for overly simple controls, mostly linear paths and blocky structures. The original level designers moved on to other games like 'Zelda: Breath of the Wild', a game no one heard of. I fear that the levels will range from forgettable to "they're obviously not from the original", as in, the quality is a huge downgrade. Or potentially a huge upgrade, but that's unlikely, in my books.

Guys, watch this Shadow stuff be a hint at a complete remake of 'Shadow the Hedgehog'. I'd be shocked. PEGI 16 and M for mature, let's go!!

And this is basically the bulk of my impressions of 'Sonic x Shadow Generations'. I wonder if anyone simply typed in 'Sonic x Shadow' into Google. I haven't and I don't want to. My hype levels will remain at 1/10 UNTIL Sega can prove themselves for this game. My trust of Sega is that low. For every thing I see that doesn't look like a major change from the original 'Generations' is a +0.1 in trust. And for any major changes will be -1. Aaand I hope the 'Shadow' stuff's quality is on par with the original 'Generations'.

That's it. See you guys, later. - GameSquid