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- Square Enix
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- Square Enix
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- Square Enix
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- Square Enix
Octopath Traveler II
Released On: Feb 24, 2023
85
8.6
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 61 Critic Reviews
85
90% Positive
55 Reviews
55 Reviews
7% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 61 Critic Reviews
85
90% Positive
55 Reviews
55 Reviews
7% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
It's a great game that will keep you entertained for a long time, has minimal bugs and its combat system and characters will grab you by the heart. [Issue#326]
Despite some shortcomings, Octopath Traveler II is one of the best JRPGs of the year. It’s nice to know that developers have took all feedback to heart and addressed the main issues with the original game, while adding new mechanics and improvements across the board. The semi-open world is alive as long as you spend most of the time in cities, whereas the wilderness and dungeons feel rather empty. Also, even though the pacing is better than in the first game, Octopath Traveler II is still a little too slow by today’s standards. I wholeheartedly recommend Octopath Traveler II to anyone who is even just mildly interested in JRPGs. It’s very close to the masterpiece status and you don’t even have to play the original. In fact, I would strongly suggest you skip the first game and play this one instead.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 276 User Ratings
8.6
86% Positive
237 Ratings
237 Ratings
5% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
9% Negative
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 276 User Ratings
8.6
86% Positive
237 Ratings
237 Ratings
5% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
9% Negative
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
This game is a masterpiece. It is made with such love of classic turn based RPGs of old. It has a gorgeous art style, moving soundtracks and engaging characters.
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Nintendo Switch
One of my favorite RPGs of all time and great improvement over the first installment in almost every aspect.
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Nintendo Switch
Octopath Traveler II is a triumphant and confident follow-up to its predecessor, building on the established foundation with welcome new ideas and tweaks that make for an overall excellent experience. A strategic combat system, open-ended character progression, well-written stories, gorgeous visuals, and an incredible soundtrack all coalesce into one of the finest RPGs available on Switch to date. Though it may be more of the same, Team Asano demonstrates mastery of its craft at every turn here. We’d give Octopath Traveler II a high recommendation to anybody looking for a beautiful new RPG to add to their Switch collection.
The sequel to Octopath Traveler goes down the same route, so it plays somewhat safe. The strong stories keep you engaged and visually it is appealing, but be aware that the performance is not optimal on the Switch. That said, there is little else to fault with the game and fans of the original can buy this title blindly.
The main issue I have with OT2 is in its similarities to its predecessor. It’s a fun and excellent example of the genre, but doesn’t really stretch beyond it. I suppose there are worse sins a game can commit than just not feeling much different from its great predecessor. Still, if Octopath Traveler wasn’t your thing, Octopath Traveler II likely won’t be, either.
Octopath Traveler 2 builds on its predecessor's strengths to create another charming retro RPG.
Despite my frustrations with the limited ways that Octopath Traveler II improves upon the original, at its core the game still scratches an itch that no other game can satisfy. I still spent more than 50 hours in the world of Solistia, exploring every part of the map I could and seeking out new stories to immerse myself in...For those who lament the modern state of Final Fantasy, or want something that feels truly inventive in its design compared to many cookie-cutter AAA games, Octopath Traveler II is a journey well worth taking.
One of the best jrpgs I've ever played so far. Muchmuch better than the first one
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Nintendo Switch
While they tried to improve on the first game, OT2 struggles to integrate multiple stories. It simultaneously acts like there are multiple people in your party while also acting like you are traveling solo. Additionally, map design and story telling are fairly average. Other than that, the game is beautiful with fantastic music.
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Nintendo Switch
We don't get a lot of turn-base combat RPGs these days, so I hate to give it low score in fear that publishers will think that the solution is stop making turn-base combat game rather than solve the other issues. It's happened with other games series. Deus Ex got low sales because of microtransactions, so instead of making a Deus Ex game without microtransactions, Square Enix stopped making Deus Ex games. So somehow Square Enix will translate a negative review for this turn-base game to mean any game with turn-based combat is bad and only make action RPGs. I can only hope that Baldur's Gate 3 will show that there is interest in turn-based gameplay when it is done well.
