-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Octopath Traveler Review Thread
- Thread starter Wise
- Start date
It won't again. A lot of games media podcasters feel "meh" on the game, feeling like its just going to be Smash 4 Deluxe. They really need something special single player or multiplayer wise. I feel like the critics are just going to be like "Yup, its Smash with everyone here. You've seen this." and just score it at a modest high ~87.
From what I have read in some of the reviews I agree. Seems like character interaction was an afterthought. Seems like it still a good game, but could have been amazing if character interactions where better, there was an overall story, and the dungeons were less repetitive.
Reviewer are free to like or dislike whatever they want, but with review being inherently subjective, the best people can do is try to know if x & y given reviewer align to their own tast or not.
Probably means there's no puzzles. Bravely Default's dungeons were like that as well.
I think that integrating that level of narrative intertwining is way beyond the scope of the game.
Even back in SaGa Frontier, you had a cop assisting a murder suspect and a sentai-esque superhero. So, this genre has always played loose with this sort of thing for the sake of fun gameplay.
Mediocre? Ok? Have you read only Kotaku's review? The game is averaging 85%. I'd say that is a good rating. Mediocre would be 65% and lower.
The only new first party game to get 90+ this year so far is God of War.
Switch has Bayo 2 port, Celeste, and INSIDE all sitting over 90 on Metacritic
I think a lot of the nostalgia for older JRPGs kind of focuses on the story and characters that we grew to love and we gloss over and forget the grindy combat of some of the games. And newer games have kind of eliminated grind by adding side quests or extra missions and they are always propelling the player forward and keeping them constantly engaged. We've forgotten that in old school RPGs, the only way to level up was to fight more, and we've now gotten conditioned to the point that if we have to stop all story progress just to gain a few levels that's a bad thing due to the inundation of map markers and always having something to do that gives you XP even if it's not fighting.
I honestly think it's low-key related to how every genre of game has taken the XP from RPGs and included it as a little carrot-on-a-stick bar. Even when it's not needed, we get that little adrenaline rush every time our characters ding over to the next level, but now we always associate it with forward progress so any sort of grind has turned unfavorable.
So from what I'm understanding each character's story is essentially in its own separate universe? So the events of one character's story are of no consequence to anyone else's and none of the characters will act as if they've met each other before even if they had in a different characters' story? That sounds pretty shitty to me tbh. I'd rather they just didn't meet up at all if it's going to be like that.
Yes, that's the typical standard for JRPG dungeons, as seen in many Final Fantasy games and Trails games, for instance. There are only a few games such as Lufia 2 that put a heavy emphasis on puzzle-solving or similar gimmicks to make the dungeon design more complex. (Setting aside the whole subgenre of Wizardry-derived dungeon crawlers in which dungeon design is the cornerstone of the whole game.)
You wouldn't need to "complete the game again", to be clear. It sounds like you can just switch who's locked into your party (at which point it's arbitrary) then, so at that point you can just go do the other 4 characters' chapters. No need to restart the game or anything.
It's very weird; I haven't read all these reviews but in one case it still only mentions the one on one scenes. I had no idea there was Party Chat till it was announced yesterday, and Googling showed only people talking about a brief mention of it in some guide book (or blurb about the book...?). It seems like it might be pretty rare? Or maybe there's limited combinations of characters that react to things so you have to be lucky about having them in the right place at the right time...? We'll see.
No idea about this APZ person, but Jason's points in the preview thread were along the lines of that people who had only played the prologues could not judge the full game, and otherwise were largely relying on marketing and hype. Given that his criticisms are largely directed at the full stories, the grinding around that, and so on, that's indeed things people who had only played the prologues would not understand.
This is a weird post given that other reviews talk about doing only 4 characters, while he did 8 and only didn't do endgame stuff because Nintendo refused to tell him how to access it.
Nice. Seems that 9 out of 10 review scores are an 8.0 or higher which is great. Looking at this year in general, Octopath Traveler is easily Switch game of the year, Switch RPG of the year and overall RPG of the year in my opinion. One more day!!!
Seems solid. Story structure seems exactly like the previews, but each seems to be more personal and intimate, which can great.
A bit disappointed with the grinding, and the dungeons don't seem very interrsting.
A bit disappointed with the grinding, and the dungeons don't seem very interrsting.
Good point, but to be fair, apparently every critic liked that game and I don't know why
But he's not the only one mentioning the repetitiveness and the grinding.
I kinda got that feel from the demo which is why I decided against preordering it at $60
definitely reminds me more of Saga Frontier than FFVI
I don't think the dungeons being similar is that big of a surprise considering we also had previews saying that the dungeons are short and therefore resource a management isn't a big issue. So I do think it's true that the dungeons are repetitive in nature and designing elaborate and unique dungeons was not a priority for this game, even when compared to other JRPGs.
the final take is that most people enjoyed the game a lot while acknowledging some flaws, that were forgivable for most of them and an absolute deal breaker for one single person
Why only the Kotaku review? Many others have stated liking those parts, such as Jeuxvideo and IGN. Why should people's decision be based off of Kotaku?
Absolutely if you didn't play the game in an optimal way.
If you rushed through just to do the story instead of exploring things you'd absolutely have to grind.
Yes. Of the nine 90+ Switch games, four of them are published by Nintendo and one of them in 2018: Bayonetta 2.
It's the opposite for me. Him hating Xenoblade 2 and loving Ni No Kuni 2 means we have very different takes on what constitutes a good JRPG.
But it's great that people can have a reference for their own taste.The value of multiple reviews, with very different opinions. Everybody wins.
The puzzles lie mostly in the side quests, which you have to figure out through examining NPCs' backstories, using multiple path actions, etc. Most of them have multiple unique resolutions depending on how you approach them, with extremely different outcomes for the NPCs involved.
Actually I said the opposite. I played the entire thing, which is how I know that 31 of the 32 chapters follow the exact same pattern (go to town, watch cut-scenes, do some Path Actions, go to a dungeon, fight a boss, fin). People who haven't finished all eight stories don't really have a sense of just how repetitive the game is.
Flaws from Kotaku's review?
so the final take was taken based on the only negative review plus every other review.
I do too, why not when almost all are glowing and positive?
Dunno why people keep clicking on the negative one.
There are two lengthy demos out. What are you talking about?
Because he wrote a somewhat negative review for a vame you haven't played yet? Why put so many emotions into someone's opinion? Why get angry?
Withholding final judgement until I can play through it, but between this and his XC2 review I really have to question why Jason Schreier is reviewing JRPGs for Kotaku? I can appreciate an against-the-grain review, but he seems extremely down on both games when most others are not, and for reasons that seem to be summed up mostly by "it's a JRPG."
It's a "traditional" JRPG, grinding and repetitiveness is quite prevalent in the genre. Most of the reviews I've read so far say that there isn't even that much grinding involved anyway...
Basically:
1. Good combat system
2. Charming NPC with detailed background story and quests
3. Stunning aesthetic presentation
4. Sublime music
I'm totally in.
Don't care about grinding, no story intersection and "repetitive" structure.
People here love Persona 5, and that game is repetitive as hell, has lazy dungeon design and requires grinding. Suddenly now it's a big problem for other game lol.
1. Good combat system
2. Charming NPC with detailed background story and quests
3. Stunning aesthetic presentation
4. Sublime music
I'm totally in.
Don't care about grinding, no story intersection and "repetitive" structure.
People here love Persona 5, and that game is repetitive as hell, has lazy dungeon design and requires grinding. Suddenly now it's a big problem for other game lol.