![]() If someone is standing guard outside a door, Olberic can solve this problem by grinding until he can beat them in a fight while Primrose can lead the guard into a trap. These map actions fundamentally changes the way each character experiences the game’s environments. Olberic can choose to fight almost every NPC in the game, while Primrose can cause NPCs to follow her and sometimes even aid in battle. ![]() They each also have a map action that lets them interact with the world in unique ways. It’s a good feeling, a nostalgic feeling for nerds like me, and if Project Octopath Traveler is trying to sell you on anything its nostalgia.Įach character has their own unique class and this determines what weapons, armor, and skills they can use. This feeling of tabletop familiarity strengthens when the narrator cuts in between major game events to give you a recap of what happened and to push you toward your next goal. This is something I’ve experienced rarely in video games but is a convention that is used often in tabletop gaming. Each has an introduction written in the second person, placing the player as “you,” the main character. We do, however, get to see a nifty map and story screen in the menu, which will likely keep track of how all these characters are connected.Īs for each character’s personal story, they feel oddly like a pencil and paper RPG. The demo only lets you play through the introductory chapter of either character’s story so we don’t get to see how they will eventually come together and presumably fight against a greater evil. Primrose is a daughter of a noble house hiding as a dancer in the red-light district of a desert town while searching or her father’s killers. Olberic is a knight whose best friend betrayed him, killing his lord and pushing him into the exiled life of a sellsword. ![]() The demo only let you play as two characters: Olberic and Primrose. ![]() These characters’ stories will intertwine and intersect, but each character also has their own motivations and goals and you won’t necessarily see the story from the same point of view depending on which character you are controlling.Īs for what the overarching story is, I can’t say. There are eight main characters, which is where the “octo” in Octopath Traveler comes from. For everyone else, it’s an RPG with an ensemble cast but only one member of the cast ever plays the role of the protagonist. About ten people know what I’m talking about and were sold on that alone. In terms of gameplay and story, Project Octopath Traveler feels a combination of Saga Frontier and Seiken Densetsu 3. It looks as if Secret of Mana was suddenly turned into a pop-up book, and it’s just so nice to look at! Honestly, 16-bit graphics have a style and charm all their own and it’s nice to see a modern game finally utilizing them. Despite the three-dimensional world, textures are all still 16-bit. Dungeons have depth, buildings have height, and a lighting engine casts shadows on walls when your character carries a lantern or ignites with a fiery aura during a special attack. Environments, on the other hand, are fully three dimensional. They even move like they did in the SNES days, swinging their swords with exaggerated overhead swings. A sprite-based pop-up book styleĪll characters are 16-bit, and look straight out of the SNES RPG style guide. It’s like we traveled to an alternate dimension where technology progressed but no one thought to make graphics more detailed than 16-bit sprites. It’s less of a return to form and more of an evolution of form. It feels familiar to SNES RPG fans like me but it’s created with modern gaming sensibilities in mind. ![]() It’s about this time that I say “until now” in articles like this.īut I’m not going to, because Project Octopath Traveler, Square-Enix’s Nintendo Switch project, isn’t a return to the classic 16-bit RPG. The condensed narrative experience of the 16-bit RPG was lost to time. Then CD-ROMs became the standard and RPGs became obsessed with voice acting, cut scenes, and game length. From their maze-like dungeons to their sprite-based graphics, they attempted to be as engaging as possible on consoles with limited power. 16-bit RPGs were a unique construct of the time. Sure we’ve seen 16-bit indie games like Undertale come and go, but they never recreate the feelings I had while binging Chrono Trigger in my childhood. It’s been a while since I got to sit down to a good old-fashioned 16-bit RPG experience. ![]()
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