Topic: Octopath Traveler

@MrGawain Grow a sense of humor and enjoy the subtle nuances in flavor of our dialects. I'm sure they don't mean any offense by this omission, and I hope it hasn't fueled any sort of anger on your part. I hope you haven't centered you focus on the title, because you may also have problems with the dialog and there's a lot to maneuver around. I'm sure it's nothing you can't analyze and understand.

@Judi

I like the fact you’ve used italics to show you know all these words are incorrectly spelt.

https://nintendoeverything.com/famitsu-review-scores-7-3-18-o...

First review of Octopath Traveler is in on Famitsu. It was the best scoring game of the week, getting four 9/10's from the reviewers.

Yes, I know Famitsu isn't the most reputable reviewer out there, but it's good to see Octopath getting a good reception so far.

Only ten more days!! My hype is as unbending as always.

Just preordered this along with Captain Toad. Two what seems to be great games on the same day! Sorry wallet!

Haven't tried the new demo, will patiently wait until next week's Friday instead.

@ilikeike
Ah! I had myself convinced it was releasing this Friday

Oh well... more time to beat Crash before it arrives next Friday lol

Wow. Octopath Traveller is the #1 selling video game on Amazon's top 100 best sellers list.

That's... absolutely mind blowing. I am so glad to see this this unprecedented level of attention from gamers

But I think they might be the biggest and most influential in Japan.

I would have liked to see a 10 in there, though. 9's don't become classics and Famitsu does like to throw out 10's for big companies. Final Fantasy XIII was 10/10/10/9 (and that game is meh).
BTW, Bravely default was 10/10/9/9.

I will probably wait for some more reviews, possible patches and the first price drop.

@Switchcraft
You put a lot of weight on reviews, eh?

Really looking forward to next Friday. Halfway through my demo playtime don't want it to end but can't stop playing.

geez I'm thinking about canceling my order and just going to best buy during my lunch. I wanna play it asap.

Hey Guys!

Well, truth to be told, while i was interested in the Game from the beginning(due it's unique Artstyle), i wasn't really hyped until they recently released the Prologue Demo, and now i even preordered it in e-shop and preloaded the Game.

I can't help and be impressed how well the Demo already is. The Soundtrack is for me one of the best OST's the last few years besides Nier, Persona5 and Xeno 2. The Characters, while they follow some kind of Stereotypes, in the Details they are pretty unique and well made... the Combat feels smooth and polished, and while there is (compared to modern JRPG's) a simplicity, the still have the classic way of complexity in it. The Graphics might be one of the most Outstanding Aspects. I mean the World itself reminds me of these, 3D Landscape Models (Papercraft?) some People tinker for such small Figures / Figurines... the Story itself so far is interesting and mysterious but for me it's to early to judge, because prologe focused more at the Characters itself.

So yeah - i played through each Character-Prologue so i could decide which will be my Lead Character (Olberic). I don't want to transfer the savegame from the Demo, because i didn't take the Time to explore that much due the Timelimit^^

@Yorumi You... must not have played JRPGs in the PS1 era if you think the volume of text in this game is bad.

Suffice to say, SE JRPG's drowning the player in writing is nothing new.

The thing is, I enjoy those cutscenes and the amount of text JRPG put for players though... That's why I play JRPG, for the story.

It's also mostly why I play games (I rarely play games only for their gameplay or online play) in general, story, from VN to JRPG, I love them all.

Gameplay is nice, graphics are nice, but the main thing for me has always been story.

I guess most of the complaints make sense... kinda. I mean, thinking of the need to create every single line for them... Too high budget?

Most of the games that really go with really meaningful interactions, tend to be games with smaller scope, and even so, they almost always have NPCs that only talk one or two sentences that got repeated over and over again, at least until some sort of "thing" happened, either next day, next event, etc.

Overall though... I find that I usually draw how the world kinda works a little through the things that happen in main story / side quests, so... yeah (o.o )

(Still can't really think of dialogues as much of a text dump. A lot of times they aren't straight vomit of meaningless words by now. I mean in the example of Octopath, I watched the first 30 minutes or so for Therion's storyline, and the dialogues that appear? It mostly is there to let us see how he acts, and his confidence. Not bad)

^
I actually have agree on that. While i'm not an Gamer who consider himself either as Gameplay or Storyfocused player(for me it varies from Genre to Gameseries) and also while i understand that Storyfocused (J)RPG aren't everyones cup of tea, it kinda confuse me if people act like this is something really fresh and even more, if someone compare it with Fetchquests, because the one thing is thrown into the Game so it don't feel empty, the other thing want to flesh out the story, character, lore and world. Also even more this People shouldn't forget, that the Storyfocused RPGs in its Origin is the Coreaspect of the Genre.

Roleplaygames are based on the Tabletop Pen & Paper Games, which mainfocus was to tell an Story with a huge amount of Dialoges and Choices. It's simply the core-spirit of their predecessor. Of course there are also Good RPGs which focus on Gameplay and such... i would argue it's the result of the potential core-mechanics had... but it doesn't make RPG's like Octopath bad because they focus on story / dialogues / cutscenes again...

And that Movie-Argument is kinda meh... because an Videogame is way more fleshed out than an Movie. That's why Videogames often don't work very well with their Movie-Adaption, because a lot of details and background Information are missing due movies have to be on point...

