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Episode 10: Octopath Traveler 2
222 Plays1 year ago
Poly and Kj review Octopath Traveler 2, a sequel to a game they both regarded very highly. Come see what they thought of the game!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Format
00:00:00
Speaker
episode 10 of the main numbered episodes. Technically, it's episode 12 of like podcasts we've done, but it's episode 10 of the main numbered one. We're like Final Fantasy that way. We'll still compare us to Final Fantasy. You had, Polly, come on. I did that on purpose. I did that on purpose. Yeah, if you don't know us, I am Polly Mune. I am an RPG enthusiast, joined with my best friend, KJ. That's me.
00:00:29
Speaker
Uh, and we do a monthly podcast episode where it's kind of like a book club where we play an RPG game off stream, uh, together at the same time. And we end up reviewing it on stream, uh, after beating it together off stream. Uh, generally KJ beats it before me. Uh, he has won this round again. I was going to say it's, it's when Polly does it, it's more of an exception. It's definitely not the rule.
Game Discussions and Community Interaction
00:01:01
Speaker
To be fair, I would have done it for Star Ocean. What did we do Star Ocean for, Episode 6? It was a while ago. I don't even know. I think it was Episode 6. Something like that. And I think Episode 6 was like... I could have, but I got distracted by a minigame for a very long time.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, so I get credit for like one and a half. As Enno said, it's not a race. We're going through, but I will say it's one of those things where I personally like
00:01:34
Speaker
finishing the game first because I love to just like get your brain dumps and just be like, yep, either think like you're so right or, oh man, you are so wrong and this is gonna be so good. Like there were so many points of this game where I'm just sitting there like, oh, when Polly gets here, this is gonna absolutely, she's gonna be in outrage or she's gonna be like,
00:02:04
Speaker
So distraught like she's gonna be this is gonna destroy her and I'm just like I Can't wait for the egg. I can't wait to see the extreme Yeah, at least you have somebody to talk to about this because I just went through barreled through headfirst and was like wow now I'm just wallowing in whatever feeling this is
00:02:24
Speaker
This is this is true. And like my Discord teases me about Kat Blox Polly and Kat Blox Polly happens a lot in these podcasts to KJ and private. You guys have no idea. Polly is like living. We have a we have a section of the Discord where we talk about like the game and everything. The game note section is pretty much me spoiler tagging things and then Polly living in caps lock.
00:02:52
Speaker
the interactions. So, yeah, it's always a good time.
00:02:59
Speaker
We have a great time with this. And I'm glad that we started this. This is super fun. It gives us an extra reason. I mean, KJ always has a reason to play games. But an extra incentive, even just for me, because I could get so busy and not play anything but the stream game. So this is great, because now I play a game off stream too with KJ. And it's so funny to see each other's reactions. And then if KJ's ahead of me, I will go back once I get to that point and read his like,
00:03:27
Speaker
his like spoiler tagged messages and I'm like oh my goodness and then all cat blocks and stuff and we have just pretty much and honestly this time uh this time around again having that uh group discussion on your discord where we were all talking and like dark was uh playing the game and pea stone was playing the game and we were all like mentioning different parts and stuff like that having conversations
00:03:52
Speaker
I definitely really love that and this is why we do this and why we announce it all the time and so that you guys could also partake and be playing the game off stream and then beating it around the same time as us so we could all talk about it together.
00:04:08
Speaker
So yeah, I absolutely love this. I don't have a physical copy of the game. I think you do. Yeah. I will flex the Steelbook as well because the Steelbook is absolutely beautiful. Cries in Canadian. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The Steelbook. Cries in Canadian Square Enix Y. Yo. It even has the character art on the inside. Oh, it's so cool. I'm sorry. I have to flex the Steelbook.
00:04:30
Speaker
Oh, it's beautiful. One of these days, I'll grab it probably probably in the USA at PAX. I was so many of them there because I was looking. They're only they're like exclusive to a certain store. I'll go. I'll go look. I'll try to go sometime and I'll look and see if I can get you on.
Spotlight on Octopath Traveler 2
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah. And so I have to talk about this a little bit because I actually got sponsored to play Octopath Traveler 2. So Square Enix gave me a key for the game, which was great because I was able to get it right away and play it right away. So thank you Square Enix for giving me the key because that helped with this. And now we get to do a big review of this game as part of that. And I really, really appreciate it because
00:05:20
Speaker
That definitely came, but now after going through it stuff, I'm like, I want that steel book. And this is also a call that's like, please think of your Canadians. Give us a store where these steel books, I don't care who's selling it. Just give me a store in Canada that I can buy these steel books from. And so I can have these cool collector stuff because I love collecting steel books. So it's funny that you bring up Square.
00:05:49
Speaker
So I kind of want to start with this and we're about to get super derailed. So this game was dead. Yeah. I was going to say, so Octavette Traveler 2 was dev'd by Square Business Division 11 and a company called Acquire. And Acquire has done a couple of different things. They did, like, I believe the Way of the Samurai games and they did Octavette Traveler 1, some other stuff. And here's your triangle strategy.
00:06:16
Speaker
So everybody hold on to your chairs or whatever you're sitting in or whatever. Got it. I got my chair. This is the best game that Square Enix, outside of remasters, has ever dev'd or published.
00:06:34
Speaker
I'll just put that out there right now. I specifically said Square Enix, and I'm excluding remasters, because I know since the merger, they've remastered things like Chrono Trigger, they've remastered things like Final Fantasy VII through IX, etc. Outside of remasters, this is the best game that Square has dev'd or published.
00:06:56
Speaker
And I'll take whatever criticisms and attacks that may be, but I said what I said. And I will stand on that hill very, very proudly.
00:07:16
Speaker
I am going to wait until the end to reveal if I agree with you or not. That way, people have to watch this whole podcast to hear if Polly agrees with KJ or disagrees strongly. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. I'm going to- We're starting with this. I said I was going to give y'all a very controversial statement and I said what I said.
00:07:39
Speaker
I'm willing to- We're here for the hot takes and tangents. This is a part of it, right? It's coming up with our own opinions of said game and then reviewing it together and seeing A if we match, A if we disagree, or A if we match, B if we disagree, or C if chat agrees or disagree. True.
00:08:01
Speaker
I will say our listeners too. I should say also our listeners. Thank you for anybody who's listening to us on Spotify and stuff like that. We really appreciate it. Oh yeah. If the numbers tank for this, it's totally because I just said something absolutely ridiculous and people are like, that is nonsense. And they just turn everything off. Is that what you have to do on YouTube?
00:08:24
Speaker
This episode has to go on YouTube now. You know that, right? Pretty much. And it has to be your hot take right at the start. The caption. I can. Yeah, we can definitely do that. We can. OK, let's do that. Awesome. I'm actually getting the volume this time. But yeah, so I guess I'll I kind of I'm trying to think about where I want to start, because again, this game was just this game was very good. I think they.
00:08:54
Speaker
Like, and I will say I actually looked at a list of all of the post merger games.
00:09:04
Speaker
See if there was one just to make sure like just to make sure I looked at all the post merger games and I was like Okay, I I can you did say post merger because I was thinking like really Valkyrie profile Well, that's why I said Square Enix Square Enix because it's post merger anything that came out after I think it's like April of 20 of 2003 I
00:09:29
Speaker
uh yes i think so so yeah i'm i'm gonna stand on that hill they so i thought octopath two was er octopath one was a masterpiece right like i thought it was a fantastic game it had its flaws like octopath one there were definitely people can talk about how the characters didn't interact much the stories weren't really um the stories were kind of
00:09:51
Speaker
locked behind optional content, like where the stories coming together were locked behind optional content. There it is. Yeah. And that was those were some of the big criticisms of Octopath one. Octopath two changed that whole thing. They rewrote the script like you have.
00:10:11
Speaker
characters interacting in battle, you have characters interacting outside of battle, you have co-op chapters where characters are working together to like figure out certain things and then all of it kind of comes together.
00:10:28
Speaker
So, yeah, overall, I feel like they they definitely they heard the complaints, right? I think yes, they did. Which is huge, which is huge because a lot of companies don't these days. Yeah. So I will give them I will give them their I will definitely give them their kudos there. I think one of the things that I did realize was they tweaked the difficulty a little bit. I think this game was a lot.
00:10:54
Speaker
I don't want to say a lot easier, but it was significantly easier than the first game because of some of the mechanics.
00:11:01
Speaker
Um, specifically like they gave some extra skills for each main class. So like when your carrot, you start out, so I probably should have started with like giving sort of the premise, right? Talked about traveler. You have eight characters. They all have their own separate stories and you play each of the stories. They're split up into different chapters. They have recommended levels, stuff like that. And you kind of can go.
00:11:28
Speaker
through the stories at whatever pace and whatever order that you want as long as you've done the previous chapter of the character before. And yeah, they basically made it a bit easier because they added like a passive skill or passive skills for people. They added skills that people can actually use in battle and they also added more like a sort of like a special almost.
00:11:52
Speaker
where after a certain amount of time, you can fill a gauge and then use that special. So I made improvements to the battle system, which also made things slightly easier because of that. Absolutely. And so I'm not sure. Did you did you feel the same poly? Did you feel like it was easier? Yeah. So Octopus, so we both we both played the first game.
00:12:12
Speaker
Um, KJ played all the optional stuff as well, uh, for octopath one, which he was talking about how the stories don't really connect until you do optional stuff. I didn't do that portion. So I did all the character quests. I did it on stream. I stream all of that.
00:12:28
Speaker
and did all the all the way up to chapter four they they had chapter four for that particular game and so i did all of those and i actually found going through this game i didn't okay so originally i didn't know if it was because i played the first one i found this one a little bit more like i already knew the combat system i already knew some of the stuff like they introduced new things but i had already had played and kind of knew like
00:12:54
Speaker
you know if uh like the the order of the weapons they kept that the same of when you're uh breaking an enemy or uh and that sort of stuff they kept that that it they kept the order the same and so things like that i was like okay maybe this is why i found a little bit easier but now hearing your explanation i do think because of the added skills and uh their combat ability and how much they can
00:13:19
Speaker
benefit the fight. I think it is easier. It is easier than the first game in some of them. I remember wiping several times to some of the bosses in the first game. I think it was a couple of the chapter threes even, and then a couple of the chapter fours I remember struggling with.
00:13:41
Speaker
Um, but, um, yeah, I, I do agree with that now hearing that I'm like, I think it's more that than the fact that I had the experience of playing the first one. And I do think the experience of the first one matters, but yeah, it makes it a little bit easier at the start of the game.
00:13:58
Speaker
Um, I think because you can remember the weapon order or you can remember the, the, so it's like, Oh, if I break him with a pole arm and there's nothing ahead of it, I know it has to be like an ax or a bow or something magic, like things like that. Right. So little, little bits of pieces that they kept similarly from the first one that you could remember.
Exploring Gameplay Mechanics and Strategies
00:14:18
Speaker
Uh, and then even just knowing that you do the chapters in order of each character, like you can't do, you can't do a characters chapter three until you do their chapter two sort of idea.
00:14:28
Speaker
because it doesn't unlock, right? So things like that that you do that does make things a little bit like easier to kind of jump into the game a little bit faster, but they do a really good job this time explaining it to.
00:14:41
Speaker
Like I like the little tutorials like I skipped them obviously They came up like little tutorials and stuff like that for everything So like even somebody who hadn't played the first one, you know, like as long as they're not skipping it Little things of explaining it before the secret boss in this game I game over
00:15:07
Speaker
in one area and it was, and honestly, so I was living very dangerously. Like I would go into areas that were like 10 or 15 levels higher than me and do fights. And be able to survive. And be fine, because I'm just, I was very comfortable with the battle system, right? But yeah, so Hikari's final chapter, I wiped twice.
00:15:36
Speaker
because I underestimated the, was it twice? I think it was twice. I underestimated one of the fights, because it's like a boss rush. I underestimated one of the fights, and the other one I just, I wasn't expecting, and I was still,
00:15:55
Speaker
I think I was I was in a state of like I'm like 50 hours into this game and I've been able to just walk everything and I got cocky. I got very cocky and that chapter humbled me. But after that, like, yeah, the only other times that I that I wiped in that game were against the were against the the secret boss.
00:16:21
Speaker
and eventually that took me like, I mean, I was at that secret boss from like 10 p.m. until like, I don't know. We could talk, we could get into the details of those a little bit later, those will be spoilers and stuff, but yeah. Definitely, I'm not gonna talk about the details, I was just saying. I can't wait to tell you where I wiped because it's not where you did. Interestingly, that's funny.
00:16:49
Speaker
That's really funny. We try to purposely also keep some stuff back. We'll talk about the plot and things like that, but we also try to keep some things so that we're both finding out at the same time as chat for these podcasts or as our listeners. Just to keep things a little fresh. I did wipe once.
00:17:10
Speaker
uh, besides the, besides the ed boss and it was not, it was not her car. Okay. But, uh, but yeah, we will, yeah, I'm super excited to dive into this. Okay. Um, yeah. So now that KJ has talked about his hot take and talked a little bit about the mechanics, um, let's talk a little bit, let's, let's talk a little bit about the, the art style and the music.
00:17:36
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm down, of course. Yeah. So, I think the art style is taking what they did in Octopath One and like taking it over. There are some improvements and there's some new mechanics based on those improvements, like you could do boat travel.
00:17:53
Speaker
Um, you could get a little boat and the boat was so cool. Yeah. So you could get led to like little boats and like find secret areas, but you can also get like an actual ship, which cool. Um, so like they've, they improved some of the mechanics that way.
00:18:09
Speaker
to kind of tie into the art style shifts of like, basically they wanted to keep it looking like Octopath, right? So there was only so much more improvement they could do to the art style. So I like that they expanded your ability to explore in this game because it kind of let you see the water more, let you see things that you didn't get to really see a whole lot of in the first game, which made it feel like there was an upgrade in the art.
00:18:36
Speaker
which I thought was really, really cool. And I thought that was genius on their part. That way they don't lose the style and the feel of the game because that is something that a lot of people, including myself and I believe, including KJ, we loved about the first game is that it was this beautiful blend of pixel art, but also three dimensional. And they did such a great job of blending the two that it's become something that other people are trying to reference with their games.
00:19:04
Speaker
Because it's like so revolutionary kind of for like that upgrade to of sprite work, like taking that that new step into sprite work where it still looks like beautiful pixel art, but it's three dimensional there's you know depth to the, the world now and stuff so they
00:19:25
Speaker
they didn't lose that charm. So anybody who played the first game, they absolutely didn't lose that lose it. In fact, they gave you more areas, more ways to explore, which makes it more like expansive with the art, which I think is really, really cool. Yeah, it definitely the the world felt
00:19:45
Speaker
it did feel like you could explore more because you're like, like you said, it was the case where when you're just like traveling on a path and you see, you would see like a random bridge that would like or steps that would go down to the water and you could go in and actually like travel down to specific areas. And the way that the camera, the way that the like, the way that everything was set up, it was, it very much felt like an older like retro RPG where it's like,
00:20:13
Speaker
You kind of just have to go up against a wall and hope that you find a secret entrance. Like there were multiple places just like that where it was like, oh, there's actually a place here and I can just like keep going. And that's an entrance to a cave. And honestly, it was funny because I actually missed there was like a level.
