Topic: Octopath Traveler

So i stumbled into my first shrine. That was easy! Glad I asked here, I hadn't even realized I could explore in the grass now. Chapter 1 roads kept you on railed corridors and I didn't notice that the full field is now explorable on ch2 roads. It's scholar for now.

Final was able to continue on with this game last night after a few days off (work and other RL stuff). Picked up Olbric or whatever his name is and while I do like him I find I like the hunter more as my fighter type.

Right now my party consists of

H'annit as my fighter type
Therieon for some his rogue skills and speed
Alf for healing and ice magic
Primrose for buffing and dark magic attacks

In all I am enjoying the way this team synergies but I still have to meet a few more characters so we will see if I stick with this group.

So I've finished 2 chapter 4's now and I have to say Primrose boss was a pain if nothing else. I beat it first try but dang if I wasn't silenced for like the whole last 3rd of the match. I quickly ran out of ways to un-silence myself thus getting locked. That battle and the warm-up to the last battle lasted a good hour.

Question for those that beat the game and did the final final boss. I found a boss that's just in a random cave that is literally kicking my butt and I don't even stand a chance. Hardest thing to this point I've fought. Without telling me exactly where the final boss is can someone tell me the whereabouts of this boss and is it even possible to find it before doing all chapter 4's? This boss alone I will need to level as much as possible I can tell.

Better yet describe what this boss looks like in one word like an animal or something. Spoiler tags please.

@Spoony_Tech You won't find the big final boss by wandering around the map. You need to beat all the chapter 4's and there's a series of sidequests you have to do before it opens up.

There's a handful of powerful bosses you'll find in caves and such. I always found they did a ton of damage but for some reason didn't have much HP at all.

@Cynas Thanks! This one us ripping me apart to the tune of over 2500 damage to all and this is before I can even begin to break them. 10 hits to break with only 2 weaknesses.

Edit: You were right, I stuck with it and beat it. Had to break it twice but the hit points were low enough to beat it. I had one character left after the attack so I brought back Ophilia with her over hit point ability she was at 9999. This was enough to keep me in the game long enough to take it out. I was quite literally shocked I beat it but that's what I love about thses types of games. You dont necessarily have to grind to beat everything, just use what you have can make the difference.

Getting my second special job was a bit of a pain as it took about 5 to 6 tries to defeat but I took my strongest team and got the job done if not just barely. I want these jobs to defeat the rest of these chapter 4's. Seems pointless to get them only for the final boss alone. By then I would've barely used them and be done with the game.

I only took Sorcerer and so far from the 2 Chapter 4 boss I fought (Therion and Primrose's), both of them aren't even close to the special job's bosses. Heck, I even feel like that Kraken / Leviathan enemy boss thing gave me more problem!

I'll slowly do the Chapter 4 bosses though... I want to play Torna T_T/

The special job bosses all seemed difficult at first but most of them have some pretty easy ways to beat them since they use very specific types of skills. For example the first one I got was Sorcerer and my characters were around level 48. He completely destroyed me the first time I tried but then I changed my strategy. I used the dancer's divine skill then cast reflect. Since the boss only uses magic attacks he basically can't hurt you and will end up killing himself after just a few turns. Since each attack he uses against you hits your entire party 3 times, it'll reflect 12 hits back on him.

Of all the caves around the world, which is a good one to grind between ch1 and 2?

Also, do you guys tend to pick one well suited job to pair with each character as a secondary, or do you tend to level up (heavily grind) to get a lot of upgrades across a lot of jobs for each character like BD and FF4 demands?

This game only allows you to carry 4 special skills no matter how many jobs you take on so it really limits you to one job per person imo. I find that after you upgrade all the skills of a second job you have more then enough good stuff to choose from of those 8 skills you unlock. Getting a character to learn say 3 or more jobs just seems pointless to me. I for one have left my secondary jobs alone throughout the whole game till the point I'm at with the exception of the 2 special jobs I got. Even if you learn more jobs with one character they can still only use the weapons across only the 2 current. If it was a benefit to learn all spells and weapon carry then that would be different.

@Spoony_Tech That's really good news actually. I gasped when I saw the "jobs" thing introduced in Octo. I wanted to break stuff with that in Bravely......every boss was a gimmick that wanted a certain build "everyone should be a vampire now!" so I felt like I had to grind practically every job for every character. Octo does it sanely then!

@subpopz That's an interesting build. So far I've been doing Olberic (main) as a warrior/scholar and Ophelia as a cleric/hunter but I really didn't have a strategy to it. That seemed like a good fit because staff/bow/axe/ seemed a good mix. Olberic I wasn't sure. Having spells on him for when swords fail seemed good and yet swords seem useful more times than not at least when everyon'es already broken.

Tressa (for the money) and Therion are the hard ones to do without, plus Cyrus for Analyze.

Hmm I'm like level 13 going into chapter 2 with most of my characters They were level 9 or so coming from their own chapters. I have a feeling I was finishing the ch1 bosses at oddly low levels

I always have a healer, scholar, and warrior in my party. The 4th is usually whomever I want and usually the lowest level to level them up. Rarely do I have 2 of either of those in my group. I did have 2 scholars for one of the special job bosses and that how I beat it.

@subpopz Yeah that's the one big limitation with it. On the other hand with Olberic as my main warrior/scholar no matter my build my walking armageddon is always on hand. I might switch it up though before investing in a lot of points.

Just wondering if Octopath is for a person who has not played many JRPGs?

@Dilly_D_Williams Your best bet is downloading the demo to see for yourself. I would say no otherwise.

@Tsurii You go to the bar and there you can start her story. I didn't even know they just joined your party that way.

@Tsurii That doesn't sound right, I'm pretty sure I delayed a few origin stories because I was still doing some minor stuff in town etc and never had that happen, but it does sound like it somehow skipped it?

@Dilly_D_Williams I agree with Spoony_Tech, thre's a decent demo that shows you the first chapter. On the surface I'd say "no" in that it's a throwback to classic systems without many modern conveniences, and has some painful difficulty spikes with damage sponge bosses.

OTOH, the simplistic nature of classic systems, a simple menu driven rock-paper-scissors type battle system is pretty easy to get into, if you can sort of develop the "jrpg mindset" of how to approach a battle like a sort of reactionary puzzle. Keep in mind it's not a narrative heavy game, so the story won't really motivate you much like a Final Fantasy, Xenoblade, Persona, etc. type game will. It has short interludes of compelling stories, but it's mostly the gameplay itself that motivates in Octopath.

Octopath reminds me in some ways of FF meets Romancing SaGa/Legend of Legacy.

@NEStalgia @Tsurii Yeah, I mis-read his comment. I'm not sure if he can see that part of her story or not. I'm still guessing you can at the bar but now I'm not sure.

Finished this at the weekend and loved it to bits - won't say any more right now as I can see you're all plowing through it, what I will say is keep going, it's definitely worth it in the end (imo obviously), I'm actually a little sad to have finished it all now so looking forward to you all getting there and seeing what you think!

So, I've finished chapter one for all characters, plus a fair few side quests.

My 'main' is level 19, but the game recommends level 24 for chapter two. And sure enough, my team got their bottom kicked.

Sigh. I'm obviously playing it wrong, and I'm not looking forward to the grind before advancing the story for all eight characters.