Octopath Traveler 0 Shakes Up The Formula Just Enough To Feel Fresh - Preview

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When it comes to companies that have made the most iconic JRPGs, it's hard not to put Square Enix at the top of the list. The Final Fantasy series is iconic, but the company has tons of fantastic titles like Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and LIVE A LIVE, and one of my favorites will be Octopath Traveler. It's where Square showed off their new HD-2D art style, which I fell in love with, and has been the main aesthetic used for the Dragon Quest remakes. I have loved playing Octopath, and so far, I have been loving my time with Octopath Traveler 0, which changes up the formula more than I expected while still retaining what makes the series so great.

If you have played Octopath 1 or 2, there will be a lot of familiarity in the general aesthetics and combat. The HD-2D visuals return in all their glorious vibrancy and fantastic blend of 3D worlds with 2D pixel textures and characters. The models and effects still combine with each other effortlessly, creating vistas that I could stop at and take a quick picture. It's just downright gorgeous, and it honestly blows my mind every time I see it.

The combat itself is still a treat as well. We have our party of fighters, who all have two weapons each and their own assortment of skills. Each enemy has specific weapon weaknesses, and hitting them enough times with those weapons can break/stun them. We can boost our allies using BP to hit more times or enhance our skills' effects, and when the battle is done, we gain EXP, JP, and money. It's pretty standard for the series, though there are some big changes across the board that Octopath Traveler 0 makes to keep it feeling fresh.

Instead of controlling eight characters to play through each of their stories, we will only be controlling one as he works on rebuilding his destroyed homeland and taking on the leaders of different countries that orchestrated the destruction. We will be able to customize our character, with a decent selection of hair, eye color, and voice choices. Visually, there is a decent selection of options, but we can also choose how we plan to build our character, focusing on different stats to increase. We can also choose three different items to start with, and I absolutely chose a random scrap of paper.

We will always control this one created character, which we can name ourselves, but we will be able to gain new allies that we can bring with us into battle. Each ally can be found throughout the world and has their own two-weapon set and skills, and we can learn new skills as we get more JP. We can find over 30 different allies, and on the field, we can have seven other allies with us. So we have four people in front attacking, and we can swap out from the four others behind each person.

And while we will only control one person, the story is still split into various main questlines. At the start, we will have four. One to go after each of the three individuals responsible for our town's destruction, and one that is focused on repairing our home. I won't go too much into detail until our review down the road, but I am loving the story. It feels somewhat familiar, but still unique enough that I had a blast playing through it. And the voice acting is decent so far, which I consider a plus.

However, the questline to rebuild our town, called Kindlers of the Flame, is just a treat and is where Octopath Traveler 0 starts to diverge from its previous entries more heavily. Here, we are finding people to bring to our village and then customizing our town entirely. This means building houses, decorations, foliage, and more to make our town our own. It's a little bit limited so far and follows a more linear path, only being able to build a specific number of buildings until we continue along the quest. I am curious if this will open up further in, and I hope it does. Still, it's interesting and quite intriguing.

We can go out to other towns and recruit more people to join, inquiring about them and bringing them in. Each person has their own perks as well, like receiving deliveries of medical items or meat, increasing EXP obtained, raising the chance of a bigger yield from farming, and much more. It starts becoming more exciting to collect and bring in as many people as possible for passive buffs.

Octopath Traveler 0 On Steam Deck So Far

As for Octopath Traveler 0 on the Steam Deck, there should be nothing to worry about. Based on the first few hours of the game, I would say we won't have any issues. It runs at 60 FPS with no problems on high settings and stays around 14W battery drain. There is still a lot more of the game to test, so I can't say for certain whether it will stay this way, but I would be surprised if this isn't a perfect portable game to enjoy on the Deck.

So far, I am loving Octopath Traveler 0. It's as gorgeous and familiar as I hoped, while also expanding the series with some interesting ideas. I look forward to seeing the town building expanded, and I am enjoying only focusing on a single custom character tackling his own tale of revenge and rebuilding. I can't wait to play more, and I look forward to discussing it in-depth in our full review later on.

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