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Project Octopath Traveler on Switch 2018, demo on eShop [Up: Surveys sent out]
- Thread starter Morrigan Stark
- Start date
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Deleted member 286591
Unconfirmed Member
This game is still a looong way off isn't it ? :'(
Being able to recruit all characters means there is no conflicting path. That kinda sucks to me.
That means they all go in the same direction, so what's the replay value here beside a few scenes at the start? I'll take it anyway if it's "only" a story about 8 storylines meeting at some point, but that's kind of a waste of the concept.
I really don't get it. I guess we'll know more after the 45min presentation but the messaging so far doesn't add up if it's simply a single story in 8 parts, lol
What's even the point of choosing if you're allowed to get them all anyway.
That means they all go in the same direction, so what's the replay value here beside a few scenes at the start? I'll take it anyway if it's "only" a story about 8 storylines meeting at some point, but that's kind of a waste of the concept.
I really don't get it. I guess we'll know more after the 45min presentation but the messaging so far doesn't add up if it's simply a single story in 8 parts, lol
What's even the point of choosing if you're allowed to get them all anyway.
JoeyJungle
Banned
Man, I'm playing the Primrose path and kept going west till I hit what I assume is the final dungeon of the demo. Pretty challenging! I wish the game had some kinda fast travel or resting away from inns, the grind is a bit long. In the survey I asked them to add a turbo button, walking is way too slow.
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Deleted member 471617
Unconfirmed Member
As someone who was going to buy a Switch for this game, im now absolutely turned off by reading about the random battles as it's not for me. May be stupid but I stay away from RPG's with random battles. Wish all the enemies were on screen ala Chrono Trigger, Setsuna, etc. Oh well.
The Hermit
Member
I was very disappointed with the random battles, but the battle system is very good.
Not ideal, but one of my favorite RPGs was Tales of Phantasia and had random battles and I gave it a pass mostly for having a great battle system. So I am taking the same approach here.
Chrono Trigger had surprise battles as well as visible enemies.
The random battles in this aren't too bad.
BD had some interesting QoL features added after feedback from the demos. I'm not sure this one in particular was implemented because of feedback, but you could freely change the encounter rate in that game. I'm expecting the same being added to Octopath, it would be weird if it isn't there for the retail release.
Exentryk
Member
Finished Primrose's story, and yeah, I wasn't expecting the game to be this dark. But this is great, and it makes me even more excited for the full game.
I think I've done everything now, and would be nice if that survey popped up soon. I realised that I didn't have Nintendo account set up to send me emails, and only did that after Olberic's story. Hopefully it'll send it to me still.
I think I've done everything now, and would be nice if that survey popped up soon. I realised that I didn't have Nintendo account set up to send me emails, and only did that after Olberic's story. Hopefully it'll send it to me still.
UnemployedVillain
Member
Sounds more like you overleveled maybe. What level did people fight that bosses at? For the knight's story I was like level 5, maybe 6
Neoleo2143
Member
I really don't see the benefit of Random battles compared to specifically designed encounters. If there was a lesson to take from Chrono Trigger, it was that.
I hate when you have enemies on the map. They're just unavoidable traps so often or there are just too many.
I prefer to take my chances with random battles provided that the encounter rate is not stupid
Neoleo2143
Member
This isn't the fault of the system itself so much as its implementation. My issue with Random battles is that once the possible set of encounters in an area is exhausted, then it's just pacing ruining repetition at that point and many JRPGs have limited enough encounter sets for that to happen.
Exentryk
Member
Spent about 9 hours in the demo doing everything!
You can't. The Journal is greyed out in the demo.
Can i somehow see what side quests i have accepted?
You can't. The Journal is greyed out in the demo.
It's square they definitely did that on purpose.
That was my theory as well.
And at the end you come back to that screen and the final character is unlocked. All hail Photocat.