I understand @Yorumi if it's not your cup of tea and you enjoy more the simplicity way of telling Stories ... but for me it kinda feels you unfairly discredit the Coreconcept of this Genre with your comparison with Fetchquests...

PS1 RPGs really did go ham on text. Out of all of them though, Xenogears is the most guilty of that in terms of text to gameplay. Just look at Disc 2, it's almost all cutscenes and boss fights with extremely little actual gameplay of roaming around. In terms of the actual game itself, there's little compared to Final Fantasy VII-IX.

Either way it's not something that bothers me personally. In video games, pacing is much different than a book or movie, so comparing one medium to another sometimes misses the point. Not always, but sometimes.

Oof, I remember playing Trails in the Sky for first... 3 hours or so? And I must say that's one of the few times I dropped a game because of the gameplay. Unable to skip the utterly long animation for attacks, and I can't do much about the super annoying gameplay either... End up can't comment on the story, the whole gameplay was just annoying me too hard to let me continue.

I do agree on FF9 being one of the best, I love that game so much, but I... won't say that the story's the epitome of super best ever? It's very nice though, and I enjoyed all the characters, Zidane, Garnet, Vivi (;-; )...

cough anyway, I played FF9 on PC from start to finish, and with help of walkthrough + money cheat + speed increase, I finished the game on 33 hours... if I played it normally, I would go that it'll go up to around 50 hours or so.

Octopath is looking to be around 60-80 according to developers... which looks a lot until you divide it by 8, which means each character got around 7-10 hours for their story if there's no overarching narrative. That's not too long especially if you add the battles and some grindings you might do, as well as side quests?

Also I have been playing JRPG a lot as well, it's pretty much my favorite genre, ever, but I... enjoy the games coming? Probably just differing taste though.

Enjoyed XC2, Ni No Kuni 2, FFXV Windows Edition, Ys8 this year, maybe I'm just easy to please.

(Note: I know these games have their problems, but those didn't detract my enjoyment)

@Yorumi:
Forced 80hours Story? Said who? How do you want to know, they force themself to make an Story that lenghty? Or might it be, because they simply want to flesh out the Story so much? Because that's in my opinion the Point where you are wrong about that.

Sure they could tone down a bit the story/cutscenes and focus on the pure content / plot itself, but in the end this Games would end in an pretty generic matter. You can simplify everything, like Primrose and her Background. Someone mentioned it already, if you look at the Core of her story, it's nothing unique, and its nothing new ... it's simply an revengestory. What makes her so unique are the Details, and the way the Devs worked that whole Aspect out. They did take their Time to let People (atleast who enjoy the Game) to open onself to the Storytelling, Cutscenes, Dialogues and writing. It gives them Personality and weight!

Thats how speech in general works. I could argue, you could also cut alot of aspects in your Argument, and you filler your text with words which are nedless... but it is Part of the way how you express yourself, and that's how it works for Octopath works as well. You don't have to like it, i would never force anyone to like something which they don't like... but alone that this Argument happen here in the first place should tell you, that this is an matter of Tastes and not facts... you enjoy more the simplicity of stories, people like me (in case of octopath traveler) enjoy it for how well fleshed out it is, and yes also compared to an Book.

Book itself might have mostly more fleshed out aspect if it's comes down to the writing itself, that for sure, but that's only due the format itself which needs it. You have - as example, in most book more details of character in textform, and that's obviously due it doesn't have Pictures and such. Because that's something you shouldn't forget - Videogames don't tell a Story only with Dialogues and such itself... it also tells a story due it's worlddesign, soundtrack, interaction, etc etc...

/Edit:
I actually don't want to argue that any further anymore, due firstly: I'm not an English Native(like you might already see) which is hard for me to argue on an complex-matter like this anyway... secondly: i don't expect that anyone of us will drop his personal view. For me Octopath is so far almos perfect they made it. If they cut dialoges and such you might see as needless, it would kinda kill part of the things i enjoy about the game, and would feel like another of these Indie-Games which haven't such fleshed out Characters...

@Yorumi
You can stop the hyperbolic ironic apology. Let's get back to business.

Bottom line: Dang, son - you seem like one tough gamer to satisfy lol

I mean, going back to your FF9 thing, I LOVED that game. Probably my favorite JRPG of all time, actually. But boy you're off your rocker if you're not remembering all the text in that game. I've played hours and hours of the Octopath demos available to us, and so far I haven't seen anything that made me think there was more text in this game than a game like FF9.

Can nostalgia be fogging up your glasses a bit? I don't know. You're really cherrypicking your examples. I mean, Chrono TRIGGER, sure, but Chrono Cross - woo baby. Talk about "forced," long story, but that game is 100% just as good as Trigger. Did you read Nintendolife's latest impressions of Octopath? If you're worried about world development, you may not have to be.

@rallydefault Xenogears has a ton, and I mean a TON of text, maybe more than any other PS1 RPG, and it has one of the most complex stories in gaming if you ask me. Honestly the gameplay to text ratio in that game is extremely skewed to text, especially when you take into account that Disc 2 is literally almost nothing but text. (It still has bosses so it's not a complete cutscene fest, but boy it can be like that 80% of the time)

Even still, despite how unfinished Xenogears is, it takes around 40-50 hours to beat that game, and there's little sidequests in the game. It's mostly all about the main story.