What makes this structure even more tedious is the grind. Every chapter has a "recommended level," gating you off until your party is strong enough, which essentially stops you from powering through each story one at a time. You'll probably need to grind a little bit no matter what. Problem is, only your four active party members get experience. Anyone you've recruited who's not in your party will just sit in the tavern, unleveled, waiting until you're ready to help them find treasure or save their loved ones or whatever else. And they won't quickly gain levels to catch up to the rest of the party when you beat a tough enemy, like characters might in a Suikoden game. Leveling from the 20s to the 40s will always be a sluggish process. Thanks to these level gates, finishing all eight stories is a chore.
You also can't feasibly play each story in linear order because of the level requirements, so you'll likely switch off as you go, which means you lurch from one storyline to another. It's not that Octopath Traveler's stories are particularly hard to follow, as packed with clichés as they are, but each chapter of the game introduces a handful of new non-player characters. Many of those NPCs look the same, thanks to the game's wonderful but indistinguishable sprite work. The game offers a story refresher at the beginning of each new chapter, which is helpful, but it's hard to even remember everything that's happened in all eight stories, let alone stay emotionally invested.
Really, it's hard to stay emotionally invested for a lot of reasons. The characters' stories are too shallow and trite to make much of an impact. They have their good and bad moments. The merchant Tressa's story of salesmanship is a delight, and the apothecary Alfyn's tale asks some interesting questions—are you obligated to heal a man you know is a murderer? Less appealing is the hunter Ha'anit's tale thanks to her story's incomprehensible word soup of olde English. (Sample dialogue: "Comen now, girl! Thou'rt too young by half for such world-weary sighs. Must thou makest our parting so gloomy?")