Btw the others have their eyes closed, I wonder if you have to meet them first to unlock them
I have to disagree, I think the fact that you can boost literally any action (aside from Primrose calling in supports, I guess?) opens the game up to the player having to make a lot of different decisions. Do you boost for multiple attacks in order to break through an enemy's guard quicker and leave them stunned for the next turn, or take a few lumps while you whittle their guard down so you can blow your BP on a single level 4 powerful shot once they are broken? If you have a character that's hurting, is it worth having them use an item to heal immediately, or have them boost-defend so that you can heal them with a more powerful spell from an ally later?
I hope you can boost-flee too, lol.
It seems like as more impressions come in I'm trending more into old man yelling at cloud territory but I'm going to reiterate my hope that they don't allow for people to simply turn off enemy encounters for dungeons they haven't previously cleared. It's convenient, yes, but also completely trivializes the purpose of having dungeons at all. There's no need to prepare your party or stock up for anything aside from boss fights if you can just turn encounters off and retreat back to an inn as soon as you run into trouble halfway through. There's no opportunity cost to exploring and gathering all the items, and no sense of accomplishment in reaching the other side. At that point the whole battle system just boils down to a series of boss battle "gates" with normal enemies being relegated to a player convenience existing solely for grinding's sake, which I find odd when explicit grinding is typically something that's frowned upon in most RPGs. Would people get the same feeling if they had an action game where you could simply turn enemies off and just run through an empty level to reach the end?
(Also I think some people are misremembering or underestimating just how many hidden/unavoidable encounters were still present in most Chrono Trigger dungeons.)
I don't think so, I think all will have their eyes open in the full game indicating that they're playable. Wouldn't like it if i needed to play with one character to unlock the starting point of another. Some characters seem to start relatively far away of others. (I think the position on the select screen indicates their starting position on the worldmap.)
There is a run toggle button (forget which one it is) but yeah even that could be sped up a bit.
I almost read that as 'thot'...
B-Button toggles Run/Walk. I wished Running was default and you walk while you press B, I toggled that so many times on accident.
Exentryk
Member
Not sure if I'll get the survey, but I'll put my feedback here anyway:
Great:
Great:
- Gorgeous art-style
- Beautiful UI (minimalistic and clean)
- Amazing music
- Nice voice acting
- Add options like Encounter Rate, Battle Speed, Auto-Battle, etc., similar to Bravely Default. Option to turn off random encounters is a must.
- Give option to see mini-map when exploring.
- Turn down the Depth of Field effect.
- Increase the running speed.
- Show detailed ability description (hard numbers and stats). For example, how much does ”Abide" increase damage by? 20%? 30%? etc. How much bonus is boosting an ability adding?
- Allow us to see enemy stats (HP, ATK, DEF, etc).
- Consider adding ”Brave" system to combat, as it will give more depth to the combat system. Also consider letting us go in to negative BP, and give us abilities that manipulate BP.
I enjoy the surprise of random battles in that you never quite know what you're going to encounter; sometimes a rare enemy might show up. There's also less clutter on the screen, and if you want to grind you don't have to worry about where or if an enemy will appear.
The key here is simply allowing you to adjust the encounter rate like in the Bravely series. If you don't want to encounter an enemy then you simply don't and that takes the frustration out of it.
I don't think you're an old man yelling at clouds, but I don't really get this at all, either. If you're skilled enough at battles to go from boss to boss with minimal grinding, why is that a bad thing? And if the battle system is fun enough for its own sake, which I think it is in this game, then I wouldn't consider it a chore to turn up encounters "just to grind" -- because it's fun.
But that doesn't mean I want to keep encountering enemies in every situation. The whole "flee back to an inn at the first sign of trouble" thing is silly. If you keep doing that then you're arguably inconveniencing yourself even more than having to fight battles at inopportune moments. But, again, if that's your inclination, I don't particularly have a problem with that either. A lot of what you're saying is basically describing a play style which doesn't exist, and isn't really that fun, so nobody would do it, even if given the option. But if someone does then what's the issue anyway?
