Octopath Traveler 0 Hands-On Preview (PS5) – Octopath Traveler has somewhat cemented itself as a part of Square Enix’s ongoing commitment to maintaining the turn-based crowd that it’s cultivated over the years. While Final Fantasy continues to deviate in a myriad of directions, games like Octopath Traveler hone back in on the very best of turn-based RPGs, and in my few hours with Octopath Traveler 0, I would generally say that this prequel does a good job at carrying that torch.
This isn’t strictly a ‘new’ game, but most probably wouldn’t notice that it wasn’t. As an extensive adaptation of the mobile entry, this game serves as a prequel to the original game, and sends players back to that setting with a new story to tell.
This preview is based primarily off of the first 10 or so hours, and will reflect the limited scope that this snippet has given me. A more extensive review will release closer to release, so please look forward to that!
Octopath Traveler 0 Hands-On Preview – The Path Well Travelled
Taking A Step Back
Instead of following in the footsteps of Octopath Traveler 2 and sending us to a new continent, Octopath Traveller puts the story back in Orstera, before the events of the first game. The early hours of the game follow the story of Wishvale, generally setting up the meat of the ‘new’ content in this adaptation, being the rebuilding of Wishvale.
Without going into much detail, a tragic incident leads to the destruction of your custom character’s town and leaves you with the mission of both avenging your loss as well as setting out to rebuild it in your image, alongside a childhood friend.
It’s a good way of justifying this radical new element to the series and immediately sets it apart from its series siblings. I’ve not had much time to get my teeth into the town building as of yet, but the early hours promise a strong focus on customisation and freedom as to how you explore this new section.
If anything, it reminds me of Team Asano’s other major series, Bravely Default. While this iteration of town building is far more focused on customisation rather than sheer timesink, it’s fun to see this idea come back.
Setting Out
As of yet, the two halves of Octopath Traveler 0 have yet to meet in the middle, so to speak. The game is fairly segmented between the outward RPG journey and the inwards facing townbuilding, and I like this dichotomy. If I get tired of turn-based battles, I can run back and spend some of my materials on building a new facility for my slowly growing town. It’s a comfy balance that feels complementary.
If you’re familiar with the other entries in the series, the forward thrust of the main plot may feel fairly familiar, with each story thread taking you to different areas, with a distinctly episodic feel. With your own custom character taking the helm as sole protagonist, the multiple path aspect of Octopath Traveler has been slimmed down into three stories that each contribute to the greater goal.
In that way, the “octo” part of the Octopath Traveler name feels a little bit vestigial in this new entry, but the value of this game is found in the world itself, rather than pushing itself to compose another eight narratives. With just the three villains to focus on, I already feel a slightly stronger sense of momentum and focus when compared to the other games. While I would hazard to call this a necessarily ‘better’ approach (Octopath Traveler 2 is one of my favourite RPGs of all time), it certainly makes for a faster pace.
Have We Been Here?
We’ve seen a lot of games make use of the HD-2D artstyle that was originally pioneered by Octopath Traveler back in 2017, so to return to the very world that brought it to life is interesting in its own right. As you would expect, this game makes clever reuse of assets from the original game in a way that never feels overly intrusive.
I’ve yet to get my teeth really sunk into the returning areas of the game, with the early areas being focused on expanding the world of Orsterra rather than forcing you to rewalk the same paths, even if that will be some part of the game as we move forward.
As I’ve talked about before, I have never had a problem with this kind of reuse. The same places being used for a myriad of stories only helps to create the feel that this world is lived in, and I hope to see that delivered upon. Compared to the relatively modest cast of the previous games, Octopath Traveler 0 expands the playable cast well beyond the sole eight and well into the double digits. So far, I’ve only recruited a few characters beyond the custom protagonist, but I can certainly tell where Square Enix have had to leap through hoops in order to get this game working for a standard RPG.
You can’t shy away from the fact that Octopath Traveler 0, for all of its embellishments and changes, started life as a gacha game and was built with that in mind. You can see these roots in how each character, despite how some do share classes, have access to totally divergent skillsets.
We’ll see if this gets in the way of strategy building, but with the promise of up to 8 members of your party being available at any given time, I have to wonder how this might be balanced.