Why Octopath Traveler 2 is Special to me (Story and Boss Spoiler Warning)
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- čas přidán 25. 03. 2023
- Hello again everyone! Sorry this video doesn't actually provide any tips or gameplay; it's mostly just my thoughts on the game, its stories, end game bosses, and why I feel it's such a great game! As such, there is a spoiler warning as I will be talking about a lot of end game stuff. This is also just a bunch of my personal opinions.
- Hry
I was watching my husband playthrough OT2, and at one point, he dropped this quote from Tolkien:
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
I think it’s no coincidence that the three most upbeat characters among the eight are associated with these elements: Ochette (food), Partitio (Cheer), and Agnea (Song).
Dude I wasnt this invested in a new game for a long time. Def one of the best turn based RPGs Ive ever played. Really hope they keep this series going
Yeah same. If nothing else, I find the battle system especially fun!
@@DarrinNewcomerI know this comment is older, but the battle system is probably the best I’ve found in an rpg.
Thank you for being one of the many that appreciated Agnea’s role in the overall story. With all of the bleak stories in OT2 in comparison to OT1, pallet cleansers like Agnea, Ochette and Partitio are desperately needed to further show the player that the world IS worth saving.
You hit the nail on the head when it came to this game and ambitions. Wanting to be a star and wanting to live a normal life and eat jerky at home are both valid dreams that people should strive for, and that cutscene pulled it off perfectly.
This game was an emotional rollercoaster from beginning to end. Oresrush’s decay, Castti’s past, Emerald’s sacrifice and Ochette’s final boss tugged at the heartstrings so expertly. A rare 10/10 game in my opinion. Even after a month I can’t decide on who my favorite character is.
Also screw Partitio’s final boss that train had no business being so hard
It was one of my favorite parts when they mentioned that. I know it's not the only game to ever do this, but I feel there are some good life lessons to be learned here
The train wasn’t too hard for me. It might have been because my team might have been *slightly* over leveled since fully boosted sacred effulgence kind of melted it.
It was not the hardest boss when I got to the mid dialog phase where I used my caveman mind to finally use hired help to eliminate the parts.
I agree with everything you said! These games are so slept on, I really hope they continue this franchise. I've never played a game that I enjoyed as much as the OT1 and OT2. I still listen to the soundtrack of the first one regularly.
"Hikari is the key of our plan" I found that line from Ori interesting, since Hikari if i remember correctly is the world in Japanese for "Dawn"
And there is a lot of little details, that sometimes go over your head at first and when you are completing the other stories, you start to put the puzzle pieces together. One example is the first boss of Ochette Chapter, when you beat it he speaks, and say "It cannot be allowed", and then you get to Temenos Stormhail route, and you find that was Roi, cause in Temenos dream he said that line...
aaaaah, that was him! Thought he just went to sleep with the fishes, not him being transformed into that abomination :c. It was the Dark Hunter and Harvey's doing, right?
@@ekjonasll3372 very likely...but the darkblood bow he found may have also possessed him, just like the darkblood blade transformed Mugen into an Abomination thing
Indeed. Although not purposely, there's a lot of little details like that that I skipped. It's like how Malaya shows up in Partitio's story; so many little things that cross like that! It's super cool
@@DarrinNewcomer I've read somewhere that similarly to Roi having been corrupted into an abomination, the Dark hunter himself was also transformed into the Grotesque Monster we encounter as the 2nd boss in the Eternal Night Chapter (the one in the Warden Beasts tomb), either by the dark weapon he was carrying or by Arcanette/Harvey, or their combined might with the eternal night.
Thank you for giving new insight for the stories! Like Osvald's, I didn't really noticed the tone shift, and that may explain why his fight with Harvey was EPIC. Also, I didn't know about the characters' unique dialog for Vide, since I played with the japanese VAs. Wish there was a setting to activate subtitles for the lines spoke in-battle QwQ
Thanks for the comment! I should go back and do a Japanese playthrough, as I have the opposite problem where I don't know a lot of the voice lines in Japanese.
