I won’t lie to you. Today’s Nintendo Partner Direct was a little bit of a snooze fest. I was losing all hope until Square Enix showed up right at the very end, and was quickly let down again by The Adventures of Elliot. I mean, come on Square Enix. I love your turn-based RPG stuff. Why can’t I have more of that? It’s as if they heard me bitching and moaning because that announcement was quickly followed up by a trailer for Octopath Traveler 0. This is the third entry in the Octopath Traveler series, though the title suggests this may be a prequel.
Either way, you can check out the trailer for yourself down below.
The game will, of course, feature the series’ unique HD-2D graphical style. More excitingly, though, is the fact that you’ll be able to create and customize your own player character. Early on in the trailer, we catch a glimpse of what looks like a character creator system, complete with hairstyles, colors, voices, and the ability to choose your character’s name. If that isn’t enough to get you excited, the trailer also showed off some sort of town-building system.
We don’t know enough about Octopath Traveler 0‘s story or setting yet, but the trailer suggests we’ll be embarking on a “journey of restoration”. A voiceover also asks how we plan on rebuilding our home, and we catch a quick look at the town-building elements and the ability to place houses on a grid. An information panel in the sidebar also suggests that players will need to progress through side quests in order to unlock more elements in the town-building segment, such as trade routes.
Just like the first two games, Octopath Traveler 0 will see the return of the Break/Boost system in its turn-based combat. Characters earn BP each turn, and they can use them all at once to Break an enemy’s guard or Boost their own abilities. It’s worth pointing out that all throughout the trailer, we also catch glimpses of characters from the first two games, including Haa’nit, Tressa, and Therion. No idea what the deal is there, but perhaps this game will be less story-focused if Square Enix plans on giving us more of an RPG sandbox to play around with.
Octopath Traveler 0 will release for the Switch and Switch 2 on Dec. 4, 2025.
