Like the two games that came before it, the combat system of Octopath Traveler 0 never fails to put me in a trance. Pinpoint an enemy’s weakness with the Scholar, smash at it with a variety of different attacks to find its other weaknesses, whittle its shields down, then give it everything you have. Attack, Boost Boost Boost, heal, rinse and repeat. Except this time, Octopath Traveler 0 puts a slight spin on things by allowing you to take not four, but eight characters into battle at any given time.
That’s a game changer. It didn’t take long for Octopath Traveler 0‘s combat system to put me in a chokehold. But what about the rest of it? Does it actually succeed in recapturing the magic of Orsterra? That’s a little harder to answer.
Revenge
Octopath Traveler 0‘s story is largely based off of Champions of the Continent, Square Enix’s mobile Octopath Traveler game. While gacha games certainly come with a bad rep, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there’s a lot to love about the story and the writing here. Now don’t get me wrong; nearly everything about the story setup is about as cookie-cutter JRPG as you can get. Chosen One loses their family and friends when their peaceful village gets attacked by villains. Chosen One goes on a journey to hunt down said villains. Chosen One then gets wrapped up in a world-ending conspiracy and must fight god to save the realm. It’s all stuff you’ve seen before, and the setup is easily the weakest part of Octopath Traveler 0.
Where it shines, though, is in the details that go into forming the journey. When the quaint little village of Wishvale is destroyed by three evil antagonists, Octopath Traveler 0‘s story is framed as a Kill Bill-esque revenge tale. You’re allowed to go after all three of them in whatever order you choose, and the game does a stellar job of making them truly detestable.
Herminia is the embodiment of wealth, and she throws her money around to intimidate people and bully them into slavery. Tytos is the embodiment of power, and he uses his military prowess to expand his territory and conquer all. Finally, Auguste is the embodiment of fame, and he’s easily the best of the bunch, thanks in no small part to his Kefka/Joker-like qualities of just wanting to watch the world burn for the fun of it.
These three serve as the main villains for the first act, and what a memorable act it is. You’ve got actual kinky bedroom slaves. You’ve got loved ones getting killed off left and right in all sorts of gruesome ways. You’ve got Saw-style “Do you want to play a game?” situations where characters must decide between two impossible options.
The Octopath Traveler games were already pretty out there with some of their villains, but 0 takes it to a whole other level. Sometimes it’s horrifying, but more often than not, I found myself chuckling at how ridiculous and over-the-top things could seem at times. Yet there are also genuinely moving moments that the game builds up to over time, which would keep me glued to my screen.
Overall, the tone of Octopath Traveler 0 can feel terribly uneven, especially since the story is broken up into a handful of distinct arcs.
Renewal
Then, there’s the whole town-building side of things. Octopath Traveler 0 introduces a secondary storyline with a town-building system that tasks you with rebuilding Wishvale. The Wishvale storyline is also broken up into chapters, where you’ll visit towns and cities, recruit people to your village, and then build and place various structures around Wishvale.
The town-building aspect starts off really simple, but as you progress, you’ll get yourself a tavern, a farm, a training facility, and more. You can also invite a variety of NPCs to Wishvale, and they all come with different perks such as providing you with a supply of materials, lowering purchase prices in stores, or increasing your farm yields.
The Wishvale story is primarily centered around a group of new characters you meet at the very start of the game, and this, I think, might be one of the weakest parts of the game. You get cursory introductions to various generic-feeling NPCs at the beginning, and because the destruction of Wishvale happens so quickly, gathering your friends and convincing them to help you rebuild the town never feels quite as emotionally satisfying as it should.
Quests that task you with recruiting completely new characters (some of which can also join your party) and having them help out with rebuilding Wishvale, on the other hand, is much more enjoyable. Octopath Traveler 0 never has enough time to establish pre-existing relationships between the protagonist and the townspeople, so when I get to start from scratch with someone entirely new, that process feels more cathartic.
Coming back to Wishvale in between missions is satisfying, as your townspeople will always have new supplies for you to collect, and there’s plenty of other things to do in town. You can collect blueprints and trading lists from other towns, bring them back to your own town shop, and get all your shopping done in one place. You can harvest crops and use them to cook meals that provide perks and stat boosts in battle.
Having Wishvale as your base of operations was a great design decision, though not being able to chat and catch up with your party members Normandy-style seemed like a missed opportunity. Your party members can be housed in Wishvale, but aside from filler lines and supplying you with materials, there’s not much else to it. You still get the classic vignettes in the form of Party Chat that was present in the first two games, but it also feels like there’s a lot less of that in Octopath Traveler 0 because most of the party members aren’t even involved in the main story.
Solo Traveler
Unlike the first two games, Octopath Traveler 0 doesn’t feature eight separate protagonists. Instead, you create your own character at the start and you follow a single storyline, broken up into different arcs.