@@DarrinNewcomer It's worth it! Although I don't speak japanese, you could feel the emotions they conveyed. Personally, my fave one is Partitio, he goes too smoothly from friendly to serious. Speaking of second playthroughs, would you rather do a lone traveler challenge or one where you can only use four randomly chosen?
@@ekjonasll3372 I minored in Japanese and studied in Japan, so it might be cool to hear it all in Japanese. I’d still unlock all of the characters though. While I respect solo-pathers, I personally don’t like to do that myself
@@DarrinNewcomer So cool! You could catch some differences between the versions beyond the way they sound! I chose it since I set the text to spanish, and Japanese was the one language I can't understand, so I don't have to read one thing and hear another. Aaaah, understandable. I do plan on solo-pathing myself whenever I play the game again, to see how it goes
@@ekjonasll3372 Yeah I usually catch things like that, but the tough part is that because it's not my first language, I usually have to focus extra hard on what's being said, so I miss other things. I usually save Japanese for the second playthrough
My understanding was that the Gate of Finis might be some sort of world-gate, like a portal that connects to parallel worlds by way of a shared netherworld. Or, if it’s all the same world, maybe the Gate naturally wanders, and the information in _From the Far Reaches of Hell_ is what Alfred Hornburg needed to firmly anchor it in one spot? As for why Galdera is tougher in OT2, it’s entirely possible that he might still be feeling this defeat decades later, or that the presence and greater awareness of the other four gods further suppressed his power.
And to your point about the difference in technological and societal advancement between games, consider what Europe was like at the height of Ancient Egypt or China, or what the majority of North America was like during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It’s a big world, to say nothing of the “impassible” mountain ranges and such, as mentioned in Masoud’s “Mercantile Manuscripts” in Sai. It’s easy to imagine that one part of the world might be developing steam engines and electric lighting, while another part several decades later might still be reliant on horsepower and candles.
Yeah, the points about how tech spreads around the world was one possible reason it could still be a prequel. Hopefully it all gets tied together at some point! Would be really cool
I think the thing with ritsu is he partially hitched his horse to the wrong wagon and partially had lost faith that the overall system could change so he embraced mugens world, and it’s evil to make a life for himself and family. I don’t think he could cope with hikari proving him wrong cause that would mean he made some truly horrible choices. Hence why he had to keep fighting till the end.
I could see that being the reason actually. I hadn't considered the perspective of "if Hikari is right, then Ritsu was evil" and him not being able to cope with that.
Great takes, man!
I love this game, as well. Really brought some childhood nostalgia while feeling completely new, too!
My favorite character is Temenos, and I wholeheartedly agree that Crick needed to die. It really set the stakes and emotional tone to the investigation, making it a whole lot better.
Really grateful for this video. I've been a massive fan of Octopath Traveler since the first game and always felt people went way too hard on its flaws while ignoring all the things the game did amazingly well. Octopath 2, to me, is the absolute perfect sequel and fixed pretty much everything that actually needed fixing without losing its core identity in the process. The way the chapters here are so much more dynamic rather than following the formulaic 4-chapter structure (with always a dungeon right oustide of town and a boss...) 1 had was the best change for me, as well as the fantastic execution of the final chapter, which made 1's true ending stuff feel underwhelming by comparison. It's an absolutely beautiful game that also found its way to my top 5 and I can't stop thinking about it. I miss it so much already....
I only really really wish the game had a NG+ mode, and some kind of optional level scaling (for the final bosses specifically, depending on how many stories you have already finished, would be great imo) or, as you said, difficulty selection, because personally to me I find it really frustrating when I'm way too powerful to the point of being able to kill the bosses in very few turns, the last few final bosses I did felt really underwhelming for that and I wish I could've enjoyed their mechanics more "as intended". I just don't like the feeling of breaking a game too much, it's not fun for me and you really can do that kind of accidentally in Octopath just by trying to enjoy all it has to offer.
I would really enjoy a new game plus that started enemies at a much higher level. I wonder why it wasn't done?
@@DarrinNewcomermaybe added in a dlc with some more bosses? I know I’m probably hoping for too much, but it would be awesome.
My own experience with OT2 is that I recently beat the first OT a few months before OT2 released. Been following OhRichard, Unovarydrake, NN Li, those OG OT youtubers.