00:20:30
Speaker
16 cave that I missed. It was because I so I 100% of the game because I was like, that's that's just what I do with these games. I love I love the Octopath games. And there was one thing that I was missing. And I had to like,
00:20:45
Speaker
I had to look it up and it was like, Oh, I didn't like go and push up against this one wall. That was really an entrance to a cave. And I was like level 90 fighting level 16 bosses. And it felt silly, but like treasure in here. I must know.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, exactly. It was it was something for like one of the carrot, one of the like extra classes or something like like it was something. And so I had to pick that up. But yeah, I completely agree. And I think they did not only did they do like the the boat travel with the smaller boat, but they also then had like the larger boat that you could travel around the world. And it was funny because Polly found that before I did.
00:21:28
Speaker
And I DM her and I was like, Yo, Polly, I got something super dope. And she's I was like, Have you done this? And she's like, No, I'm broke. I can't I couldn't afford it. And my response back was just sending the I'm on a boat by Lonely Island.
00:21:47
Speaker
I was so jealous because I found that part of the game before he did. But I was broke and I couldn't buy the shit. And the reasoning, the reason why she was broke is actually like when we start talking about sort of our paths in the game, it'll kind of make sense as to why she was broke. And I was just like sitting on money because of the specific characters that we chose.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. And it's funny because it's like you could end up like Polly or you could end up like KJ, depending on who you chose as your main character. Pretty much. Pretty much. And I think that's great. And so like, yeah, so I stumbled across that and I was like, so adding that allowed you to start seeing more of the ocean and how well they did the water effects and how they did all of that. Another thing they added to improve the art style
00:22:45
Speaker
And also just add to the game was a day and night sequence. Yes. Which is really cool because it also allowed them to think of how do I look at the scenery at night? How do I look at the scenery during the day and kind of like play around with the texture or the pixel art and everything for it and like the water reflection and stuff like that, whether it's a moon or a sun that you're seeing reflect.
00:23:08
Speaker
And it's just so cool to like look at all the art that they had now upgraded because they had this day and night system that at first I was like, okay, is it going to be like one of those clocks where it's like it'll eventually, and yes, it does do that, but you can manually switch it whenever you want, which I think was genius because I just, I would just find myself like walking through like an area or on the boat in the water. And then I would switch it to daytime and then switch it to nighttime just to see what it looked like.
00:23:37
Speaker
Because I was like interesting cool because I was just so admiring all the art and like the the just the in-depth that this team Went to like thinking about like how shadows and stuff are cast versus the Sun versus the moon And and I just oh, it's just so cool. Like I have flipping it day and night just to see the difference
00:23:59
Speaker
That is the artist in you coming out because yeah, I think I'm like the artist nerd of me is coming out of where I'm just like stare at a game. And I think this is why my idle time is like matches your play time because I'm standing there just looking at Cedar. Oh my goodness. I realized now that's probably why I had an extra 10 hours and that we beating the game at the same time, even though you did more content than I did. I.
00:24:27
Speaker
It's funny that you say that because one of the other things they did not just add the day night cycle because it looked cool. They actually gave skills based on day and night. So like some characters you'd get like exp boost if they were in the party at nighttime.
00:24:42
Speaker
So while you were like, took your artist approach, I took my very, very much like engineer, logical, like analytic way of thinking. And I was just like, Oh, I can abuse this. So I would change the cycle depending on who was in my party, I would change the cycle to
00:25:04
Speaker
make sure I'm fully utilizing the battle mechanic for the day and night cycle. So that was another reason why I was just like, I would do all the fights because I was like, I'm getting extra experience. I noticed the cool things like with the day night change, but for me, abusing the day night mechanic was way more about making sure I'm taking advantage of the things that they gave us and optimizing.
00:25:34
Speaker
The funny thing is when you think of day and night sequences in games when things do that, sometimes they either just have the day and night there and it's not really relevant. Sometimes they have it where certain quests can unlock.
00:25:49
Speaker
and stuff during those day and night. But I love how Octopath Traveler 2 did it. Like you said, they also built their mechanics based on it. So you got certain abilities and certain things in battle and certain characters could do certain things during the day and certain characters could do certain things during the night. And then also even your battle mechanics could change. And so it meant more why it was day versus night than in pretty well most games I've ever played.
00:26:19
Speaker
And they still did have a couple quests and stuff like that where you had to be nighttime to see something happen or you had to be daytime to see something happen. It was actually more than a few. It was a lot. There were a lot of side quests. Okay, so you did all the side quests. I did a couple of them where there was a haunted mansion and I did that quest line.
00:26:40
Speaker
They built a ton of stuff into that. Like there was this one and again, these are like small side quests, but there was this one where there were two different trials going on and you had to like find different equipment or like different items for evidence for the trials.
00:26:58
Speaker
based on the day or the night. It was really cool. They really put emphasis in this day and night cycle. And they put it in where it just didn't feel like it was just an additional, oh, it's here. They really thought about how they were going to implement the system and make it a big part of the game.
00:27:18
Speaker
Um, which is fantastic. Like it, I, I found myself switching day and night just to see, because it would even take the NPCs and certain ones would be available at night and certain ones would be available during the day, but sometimes not both. And so like, I would go around a town switching day and night to see who I could interact with and see what I could.
00:27:41
Speaker
take from them or see what I can bring them into my party or things like that where you get the additional higher effect. There's just so many things in every town where they really thought about this day and night sequence. They said, hey, we want to really build this into the game. And it was entirely built not only for style, but it was entirely built into the mechanics of the game, which made it so in-depth and cool where I can't think of a game that does that as well.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that extent, which is like, again, you took you octopat traveler was already something incredibly unique. Um, taking it in octopat traveler too, and then making it even more unique was like, I did not expect that at all. Cause I was like, you know, like what I couldn't think of when I first played the game, besides some like, you know, quality of life upgrades and stuff like that.
00:28:35
Speaker
I couldn't think of where they could make it even better. And with that day and night sequence, made it even better. Yeah, and one more thing to add on, because I think both of us forgot to mention this per se, but on top of the NPCs switching,
00:28:51
Speaker
Um, it was also the case that the character actions would switch. So in Octopus Traveler 1, everyone had their own character action. So like the thief could see, the warrior could challenge people to battles. The cleric could guide people, the dancer could like
00:29:10
Speaker
basically seduce people into following. The scholar could like interrogate almost. The scholar could interrogate. The merchant could buy things. They were basically opposite. So it was like merchant could buy where thief could steal. You have the guide versus allure. You have the challenge versus like I guess the challenge and the
00:29:33
Speaker
The Hunter one are kind of the same, right? They're very similar. Those two were basically the same. And then you have like the inquire versus the scrutinize. Where like it was it was one of those things where it was really, really interesting to kind of see like with Octopath one, it was interesting to see. Oh, in battle, the games, they each class had their own thing, like had their own sort of unique thing to them, like because
00:30:03
Speaker
You could also have people have subclasses, but everybody who's their main class, they have a specific skill. And it was really cool to see them incorporate the out-of-battle skills into the day-night cycle. So it was like an example would be...
00:30:22
Speaker
Which is an example would be like the thief who is actually who I ended up starting with thrown a she can steal during the day or knock somebody out during like knock somebody out during the night. And so they had all of these different things. So it basically set up a whole nother level of inner a layer of interactions that you could do to do side quests and to do optional stuff. So it was it was really cool.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah. And like, and so you went from having like eight party or eight people that you could, you could recruit and then having 16 different, uh, special moves that they could do. So like in day and night, depending on, so it's like, it was really, really cool because you could do like, where you can like scrutinize with the scholar or you could mug them at night.
00:31:13
Speaker
and like beat them up and steal their stuff where you're like, what? And so like they had the, so you went from having like eight special skills outside of battle to 16. And they were still depending on Derek. And there were still opposites and there was still like, they really made it so that you could really just run around with the four people that you really liked.
00:31:35
Speaker
Um, and so for the most part and where they had a lot of the opposites and you could balance your team based on like that too, where you can have like the dancer where she could just get items or you become based on her level, or you have the thief who could steal the items based on their level and like, uh, gives you a percentage. So if they're a higher level, then they have a higher percentage of stealing that item.
00:32:01
Speaker
And so, like, you could be like, okay, do I want the dancer or the thief in my party? Because they essentially do the same passive ability.
Character Roles and Choices
00:32:10
Speaker
Which, by the way, if you tell me you picked the dancer over the thief and octopaths, I'm saying other people can, but I think you both agree.
00:32:21
Speaker
That is going to be like a personal... That's a personal attack on me. If you pick the dancer over the thief in your party, that is a personal attack and I will be... I will be reaching out.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, I saying that for the viewers and the listeners, because I'm sure there are people out there who like the idol storyline. But so you have these things. And then in battle, it was also something like that as well. So you had your your eight characters had different abilities. And of course, they left some of them the same, like the scholar could figure out one of the enemy weakness at the start of battle.
00:33:04
Speaker
Um, but things were like, if you were battling at night, um, uh, things like, I think it's, it, I think it was Temenos, the cleric who had it where if you were battling at night, he did, he did status effects to the enemies or something. Yeah, I think that was his. Yep.
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you had this way to customize your party the way you wanted, as well as still having these characters have these unique things, even if they did double up. My unfortunate thing is I tend to like the characters that all doubled up. So I had them all at the party at the same thing. What was your party? We can at least...
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the characters. So we have the eight characters like in Octopath Traveler 1, but just in case you haven't played Octopath Traveler 1, I'm going to try to explain it as if you haven't played the first game. So more or less you have eight different characters that you can
00:34:04
Speaker
you have access to to make it to your party. You have to pick one of them as like your main person. So it generally is your first quest that you do or your first chapter that you do is this character. So you have the options of a cleric,
00:34:21
Speaker
an apothecary who is kind of like a hard hitter slash healer slash status effect remover kind of a buffer character. Cleric is just you know typical in most games where they're a healer and or has a few spells that can damage enemies that are light based. You have a thief that you could choose that can steal and stuff like that
00:34:48
Speaker
uh you have a dancer who can buff your party um or attack with like daggers and stuff like that but i mean and it has a has a wit i guess it has a magic they have a magic move too yeah and the first one they had different magic but they do have magic as well
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, they switched around some of the magic and stuff from the first game, but they have magic again. You have a scholar who is basically your mage. You have a warrior who I mean is your.
00:35:21
Speaker
Yeah. Hunter, who is also like an attacker, but can also use animals to attack for them. Um, and this game, they did it a little bit differently where you got to pick your Hunter's companion. So I thought this was really cool. So with the Hunter, they have an animal companion. They had that in the first game and now they have this in the second game. This time though, you got to choose which one. So either they would break the enemy based on an elemental move. Yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker
or they would break the enemy based on a physical move. And you had to pick that, which was... Wait, really? Oh, you missed that? You missed that? Yeah. So you had the choice between the jackal dog kind of thing and the owl. The owl could break an enemy based on elemental and the jackal could break an enemy based on weapon attack.
00:36:16
Speaker
Interesting. I did not know I'm I mean, I either I knew and forgot or I just didn't realize but I ended up going with the owl because I was like,
00:36:26
Speaker
the owls cooler, but like on the hunter class, I guess it sort of makes sense to do that anyway. Cause they're not really gonna necessarily have magic immediately or anything like that. So exactly. And that's actually why I went with the owl myself personally, I liked both of them, but I went with the owl personally because it could break magic. And I remembered from the first game, the hunter, not really getting too many magic moves, even with the animals you could capture. So they definitely changed that, I think.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah, Hunter was way less limited. It made the Hunter a little bit more useful in this game. So you have the Hunter, and then you have a merchant. Again, who could hire people to battle for them, as well as a few other moves. They could collect money from... They could collect money from battles and boss battles, which was hilarious, and a mechanic I definitely exploited.
00:37:18
Speaker
when I realized you could steal from bosses. I didn't think you could collect money from bosses, so I didn't try until KJ's like, oh yeah, I collected money from this boss and I was able to afford the boat. And I was like,
00:37:31
Speaker
I mean, that's not why I was able to, I was able to- I mean, you were also because of your main character you chose. I chose the thief and like in these games- You pick the thief, I pick the apothecary. Yeah. And in these games- Because my father's story would be more interesting. It turns out all of, but I won't even go, we haven't started the story yet. Yeah, seriously. But it's just so easy to steal things when you can just,
00:37:58
Speaker
like when your character when your main characters over leveled so it was like I was going into every town and I could steal everything from everybody so it was like I just stole everything and then sold it all and I was like wow this is like this is incredible I did not I didn't buy equipment until like
00:38:20
Speaker
the second to last chapter for most characters because I was able to just take and just steal it all. It was great. And see, I was torn about picking the thief because I had played the first game and in the first game they had this mechanic where they took it out the second game and I'm so freaking happy they took it out. They had a mechanic where you could only open certain chests in the world if you had the thief in your party.
00:38:45
Speaker
And I was very close to picking the thief because I thought they might do that again. And so I was like, borderline and picking them until KJ came into my chat and said, Oh, I picked the thief as my character. Cause KJ started before I did. And so I said, Oh, I don't want to pick the same one as him. Cause I wanted something different.
00:39:02
Speaker
So I ended up going with a character on the other side of the map because where you could see people's first chapters like four of them were on one continent and four like three of them were on the other and one was on like one of the like Eastern Southern continent, right? Right. So you had like so KJ started on the Eastern side continent and so I decided to go with the Western somebody on the Western and
00:39:25
Speaker
And the Apothecary was immediately the one I was interested in, so I picked them. But they took out the mechanic of the game, which makes this quality of life so much better, that you don't have to have, like, there are no chests in the map that you can't open. So, like, you could go around and open any of them, even the special looking ones, you don't need a thief in your party anymore.
00:39:47
Speaker
which I think I get what they were trying to do with that, but it made it where you had to backtrack a lot in the first game if you didn't happen to have the thief in your party. And for me in the first game, I wasn't really vibing with the thief at all. I didn't really like his storyline. I didn't really like him as a character. And so I never really wanted to play with him, but I felt forced to play with him because there were so many chests I was missing out on in the game. They took that mechanic out and I think it was incredibly smart.
00:40:16
Speaker
because it allowed you to have more control over who you were going to have as your main character and not be already at a disadvantage. Except for money. Except for money because I will say having either the thief or the merchant as your first choice in this game
00:40:36
Speaker
Meads, you will get more money. More money or more equipment easier at the start. I was going to say, not necessarily money because the merchant buys. But you're broke upon the carry, who ironically, their story is also them not taking money and just going around and leaving. So I'm like, oh, I'm living the broke dream. I was very broke for a while.
00:41:00
Speaker
in the game and not being able to afford my equipment, but that's fine. But it was still something like you want to go around and collect all eight characters anyway. You want to do everybody's chapter one, get everybody in your party, and then go from there of who's your favorite and whose story you're most interested in. I think that's the best approach to these games because it allows you to kind of experience everybody and then go, okay, whose mechanics do I like, whose story do I like, and that. So you go around, you collect everybody.
00:41:30
Speaker
And then once I started using the merchant and the thief a little bit more, suddenly I was stealing stuff and getting money for bosses and stuff, and then I was okay after that. But yeah, so you start off with those eight. You could pick which one you want.
00:41:47
Speaker
He went with Thief, who was Throne. I went with Apothecary, who was Casti. And yeah, that's kind of how you start it. And everything is broken up into chapters. And so each story is a chapter. They did something really different right at the start, which I thought was really interesting. But it also made it where KJ and I basically left the same character to the end.
00:42:13
Speaker
of our first chapters is because one of the characters, uh, the scholar, Oswald, you have to do two chapters. So you do chapter one and two. You cannot, you cannot stop in the middle and go do somebody else's chapter one and two, but it's because of story.