SciencePilot
Member
More options are always good. Bravely Default allowed you to turn off random encounters, but you can completely ignore that option. Actually, the game was still designed assuming you never did (for example, there were actually character abilities that helped you avoid random encounters)
Either way, for me personally, I'm going to argue that fighting regular enemies in dungeons was never the fun part of RPGs. Fighting bosses was always the fun part. Bravely Default is my favorite RPG because it allowed me to focus on what I found fun, and allowed me to cut out the parts I found boring and grindy. Maybe some other people think surviving dungeons is fun, but that's why it's an option.
This is an interesting point because it deals with how much control do you want to give the player. It was talked not so long ago because of the comments from that designer about Splatoon 2 and them knowing how to make for an enjoyable experience. Which is funny because I found BoTW to be one of the most "do whathever you like" games out there, even though that's one of the approaches I feel more in line with western design philosophies and development in the open world genre.
In my opinion it all reduces to this: if I let you choose the rate of encounters, will you enjoy the game more? If that's the case, then by all means, implement it. If the players will have more fun avoiding normal battles and confronting bosses while being underleveled, why wouldn't you let them do it?
BizzyBum
Member
3D fan! *high-five*
Yeah, would look amazing for this game. Me, you, and about 20 other people would be happy, though.
Exentryk
Member
That's a shame, but only because I didn't want the demo to end, haha. Very meaty demo and even though I already knew I'd get the game day 1, I'm now even sure I'll be grabbing this as soon as I can, maybe even the SE if they offer a good one.
There's no real counter-argument for the "why not let people have the option?" point so I can't really try, but to the bolded part at least, I suppose it's because I'm coming at this from the perspective of believing that getting through the dungeon itself, normal encounters and all, is meant to be a challenge in and of itself, and not simply time-filler for the "real" challenge of the boss fights. It's a gauntlet that simultaneously strengthens your party for future battles via level-ups and gaining money you can use to purchase more items and equipment, while also draining your resources and requiring the player to make decisions about when/whether to use healing items or spells, make a choice about which direction to go, whether they think it's worth it at that point in time to try and find the path to that distant treasure chest (it is, it always is), and whether they think they'll have enough left in the tank to survive a potential boss battle at the end. It is indeed more convenient to be able to fight or not fight whenever you want to, but on the other hand I wouldn't say that challenge and risk in a game should always fall secondary to convenience. If that were the case, why have non-boss battles at all, do away entirely with stuff like levels and grinding and even the dungeons themselves and just boil the game down to cutscenes and boss battles?
Like was mentioned earlier, people don't mind fights as long as the systems involved are fun, and they seem to be fun in this so far, yet people are so keen to get rid of it with the snap of a finger? I argue that the experience of beating an end-of-dungeon boss is very different if you have to fight your way through the whole dungeon to get there and beat the boss as a final punctuation mark of your accomplishment, rather than grinding levels at 200% encounter-rate around the entrance until you decide you're strong enough, then set the rate to 0% and stroll through the whole place unburdened, beat the boss and move along. I messed around with the battle slider in Bravely Default, and had my own moments of turning battles off and just running through, but I'm not convinced that the ability to do so actually enhanced my experience at all. Like I said in a previous post, that mostly just serves to trivialize dungeons and encounters and puts the meat of the game entirely on boss fights.
Again, imagine something like a Metroid or a Zelda game where you could just...turn enemies off. Am I wrong in thinking that sounds utterly bizarre and would take something away from those experiences?
The Xtortionist
Member
What were people's thoughts on the random encounter slider in the Bravely Default games? Was it usable in all areas, and did it trivialize the difficulty? Haven't played them so I can't comment, but I was under the impression that it was an appreciated feature.
Exentryk
Member
It was awesome! It gave the player the choice on how to go about dungeons. People that want challenge, they keep the slider at normal, while grinders can turn it up to 200%, and others that want efficiency can turn off encounters to have their own tougher boss fights, etc. It honestly is the best part about Bravely games!
I don't think it was implemented well. I'd much prefer an ingame mechanic such as the moogle ring in FFVI, or the item you use in Pokemon than just a slider bar in the setting.