Heard a lot of new things that will come with OT2 from the video analysis of unovarydrake (who beaten Galdera blindfolded btw lmao.)
Then got very curious and check out the demo on switch. The title screen sold it for me, when it suggested me to press zR to change time on the title screen. The the time of day gradually changed, and the tone of music too to a calmer version of the same piece.
"Sold!" I said right at that very moment, and went on to eshop to do something I've never done before, pre-order the game.
Thank you for this video walder, I hope to see you share your knowledge with us and the world again in the next installment of OT.
Thanks for the nice words! This is definitely one of my personal favorite games!
People bash on Agnea’s story too much. She was my 2nd fav after Castii
Yeah. I've always been convinced that people who dislike it must not have their sound turned on haha
@@DarrinNewcomer Agneas story is great. The only "negative" thing about it, is that it is a story told so many times already.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 Maybe, but that will really depend on the player's personal experiences. I haven't seen too many stories like that myself, but I also play a lot of strategy games that often lack a story entirely haha
@@DarrinNewcomer Fair point. I read a lot, so i am more familiar with this type of story. Though Agneas version of this type of story is still executed perfectly. Also it clearly has its place as a foil to many of the other protagonists stories.
great video. I really do believe it cleaned up the issues the first game had. very fun old school style rpg. your guide videos were in depth and awesome as well.
Thanks for the kind words!
OT 2 is in my top 5 as well, now begins the long wait for OT 3. Also Temenos supremacy
I definitely hope they make one, but yeah, the wait will be long
It is just impossible for me to tell everyone how much I love this game. The characters stories, music (everything is fucking phenomenal). This game is my game of the year, and it plus persona 5 royal probably saved me from a time when my life was probably at its worst. If you are considering getting octopath 2, and like JRPG’s, please play this game. It’s worth the entire $60 price tag. I’m going to buy the first one after this now. This game is a work of art. The Voice actors are insane. Alajandro Saab did a next level job as Osvald (he’s probably my favorite character), and I just can’t get over everything. All of the stories were amazing, and I loved Agnea’s story. I love this game so much man. All of the character themes are next level, the character development during the stories, the final bosses for each story was super cool, and the depth of the characters was amazing. I absolutely adore this game. The final boss was also phenomenal with everything coming together and taking down vide was amazing. I love this game to death. Also a difficulty slider would’ve been nice for the later bosses since my main team was so over leveled and the story oriented character was a little under leveled. Also the final boss is so cool. The unique dialogue, and the full boost quotes are amazing. “There is hope for tomorrow!” “Light will prevail!” Oh and my favorite “THIS IS THE FINAL ANSWER!” I loved the special quotes. It made it that more impactful. Also I have yet to beat Galdera, but I’m going to put some more effort into it, and try to platinum the game on my ps4.
Also, I would 100% buy a dlc for more secret bosses or more bosses in general. They all had really cool mechanics, and I loved them.
Also I loved all of the story bosses. Osvald’s story as a whole was probably my favorite. His development in the party, and his interactions with partitio in his crossed paths thing was great. Osvald had my favorite story chapters, and his theme is phenomenal. Hearing it when fighting Harvey and being able to nuke him from existence with the One True Magic lll, alongside his killer quote with it (I find myself saying it with him when I use it). Also I’m still upset that Crick got killed in Temenos’s Stormhail route, but I saw it coming. I love this game so damn much. Also what you said about the story reasons for Crick dying made sense. It made me feel awful, and made me want to kill whoever did it. It made sense story wise!
Great video, I have subscribed to your channel!
Thanks!
I guess the reason why you liked Agnea the most is because she's the most relatable to the average working class people like us. I do see the appeal. And i also agree Osvald's shift in story was too stark and sudden.
My favourite character is Ochette, she's a generic happy go lucky cheery MC in the face of impending doom but they wrote her SO WELL. Of course, i'm partial to her ridiculous full boosted 6x summon too. My favorite story is Hikari's. I don't know why, but his absolute conviction that Rai Mei would follow him made me tear up. I also like that not every one of his beliefs in people were proven right, as shown by that guy who refused to back down before the final fight with Mugen, and by the betrayal from Kazan. I love Temanos - such a sarcastic troll but also still a person who has faith in people.