Overall, I didn't enjoy this as much as the first game. The two are essentially the same game, but you lose the novelty of the first game and the character classes have been nerfed so they aren't as satisfying to play. This game also adds more content, which is generally a good thing, but at 95 hours to beat the main story and side stories, it really dragged on for too long. For me 80 hours is the limit before a game starts to overstay its welcome.
My complaints with the first game remain unresolved with the second. The world building is terrible. Each of the towns and each of the characters exist in isolation. The desert nation of Ku is this warlike tribe that repeatedly conquers surrounding nations. But you don't experience this once you leave the Ku's territory. Shouldn't the people in the neighboring towns and nations be terrified of being the next victims of Ku's army? Instead the towns are lifeless set pieces - here's a desert backdrop, here's a forest motif, etc. So much like the first game, you are experiencing 8 mini-stories that are completely independent of each other.
In the future, I hope they aren't beholden to the name "Octopath", and will give us fewer story characters but with a deeper and connected story path. Recruitable non-story characters could be used to help fill out the roster of missing classes. I'd much rather play a game with 3-5 good character arcs in a well developed world, than a game with 8 characters and micro-stories.
So I've ranted about the world building and story, but I also want to mention the combat and gameplay as well, which aren't as good as the first. You have the same classes as the first game, but they've nerfed some classes and given slight buffs to others. Overall, the classes seem much worse since their abilities aren't as cohesive and more general purpose. That helps if you just want to slap 4 random characters into a party, but worse if you're trying pick characters to fulfill a specific role in the party. There are just some weird classes in this game that don't fit into stereotypical roles because of how general purpose their abilities are. The merchant class is worthless unless you want to build around the hired help ability (Good luck figuring that out at the start without a guide or youtube video). The warrior looks like a tank on paper, but functions better as DPS. The hunter class is terrible, but balanced by Ochette's monster capture ability. They really need to put more thought into how these classes play before you've fully unlocked the class's abilities. The descriptions just don't give you enough info to make an informed decision on which abilities should be unlocked before others.
Boss fights are bit of another issue. The first game was a bit easier than I would have preferred. Things are more difficult in this game due to some class nerfs, and sadly some poorly designed boss fights. Some of the bosses will use abilities that take you down to 1 hp and immediately after another enemy can use an AoE to wipe you. RNG just took you from perfect health and buffs to a wipe. This kind of lazy design doesn't make the game more challenging, it just makes it more frustrating. So this really impacted the fun that I was having with the game.
In the end, I'll be playing the next iteration of Octopath (if there is one) just because we don't have a lot of turn-based combat games being developed.
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Nintendo Switch
Pain for my eyes due to poor graphic rendition and bad layout infos on screen.. boring gameplay..
Great story as ever for these games, but (for me) it's far to be enough..
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Nintendo Switch
Oof the writing in this game is just terrible. Some of the characters have had absolutely the worst story premises in comparison to other characters that it feels like all the writers energy maybe went into 2 characters primarily and everyone else got this half baked and generic plot line to get through.
The writing for some of the villains is also cartoonishly evil. I absolutely could not roll my eyes hard enough everytime a main villain came up. It's laid on way too thick and sometimes just feels like it lacked purpose. Someone being so obviously evil just to be evil and their evilness laid on so thick so there is no question to their evilness just ****.
The combat also is so generic as well. Everything felt way too easy to cheese or over level yourself out of. Honestly the only redeeming quality of this game i found was it's music and art. I however could not get past this completly awful disjointed and generic writing.
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Nintendo Switch
Summary This game is a brand-new entry in the OCTOPATH TRAVELER series, the first installment of which was initially released in 2018 and sold over 3 million copies worldwide. It takes the series’ HD-2D graphics, a fusion of retro pixel art and 3DCG, to even greater heights. In the world of Solistia, eight new travelers venture forth into an ex...
Rated T
for Teen
Platforms:
- Nintendo Switch
- PlayStation 5
- PlayStation 4
- PC
- Xbox Series X
- Xbox One
Initial Release Date: Feb 24, 2023
Developer:
- Acquire
Publisher: Square Enix
Genres:
