Octopath Traveler

A wonderful love letter to the 16-bit era with both style and substance.

A work that has so much to tell, a journey that travels eight streets at the same time, destined to unite, to be loved.

With its splendid soundtrack, its courageous narrative structure with eight protagonists and a solid combat system that has its roots in the glorious past of the genre, Octopath Traveler is a game that will kidnap and entertain you for a large amount of hours.

It’s a pleasure to play Octopath Traveler on PC as it is on the Nintendo Switch.

A good port of an already excellent JRPG that the genre's fans should play if they've not yet.

An otherwise delightful and nostalgic JRPG, Octopath Traveler's lack of an integrated story leaves the experience feeling empty in the end.

Like its Switch sibling roughly a year ago this is a captivating old-school RPG with an extensive turn-based battle system and stunning art design, but also quite some grind and varying quality in the storytelling for the eight protagonists.

While I do wish that Octopath had a bit more off-the-wall ambition the fact is that it definitely accomplishes what it set out to do. They really don’t make games like they used to, and this is the most playable old-school JRPG I can remember in forever. The turn-based combat is very engaging, as are the soapy stories. The style is confident, from the music to the character designs, to the lighting and motion blur, this is a game that knows what it is about. And while some of the writing and voice acting stumbles in places, that’s kind of part of the charm. For good and bad, Octopath Traveler evokes the games of the past, and for a lot of us, we miss the bad as much as we do the good.

Octopath Traveler is an appealing title full of pleasant little stories, and offers solid combat mechanisms. However, some not-so-up-to-date decisions prevent it from reaching its full potential.

Octopath Traveler is a love letter dedicated to the gamers of the 16 bits era. Adult narrative, strong exploration, epic battles and an unforgettable music that remind the feeling of some of the best J-RPG titles.

Octopath Traveler has many little and big pros. Its 'HD-02' visual style is beautiful; the music is great; the world is very big, non-linear, and full of things to do; the characters can be customised in many different ways; and, finally, the combat is fast, yet tactical, simple, yet deep. Octopath Traveler is great. However, it also has a couple of cons that for many people will be the deciding factor of whether they should play this or not, and these are, the almost non-existent interaction between its eight characters, its somewhat… artificial vibe, and the lack of a decent main plot.

Quotation forthcoming.

This breathtakingly beautiful revival of SNES-era jRPGs stumbles because of its fragmented main quest but still manages to provide a compelling experience for RPG fans.

Octopath Traveler may not be the perfect JRPG revival that many had hoped for, but this PC port takes what worked before and makes it just a touch better.

Revisiting Octopath Traveler on PC has been a treat, not the least of all because of the available graphics settings that let you tweak the game's iconic hybrid visuals. This is an obvious feature in most PC games, but Octopath's mix of retro pixel art and modern post-processing effects are unlike most games. With one foot in the past and another in the present, adjusting resolution, textures, and lighting effects lets you dictate, to a point, which half of its aesthetic identity is most prominent. It's not a game changer, but it is an appreciated option that gives the PC version a slight edge over the Switch original.

This is one of the best JRPG from 2018, and now it’s available on PC with all its vices and virtues. If you don’t own a Switch or prefer playing on PC, it’s worth checking it out.

On PC, Octopath Traveler is still this charming and gorgeous retro-RPG that offers a well-built but classic adventure to fans of the genre.

Never quite the sum of its parts, Octopath Traveler is a game with brilliant moments rather than a brilliant game.

In the end, I love what Octopath Traveler is trying to do with its shieldbreaking and its eight-way narrative, but it’s probably better suited to the Switch than the PC. It feels like a title that needs to be played in short bursts, as is fitting for Nintendo’s portable platform. Perhaps I wouldn’t be as frustrated with its quirks if I walked away from time to time and did something else — I will go back and complete the quest, but for now, I just need a break.

Octopath Traveler's beautiful art, music, and in-depth combat system make it a journey worth taking, despite the haphazard plotting and somewhat repetitious nature.

This is the exact same game we already played on Switch: ideas, mechanics and gameplay that suffer when put all together in the same game.