I was really shocked to find out that the scrivener and Kazan helped to revive Chaos. And of course, the music is PHENOMENAL.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much attention on this game, so i'm afraid that devs won't put as much effort as Octopath's devs simply because gamers don't seem to be rewarding this level of passion in an indie project. Pity.
Interestingly enough I enjoyed Agnea’s story the most because there was a twist in the end and it was entertaining and different from all that save the world theme. I agree with you on finding a worthy rpg these days, I have been very petty these days with finding the one that speaks to me and octopath did its job. When I was a teenager I used to play all those PS 1 rpgs right up to ps2 and 3 but gradually finds the new ones don’t live up to my expectations. Maybe it’s just that I have grown bored with years of the same thing. I don’t know? I was a big fan of star ocean series but the last one didn’t even appeal to me like how it was. I have quite a number of rpgs stashed in my collections but only this one takes the cake so far. And I particularly enjoyed each character’s stories immensely and can relate to some. Thank you for this honest video! ❤
Yeah I know what you mean. Used to spend a lot more time playing games like this when I was younger, but nowadays it’s always tough to find ones I can really get into. I haven’t enjoyed a turn based RPG like this since Persona 5. Thanks for the comment!
I would try persona 5 royal (specifically royal) it adds new characters, relationships, and if you do specific stuff you can get the true ending that is added by the royal version. The characters are amazing, and if you will hear anything about it, it will be the amazing music. It’s as good as Octopath honestly.
what about making a video talking about things you would like to see in a dlc or octopath 3? i feel like it would be a really interesting video
Hmm, I hadn't really thought about that. I might give it a shot
I agree. This is a special game. It took me by surprise, actually.
Indeed
Good video, the game was awesome ! Every day after work my wife and I would put on our pijamas and played 3-5h per night to follow the stories of the characters. Took close to 90h to get all achievements. What I like is the game was not so hard so you didn’t have to grind the hell out of it. You just had to follow the character’s little life stories. Still combat was very fun with the break mechanic. Super Boss was one of the hardest of all RPGs imo.
Never played the first, tried the demo a few days after the game release and took the guess to pay 80$ on a turn base RPG. It was amazing from beginning to end !
Hard to say for me what Character had the weakest story ! All so diverse !! Thanks for the video !
That sounds like a super cool way to play the game!
I hadn't played the first one and I didn't know anything about it till right before release and I tried the demo and I chose throne and before I got out of the sewers I was sold on it in fact as soon as I was in the first battle I was sold. I've been taking my time and I'm just now doing everyone's final chapter and I don't want it to end. It's such a beautiful game. I know that sounds crazy for a 2d game but it's really gorgeous you have to see it. Every single place I go I just look around in awe. The music is amazing the depth and battle system is amazing the characters even the npcs. Are so enjoyable to read about. It's what I wish more RPGs were it makes me feel like a kid again playing snes or Gameboy nostalgia is real
Yeah I’m a big fan of their style choices as well
Having finished the story i think it plays after the first one. and i believe since finis is basically hell, there are several portals to it.
Just curious, how hard were the chapter bosses, and the epilogue boss for you? (Not the secret boss). Personally, as soon as I got a full party I just started exploring like crazy crazy by the time I got everyone, I was around level 52 for everyone and I didn't do anyone's chapter 2. So I was one shotting literally evey single boss, and the epilogue boss was the one boss that I had to actually adapt to.
Yeah, I pretty much one shot nearly every boss. In games like this I can't help but to get as powerful as I possibly can, even if it might make the rest of the game easy.
I plan on playing this so I'll take my leave. Made sure to leave a like though, appreciate the spoiler warning.
You have a lot to look forward to!
I just love this game ❤️
Indeed
I loved Octopath Traveler 1 so much I even did speedruns of the game. Octopath Traveler 2 is better in almost every way possible
I will say that the game (at least the first game) was advertised as "complete" ( by the director) so they didn't want to do DLC . So I doubt they will do DLC for this second game. I would love to see a champions of the continent DLC with the bosses
Yeah, for that same reason I don't think they will do DLC. We will probably see them in CoTC though, although I'll likely never be able to complete my roster as a F2P.