00:42:35
Speaker
There is a reason it's connected to his storyline because right at the start you read the description that he's in prison. And so that is why. So we both left him to the end because we wanted to do everybody's chapter one and then his was going to be a two-parter anyway. So we left him.
00:42:54
Speaker
to do his two parter and then kind of carry on from there. It's really interesting how they set up the chapters because so everybody does have five chapters, but it is the case that like
00:43:07
Speaker
there's branching things. So they actually allow you to say like, oh, if you have to go to A and B, this is all chapter two, right? But then the person's final chapter might end up just being a chapter four. So I thought it was really cool how they did that because it was like everybody still got the same amount of chapters and the level
00:43:29
Speaker
um the level curve was still similar like for everybody's chapters but it was the case that like if you went in saying okay i'm gonna do every chapter one then every chapter two then every chapter three like that it would be the case where you would actually end up finishing some people's stories before you even unlock the final chapter of some of the other of some of the other people um
00:43:56
Speaker
And yeah, I think I think one of the other interesting things that they did was, even after so after you get all the characters, like you at that point, you know how all of their specials work and everything. But they also added what they called ex skills. Now, one of the ex skills you unlock later in the game for everybody,
00:44:13
Speaker
But one of them, you go around finding different alters to actually unlock the skill. So what you do is you have to have the person in the party, you find their altar, and then they get granted this skill. And I thought that was something that was really cool. And they did they did something similar with the
00:44:31
Speaker
the class system too, where like in the first game you have optional classes and everybody could only be set to one, right? So I started with Ophelia in the first game, who was the cleric, and if I wanted to make her a thief, I could make her a thief, but then none of my other characters could be a thief
00:44:52
Speaker
as their secondary class. In this game, what they did was they made it like a job board license system type thing where you found the different guilds or whatever that could give out the licenses.
00:45:07
Speaker
and you basically go there, you get one for free, and then there's some task or something that you have to do. So some of them, it's the case where you have to, like for the merchant, you just have to give them a bunch of money.
00:45:24
Speaker
Like, you basically buy the licenses, right? But with, say, the warrior, you might have to do some other
00:45:38
Speaker
some other thing where you have to like fight a certain number of character, a certain number of battles. And then another one would have been like, oh, you have to get these certain items and through this quest, through some random quest lines, some random optional dungeons. So they really kind of opened it up to say like to allow you to basically say, oh, if you want to make your if you want to make thrown a and Casti, uh,
00:46:06
Speaker
say clerics, you can. But you just have to make sure you have the licenses unlocked. And so there were three for everything outside of the secret classes, which you can only add one person to. And it follows a very like the same patterns as octopath one, where like, you get skill points and job points and all that stuff. And you can kind of
00:46:27
Speaker
use those to unlock different skills. So it definitely sort of built on the original Octopath 1, but each character had their own sort of skills and some of them were like the skills individually are passive, but the EX skills are actually abilities that you're using in battle that are taking up like some of your mana and stuff like that. And
00:46:49
Speaker
I will say I definitely abused some of those ex skills. Like some of those ex skills were absolutely incredible. It made for pushing again, the exploration, which I thought the first one also did, too, because they had and Meech made a really great statement in chat. K.J. was meaning alters, as in like you found shrines, basically like pray at an altar.
00:47:16
Speaker
Exactly which they kind of took that mechanic a little bit from the first game and then they adjusted it why you were going to why you were going to those spots instead and so it made it for like map exploration but it also made it for town exploration and stuff like that too because a lot of the licenses and stuff.
00:47:34
Speaker
Sometimes we're in town, sometimes we're near towns. And so it made you explore more and kind of explore each of the maps a little bit more and try to take paths and stuff like that when you looked at it and go, oh, if I go left, I'm going to go to the town. But if I go south, weird. There's this weird indicator on the map. Let's go see what that is.
00:47:54
Speaker
And so sometimes you'd find optional dungeons. Sometimes you would find the shrines, aka the altars. Sometimes you would find the licenses and stuff like that. So it really made for map exploration in a sense that
00:48:10
Speaker
when you got to that area, you could see on the map kind of, okay, the town is over here, but there's these weird symbols elsewhere. And so you kind of like tried to figure out how to get to that symbol. And some of them like were like behind a waterfall, like things like that, where it was like, it offered a little bit more explanation, but also made it so that it wasn't like impossible to find things unless you just like. You know why those showed up, right?
00:48:38
Speaker
I actually don't, but. Okay. So those shrines showed up. So if you found the guild and talked to the guild, they would tell you, they would give you like. Oh, they tell you. Oh, yeah. Okay. To where the different shrines are. So I didn't realize I only ended up finding one guild before I found the shrines. I found all the shrines and then found the guilds. Um,
00:49:07
Speaker
And so yeah, as you talk to them, there's like three different options. One of them is like just a general conversation. I think one of them is how to get the other licenses and then one of them is how to find the shrine. So if you talk to them, it basically like triggers the, yeah.
00:49:24
Speaker
Okay, that's kind of cool. So there you go. It gave you a reason to find the licenses and explore the towns a little bit because a lot of the times they were around there or in and around the town. And then they would help you find the shrines and then you find those. And then you could find the extra EX kills and stuff like that later on. So they really wanted you to explore even more in this game, especially giving you support.
00:49:49
Speaker
at some point um in one of uh in the merchant's pathway is where you can unlock the boat so like there's so many mechanics and stuff like that in this game and then of course with like the battles and stuff like that they did it like the first one where when you were in a boss fight the pixel of the boss was massive compared to your tiny little sprites which really i think is really such a cool mechanic because it really
00:50:16
Speaker
Emphasizes of like your enemies were always bigger than you but like, you know relatively decent sized but then the bosses were generally like Massive and you got to see this crazy detailed pixel art of every one of the bosses and whether they optional bosses or the chapter bosses and I think that was really really cool because They they took that mechanic from the first game But in this game they even had some of the bosses where they switched
00:50:47
Speaker
like positions. So like they might be looking at you with like a sword and they're like about to attack you. And then they swap the position. One, one I can think of right away as one of Hikari's quest lines. I think they did that in the first one too. Did they do that? Cause I remember they do it a couple times, but like not as frequently as this game. Like they took that from the first game and then they were like, let's do this more often.
00:51:09
Speaker
This game definitely had a lot more of like the stance changes. And yeah, they did different stance changes. They also did different like, like different kind of forms and stuff, which they did in the first game, but just not as many. Yep.
00:51:26
Speaker
Which I thought they pushed it more, but they pushed it more. And I think it's because they already had a game that was tried and true. People loved it. It did well. So they were able to bring in more people, expand the team, expand the game. So like it definitely felt like now they had more people to like assist. And so they could do a lot of the extra extras or the more extra stuff like that, where it's like,
00:51:52
Speaker
It doesn't really take it away if it doesn't, but it's cool when you're playing it and you go, okay, that's cool. It's something where you're like, okay, this is just adding a thing. This would not have been a negative if they didn't do it, but it was cool that they thought about it and they were like, hey, we want to expand on this a little bit more.
00:52:11
Speaker
But yeah, so we've talked about the mechanics, we've talked about the characters. Let's talk, before we jump into the storylines and talking more maybe getting into the spoilery stuff, I wanna know, did you run into any glitches in this game at all? Like any parts where you had something freeze or glitch or stutter or frame rate or? The game crashed on me one time, but it was,
00:52:40
Speaker
I attribute that to switch hardware and not the game. OK, because I did remember you mentioning it crashed, but I thought it was more of like a switch issue that it was definitely switch hardware. It wasn't like I didn't I didn't run into any like frame rate issues. I played this game docked and undocked like I didn't have any problems, but I did run into a crash once. I'm trying to remember where I think it was in the snow area.
00:53:08
Speaker
So I have a theory, and I think this game might be getting towards the end of being able to be on the Switch. Yeah, so my theory of this is like, I didn't have any issues or glitches of any kind. I didn't end up having a crash or anything like that myself, but I definitely felt like
00:53:32
Speaker
this game was pushing the limits of the switch in terms of like just how expansive it was over the like the first one, just how like more stuff you could do more things. And I'm not surprised it might have had it, but I agree with you that I think it's more it's getting towards the end of the being able to be on the switch. Like thinking about it, if they would do a third game, if they tried to expand even further, I don't know if the switch would be able to like
00:54:02
Speaker
They might have to do it in two different carts or something like that. I feel like they're getting towards it. I know it's pixels and stuff like that, but it's still a lot of VFX work. It's still a lot of post-processing. It's still a lot of with the day and night shift even as well. That is still stuff that's going to be heavy on it, and it is the Unreal Engine as well.
00:54:24
Speaker
mind blowing to me because when I went to school, I learned how to use the Unreal Engine. And I want to say this, and I hope my teachers hear this podcast at some point. They told me it would never be possible to do like pixel sort of stuff with the Unreal Engine.
00:54:41
Speaker
You have to do the hyper-realistic, that's what the Unreal Engine is for. If you want to do cutesy stuff for hand textures or stuff like that, go to Unity, yada, yada. And now we're looking at the Unreal Engine, and we're looking at Octopath as being on that, but utilizing it so well. One, it's crazy how well the Engine has come all these years, but also two, it's just like,
00:55:03
Speaker
You told me this would never be possible, you liars. I'd be really interested to see how the game played on the PS5, because the game is out on the PS5 as well. I'd be really interested to see how it played on the PS5 in comparison, but everything that I heard, I know definitely had a friend that was playing on the PS5 and they had no problem, but I think everybody else is playing on the Switch.
00:55:31
Speaker
I think that actually, you're right. I think we are at the point where if they came out with a third game, PS5 is fine. PS5, it's got a long way to go before I think it'll be an issue on that. But on the switch, I think it would definitely be.
00:55:45
Speaker
I think we're getting towards the end of this game being on the Switch unless there's a significant upgrade to the Switch itself. I didn't have any issues, but the few people I've heard say there was an issue or two have all been on the Switch. I haven't heard anything on the PlayStation 5 at all, and I haven't heard really anything. I think it's on Steam too.
00:56:12
Speaker
It is on Steam, yep. Yeah, yeah. So I haven't heard really anything about that version either. So yeah, so it was one of those things where it's like, one, I'm just mind-blowing that it's on the Unreal Engine and how much that engine has come along. And me trying to do particle effects and pixel style way back, like, freaking, oh, god, how long ago was I in school? 14 years.
00:56:38
Speaker
Why would you hear something like that? I don't know a long time ago. Listen, like I was trying to do cool shit like that and seeing like them be able to do that with this engine and just like be able to build it to what they want. It's just incredible. But yeah, I think it's getting to the two with how much they added to this game. Holy crap. Like I keep thinking as we're talking more stuff to say that they've added and expanded on this Octopath Traveler universe that they, they literally like.
00:57:08
Speaker
They've put so much on
Technical Performance and Visuals
00:57:10
Speaker
it. And so I think yeah, I think it might be it might be pushing towards the end of the switch life cycle unless unless people are playing I mean like unless they do like a new switch console or something like that, but But ps5 yeah, I don't see it having any issue on that for a while. Yeah, definitely not but um
00:57:34
Speaker
Yeah. So other than that, yeah, I don't think I, I didn't have any glitches or any firmer to choose. One thing that I wanted to talk about, um, was just like the entire sort of like sound profile of the game. It's from OST to voice acting. Like I think it definitely, I mean, the voice acting was pretty good. Like I thought the voice acting was good. I thought they, the fact that they had most of, they had not only the main characters, but even some of like, well, I guess.
00:58:03
Speaker
Hmm, this is kind of a spoiler because I don't wanna, they had the main characters and side-ish characters voice acted. And I say side-ish for a specific reason, but I'm gonna, I'm not, I think you know what I'm alluding to, but I'm not gonna say anything, but yeah, so they voice acted quite a lot of characters.
00:58:29
Speaker
And yeah, it was it was very, very, very solid, like having having those having all those characters. And if you didn't want the voice acting, you didn't have to, because they also added like a fast forward feature. And with the fast forward feature, it was the case where.
00:58:48
Speaker
You could you can either like autoplay and have the voice acting you could or you can have it fast forward where it just went through and just had the dialogue so i thought it was really cool that i.
00:59:04
Speaker
was able to kind of just pick and choose. And so when there were stories I didn't care about, which I only actually didn't care about one of the stories, it's allowed me to just play through all the dialogue fast and get through it. But then when I was in a story that I did care about, I could hear the voice acting and hear everything. And I thought that was fantastic. And in terms of the music, like, I mean, it's occupied. The music was, I would say the music
00:59:32
Speaker
in this game was equally as good as the music in the first game. I think they're they're both very good. The music is is just it very much encapsulates the environment. And I think it's it's just with one particular track holding supreme for Polly.
00:59:49
Speaker
is the one I've, okay, don't give me that attitude, all right? I love that smooth jazz, okay? That saxophone hits hard. And the track I'm talking about is Partishio's theme that played a lot through his chapters. And or anytime there was like, where they, like the party was like pumped up and determined to follow through with their goals. That song was also played, but it was a track that I was just like, I fell in love with it instantly. And I would just like sit there and listen to it and not
01:00:19
Speaker
the story just so that I could listen to it. But yeah, I would also agree that the OST is fantastic. I would say yeah, it's like they did great in Octopod Traveler 2 with the OST. Octopod Traveler 2 also hits hard with the OST like there's some really great tracks.
01:00:36
Speaker
And they really set the mood well with their music. But one thing that I feel like I love that Octopath does that a lot of other games might not do is they have a lot of
01:00:50
Speaker
support sound effects that work really really well like where the character like puts out their arm and you hear as if they're like clothes is shuffling against their body and it like you hear that or where when they head nod it like it sounds like they're like clothes are like moving and stuff like that so like
01:01:09
Speaker
There's a lot of little subtle sound effects that they took from the first game and they put it in the second game and they added some extra like little bits in there that really tie you into like Like it really pulls you into the game more Because I hear some arguments of people being like oh, it's a sprite based game I'm not gonna get into this because it's not realistic or whatever and
01:01:31
Speaker
And I get that there's a whole mantra of people who won't play anything that isn't hyper-realistic. But one thing I thought Octopath does that pulls you in more than some of the sprite-based games or even of other companies and stuff like that, doing the pixels or even the more hand-painted texture stuff, is that they really use the sound effects to also pull you in more.
01:01:57
Speaker
which I thought was really, really cool. Every time the character would head nod, it would make a noise, or they would shuffle their hand out of their pocket and put it out to grab an item. They have all these little tiny sound effects and stuff like that, which I thought was really cool. That added with the music and added with the voice acting, and they had more voice acting in this game.
01:02:20
Speaker
So a lot of the game, at least with the main plot points and stuff like that, a lot of that is voice acted. Like you said, there's side-ish characters that also have voices. And I thought a lot of the voices suited the characters more this time around.
01:02:39
Speaker
like, like O'Shet was a more bubbly, bubbly kind of character being like, I like meat and like being more like high energy and stuff like that. And they had a great voice actress for her for that. Um, they had like Osvald who was like, you know, in prison and tortured and had like, not tortured, but like, I mean, well, kind of.