I’d mentioned in my early impressions piece that I wasn’t too bothered by this change, especially having been burnt out playing through Octopath Traveler II. However, as I continued playing, I started seeing the cracks in the formula.
If you thought it was hella weird recruiting characters and having them disappear during story cutscenes in the previous games, that issue is still present in Octopath Traveler 0, and it’s worse here. Apart from Phenn and Stia, two of the original Wishvale residents, and a small handful of exceptions, the rest of the 36-member cast are completely separate from the main story. Their Party Chat vignettes can often feel shallow, only serving to highlight character-specific quirks, and these can feel very few and far between.
On the flip side, the non-playable characters you do meet during the story are much more interesting. Bargello and his ragtag crew of misfits working against Herminia are very likable, as are the princesses Elrica and Alaune, who seek to overthrow their tyrant king father for the sake of their nation. I found these characters much more compelling and also found myself wishing that Octopath Traveler 0 would’ve gone down a more traditional path of having you gather party members as part of the story, rather than just throwing all these names and faces at you haphazardly.
As if to appeal to my specific tastes, the entire cast of Octopath Traveler is available for recruitment here. That being said, like the rest of the roster, they’re almost entirely separate from the main story, which means they’re purely there for fanservice. Considering there was virtually no narrative difference between using them and the other new characters, I eventually filled my party with the original OT1 characters and disregarded the rest. It’s a shame, because I genuinely like the designs of some of the new faces.
If you’re able to look past the fact that the story of Octopath Traveler 0 revolves entirely around a boring silent protagonist and their journey to save the realm, there’s plenty to enjoy here. Like I mentioned previously, the side characters are genuinely compelling, and I only wish they could’ve been mainstays in my party.
Eight’s A Party
While the characters themselves may be lackluster, they more than make up for that shortcoming in combat, which is my favorite part of Octopath Traveler 0, as I expected. Whereas its predecessors only allowed you to bring four characters into battle, Octopath Traveler 0 lets you bring up to eight, with four in the front row and four in the back row. At first, I wondered if this might make combat too easy, since you’ll basically always have access to every weapon type, but the game quickly proved me wrong.
General enemies are easy to handle, but where the game shines is in its boss fights. The bosses (and even the elite enemies in dungeons) can be extremely challenging. These guys come with shield-regenerating moves, scary haste moves that allow them to wipe out an entire row in a single turn, and status effects and debuffs that could keep you on the backfoot for multiple turns in a row.
Aside from getting to the appropriate level and gearing up, beating these fights requires you to have a good understanding of how to form up your party, mix and match your jobs, and unlocking the right skills for each character.
One key difference to be aware of in Octopath Traveler 0 is that dual-classing is no longer a thing. It’s a system that just doesn’t work with the eight-character party format. While your protagonist can switch between any of the eight basic jobs, everyone else is fixed to the job they come with. While this can sound limiting, you make up for this by making sure your characters are paired up properly in the front and back rows. You almost always want the front and back characters to be equipped with different weapon types, though bosses can throw a serious wrench in your plans by using moves that prevent you from switching. Now that’s a real headache you need to think about playing around too.
Characters also come with skill slots that allow them to equip Masteries, which are basically skills from all eight jobs that can be equipped on anyone. This alleviated some of the disappointment I felt over the absence of dual-classing, though I’d still much rather have the old system back.
Then there’s also Ultimate Techniques and skill mastery, with the latter allowing you to master existing job skills to increase their potency. While I’m still not an eight-character party convert, I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with the amount of depth that this system allowed. Being able to swap out Masteries (up to three active Masteries and three passives) means that you have a lot more freedom in building out your party, which can be a dream for min-maxers.
I should also mention that there are three recruitable characters for every job, with all of them coming with their own unique abilities, so this can make things even more complicated. For instance, the protagonist gets access to Wind, Fire, and Light spells as the Sorcerer, while Alexia’s Sorcerer spells include Lightning and Dark.
Personally, I would’ve preferred a much smaller roster with skills being less spread out across the characters. Because I want to have all of the available job skills on one character at any given point in time (which honestly seems optimal in most cases), I ended up just having a fixed build for my entire party by the end of the game, which kinda defeats the purpose of having Masteries in the first place. Why not just bring back dual-classing at that point?
Despite my qualms with Octopath Traveler 0‘s changes, however, I won’t deny that I found myself utterly captivated by it every step of the way. Thanks in no small part to the excellent Boost system, the depth and nuance of the combat kept me engaged to the point where I started charting out my party formations and skills on a notebook just to see what other combinations I could experiment with.
Octopath Traveler 0‘s boldness in changing up the formula should be commended, even if some of those changes can feel like a step backward, especially when it comes to the characters and writing. Still, this game is proof that with a powerful soundtrack and an innovative combat system that has you making interesting decisions at every turn, you can be forgiven for just about anything.
A review code for the game was provided by the publisher. You can check out our review policy here. Reviewed on Switch 2.