The arm master secret class guy says he’s from osstera
On a bittersweet note, the idea of this game getting DLC with more superbosses is likely a pipedream.
Now let me explain the 'sweet' part, and why I respect the Octopath and Bravely crew so much more than I do the general 'Dragon Quest' and 'Final Fantasy' devs.
This team - Acquire - is made up of members of the crew who make the Bravely series of games. Both the Bravely series and the Octopath series pride themselves on keeping it oldschool in terms of selling their games, and I love that so much about these games. They want their final product to be THE final product. They don't want to weasel more money out of you with DLC, they don't want to cheat you in any way, they just want to make a finished product that shines like a mirror sheen. And boy, am I glad for that. Everything about Octopath Traveler 2 feels well thought out and professional, even if the microstutter played hell on my attention span for the first few hours while I was starting my journey with Castti.
Speaking of which, that's another thing I love about the Bravely and Octopath series. The games really feel open with how you do things. The characters have set roles they can fill with their opening class (and not even that in the Bravely series, where it is ENTIRELY up to your imagination what sort of team you'll make with your four heroes) but are not entirely constrained to them. The first chapters for each character in Octopath really serve as a tutorial regarding how those characters and their classes function, such that when you unlock subclasses about 20% into the game, you'll know what you're getting when you, say, put Castti into the Warrior job.
(As an aside - I love how Solistia is divided compared to Orsterra, largely because it actually encouraged me to do a chapter two or two before getting all eight travelers. This was definitely a step up over Octopath Traveler one, where the first two chapters for each character honestly felt very cyclical in how you were sorta expected to just walk a circle around the world. I did Castti's Sai after getting every traveler on the western continent, then interspersed each introductory chapter for Ochette and the eastern crew with another chapter 2 for another character, which felt really fun and unique.)
I consider myself a bit of a powergamer, though I deliberately hold back from getting so broken a game becomes effortless for me. I had to ask for help with Galdera only because I learned how to effectively, easily survive his first phase through actually managing to weather his storm by building for defense (which I know is unheard of) but could not puzzle out how to deal with his permadeath curse during the last legs of the fight, since my team, built for defense, couldn't kill the souls fast enough. But my point here is that what I noticed and what I really appreciate with Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler is that, as I just mentioned, the games are really open with what you want to do. I made an almost purely offensive Castti that tore through bosses with Drastic Measures, with my Hikari being her support by using Bloody Bonus to set up poison for her while she set up Poison Weakness on enemies. I loved coming up with fun roles for the various characters that may not have really fit their mold - Castti is built to be able to hit hard, but Agnea, for instance, was another one of my DPS units due to how hard I focused on making her a magical master instead of a support god. And that worked for the entire game and felt really fun. Up until that moment with Galdera, my method worked.
That's not even getting into the stories. This game is such a marked improvement over the last game it's not even funny. They took what I thought would be an impossible task - managing to find a way to have the travelers meaningfully interact with each other in actual voiced scenes - and managed to actually put a good foot forward in solving that criticism people had with the first game, never mind the fact they made sure all story cutscenes were voiced this time. Sure, they needed to lock their biggest names in the industry behind bit roles (looking at you, Cristina Valenzuela. From the protagonist I chose in the first game to... an owl...), likely for the sake of costs, but considering how great Erika Mendez and Xanthe Huynh are themselves and how much energy Alejandro Saab put into Osvald after several roles sounding the same, I wasn't complaining. Plus, they took my favorite voice from Live A Live's remake, Lei Kuugo, and put her to work as Ochette's VA! I always thought this task would be impossible due to all the potential possibilities they'd have to consider with, say, solo runs or four-man-team runs, but they found a workable compromise with the crossed paths and the final chapter. I can only hope they expand upon this in the next game, perhaps to have an entire team of travelers with some crossed path stories.