01:02:59
Speaker
it is the right word. Yeah, which isn't a spoiler because I mean, that's his rate at the start. You like that. Really? You literally read it. He like the rate at the start, you read different characters profiles. His was that he was free. He was he was in prison for murdering his wife and daughter. And then you kind of go through that storyline. But yeah, so his voice, okay, his voice actor,
01:03:25
Speaker
is the same voice actor who plays Sino and Genshin Impact. And hearing the differences in the voice was incredible to me, still recognizing it was the same voice actor. And that like in Sino and Genshin Impact, he's a proper, he's like, he's kind of like a guard. He's like the head of the guard kind of thing with the mantra and stuff. And he's very like, you know, I am gonna do this thing kind of thing. And he's very like prim and proper. Oswald.
01:03:53
Speaker
It's very scuffy, very like grubby, growly voice. And like, he's like, Harvey stuff like that. So he's very like gruffy and growly. Yes. I had to throw the name in there.
01:04:12
Speaker
And it's like night and day with the voice actor. He did incredible to pull these two different, very different characters off and be able to, I still like, I was like, okay, that's his voice. But I'm like, he's done a really good job at doing that. So like, Throwday's voice was really good. She had more like the smoother voice that like Primrose kind of had in the first one. But I felt like she, when she had to put it on motion,
01:04:39
Speaker
to like give that like seed of like, oh my god, I'm having this thing happen. It came out really well too. So I feel like I feel like all the voice actors and actresses like Partishio. Oh my god, I felt like I kept trying to I kept trying to talk like Partishio.
01:04:55
Speaker
Oh no. I kept like trying to talk to him and I keep teasing KJ because KJ wears a lot of fedoras on his channel that he needs to get a white one with a little yellow brim so that it's for partition because that's what partition wears. Always trying to make me stop doing these.
01:05:14
Speaker
But yeah, so all the characters' voices and stuff like that tied in. So when you have the music, you have the sound effects, and you have the voices, it all pulls you in. All of it was just, it came together really well, this one. Whereas I found in the first one, there's a few disconnects in a few areas. Generally, the voices and the sound effects and stuff like that. But I mean, they've approved it in this one, I feel.
01:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, definitely brought me more. For the record, I recognize zero voice actors or voice actresses. I specifically asked this question so Polly could go off on a rant. I specifically was like, okay, we're going to talk about the VA and
01:06:03
Speaker
like Polly will have her literally wrote to KJ and capital letters that it's my boy Sino because Sino is one of my favorite characters in Genshin right now and I was like I recognized him instantly just because I've like heard like I really like hearing that voice so I could hear it and I was just like I don't know
01:06:24
Speaker
I was like going on a tangent about these voice actors and actresses like, uh, sure. Okay. So I have switching gears. I have four questions for you and they're going to go, they're all regarding like character, story, gameplay, whatever.
01:06:44
Speaker
Okay, do you want to we want to say that it's spoiler now or do we want to know this is it's it's more so like the first two are specifically just like your More so like what you did and like game preference. Okay, so the first one I'm curious What do you remember the order you collected the characters in?
01:07:05
Speaker
Yes. So I got, I think I can remember this right off the top of my head. So I had Cassidy. Yep. Um, I,
01:07:16
Speaker
I went and got, so I had Cassie, I got Partishio, I got Agnea, the dancer, I got, and I got Hikari. So Hikari was the last on that segment. And then I went over to the, the Eastern province and I got O'Shet.
01:07:42
Speaker
Then I got Thronae, then I got Temenos, then I got Oswald. So Oswald was the last one. Gotcha. Okay, so I went, I started with Thronae, I went up to get Temenos, I made sure, I checked on Oswald, saw that I had to do the chapter twos, then went down and I got Ochet, then Casti, then Hikari,
01:08:09
Speaker
then, um, Partitio, then Agnya, then I got Oswald. Okay. I was just curious, like, and so the reason I asked that was because what was your main party? I'm curious, like, if the order that you chose- Oh, that's right. We didn't talk about who our main party was at all throughout the, that, that is something that we left kind of secret, didn't we? True. Yeah. I had no idea who your main party was. I mean, I posted mine in Discord, but
01:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, for me, I started out with a party for a little while up until chapter three, and then I changed them over. Interesting. I think it's because I started bonding with certain characters a little bit more, so I swapped them in and out. My main party right at the start that I really liked is because I really, really liked Partishio. I had Castee,
01:08:59
Speaker
Partishio, Hikari, and O'Shet. Interesting. That was like my main party, and it was kind of...
01:09:08
Speaker
destructive because Ochete and Hikari were like crazy damage dealers for me. So I was just like Partichio was just kind of like, he was getting me money. I will be real with that one. He was getting me money. I liked him as a character. I was a broke, I was a broke Polly wanting to buy a boat.
01:09:28
Speaker
And I needed the money. And then I found I started to switch around a little bit. And I think my end party, except for the end boss, which we'll talk about that a little later because I restructured things a little bit, my end party was Kasty. I actually kept Kasty in the party because I kept using her as a buffer.
01:09:54
Speaker
So with her concoctions and stuff like that, with her stuff, I could raise the BP level of everybody. Yep. I could raise all their attack power. Um, I could make them heal SP after every turn, and then I can make it hit all characters that I could strengthen it. So that was like one of my go-to moves all the time with Castee, where everybody had their battle points back. Everybody was like buffed.
01:10:23
Speaker
Everybody was like gaining SP after return because Osvold, oh my God, kept stealing everything. So then when I got Osvold, I was using him more. I had Cassie, I had Osvold, I had Hikari, or Ochett, because I never needed both of them at the same party. So I would switch the back and forth, whichever one I wanted to use, and or if I was doing a chapter quest with one of them.
01:10:46
Speaker
And then the fourth member actually ended up being either Thronae, I use Thronae sometimes, and Temenos sometimes. Interesting.
01:11:01
Speaker
Temenos was kind of nice because he had to like I would put like Osvold as Cleric and Temenos. Both of them could do Sacred Shield so they could like cut the attack so then they don't get there so that even though they're both kind of squishy I made it so that they would like you know cut the attack by half if I knew a big attack was coming so like but I also really liked Thronae and I liked using her as like a sabotager.
01:11:26
Speaker
So, like, I would, like, lower their attack, lower their defense. Oh, you did that. You took... That's so interesting. Thronรฉ was so different for me. Wow. All right, so who is your, like, main party? And... My party throughout the entire game was Thronรฉ, Oswald, Hikari, Casti. The entire game. Like, those four, because I used Casti the same way. I would... It was BP up. Um, it was BP up.
01:11:57
Speaker
SP up or SP heal
01:12:00
Speaker
to everybody. Actually, it was to BP up SP heal strength and strength. And so you got the two up and I just have to turn like and then what I would do is I would so end game Hikari has an ability that is pretty fucking broken because that shield like I was doing the same thing. I was using the protection shield, but I I just had Oswald as cleric. And I was using that for a while. And then I really I found
01:12:31
Speaker
that there is a, cause Hikari can learn skills. Based on when he, after he like battle somebody, there's a skill where he can grant invincibility.
01:12:40
Speaker
Oh, I heard there's a move. I never got that move. What I started doing was I started maxing. I started, I think I had Cassie as backup dancer. And I think the dancer ability allows one of your skills to apply to everybody. So I would max out Hikari, cast that. So I had four turns of invincibility, and then go ham.
01:13:04
Speaker
Oh my goodness. That was like you spamming invincible mood. Like when you bought invincible mood in multiple turns in a row. I never got that ability. I kind of broke the game with that. And that was actually really clutch. And it worked out because
01:13:26
Speaker
I think that's only available after you get some of the later chapters. And I beat Hikari's story first, before I even beat Throne's story. So I had that, and I was basically, when I got that, I was able to kind of just walk some of the stuff. It wasn't even a challenge. And yeah, everybody, it's funny now, because in my current, in my final save, oh, Chet's actually my highest level character.
01:13:55
Speaker
because just because of like how my grinding worked out and also because of the fact that like some of the monsters that you can capture with her are actually super broken. Like some of the extra. Yeah, they are. Oh my goodness. I don't even know. There's the best place to train in the game has a monster. It's actually it's actually a boss from the first game.
01:14:22
Speaker
It is a boss from the first game that you can capture. And I didn't get that one. I don't think it hits like six times for 10,000 damage or like it breaks the if you break the damage on it, it hits six times for over the damage limit.
01:14:38
Speaker
Oh my goodness. I never got that one. I thought O'Shet was broken already. And now you're telling me that and I'm like, Oh, I never got that. I never got that. I was able to use that and some other monsters that she had to that's how that's how I ended up like
01:14:55
Speaker
beating some of the more hard fights. But yeah, and the thing about that monster that you can capture is you can't capture it as a boss, I don't think, but then it has a percentage chance to show up as an encounter in that area.
01:15:13
Speaker
Oh, you can then, was it like an optional dungeon? So maybe I fought it. I just didn't know. Yeah. So it's, there's one, okay. So slight spoilers. Um, cause we're talking about, I want to know which dungeon this is because I want to know if I did it or not.
01:15:29
Speaker
There is a dungeon you can only get to if you you have to guide somebody like before somebody to like allure them or whatever and have them you have to have seven basically you have to have seven people in your party and then you go to this area a bridge collapses leaving you with a ladder to go down and that's the best place to train in the game.
01:15:55
Speaker
Oh, I never found that probably because I never had like I kept forgetting to allure and hire people. Yeah. I like these broken mechanics of this game that would have made things easier for me. I kept forgetting to do that except for Partishio. I had somebody in the party that made it so I collect more money from.
01:16:15
Speaker
But that is that's like one of the that's that's the biggest training area. And if you go to the area without enough people, it just looks like a bridge.
01:16:26
Speaker
But if you go there with all of the people, it collapses. Oh, okay. Cool. That's cool. See, now I want to go back and like find these things and stuff like that. You're making me want to go. Well, I've already told KJ that I was going to go do the stuff at Octopath one, which is going to be a little bit, little bit hard go backwards, but honestly, honestly, if you play to first,
01:16:52
Speaker
playing the optional stuff of one is gonna be a pain. Or if you've played two at all, like the optional stuff in one, you end.
01:17:01
Speaker
You end Octopath 1 at a certain level, and then you kind of have to grind out like 20, 25 levels to get to a point where you're gonna be able to do the secret boss. And Octopath Traveler 2, they do a much better job at giving you ways to grind and level up that are... It's easier to grind and level up in 2 over 1. There's... Honestly, I don't know if you found it, but there's actually one way that's really broken.
01:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, so like so so he he was telling me about like the one of the one of these things that he could one of these guys that he could like Do it like attack or have in your party or something like that where you get like for experience and stuff So it's one of these things where it's like it's
01:17:47
Speaker
This is why, and this is one of the main reasons why I say if you want, if you want the, the bit of like the, the things that connect to the second game from the first game, if you want to know that, please play the first game before the second game, just because it's going to be really painful for me to go backwards now because they do a lot of quality of life upgrades in the second game versus the first game.
01:18:14
Speaker
even like there's so many things that they they've improved that going back to the first one is going to be a little rough for me even just on the characters alone because I love the characters so freaking much in the all but one in the second game and everything so that's what I told KJ that I do still want to like go back to the first one and do it but I'm also like partly thinking I might watch
01:18:40
Speaker
the thing in the first one and then just do it in the second one because I like just watch it and then I can fill in any gaps for you that's
01:18:51
Speaker
Yeah. And so I'm just like, I love this game so much. And now here, there's even more things that I could go find stuff like that from KJ's cause KJ a hundred percent of the game. And so I, I, I did, I did all the chapter quest. I did the final, I did the final boss and stuff like that. I did some of the side quests.
Storylines and Character Dynamics
01:19:12
Speaker
Um, uh, I think I might've done maybe maybe about half of them.
01:19:17
Speaker
I found all of these. I think there's 70 or 75 side quests. I have a spreadsheet. Yeah, I think I did around 30 of them. Yeah, I have a spreadsheet with all of it because I was like, there was like the haunted, like the weird, creepy mansion. There was no music. OK, that freaked me out. So it was like that was just it was just sound. So you go into this building and it's just like the music cuts and you're like, OK.
01:19:44
Speaker
And then you just hear creaking boards. They're trying to set it up to be like spooky. And I was like, okay, this is actually kind of cool and freaky at the same time. But there's a quest line that you could do. One of the side quests pulls you to there and stuff like that. So yeah, so I did start, but I didn't 100% it myself. But do we want to start talking about the spoilery stuff?
01:20:11
Speaker
Or do we, do you have more questions? I have more questions, but it's going to step into spoilers. So, um, who's your favorite character? I'll just ask. Okay. So this one's hard to pick one. Gotta pick one. I'm putting you on the spot where. KJ's doing it to me again. If anybody's like following our podcasts and stuff, KJ. No honorable mentions. We need favorite character. No.
01:20:38
Speaker
favorite character. It's funny because I'm wearing ears right now. She's not actually the favorite. She's up there though. I would say, oh, favorite character for me was both based on their, their storyline. Okay. Being super, like super attached to it, super into it. And then also just like them as a character, them as a mechanic character. I think it's going to be Casti for me.
01:21:04
Speaker
Okay. And Cassie is the apothecary for anybody that is. Cassie is the apothecary. Her whole storyline was holy shit. And then for me, and again, it happened again because an Octopath Traveler one, everybody told me to pick Primrose. And then Primrose's storyline ended up being my favorite. And then this one, I was like, I picked Cassie and Cassie ended up being my favorite. So I don't know if it's like,
01:21:33
Speaker
But their storylines were both so good. And I liked Fastie as a character. I liked her gameplay mechanics very much. I liked the improvements that they did with the apothecary. And I just like her, like she's just wanting to help people. And she just, she's kind of like the mom of the group. So she keeps like Ochete in line and like, there's a, there's a scene. There's like, there's a couple of scenes and stuff like that where Oswald mistaken her for his wife.
01:22:03
Speaker
And like, there's some little funny mechanics and stuff like that with that. So she starts trying to act like his wife. And like, you know, so she has like the humorous side and she has like the playful side, but she's also like, okay, like I want to help people. I want to make sure everybody's there. And she's like, she just wants to be there for everybody and be there to support them and carry them through every one of their things. And she's so uplifting to every, like all of like, so they did the same in the first game and second game where you could do banter. So travel.
01:22:31
Speaker
But they did more of it in this game, I found. And it was where it was like applied to the stories as well. Yeah. And then applied to the stories and the characters talk to each other in battle, which is great. It doesn't matter who your battle party is. They'll like support each other. So like you'll break an enemy and Hikari will be like, great job, Cassie.
01:22:52
Speaker
Like they're talking to each other so it feels very connected this time around where it felt very disconnected before and so even all the travel banter and stuff like that that you could do throughout the game there's more of it and it's relevant to what's currently going on or where you're situated it so sometimes when you go in a bar travel banter will come up because they're all drinking at the bar stuff like that.
01:23:13
Speaker
So, um, yeah, with Cassie's everything that I, I kept in covering with Cassie, both her story, uh, how she talked to other characters going through what they were going through and how she supported them. I was like, she's my favorite. Absolutely. I loved everything about her. And like, there was other characters I also loved, but she was the package for me. Like I always had her at my party. She was level like 69 by the end of the game. Was her story your favorite too? Then you would say.
01:23:44
Speaker
I think, I think hers, I think hers was one of my favorites. I can, I can really argue. Ooh. Cause like her story was really, really good, but I could almost argue there was one slightly better. Okay. My next question was going to be, what was your favorite story? So I was curious, like, what story would you say was better?
01:24:12
Speaker
Honestly, and this is going to be a wild card. No, it's not. I'm ready for it.
