Why Octopath Traveler couldn't organise a great night out
Octopath Traveler (2018)
Octopath Traveler (2018)
It’s a privilege sought by many but achieved by few. To be conferred such a status suggests to all lookers that you are the highest value male in your social group. This brings with it female adoration, several cries of you being a legend, and more than a few free drinks.
It does of course saddle you with a large burden of expectation, too much for many men to handle, and one bad performance could see you stripped of your title and rendered just another contender, making up the numbers. I’m talking, of course, about being the linchpin of a night out.
What could be more important? The linchpin is charged with bringing the whole night together. You’re the one that the entire group looks to for a clue, or maybe you’ll even serve as the liaison between two entirely different social groups on those more ambitious nights out - the 12 Pubs of Christmas is your classic example.
But most people have had a taste of all this already, since you automatically must shoulder linchpin status if you fancy throwing a birthday party, or if you’re on your stag or hen party. Still, at least on those occasions, the pressure's off you. Unless of course the rest of the people on your bachelor party are a bit banterous, and decide to strip you naked and crucify you on a traffic pole, before taking and sharing photos of you - that does tend to bring about a social pressure or two.
A big worry when you're linching a night out is the venue you choose. You’ve already crossed the first hurdle by getting all the people together. And if you don’t live in a Cameron Frye museum type of house with horrendously overbearing parents, you may even have everyone over at your place beforehand.
You and the lads all look top notch in your Primark shirts, and the girls, if you’re lucky enough to a) know any and b) have them turn up on the night, will look more incredible than anything you’ve ever seen in your life. Eventually though, as the pre-drinking wears on, it’s all eyes on you and it’s time to clamber into more than one eight-seater taxi. But where to?
Now I cannot stress the importance of picking the right venue enough, because that dictates how everything will turn out, and I do mean everything. Da Vinci's Last Supper would’ve been worth nowt had Jaywick been visible through the background window. And you wouldn’t get much of a Sistine Chapel effect on the ceiling of Scotland’s roughest pub, the Brazen Head, nestled in the Gorbals. The venue says a lot about your character, although if you find yourself stuck, then it’s probably wise to kowtow to the majority female decision here.
So many things that can all go wrong on you, but even if you get the venue, the crew and the times all correct, and even if you’ve regulated your own drinking to hit that perfect sweet-spot between confidence and drunkenness, otherwise known as 'optimal social lubrication', things can still turn sour on you. As any leader knows through bitter experience, it won’t be your fault if craic doesn’t materialise. It’s never your fault. It’s always the fault of your crew.
After all, that’s the worst fate that can befall you in the linchpin scenario - when the worlds collide in the wrong way, and you’re left with groups of different backgrounds who don’t mesh, don’t communicate, they may outright not even talk to each other. Speaking as a well-experienced linchpin, pubmaster and raconteur myself, this means I get some pretty bad déja-vu from Octopath Traveler.
I must say that the graphics in this look the biz. Not every game needs to push the envelope of realistic looks, and certainly not when the game is question was a Switch exclusive, at the time. The 2D-HD sprites immediately put you in the mind of the SNES Final Fantasy games, and it’s small wonder that it had people immediately clamouring for remakes of Final Fantasy 4, 5, 6 and Chrono Trigger in the Octopath style, rather than the guff sprites that disgraced their mobile versions.
There’s a stylised blur around everything as well, which is a bit much for me but you can tone it down in the options menu. You’ll definitely want to do this so that you can properly take in the graphics. I must say, the deserts, snowfields and seaside areas that you’ll be running around in look pretty juicy, the kind of artwork that never ages. And when it comes to enemy encounters, you’ll also be smashing up some of the nicest sprites in recent memory.
Unfortunately this is also where things get a bit tedious. I daresay we’re a bit beyond the days of random encounters suddenly haranguing you as you cut about the world, especially when these battles can take their sweet time to get through. But this is one of those games where it’s a bit like NFL - tough to move even ten yards without getting T-boned by some absolute tank.
Yes, they really are tanks, the enemy monsters. They certainly won’t die in one hit, that’s for sure. Luckily, every monster in the game has a number of weaknesses that you’ll need to exploit, be they Axe or Sword or Tequila (sorry, I’ve still got my linchpin cap on). Tickle at their weaknesses long enough and the monsters will break down and refuse to communicate, making them easy prey to dance all over.
Whatever about blasting through the enemy weaknesses, the battles can still get monotonous and a little slow, even if customisation options come up later in the game. It’s the bosses that you really gotta watch out for, they can get pretty nasty. I do love when an RPG challenges you enough that you need to put some strategy together though, rather than just letting you blindly mash the button in the hope that your numbers are bigger than the enemy’s. I’ll give Octopath pints for that.
That’s the flow of the game, almost in its entirety. It’s a long old slog, an 60-hour stint of hitting up a new town, watching a few scenes, looking at equipment you probably can’t afford but will definitely need. Then you go and rumble with the boss, assuming they don’t rumble you out of the arena first.
That’s Chapter 1 for your first character. You’re tasked with bringing together the remaining seven characters who make up the Octopath fellowship, and moulding them into a team. You’ll then repeat that entire flow three more times for Chapters 2, 3 and 4. After all that, you’ve won the game, but the storyline still isn’t the grand epic you might have hoped for.
The mini-stories that the Chapters are built around are mildly interesting, but it’s all too disconnected beyond some occasional “party banter”, which is really just a few overly pleasant conversations between two of your party members. There’s only a few dozen of these in the game, whereas the Tales series, for example, features cohesive groups of characters, with funny and insightful skits out the wazoo.
I suppose there is the advantage that, unlike Tales or Xenoblade or even Fire Emblem, Octopath isn't very anime, and much of the voice acting is actually quite good. That's a definite advantage, because it's never really in a popular linchpin's interest to start lecturing the rest of the group about anime, now is it?
The premise of Octopath Traveler is good, the graphics are terrific, there’s a lot to like about the soundtrack even with some repetition, and I’d certainly recommend you at least try the generous demo from the Nintendo eShop. Like constant nights out as acting linchpin though, eventually it all becomes too stale, a bit by the numbers.
21 November 2023