I'm with you on everything I love about Octopath Traveler 2. I was a little skeptical at first because I didn't find the character designs as inviting as the designs from the first game, and I wasn't impressed with anyone's stated goal besides Castti's when the travelers were first being introduced, but I'd have to say that pretty much every character ended up being even better and more entertaining than their predecessors - though, given my soft spot for Ophilia and her story, I can't concede Temenos quite beat her out. That was certainly a high bar for Partitio to cross, but man did he manage. His theme being the best thing I've ever heard out of Bravely Default or Octopath short of 'That Person's Name Is' from Bravely Default and 'Combat: Destiny' from Triangle Strategy (Triangle Strategy counts, right?) certainly helped matters.
The only down side for myself for this game is how easy we got the 3 hidden secondary jobs, no cool hard fights with the gods
But I love everything else, just 100%
I was a bit surprised at how you get them. The advanced subclass fights in 1 were really cool
@@DarrinNewcomer i know right? The inventor and training tower is cool and all. But not as exciting as the first game.
Hope they add a new game plus to masterpiece
That would be really nice if they did!
25:00 yeah i 100% agree, for any experienced turn based rpg player, 99% of the game is way too easy. As long as you play correctly (break the boss at the beginning of a turn and burst it for the next 2 turns) you will one shot every single boss in the game. A shame when many other square enix games have difficulty settings (dragon quest, bravely default, triangle strategy...).
Thats the only drawback of the game imo.
Yeah, sort of an odd thing considering people were asking for it in OT1
Man "Crick" U for saying that he need to die
Glad ya enjoy the game too :)
He was too good for this world
you are another old gamer like me😢😢😢😢😢
Hey, lets not throw around crazy words like "old"...
Ah, Partitio, my favorite Marxist Leninist.
I've seen a lot of people say that or similar things about him, but he has always struck me as just a "non-corrupt capitalist" if that makes sense. He doesn't seem to have a problem with people being rich or having more than others; he just doesn't want to it be so much so that everyone else has to suffer for a select few's wealth. Either way though, I really enjoyed his campaign!
@DarrinNewcomer I think he'd be a Marxist because he hates the idea of wealth hoarding and partially the idea of private property. He thinks the steam engine shouldn't be owned by only the rich, but to be owned and used by all who need it, which is essentially the basis of socialism/communism.
Also, I think it's funny to call him Comrade Partitio.
The whole difficulty balance issue could've been avoided if you could remove your starting character. It seems like the game design contradicts itself and I really don't know why they insisted on keeping it that way in the sequel. On the one hand the smoothest and the most logical way to go through the game and its level curve is to alternate between two parties of 4 characters when transitioning between chapters. But with a fixed party leader you end up either:
a) having to beat chapters with the first quartet of characters and therefore gaining access to OP gear for your second party to use and abuse to the point that you one shot most of their story bosses.
b) having everyone all at once and beating all 8 stories one after another, constantly rotating people in and out one by one, so your character levels are all over the place but your party leader still is like 10-15 lvls higher than everybody else and hard carries everyone anyway. Not to mention it's incredibly exhasting to do it that way.
As for the story, I suppose if we accept by default that Octopath is never going to have a big sweeping interconnected narrative because that's not what it wants to do, then I guess it's okay for what it is. But personally, as a long time jrpg fan that places A LOT of emphasis on story, both in terms of ideas and execution, I feel Octopath always leaves me wanting for more and doesn't offer anything interesting that the renowned classics didn't. The individual stories are fine, if a bit clumsily written at times (there's too much "as you know" dialogue and heavy handed exposition for my taste) but they don't make me feel as strong of an emotion than when I finish a game that is singularly focused on telling an epic adventure tale, where every plot thread is connected and the characters are constantly interacting.
It's a good thing then that this game is carried HAAAAARD by its aesthetics because MY GOD is it amazing in everything else that isn't story. Gorgeous to look at and a joy to listen to. It might just be the most beautiful traditional jrpg ever. Just the art of it all elevates this game to something special from what otherwise would have been a farly generic jrpg. Bottom line is, Octopath is just nostalgia bait for old, jaded Final Fantasy fans, but a DAMN good one.
Yeah I can understand those arguments. I personally never played any of the final fantasies before 7, so I don’t really know what those are like, although I still really liked the stories in this particular game, although I looked at it as 8 separate stories rather than one large one.
I agree BUT WHY CRICK 😭😭