01:24:18
Speaker
I actually, and I didn't, funny thing is I didn't even think I would like this character. I know, I know what you're gonna say. At the very heart. It's Tevenos. Yep, I knew it, I knew it. I like Tevenos's, Tevenos is basically Sherlock Holmes, and I was freaking out the entire time when I saw the reference where they were going with him. And his story ended up being very slightly
01:24:44
Speaker
better for me than Castee's. And it also, I found like even like the end sequence and stuff where like it was starting to connect and stuff tied in a little bit more. Whereas Castee's like, and this is a little bit of spoiler. I'm just going to warn people right now. Castee's like the main person like towards the end that she like kind of goes after. I was kind of like,
01:25:09
Speaker
I thought I was more pulled in, and I think, yeah, I was heart pulled in both of those stories, but I think Tamanos has ended up being slightly, just slightly more interesting to me. And I think it was a lot of how they set him up as a character.
01:25:32
Speaker
And right away, I wasn't, I will admit it. I was not a Temenos fan. And I told KJ that I was like, I don't know how I feel about this guy. Um, like, uh, I really, really don't know how I'm gonna like progress with this character because I was like, I was on the fence with him and I wasn't a huge fan of the dancer. So I was like, those were like the two. And then I did Temenos chapter two and I was like, Oh no.
01:25:57
Speaker
I love Temenos. And then I got like pulled through after that. It's so funny because I think I agree with you. I think Temenos had the best story. I think Temenos had the best story, but it was not my favorite. My favorite story was Hikari's story, and that's because like I will always love a like
01:26:26
Speaker
I mean, I'll always love a good, like, oh my goodness, you were betrayed by these people. Time to get revenge, type story.
01:26:34
Speaker
I will always love, like, I will always love the sort of like redemption, like, I'm coming back to do this, like, do what's right and stuff like that. Like, I really enjoyed Temino's, uh, Hikari's story. Like, I thought Hikari had my favorite story, even though I do say, I will say, like... I was going to say it was going to be either Hikari's or Thronai's for you, but I think Hikari had a little bit more of the, the getting, like, basically taking his kingdom back.
01:27:03
Speaker
It pulled me in more. I think Hikari's story definitely pulled me in more, whereas I think, like I said, Temenos had the best story in terms of consistency and in terms of there weren't any ups and downs. For me,
01:27:22
Speaker
I didn't really care too much about Ochete's story. I didn't really care too much about Ag- I didn't care too- I didn't care at all about Agnya's story. Throna's story and Casti's story I loved, but they both kind of fell off towards the end for me. And then
01:27:40
Speaker
like, Temenos' story. For me, it was between Temenos and... Oh, and Oswald's story, I think, was also good. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's true. Like, I would argue, like, for me, yeah, I think story-wise, I think Temenos and Oswald were close. I think I just like... I think I liked Temenos' a tiny little bit more because I kind of predicted the twistedness of Oswald's.
01:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, Oswald, it was very odd. I think it was, that's what I didn't like as much as that it was very obvious. But yeah, I think my favorite story was definitely Hikari's. I won't get into too many spoilers, but even going through to tie everything in, I thought it was just great. My favorite character was Thronรฉ though. I'm so glad that I started with Thronรฉ. So you had a similar thing to me. We had our favorite character, but we had our favorite story and it was different.
01:28:30
Speaker
I'm so glad I started with throwing it like I even though again, we're so rich, but well, that too, like that was great. I, I probably, I had well over a mill in my entire time playing this game, like well over a million gold. But the biggest thing for me was I really enjoyed her like
01:28:55
Speaker
as a character in her inner dialogue, her monologue, all of that stuff. She would go off and they did a good job of having each of the characters kind of talk through their thoughts and stuff like that. And I thought it was great. Hers was just so powerful because of where she was coming from in her story and how she was sort of like,
01:29:15
Speaker
a thief, but not by choice. Like she was just, she ended up being sort of taken in. And so it was one of these things where it was like, oh.
01:29:26
Speaker
this is why this is the case and again like the sort of plot twisty stuff that they did I wasn't a big I wasn't the biggest fan of like I was like oh that's pretty interesting and I saw how it tied into the stories later on and stuff but in terms of just her as a character and how she interacted with the other characters and just like how she
01:29:48
Speaker
process as a pair was very interesting. It was great. It was great. Like they played off each other so well and they're both sarcastic. So like they were like being so sarcastic that I was like, okay, this is fun. Like so dynamic.
01:30:08
Speaker
Yeah. And this is something, this is a bit spoilerally. So we're going to start talking about spoiler topics and stuff like that, because I think the next question is if we're going to start connecting a little bit more into spoilery stuff. So one thing that they added with this game, which I thought was brilliant, was that they added not only that you have chapter quests,
01:30:26
Speaker
But you have co-op chapter quests where two characters kind of go off and do their thing together. And they paired up some of the most unlikely pairings that I would think of. But then they worked really well. Yeah. I think the only one where I found it fell a little bit short was the Partishio and Oswald.
01:30:47
Speaker
Really? But at the same time I could see why those two like because like partition was like trying to like the better the world that's his whole kind of like storyline and Oswald is the scholar so he has all these connections to scholars and yada yada if he was and or is and so I saw like I kind of saw it or whatever and it connecting and everything towards the end but for me like
01:31:13
Speaker
It was funny because they paired up certain characters together that I I didn't expect and then I said all this is great and that thrown a and tamanos was a great example of that I was like who think it's like when when I unlocked the first one the first one I unlocked was castee and oh shit
01:31:32
Speaker
Oh, and I kind of got it because I was like right away I saw them how they talk to each other battle and it's some travel banter because I had a chat in the party. I was like, okay, they're gonna do like a mom and daughter sort of thing.
01:31:44
Speaker
Like I knew, I knew right away. Like I knew what I was going to be. I got Tevino's throne a first. So did you, did you really? So when I was thinking who is Tevino is going to be with and I thought, Oh, Thomas is going to be with asphalt. That's what I thought. And then I was like, who is thrown a going to be with? And I kind of laughed and I had this funny picture of thrown a and Agnya together. I know that would have been awful.
01:32:07
Speaker
It would have been awful, but it would also have been like, can we make Agnia more, more like, like maybe, maybe her, her like side co-op thing I would be interested in. But no, they put Frone and Taminos together and their story also being connected into the over connecting main story. I was like,
01:32:32
Speaker
Holy shit. Like I was like on the edge of my seat wanting to unlock that next chapter after I finished the first one. Because I was like, these two work so well together. And Temenos was very not the typical cleric. So Ophelia in the first game was very typical cleric, like soft spoken, wants to be good guide people. Temenos was like, may the light protect you, I guess. I don't know. What am I supposed to say? He was very much doubting.
01:33:02
Speaker
Like he wasn't because I think a lot of times when you think of a cleric you think they have like sort of this religious like strong religious ties and stuff like like strong ties to their religion or their faith or whatever. Temenos was just like
01:33:15
Speaker
man, this might be, he's like, he was very much like, I don't know. And he's also like, I need to challenge everything. And I need to challenge these beliefs and I need to challenge these directions. He was also very sarcastic. So he like, he was just like, Oh, very good. That's, you know, like you did great today. And it's like, are you, are you, are you being sarcastic? It's like,
01:33:36
Speaker
oh so you cut on like he was very like like he's just such a well-built character that him pairing with thronae who was also like she she's gone through some shit and like you you hear her storyline and everything and she and her storyline is very very serious and so her and tabernos paired together where tabernos is trying to like
01:34:00
Speaker
like kind of be sassy and she's like sassy right back that I'm like she's just giving the punches right back and then he's like oh and he like looks at her as like a worthy opponent kind of kind of it just ends up blending so well together that I was like I freaking love these two together like I would play a whole game yeah they were they were a solid pair
01:34:26
Speaker
Like if they make DLC where like, I could be like, tabernos at throw day going off on an adventure, I'd be slowed down for that. Don't add DLC to Octopath. No, I'm teasing. I'm teasing, obviously. Make the game complete. That's all I want. It's great.
01:34:43
Speaker
But yeah, give us an anime. Give us an anime of Tevenos, no. But yeah, they did a really, really great job. And I warmed up to Tevenos really quickly, and then doing that was great. And unfortunately, I wasn't super into Hikari and Agnias. Because it wasn't good.
01:35:05
Speaker
like anything connected to Agnea just wasn't my jam. And I'm going to say this right out to like our listeners and stuff. I know there's Agnea fans. Agnea is the, I'm going to be an idol trope type that anime and some games will have. And
01:35:24
Speaker
And that does it for people. And that's great. Her storyline is entirely the idol storyline. She's just a sweetheart. And that's her whole kind of thing. And if you like those kind of stories, you're going to love Agnia.
01:35:42
Speaker
My thing is, is I'm not super big on idol anime. I'm not like, I know I watch magical girl anime and stuff like that. And I've said that a lot on the channel, but like idol anime is a different thing. We're like, they're kind of more or less singing and dancing and going through like.
01:35:58
Speaker
you know, going from zero to like hero, basically, but like in a singing and dancing kind of way. That's basically what Agnya's storyline is. And while that does it for some, and some people will really like her story, and that's great. It's like, it's not a knock on that. That's just not mine and KJ's like,
01:36:19
Speaker
We're not into those kinds of stories. My biggest thing was every other story just stabs you in the heart. Almost every other story, it was like... All of the other ones were almost an emotional roller coaster. Even Partishio, his story was the lightest of them all, I'll say, other than Agnea.
01:36:43
Speaker
But like, there was still some backstabbing and betrayal type shit that happened in his story too. And I was like, like, it just got you motivated him to be who he is where Agnea just seemed like she was good, wholehearted, needed nothing. And there was no real, like.
01:36:59
Speaker
But there wasn't really a betrayal. There wasn't really any like extra except for this good wholehearted feeling. Even Ochez's story, which she was very trying to be upbeat. There was like, there was two groups of people fighting. It was like a little bit darker. She was trying to go and find these like mythical. And then, and then when you went to like those mythical creatures that she's trying to bring back to the village to save her village,
01:37:23
Speaker
You, you got some twisted shit that happened to those creatures as well. And so like it built more onto her story that yeah, she was a good wholehearted person and just really sweet and adorable, but there was more to her than that. And Agnea, I felt like there was just not more to her than that. And there was like, I, I was kept hoping that there was going to be a twist. I kept hoping that there was going to be something and even her co-op with Hikari and Hikari was such a more interesting character.
01:37:53
Speaker
Felt her co-op with Kari kind of brought Hikari down a little bit. Yeah, because like very fair. Yeah It was like it was one of those things where it's like it was like they paired everybody out up together and then they had Hikari and Agnya at the end and they're like, okay, we'll just gonna stick these together and and
01:38:13
Speaker
like stick these two together because they're the last two together and we're going to kind of do some, some wholehearted, like positive thing. And so you're just kind of like, okay. And it kind of dragged Hikari down a little bit for me. I'm not going to lie. Cause I was just, I wasn't super interested in it and I found myself kind of fast forwarding through it. And it was a little like you got a little bit of character development-ish for Hikari and that you didn't really get any of that. Yeah.
01:38:43
Speaker
Like she was just kind of there and be like, music! And you're just like, okay. I thought they were going to take a different route. I really thought when at the end of Agnius chapter two, I was like, oh, I'm excited. They're like, they're really taking a different route. They're going to like.
01:39:01
Speaker
tie this into this person that her mother knew and it's going to be like chapter two was something interesting. And I was like, okay, I didn't speed through it. I didn't do it. Like I did that one and I was like, okay, now I'm interested. And then chapter three, I was like, oh, come on. Chapter three was a huge letdown. And then after that chapter four, you're just like, Oh, yeah. And the chapter five, you're like, Oh,
01:39:21
Speaker
And then you just, you just kept expecting more and I'd hope it because all the other stories were like that. And so I think her story would have been fine in a different game if it was like tied with everything else. And that was like the shape of the story, but because her story kind of just stood out a little bit too much as being like the weakest link.
01:39:45
Speaker
that it was a little unfortunate because it was literally one of the only negative things I could say about this game, playing it.
Boss Battles and Strategies
01:39:52
Speaker
It's the only negative thing I can say about the game. Yeah, it's the only thing where I'm just like, I didn't like her as a character. I didn't really use her. She kind of saved my butt in the end fight. But again, when we start talking about that and the way I had it set up, there's a reason why. But otherwise, I was just kind of like,
01:40:14
Speaker
And I feel bad about that. Everybody else has so much, so much substance. And you're just like, you were on the edge of your seat being like, even Partishio's, who's was a very lighthearted story, like a lighthearted character and Ochete, who was a very like lighthearted character. They still may have managed to make their stories where you were like pulled, you were pulled in and everything. And Partishio, I will say right now, uh, was it Almond, Aron, Armon or whatever that guy? Alron, yeah.
01:40:44
Speaker
I love that guy. I love that. Oh my God. Like I like, I found I was super intrigued with Partishio's and then Partishio had like these side stories of like, and that's how you get like the boat and stuff like that. So like doing those side things and getting a little bit more. And he's literally just going around trying to like,
01:41:02
Speaker
help people out and lift them up and make the world a better place. But there's story behind that where he's like, he came from nothing. He got, you know, backstabbed. He got like, his dad got really sick. Like things like this that like, there was so much substance to his character to build up to it where Agnew was like, my mom was dancer. I want to be too. And like, it started out with the first chapter where you're like, you thought the dad would be opposing and he caves like,
01:41:30
Speaker
almost instantly and then chapter two you start to get more interested you're like okay they're shaping something up here and then literally that's how i describe it the best way i could describe it it goes from chapter two to yeah you're not wrong and again she is a trope that some people will like i just feel like in the overall of the story they could have done something a little bit more with her she so like
01:42:00
Speaker
It was really interesting, and I'll get into a little bit of spoiler stuff, because she does have one very important use, and that is she has a broken ability that you can use. It's wind damage, but in the following turn, it makes the entire party move first.
01:42:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that mechanic was really good. That is one thing that is very, very good. And honestly, it's the reason it ended up kind of being the reason I was able to beat the final boss, the final boss, the secret boss, the final boss. OK, I feel I feel bad about the final boss, because at that point I was I hadn't started grinding yet for the secret boss, but I was still so overleveled that like.
01:42:48
Speaker
I don't even remember what I did to fight the final boss because it was so easy for me, unfortunately. Like, I feel bad saying that, but like, I was so OP at that point that it just... KJ was going around doing everything, doing side quests, doing stuff, so he ended up overleveled. And then Holly comes up to this and boss underleveled by like 10 levels. And three characters who were not underleveled. Three. I didn't actually...
01:43:18
Speaker
Do all like I did the fun. So because there's so again, this is master spoilers, but there's like a final chapter, right? Which is great. We did this better than in first one. The first one it's put behind side side stuff. This one it is. It does follow the trajectory if you're doing every like doing all the character stories, which is I think is fantastic.
01:43:42
Speaker
So what I did was, I didn't do the side quest. I did all of the stuff that I needed to do. And then I was like, okay, this is where the final boss is.
01:43:54
Speaker
I made a save, then I went to the final boss, beat the final boss, and then I was like, if I can't save after beating the final boss, then I'll reload, I'll grind, and I'll do all the side quests. But I was able to beat the final boss, and then you can save in between beating the final boss and the credits. So that's when I saved, and then I did everything else.
01:44:18
Speaker
Like I did all the side quests and everything. But yeah, I was I mean, I had done a lot of the side quests just going through the game. But like all of my characters were level 60 or 70 by the time I got to by the time I got to the final boss. And a lot of them were in the 70s. So like I just kind of like I said, I just kind of walked it. I will say one of the coolest things about the final boss was that they do make you use all eight characters.
