Project Octopath Traveler Demo

  One of the standout trailers of the last Nintendo Direct was Project Octopath Traveler by Acquire and Square Enix.  The game's pixel art and aesthetic with 3-D motion was appealing to me and I am a sucker for something that will bring up nostalgia as well as introduce new mechanics.  If you are going to sacrifice graphics, let's face it this game does that, you will need a good story and good gameplay to make up for it.  You need that anyways but sometimes when games like Final Fantasy get boring in the story the visual aspects will keep you interested till it picks back up. (If it ever does)

  The demo greets you with a simple welcoming song that turns grand and dramatic.  I liked it, it gave the sense of going on an adventure.  When you start the game you are able to pick between two of the characters Olberic or Primrose. I started with Primrose then moved onto Olberic.  They definitely felt very different in their starts and the level of voice acting.

(story spoiler)

  Primrose story starts with tragedy as she witnesses her father's murder.  It becomes her life goal to set out after the three men who killed him.  To do this she becomes a dancer for a very mean and demanding brothel owner.  The brothel jerk owns a tavern that one of the men she wishes to kill is known to visit.  From the very start, you can tell this game is going to deal with some mature subject, at least with this story.  It does not pull punches with the way Primrose is talked to, nor the following events that happen to her.  Good or bad it really does a great job of connecting you to this character.

  Olberic starts out as more your generic hero story of a knight who lost his king and now is tucked away in a village that he defends.  Spending his time teaching others to fend for themselves and fighting off bandits.  The village is attacked by bandits and he goes after them.  While doing this he finds out one of the bandits was a disciple of the man who slew the king and now he must go off and find that man.  I am glad I started out with Primrose because this story was the opposite of interesting.

  To make each character unique, besides the skills they have, they have different ways of interacting with NPCs.  Primrose has the ability to seduce people and have them follow her around and with Olberic you can duel anyone in the land.  I won't discount their skills though because they are unique.  Olberic is your standard fighting class that can easily switch between sword and pike while Primrose is more of your mage character with support skills.  In the demo, they show that you can travel to each hero's area and then recruit them for your journey, which is a really cool system for building a party.

  The combat system is pretty cool and I am not sure I have played something quite like it even though it is your standard turn-based RPG.  Your enemies have shields and will reduce the damage you do to them until you find their weakness.  Once you bring their shield number down to 0 with concurrent attacks of their weakness they will be stunned and super susceptible to your attacks.  You also get a boost charge per turn that you can use toward your abilities and attacks to give them more strength or more attacks.  All of this makes the combat more dynamic and from the first few levels, the enemies are not pushovers so tactics will have to be involved.  (I might have or might not have died, but to be fair I was paying more attention The Defenders because I need to finish it.)

  There is definitely some slight quality of life items this game has that are nice to see in RPGs.  For instance, you are able to equip your items while still in the vendor screen.  This is such a simple thing but I hate having to go out of the screen to put on clothes and then head back in to sell.  It's tedious and the fact something so simple is addressed is telling me that this is a game being made by people who like and play RPGs.

  There are some things that need to be improved.  At some points, the music can outweigh the voice acting so you can't hear what is being said.  The text isn't always what the voice actor is saying so this is a bit annoying.   There was also the lack of shadows of some NPCs that made it hard to tell the distance and it felt a bit awkward.  Near the end, when I was seeing what would happen if I found the other hero, I was constantly running into encounters like I was in a cave in Pokemon but I guess that is just a facet of RPGs.  The voice acting was also a bit hit or miss but not terrible by any means.

  All in all Octopath Traveler has a pretty good demo.  It's a clean RPG already and it's apparently only in its early stages.  I am curious to what the list price will be due to its graphics.  I still think if the stories continue to be compelling and the combat is kept interesting with ever increasing moves and abilities it might be worth the full price tag.  So far it's a good start for me and definitely will be keeping my eye out for this one.  I am also excited about this being the first game I review from demo to finish.