01:44:48
Speaker
So I was just like, Oh, this is, which works. One of the coolest mechanics in a game I have ever seen was the ad boss sequence. They took that from the mobile game.
01:45:03
Speaker
Yeah. And like they did it in the mobile and then people like talked about how amazing that was. And that was such a good thing. And then they put it in Octopath Traveler too. So yeah, we're still definitely in spoilers. We've been in spoilers for a while. So hopefully people have gotten that warning.
01:45:20
Speaker
But that end boss sequence, I told Edo, like as soon as I did it, I felt so freaking good and powerful after I did that. I thought it was so freaking cool. And I set it up similarly kind of to peace. So I did it in two tries. I was horribly underleveled according to KJ, but like when I told him my levels, he's like, what?
01:45:46
Speaker
So yeah, I never have a character. I had three characters over 60. The rest were like 50, maybe 51 going into that battle. So, oh, uh, Casti, Hikari and Oswald were in their sixties, but like mid sixties. And then everybody else was 50 or 51. That's so wild.
01:46:13
Speaker
Yeah, everybody else was only 50 to 51. And so that was my end sequence into that. And the boss that I wiped on, I was mad. I was mad because the boss had bullied me a little bit because I was a little underleveled and they just had too many turns in a row. And it was, I believe it was,
01:46:43
Speaker
Oh, who did I wipe up? It was a fast bot. Now I can't remember whose chapter it was. It was either chapter three or four, and it was a boss that was stupid fast. And unfortunately just got like four attacks in a row and I didn't realize it and wiped my party. Oh, now it's going to bug me. It was a really fast boss. Um, fast boss. And it was one of my underleveled people. Was it thrown as chapter four?
01:47:14
Speaker
No, see, thrown ice was, even though it had the different forms, I was okay with that one. Okay. Um, I had no problem with it. It wasn't Ochez. It's not Ochez. It definitely wasn't Agnias. No. Her chapters, her chapters. Yeah, I wiped on Agnias because I just never used her.
01:47:31
Speaker
I showed, I showed KJ as I was finishing people's like chapters fours, I showed KJ my level for Agnea and he's like, you really need to level her up. She was, yeah, because you're like, she has to be like, I was going to like, I was going to slow things. So I was like, okay, I will level her up. So I love, I had to do some grinding for her, but Oh, whose boss was it?
01:47:53
Speaker
It wasn't Partishios because I laughed really hard at Partishios chapter four. I I I literally was like, can I suplex this? Oh, my God. I said, but I never got the suplex. I'm trying to think it was that chapter four boss. It was either a chapter. It might have been a chapter three boss, though, too. Was it because it was a Temenosus chapter three was really high level.
01:48:23
Speaker
Maybe it was his because anyway, it was a boss that ended up hitting me. Like it was so fast. And then it ended up making, no, it was Cassidy's. It was Cassidy's because he kept doing elemental that stunted me. And then he was fast. I think it was his four.
01:48:41
Speaker
like the final one interesting it was her final one because he kept doing status elements to everybody and then it made them slower and then all of a sudden he had like five moves in a row he wasn't strong it was just he that that good rng where he had like made me really slow and then he had five turns in a row and he wiped me
01:49:01
Speaker
And then her RNG match in that in that fight. Yeah, he had he had better RNG than I did. That's wild because he just went like five terms in a row. So yes, it was Casti's final because I remember the stats effects, too.
01:49:14
Speaker
Interesting. Hers was the only one that really did heavy status effects. And because they were trying to get you to use the apothecary to like, nullify it because I didn't have that issue with with that one. But again, like at that point, I had already done a few of the final chapter like Cassie's I think was like the third or fourth final chapter that I had done so
01:49:38
Speaker
Yeah. And see, Cassie's was the very first one I did. And so I think a few people were a little underleveled except for Cassie. You mentioned getting hit four times in a row. That is a reoccurring theme. I'm going to let you know.
01:49:54
Speaker
That is not something that goes away. You are going to cry. If you fight the secret boss, you are going to experience that. I'm probably going to rage. Oh, you're going to rage. Like I said, it took me like 10 tries. But the problem is it's a two part fight where you have to use. It's a two part fight. You have to use all the characters. So it's like the end boss again. It's like the no, no, no, it's not like the end boss because the end boss, you had access to all eight characters.
01:50:24
Speaker
OK, it's like it's like the it's like the secret boss in one where you set your two parties and then you go in. So so when one wipes, the other one comes up. No, no, no. When you beat, if you wipe, it's game over. OK, OK. You beat the first phase and then there's a second phase. Oh, OK, OK, OK. And you can't use the other characters from the first phase.
01:50:53
Speaker
So, okay. So they, so they, they changed up the mechanic to make it harder. I mean, that's all it was. That's all it was in the first game too. So they just, so I never did that sequence. So I never, so I don't have that to bounce off of, but yeah, let's, uh, let's talk a little bit about that final boss.
01:51:10
Speaker
Oh yeah, of course. Because, so all the chapters and stuff like that, you see bits and pieces of a reoccurring stuff, but it's like, it's subtle enough that you're like, okay, okay. But it keeps you interested and it all ties in together in a final chapter, which I think they should have done in the first game and not left it optional. The problem with the- So to just jump into that really quick,
01:51:37
Speaker
Cause you've done it. So yeah, yeah. Make that like the problem with the first game is that the way that they did, they did this in the second game too, right? With the final, with the secret boss, but the problem with the first game, there's three, the way that you think you, you, um, I don't know if you remember any of this is the way that you kind of get the, you get unlocked the true,
01:52:06
Speaker
path, there's three or four side quests that you have to do. And they're all regarding, in Octopath 1, they're all regarding a kid and some random woman. And I don't know if any of these sort of ring a bell, but over the course of that,
01:52:28
Speaker
you have to do those side quests to then unlock the more, like basically unravel more of the story and sort of figure out why it's plot relevant. And then after you do that, there's like a boss rush that you go through. And after you go through each boss, you get everybody's, they basically give you information after each boss in the boss rush.
01:52:52
Speaker
as to why or how everybody's story ties together. And then you can fight the final boss, like the true final boss. So it would have been really hard for them to do that in a way that made sense. Whereas in this game, as you know, they were able to incorporate different people's stories
01:53:19
Speaker
in how they made it all work. Like you were alluding to, you got some of the exposure as to like, oh, this is happening here and this is happening here. And it's very similar. They have this like weird darkness theme, but they don't really tie on it or touch on it rather until that final chapter that you were talking about.
01:53:45
Speaker
Yeah, until those final chapters and those co-op chapters too. Some of the co-op ones as well tie into it as well. And see, I don't know, my experiences were one or the other just listening to one. I think I kind of like how they did it in two better. Oh, it's definitely better. Because it keeps your interest in those other stories thinking, okay, there's more to this. Yeah. Okay, there's more to this. And then everything where you were left questioning in those stories,
01:54:12
Speaker
gets tied together, which is fan-fucking-tastic, but also breaks your heart at the same freaking time. Because you're just like, come on. But everything that was a loose end, everything, everything wraps. And so I thought that was a more cohesive way of doing it. And I know they tried two different things. So they tried what they did in the first one.
01:54:36
Speaker
And while like, you know still fantastic game and that's the one you had to now that i've played the second one and i've gone through that Uh looking at the two of them and hearing the the rest of it how it ties it and stuff for the first one because I never got to the tie-in part because by the time I was done all the chapter fours I was tired and then there was just nothing left on the map that showed that I was doing anything because you had to kind of go and do your thing um, whereas the this game yeah, there was so much of it
01:55:04
Speaker
And I'm sure it's like if I do all that stuff, it'll be, oh, I remember that from that and that that's how it ties in. But this one, it was a little bit more obvious that there was going to be something that ties everything together. And then they just also coordinated the characters where they're they were all like supporting each other and their banter and stuff like that was a little bit more. So I kind of like I kind of like that they took their idea from one and they improved it. It just feels like that is the the way I can explain this game the best is that it took what they did in one.
01:55:34
Speaker
Mm hmm.
01:55:35
Speaker
And they made it better, which I didn't think it was going to be possible because I did really like one, even in the end. And I didn't do the secret stuff. I still liked the game from where I left off. Um, and I really enjoyed it. Um, but like two, so like all the stories and stuff like that, the interconnect, which is really freaking cool. A lot of the stories punch you in the gut and make you cry. Um, there's a few of them where they, it doesn't happen until maybe a little bit more where the big thing is revealed. Um,
01:56:05
Speaker
There was a sequence, even they had such tiny details that alluded to things that now I'm thinking back being like, oh my God, that's a thing. Yeah. He still brought it up to KJ and then brought it up to me. I noticed something was happening during like the final, like getting to the words, the final chapter, but I thought it was my switch was glitching. Yeah, that's why I told KJ this, which is really, really cool. So this is this is a huge spoiler, but it's such a tiny little thing that connected.
01:56:34
Speaker
But for the end sequence of Octopath Traveler 2 when you're in the final chapter, you were finding out that the lights of the sacred flames are going out. And in the corner of your screen for your loading, you could see those are going out as you progress. And it's because they're happening in real time. And then you find out later the story of why those were going out. Everything ties in. And you're just like,
01:57:05
Speaker
What? And I thought it was my switch was glitching because I was like, why is these things faded? Like, this is weird. And then when it all connects, I was like, and then KJ's like, think of where you saw that in the timeline. I'm like, oh my god. I'm such an asshole sometimes. I'm sorry. It was so good that they had this like such a subtle thing that is so
01:57:33
Speaker
connected into the story so it makes it more like they did such a great job connecting everything together holy shit my mind is blown at everything in this game but like so and then you're like see like who is the ones that are going and putting out those torches and then you're just punched in the stomach again because like i thought they couldn't punch me in the stomach anymore make me cry
01:57:54
Speaker
And then I rage cat locks to KJ when I saw a certain little sweetheart from Particio's storyline. I mean.
01:58:10
Speaker
But it was funny because they did kind of make it, you're right, they did kind of make some of them obvious. I was actually more upset about the actual final boss, because in terms of the characters that were tied to that,
01:58:29
Speaker
Like there was a certain character I was really upset. Yeah, I did not. I was so mad and I know exactly. I don't want to like spoil that reveal because I think again, I'm I'm alluding to things, but I'm not coming out and saying it because we want people to go play this game. But yeah, when I saw who that who that was.
01:58:50
Speaker
I was so mad. I like threw my controller on the couch. I like walked away. I was just mad. And I was like, oh, you gave, did you wipe in your game again? I was like, no.
01:59:03
Speaker
Wow. Because I was so mad at Cassie's wipe because I thought it was so unfair because he had got those four turns in a row and just wiped me. And I was so underleveled with my other characters. I was like, okay, well, this is going to suck. So I leveled up a little bit and then fought him again and I was fine. And then I knew he was going to do speed stuff, so I kept deflecting that. But that part of the story, I was like,
01:59:33
Speaker
Come on. I was like, yep, yep. Really? And I was I was ready to destroy at that point. I'm like, no, we're just no, no, we're we're destroying this right now. But yeah, so like the end boss sequence was really, really cool. I guess I did this in the mobile. I didn't quite know that. But yeah, I knew there was something cool that they did in the mobile version that they added it to. And that must have been the end boss sequence. Yeah. The like characters, the eight character thing was something they did in the in the mobile game.
02:00:03
Speaker
So when I did the end boss, I wiped the first time, uh, and it was also like, okay, I didn't quite get the mechanics right away and stuff like that. So it was like, it was kind of figuring out the mechanics of the fight. And then in the second one, I played a little rearranging and this ended up working out for me in the end so that I beat it on the second try. And that's, I had Casti and Agnea in the same position.
02:00:29
Speaker
Now my, I saw, I got a lot, I got all the secret classes and oddly enough, I didn't, I thought about doing it, but before I just was like, no, I want to, I want to, I want the plot. I want a thing. So I didn't get all the inventors abilities. Oh, that might be why you weren't able that, that honestly might be why you struggled there too.
02:00:51
Speaker
Yep. So I didn't have the inventors. I had the arms master. I had the conjurer and the Arcanist, Arcanist. And so I put Oswald as Arcanist so that I could put Agnea as cleric because I didn't go around and get everybody's second or third license either because I was kind of like progressing through and everything. So everybody could only be one character. And then I had Casti as conjurer.
02:01:17
Speaker
And because I had her there, she saved me. So when he goes from four, one to form two, where everybody's like kind of laid out, um, I, he killed three of my party in the one team because they're all underleveled, right? So Agnya's team, um, Agnya was alive, but Temenos was dead. So my, my second team was Agnya, Temenos, Thronรฉ, and Ochette.
02:01:46
Speaker
Um, and I put partition in my, because he was also really weak. So I put him up and did the other team and I put him in the same position. I was OCHET because I knew I would be using her more. And so for that second sequence, I had just the perfect order of everything. Like, like people were in the right spot. So when he wiped out three and had everybody else in critical health,
02:02:10
Speaker
I use the conjurer's ability that revives, heals, maxes out RSP, but then you can't use them for six turns. And all I did was switch to Agnia and use her on those turns so that she buffed the party or healed them. So I didn't need Casti for those six turns. And that's the end boss.
02:02:31
Speaker
And of course, using Hikari, Osvald, and Ochett as my damage dealers. And then having Partishio as an item user, or basically an item user, or reviving people, or something like that, or keeping people's health up, if Agnea didn't do enough. Because Partishio was number four slot, and Agnea was number one. So he was always towards the end. If I didn't need him, I switched to Ochett and did damage.
02:02:58
Speaker
And thrown a was the same and she was in the same position as, um, Hikari. So again, if I needed somebody to heal or if I needed somebody to steal or not steal or like, um, debuff or whatever, I could switch to her. And then Tim and Austin Osvald were in the same position, which I think that was a little bit, I should have swapped, but that's okay. It's so funny because mine was all fucked up because I just went in with my best party.
02:03:26
Speaker
So I went in with... See, I did that originally. And then when I saw the mechanics, I switched people around. But it ended up working out for me. I think that's when I got wiped too. It ended up working out for me because I was able to just... I basically used one party and just you... The only other character that I used in the other party
02:03:47
Speaker
really was Partishio and that was to give cast DPP, right? So that she could then cast for everything. But like for me, I, so I spammed Inventor. Inventor was great because
02:04:02
Speaker
With that final boss, I just made sure that anybody that was attacking was going to end up breaking. So I basically kept breaking the boss. So I beat the boss in like four or five turns or something ridiculous like that because I just broke the boss so quickly and then was able to just like freak the hell out with attacks. And so it was the case where I had the classes, but
02:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, I had thrown it as inventor so that she had more damage flexibility and breaking flexibility. And I could then get her for two turns to be able to break to be able to do chip away multiple times. I had Hikari as arms master. And to be honest, after that, I don't even remember who else I had with what it was just that
02:04:54
Speaker
Oh no, I had Oswald as Cleric and I had Castee as Warrior for a bit. But yeah, it was just that I basically was just making sure that I had coverage on everybody to be able to break. And I had the ability to get everybody BP whenever I needed to. And from there on out, it was just
02:05:22
Speaker
attack the boss and make sure that I can can manage everything. And to be honest, also that I have. I don't know if I did. I think at that point, I also had the the like kind of OP beast with with.
02:05:42
Speaker
So I did that too and that hit for a ton. So it was just like, yeah, I, I was able to kind of manage that pretty easily because I was able to keep everyone's health up. I was able to keep everybody's BP up. And like the, the skill to be able to go over quadra nine damage was so OP to put on Hikari, Ochett and Oswald. That's who I had them on. I had it on everybody.
02:06:04
Speaker
Oh, did you have it on everybody? I had it on everybody except Agnea, I believe. I wish I had it on Taminos. That was the only one I regretted not having it on because he has that OP light move that you can unlock by the end where he uses all his SP and hits you with light and the enemy like the end boss was weak against light.
02:06:23
Speaker
And I used that as well. See, I never used that move because I didn't have him with the damage broke. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to use this because it's only going to do Quadra 9, which I know it would have been way more. So I kind of screwed up there. But Arcanist I found was really great on Oswald because what I would do is he had that light move that would
02:06:47
Speaker
boost everybody's MP depending on how much damage you did. But because the end boss, all the parts were always weak against light. It was just like I was constantly really filling everybody back up with their SP and then I would use Oswald the next turn to do crazy damage and then I'd switch back and forth with him like that. So like I had Arms Master on Hikari because the axe move was stupid strong. The axe move was OP.
02:07:15
Speaker
Yeah. It did like at the end sequence with the, with like the end form where you're the all eight, I ended up buffing him with might he, his crit. I had him on crit where he had a tire chance to crit and then all the weaknesses were uncovered. Yeah. And so when he hit that middle guy, it was like 40,000 each hit. And I was like,
02:07:36
Speaker
I have to do debuffs until the secret boss funny enough like debuffs I did need some for this I did I'm using debuffs with the end boss sequence just because I had them arranged so well that I was able to like use Cassie to boost everybody that when he did that like when you got him like halfway and he did that for where he just nukes you and then resets kind of almost yep
02:08:01
Speaker
Um, I used her conjurer ability, so she was out for six turns, but Agnea was the one keeping like just healing. So I just had her there. Gotcha. Okay. And then going from there, yeah, I didn't need to debuff at all. Uh, I just, I buffed like hell, but like I didn't need to debuff. Gotcha. And so I ended up still winning. Agnea's conjurer would be really good. Cause using that ability, like it was only good for that boss fight. Cause I'm thinking about it. Like it wasn't worth it.
02:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, that move would have sucked if you were in just a team of four, like you are at the beginning where you have your, your main team. And then halfway through that fight, it switches to the backup team. I was stupid and put the backup team last. So that's why that form took me longer. The second try, just because I was like, Ooh, they're a little, they don't do as much damage as my main team. So it was like, it took longer.
02:08:54
Speaker
But then when I got to the second four, when they did all eight, it made more sense to be like, okay, I can use Agnea instead of Cassie. It's not like I lose a character.
02:09:05
Speaker
So that's the only time I felt like the conjurer, like super revived, super HP and SP move mattered was literally that one fight. Otherwise I don't think I would have used it. And now hearing kind of how the secret boss goes, I don't think I wouldn't be able to use it there either because you're down a character, which is not going to work.
02:09:26
Speaker
You can't eat like, yeah, you can't be down a character for that many turns. No secret boss. Whereas when you have eight of them and you're swapping between them, you're fine. I'm fine because I have a backup character and Agni could just heal and she could also buff with her dancer move. So I'm like, I could keep putting might back up on people or the elemental attack raise on people if I had to. So I'm just like. I could lose her for six turns and not hurt is basically why she that move for me.
02:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, for me, it was the case that, so I think it's inventor has an ability that makes people have a turn before the, before anything else. Like it's like first, it's something with first in the name, but it's a skill that lets you go, like lets the people go first. So I abused that too. What I would do is I would set my party up so that I would have
02:10:25
Speaker
Everybody have that. I would get the ball or whoever I was fighting down to one shield. And then I would make sure that I set it up so that I could then do a step ahead. One step ahead. Yeah, her first step ahead or something like that. And then I would set it up so that whatever the future turn order was right before the enemy attacked.
02:10:46
Speaker
I would be able to break them. That way I would get as many, as many moves in as possible before I broke them. And then I would break them on the turn that I would then be able to like continue on and then have another full turn. So I was basically, there were a lot of times where, and again, this is what I was talking about where I tripled up the boss, the final boss before I even saw it attack.
02:11:15
Speaker
I was just making sure like, hey, I'm moving, I'm attacking first, and there is no way that this is like, there's no if ands or buts about it. Like, it was ridiculous. And as soon as I unlocked that skill with Inventor,
02:11:34
Speaker
everyone learned it because you didn't even need to all you had to do was yeah everyone had everyone equipped it rather you didn't even need to you didn't even need to learn it you just you could just equip it so after that i was like oh it this is this is going on every character i don't care like everyone's attacking first
02:11:52
Speaker
And that's really cool because like I use that on like my main people who I wanted to do the most damage on, but I didn't think to use it on every character. That's smart. That gives you like a free turn. Yeah. And that's what it was. It was like, even if somebody wasn't doing damage, if I could use them to chip away at the, the shields. Oh, the shields. Yeah. And they were helpful because that just.
02:12:14
Speaker
allowed me to get another free turn later on. So yeah, like, I basically was stun locking bosses. Like, that's why I said stun locking, bullying those bosses. Basically, like I and I felt bad a little bit until I fought the secret boss. And then I was like, oh, I don't feel bad anymore. Yeah. Sounds like the. I don't feel bad anymore.
02:12:42
Speaker
But yeah, the fact that you took like what Ted tries or something. And the thing is, so every attempt because so I basically did like two attempts to scout, but I didn't actually complete the attempt. I just went in. I kind of got the feel for it and that to me. And then I quit.
02:13:03
Speaker
And then I went and I was like, OK, I need this. I was like, there's a certain monster I remember having. I got rid of it. I need that monster back and then I'll be OK. And I got that monster because that monster like help was helping me break the thing. Also, yes, hired help with the assassin is also OP. But the problem is.
02:13:26
Speaker
you only end up having, like, there's only so much money that you can have, especially when you're grinding with the best method in the game. Because if you're grinding with the best method in the game, this is also very spoilers, Polly, I don't know if you care about knowing how to grind in the game. No, go for it. Yeah, that's fine. The best way to grind in the game is after you finish Particio's final chapter, and then you do the, like, extra quest,
02:13:56
Speaker
you can recruit Alrond as a member of the party. And he has- He's my favorite! What, really? He has the possibility, he has a possibility of giving you a 100x EXP on the turn. Oh, shit. So that's how you grind in the game, but he costs like almost 200,000 to recruit him. Oh, okay, okay. Or he costs the,
02:14:26
Speaker
how you get, like when you capture the, what are they, octopuffs? If you capture the king octopuffs, you get like the meat or whatever that they give you.
02:14:38
Speaker
You can also use four or six of those. No, I think it's three. You can recruit him with three of the octopuff things as well. So you either spend 180,000 or you hope that you can get those octopuff things. The thing is, I think only king and queen octopuffs drop them, so you just have to grind those too. And I was like,
02:15:03
Speaker
I don't get some items in the game where you can like those spawn more regularly, but it's still it's still really hard to get the battle I found. Yeah. So I looked at it like, okay, I'll just grind money. And then I'll do that. And then while I was grinding money, I ran into like a King Octo buffer too. And that's how Ocea ended up being my highest level character, because
02:15:25
Speaker
in order to have Alrond in the party, she had to be in the party. And she ended up getting a bunch of experience out of that. So it ended up being the case where I was able to recruit him, but I didn't have as much money. So when I went into the secret boss, I only had like two or 300 grand. And so I could only use the assassin
02:15:49
Speaker
for so long. You can also recruit, you can use Temenos to recruit Alrond, but Temenos has to be level 80 before you can do that. So you have to, in theory, you basically have to recruit Alrond a couple of times to get Temenos to level 80 before you can actually recruit him for free. So that was one of the biggest things. But Alrond is the key to
02:16:19
Speaker
leveling up a like getting levels quickly. But it's also RNG like you have to he has to he has to level up. He has to
02:16:33
Speaker
He has to roll the hundred thing, so. Yeah. Yeah. And so like you already have to have Tevenos leveled up in order to recruit Tevenos for free. So it's almost like by the time you get to that point, you're like, I've already spent all my money trying to level Tevenos up.
02:16:51
Speaker
Um, yeah, that was, uh, that was KJ's, uh, fair enough. Peaches. Yeah. Yeah. Peaches. But yeah. Uh, yeah. So like, it's, it's cool that there's like these like extra like mechanics that I never used hired help. Um, again, because like, I loved partition. Oh, I did. But like I had my main party that I always used. So I didn't really use partition a whole, whole lot with, um,
02:17:18
Speaker
with hired help and stuff, so I couldn't utilize that thing. But I did know about the assassin because KJ had showed me that he had finally recruited the assassin or whatever. But I didn't know you could recruit Al Ron. I love him. He was so great. I liked his whole story thing and everything.
02:17:41
Speaker
Uh, Oh, really? That's awesome. Um, also, I think that's a great thing to mention even just on the podcast is that like, you
Game Reception and Ratings
02:17:51
Speaker
know, when we, when we allowed this, this episode is that octopath two is on buy one, get one free. I gave stop. Uh, I can't hear you. Okay. Jay, if you're talking, there we go. Sorry about that. Yeah. Don't worry. He's no worries. No worries. Yeah. I figure you're dealing with the cat. So we're good. We're good. Um,
02:18:11
Speaker
But yeah, no, Alarond was dope and being able to recruit him was cool. It is locked behind a side quest, like I said, and it is the case where once you do it, you kind of have to utilize him with the best area to grind in the game. But that kind of flashes back to what I was saying, where if you go through that dungeon,
02:18:36
Speaker
And then if you go through that dungeon and you then get the opportunity to get that boss as a random encounter,
02:18:50
Speaker
I was getting 230,000 experience whenever Alrond hit the hundred and I was like save scumming it because he was so expensive. There's a save point right outside the dungeon. So you say you go down and you basically.
02:19:06
Speaker
get the encounter, make sure that he does actually roll the hundred hundred times experience and then finish the fight. And in my case, I wasn't even necessarily killing the boss. I was capturing the bosses with with a check. So it was a case where I just had to get them down to like 50 percent capture them. And then we were good. So.
02:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's awesome. That's a, that's a great tip. Like that'll help me for when I, cause I, I'm definitely going to do the, uh, I'm going to try the secret boss fight and stuff like that at some point. It's fun. It's fun. It's just, it is, it is a lot of pain. It is, but like also this game has just been fantastic and it deserved to be played to 100% for like anybody. And like, I, I just want to say like, for those of you who played this game along with us or listening right now and are going to go out like,
02:20:00
Speaker
like seriously going to go out and get this game and stuff like that. Like one, thankful to square for giving me the key to this game, but also like just kind of like, I'm going to be that person who preaches that like any JRPG fan buys this game. Yeah, I agree. Like I had a freaking fantastic time from start to finish and everything I thought could have been improved in the first one was improved in this one.
02:20:27
Speaker
which was absolutely fantastic. Is there anything else you want to mention or do we want to go through our... I want to mention my claim earlier and I want to see if you... Oh, yeah. All right. For anybody that's just getting here, I said earlier in the podcast, this is the best game that Square has developed or published since the merger, Square Enix.
02:20:56
Speaker
since the mer- has developed or published since the merger. And I'll stand on that hill. Outside of remasters. Not including like remasters. Obviously remasters are reasonable games. Take those out. Cause like- I'm ignoring remasters. So I'm ignoring like the DS Chrono Trigger remaster or any of the Final Fantasy remasters or anything like that. Outside of, outside of remasters, this is the best
02:21:21
Speaker
game that Square has published or developed since the merger. And I'll stand by that. All right. So you want to know where I am? Yeah, I'd love to. You're not going to like my opinion. No, I'm more than happy. But what I will say is please give me what you think is better. That's all I'm going to say. OK. All right. So I'm going to tell you that Octopath Traveler 2 is. I agree with you.
02:21:51
Speaker
No fighting comes for me. That's why I said you're not going to like it. Because I can't think of one. So like any of the games that I'm thinking of were pre merger. Yep. Um, so like, like a couple of them that might be able to rival it or pre merger anything post merger. Yeah, I'm thinking of all the post merger games I've played. I'm thinking of all the stories. I'm thinking of the gameplay. I'm thinking of everything in those games and I can't
02:22:19
Speaker
pick one that is better than this game in my experience. And like I also wanted to keep Keiji on his toes there because I was also making funny facial expressions while he was talking because I was just like, but like it was also something like I agree with him. I cannot think of one. I can't give him an argument with that. The only argument that people would make and I have a I have a counter argument to this is some people will say, but what about Final Fantasy 14?
02:22:50
Speaker
my response to that is going to be Final Fantasy XIV. You can say that, but Final Fantasy XIV has had multiple expansions. So I don't think it's fair to look at Final Fantasy XIV as a whole and say that because
02:23:11
Speaker
it's been worked
02:23:26
Speaker
Like even when I'm talking to people they're like, oh, a realm reborn is kind of boring until you get to this DLC or this expansion or that expansion. Then things pick up and stuff like that. So like, yeah, you can't really compare a game that's been able to be worked on for 10, 15 years or whatever.
02:23:44
Speaker
and have all these DLCs and have all this fan commentary that they can listen to or not listen to and approve their game and not approve their game and go through it. And it's also an MMO, which is a different kind of game. I kind of argue trying to compare that to Octopath Traveler 2. Octopath Traveler 2 had a lot of people work on it, but it's still the smaller team.
02:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's why it's like I don't I personally like I could see the argument, but it's also it's they're different, right? Yeah, and I would say and and if you want to like go to an argument site, I would say, yeah, Agrobot Traveler 2 is the best single player.
02:24:29
Speaker
is the best single player that came out of the out of the merger, but you could still argue that it's the best that came out of the merger. If you compare apples to apples, and that's if you look at just a realm reborn, taking out all the expansions, everything else, just look at like,
02:24:44
Speaker
Honestly, let's, let's say Final Fantasy 14 OG is like Octopath Traveler 1, Octopath Traveler 1 was better than the OG of 14, but let's, let's use that as a comparison. So then Octopath Traveler 2 is a Realm Reborn. If you took out everything else of the game, all the expansions, all the stuff, and just look at it, the Realm Reborn, so far in my experience with a Realm Reborn, I'd still like give it to Octopath Traveler 2.
02:25:09
Speaker
But again, I haven't beaten it. So I don't know if there's people in a listening or whatever who's built beaten around we're born and then beaten Octopath Traveler 2 and said one was better than the other. But yeah, that's the only argument that I could see being a fair comparison because, you know, Octopath Traveler 2 doesn't have all these expansions and DLCs and stuff like that as well. And have been developed over a long, long, long period of time. Um, at the same time, I've heard also that, I mean, Final Fantasy 14 is freaking fantastic and great, but like,
02:25:38
Speaker
Yeah. I can't think of any other, like I can't think of any, anything that can rival my experience with this game. Like the end, the end sequence, the stories, the care, everything, like the night and day sequence and tying that in where it was like super smart to do that with their abilities and everything too was like, I haven't seen games really do that. And like, like,
02:26:02
Speaker
I, yeah, I would, I, I'm going to go with you on that one too. I'm, I'm on your side on that one. Uh, isn't bad. It's just the Agnea. Okay. See there, thank you. There, there we go. So like, if we're comparing apples to apples, we have to look at Octopath Traveler 2 with just a realm reborn. And if you're telling me that that is the Agnea 14, then yes, we're still right. It's fine.
02:26:34
Speaker
Um, so, so yeah, it's just like this game. Holy crap. I was not, I was expecting it to be a good game, not because octopod traveler one was a good game. Um, I was looking at it being like, I hope they made the improvements that I was thinking when I was playing the first one.
02:26:53
Speaker
But I was also like, even if it was like, again, yeah, I would be like, okay. But no, they took Octopath Traveler 1. They listened to the feedback. They listened to everything. They improved it all and then gave us two. And it's like, oh.
02:27:08
Speaker
Two is just a rollercoaster of just intense, like, I didn't want to put this game down. I'm glad we took the two months to do it because I got to do more of the game where I wasn't just feeling like I had to push through the plot line or something like that. I got to do some side quests. I got to find all the secret classes.
02:27:28
Speaker
Um, and, and everything. So like, I got to play with some of the mechanics and stuff like that. I got to explore the world. I found most places. I did find that bridge one, but I found most places. The bridge, the bridge place is OP, but it's also like that boss. Okay.
02:27:44
Speaker
So, it is a boss, again, that they recycled from Octopath Traveler 1. And the boss was not nearly as difficult in Octopath Traveler 1, and it's still not super difficult in this game, but it has a cycle that, like, it's basically only vulnerable to magic. And it's only vulnerable to one type of magic. So, and it has an instant kill move.
02:28:11
Speaker
So like it's kind of it can be kind of bullshit if depending on the rotations that you get and like if I didn't have a chat in the party, I would have game over to that boss multiple times. But I happen to get lucky that I had a chat in the party and was able to capture it. And I was like, oh, damn, that would have gotten real bad real fast. And it also has a move that resets it shields.
02:28:41
Speaker
So it was a case where it just, it got close a lot. And the funny thing is I didn't use Ochete to fight it the first time I did it.
02:28:57
Speaker
but it just so happens that Ochete was one of my like B team members. So I had to level her up a little bit. So she was in the party. And when I had it down, I think it either goes to that, um, to that state when it's half health or 25% health, I can't remember, but that allows you to capture it. So I was able to just use the capture ability and capture and I was like, Oh,
02:29:22
Speaker
This makes things a lot easier. So that's what I did. I ended up having like five of that monster in my party. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah. But like, yeah, so like you had like that, like I didn't even find that monster either. But again, it's because of that bridge sequence. I miss that entirely. And now I'm just kind of like, so when we're done this podcast, I'm going to load up my Octopath to I can tell you I can tell you like exactly where it is. It's in.
02:29:49
Speaker
It's in the snowy area. I can I can let you know exactly. OK, so since we challenged the the Internet and our viewers and everybody, and I'm sure for later for when this was up on some podcasts and stuff like that, I'm sure some people will be very vocal. I think this is definitely needs to be a YouTube put on the YouTube because I feel like we're. Yeah, no, we definitely can't fighting us. So what would you rate the game out of top 10 RPG? This is this is like
02:30:18
Speaker
This is up there with the... This is up there with the greats. I mean, this is up there with the... So out of 10. Like, this is up there with the Final Fantasy IX. Like, 9 out of 10. 9 out of 0.5 out of 10. So it's really tough for me. When I start to get up there in, like, a... When I start to get up there with, like, again, games that are, like, I would consider the best of the best, it's really hard to...
02:30:48
Speaker
differentiate number-wise, because if I give it a number, like, hypothetically speaking, if I were to say, oh, Lunar is a nine and a half out of 10, and then I say Octopath Traveler 2 is a nine and a half out of 10, it almost makes it seem like they're equal in my opinion, when, like, that's not necessarily the case. So it's hard for me to give a number specifically.
02:31:14
Speaker
So that's why I said like this, this game sits comfortably in my top 10, my top 10 RPGs. Okay. Okay. Well, that's fair. That's fair. Um, I am, I'm not going to do the cop out answer. Wow. Wow. Hey, you call me out all the time when I do honorable mentions.
02:31:39
Speaker
That is a legit. No, that's legit fair because you're right. It's hard to be like, okay, this is a nine point five and this is a nine point five, but this game like a decade ago. So like Octopas not only has like a bigger team than a lot of these JRPGs that we also love, but they also have more money put into it because Square Enix is a bigger tyrant in the JRPG like not tyrant, but like a bigger like like.
02:32:06
Speaker
entity in the JRPG thing, like even then they were back in the day. So like they're massive, massive now. So they have a lot more funding to throw behind it. And they just had, you know, like they have the unreal engine that's like gotten better over the years and has gotten more expensive and stuff like that. But for me, I start to finish, um, like
02:32:31
Speaker
It's really like I have only one tiny, tiny flaw of this game. So it's like, it's just shy of perfect for me. It is just shy of a perfect game for me, which I can like some of some of my top 10 are I consider the perfect games for their time. And I don't like try to compare them to like future things and stuff like that at bigger times and stuff like that.
02:32:54
Speaker
But I am I am saying this is like the only thing holding it slightly back was just one story just didn't do it for me. I can respect it does it for everybody else. But that's the only one where I felt like the character and development stuff was a little bit like less powerful than everything else. So I'm I'm going to literally give it my one of my higher scores and give it like a 9.8 out of 10.
02:33:20
Speaker
And it's literally just because that one story pulls it just a tiny bit down from being a perfect game for me. OK, you're going to yell at me now that you called me out. You're going to yell at me after this. But where's this game fall in your grand scheme of RPGs? Then if there if there are only a few perfect games for you because of their time, I'm thinking like you're going to say Chrono Trigger, you're going to say Final Fantasy six.
02:33:48
Speaker
Like, I feel like I need to now defend myself a little bit for my. It honestly might be like number two for me. It might be a two or a three up there. Like it's for me. Honestly, I like, I love those games. Don't get me wrong and stuff like that. Like they're fantastic. Like, I mean, I, I can definitively say it didn't beat chrono trigger for me.
02:34:13
Speaker
But it definitely came the closest of an RPG for me in a long time. Like it definitely came closest to me for a lot of them. And like some of them are super great and powerful and like Xenogears is like probably in there at this point too, just for its story.
02:34:32
Speaker
But for me, Octopath Traveler 2, like gameplay, story, music, sound effects, tie-ins, battle mechanics, things like that, is like, Chrono Trigger is like perfect to me. And I don't know if anything ever is going to ever knock that off, because there's also a bunch of stuff surrounding Chrono Trigger is why I feel that way.
02:34:59
Speaker
like I would put it up like I'd have to really think about it maybe it'd be three or something like that but like I feel like it's very close to being like a perfect game and thus needs to be as close to like Chrono Trigger as possible
02:35:14
Speaker
Like, I don't know. I just, I thought this game was absolutely fantastic. I don't even know how they could improve it except for the one story that fell a little bit. If they like made the next game and made that all eight stories just slam. Like, I don't know. If they swapped Primrose and Agnea, this would be, this would be like. This would be guarantee number two for me. If they swapped Primrose and Agnea. Yeah, if they swapped Primrose and Agnea, this game would be.
02:35:40
Speaker
Yeah. If we take Primrose from Octopath One, put her in and kick Agni out. And I would say, yeah, it would be like right behind Chrono Trigger for me.
02:35:52
Speaker
Like, I think everybody has that game that no matter what comes out, it just, there's a game in your heart that might never be touched. And it just might be out of reach. And for me, that's Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is a big reason why I even became an RPG gamer. Like it has so much ties it's for me and so much that I I'm super things. So like, but like Octopath Traveler 2 being up there for me, like,
02:36:20
Speaker
Oh, I, I don't know if it's above six or not, but like it's, it's, it's so close. It might actually, I don't know. I don't know how I mean, I can just spot here, but it's, it's definitely like towards the top of the 10. How about you? Where, where does it sit for you? Like I was going to say, I can,
02:36:37
Speaker
I can hurt some feelings right now and say this is a better game than Final Fantasy 6, but I'll just throw that up there. Stop! We've already broken their heart by slamming 14 in this. Somehow we put 14 in this. Yo, I am coming out swinging. It's all good. KJ wants to get us canceled for Mario. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it.
02:37:04
Speaker
See, this is what I mean. So like, if I'm really thinking about it, it might actually pop Final Fantasy six out of like, I'd have to like really think about it and really think about the games. And I might even have to like, the next time we do a top 10, I might have to actually replace some of these older ones and just see where they, they feel for me because like, it's so high for me, but yeah, I want to know where it is. Is it like mid tier for you? Is it high? This is, this is up there. I, I will say.
02:37:33
Speaker
the only, so I'm kind of, I try to take my, because my favorite game is Golden Sun. And even though I think Golden Sun is a great game, there are still games that I have played that are better than, that are better than Golden Sun. I acknowledge that. Like I still, I will swear by my love for Golden Sun, but I acknowledge there are games better than Golden Sun. Outside of Suikoden 2,
02:38:00
Speaker
I don't think I've played a better RPG than this game.
02:38:06
Speaker
Well, see that front to back. I said, I like Chrono Trigger's love for me. Like, I'm really struggling to see if there's one that would be above Octo two for me, too. Yeah. And I haven't played Suikoden two. So that could all change because I'm going to be playing Suikoden once in the summer. So looking at my timeline, it's probably Suikoden one's going to be in the summer. So Suikoden two is probably going to be in the early fall, late summer. So like, I haven't even touched that game yet.
02:38:35
Speaker
I think this would slightly, ever so slightly edge out Legend of Dragoon for me. Oh, that's cute. And that Legend of, like- So it doesn't be in Final Fantasy VI, it might actually- I would say, like, I mean, my gold standard for RPGs is Suikoden II, Legend of Dragoon, and then Final Fantasy IX. This game is better than Final Fantasy IX. As much as it pains me to say it, like, I love Final Fantasy IX. This game is...
02:39:04
Speaker
This game is so good. But it is. So, yeah, I would I would. And my top three, I think were when we did them, I was Chrono Trigger. I think it was Valkyrie Profile and Final Fantasy six. So like this. Oh, I'd have to. I have a question that made Polly really like think it might bump.
02:39:36
Speaker
This hit really hard and I didn't expect it to. So it's like, I knew this podcast was coming up and I knew I had such strong, positive feelings for it. But I'm like, you hit me with the, where is it at top 10? And I'm like, Oh my God. Like it definitely, it's not going to dethrone Toronto trigger, but like, Holy shit, it's so good. It's so good. It's so hard. Like it's definitely up there. It's definitely at the top.
02:39:58
Speaker
six it might even bump Valkyrie profile I don't know like it's
02:40:04
Speaker
Just what, what game does it bump out? And I thought about this and I might actually go back and play like, um, Valkyrie profile all the way through to see.
02:40:16
Speaker
I think it's hard too because Valkyrie profile was also one of the first games that had a woman protagonist that was super strong and super powerful in it. But like Octopath Traveler 2 has some powerful women. I'm just gonna say this right now. Kasty and Thronae are like
02:40:35
Speaker
You know, even old chat, like, you know, she, I think the biggest thing for me is like, like I said, there are points, like I've played a lot of these games recently too, right? Like I played Valkyrie profile recently. I played lunar recently. I've played legend Dragoon fairly recently. Yeah. And I'm just thinking like, the irony that your top 10 is now all games you've played recently.
02:40:59
Speaker
I mean, it's getting to that point, but it's funny because that, I mean, outside of like Golden Sun and- The more we play, the more we expand our outlet, the more things start to struggle. Exactly. No, it puts things into, it starts to put things into perspective more for you in terms of these different games. And yeah, I mean, Suikoden 2, in my opinion, is in a league of its own.
02:41:26
Speaker
just with how they did everything. And yeah, just in general, that game is that game is in a league of its own. But for me, I'm looking at it and like I as much as I love Legend of Dragoon, it does have some slow points and it does have some like
02:41:47
Speaker
For example, I think something like Legend of Dragoon, having characters that I don't really care about in that game with that story make it, it's almost more impactful than Agnea being in the story and me not necessarily caring about Agnea, right? Because when you're, and I think that's one of the strengths of Octopath in general, like their process is that because it's eight split stories,
02:42:17
Speaker
if you have to, if you don't necessarily like a character or their story, it doesn't necessarily take away from the grand scheme of things because their story is only a small part of the overall aspect of it, right? Whereas like, if, I mean,
02:42:38
Speaker
There's characters that I don't like in certain games. Like, perfect example. I don't like Steiner in Final Fantasy IX. And that takes away Steiner's parts in the story. It's way more impactful than Egghead's. Take away from parts where I'm like, damn, I really loved this interaction with, like, we'll say Zidane and Vivi, but then Steiner was there and he brought it down for me.
02:43:04
Speaker
So even though I, again, like we'll talk about favorite games and like, yeah, nothing will, there's a very small chance that anything will ever touch games like Golden Sun and Final Fantasy IX. But if I'm looking at how good the game is and sort of rating it on the things that I think are making a good or even great RPG,
02:43:30
Speaker
you start to nitpick those things. And yeah, I think there's a lot less things in Octopath 2 that I can really nitpick and dock it for, right? Like, I think that's just... And like, I was going to counter argue and just say, but like with Octopath, you have to go through that character stories to accomplish all the way. So even though you don't like like Agnea, we still have to like suffer through her story. But the thing that they improved with that is that you could fast forward.
02:44:00
Speaker
You can fast forward with it and you don't have to actually experience the story. So they kind of, it's like they thought about that and being like, okay, maybe one or two characters might not jive with people. So here we'll give them a fast forward kind of thing so they can push through it. So it's less impactful than like you said with Steiner where he's like intermangled into the plot line. And when you don't like him as a character and he's there from start to finish as being kind of a central character, it's more impactful than Agnea where you can like speed through her chapter and you're not going to miss anything.
02:44:29
Speaker
The big thing is, is you don't really miss anything in hers because hers was like one of the only ones that didn't really connect to the whole world. It was the one we could skip. So it was fortunate that that was the one that we didn't end up liking. But I do kind of want to make a little bit of a hot take myself. Usually I leave these to KJ, but I kind of want to say a hot take myself.
02:44:59
Speaker
I think Octopath Traveler 2 is bringing us back to when Final Fantasy games hit me better. So like a lot of people are arguing and stuff like that that Final Fantasy has gotten so distant from what made them great and the roots and stuff like that.
02:45:17
Speaker
Whereas they just keep kind of going out note and that might appeal to some people like action rpgs Those kind of games do appeal to a group of people and like for me. I love final fantasy 7 remake Don't get me wrong. I love that they went in an action direction but octopus traveler 2 is like bringing me back to the reason why final fantasy 6 is higher than final fantasy 7 for me and so like for them as a company to have brought that in even though it's not a final fantasy title
02:45:46
Speaker
It's like we're bringing me back to why I love RPGs in the first place. I think that's going to be a very powerful thing that's going to sway me into I'm not going to be putting it really high because it's done by the same company that
02:46:08
Speaker
pulled me into JRPGs to begin with, Chrono Trigger, and FF6, that I find Octopath Traveler 2 is a great homage to the fans who say, hey, Final Fantasy's gotten to not Final Fantasy for them, that play Octopath then.
02:46:23
Speaker
play Octopak Traveler 1, play Octopak Traveler 2, and you're getting that, I feel like it's the same feeling for me. I don't know if you agree, but like, like Final Fantasy, like even Final Fantasy 7, 7, 8, 9, and arguing, like some people like really love 9, some people really love 7, stuff like that. Even those ones, let's just say PlayStation and back era. It's bringing me back to those. It's bringing me back to like turn-based and, but still being an updated, fantastic game that can rival games today for me.
02:46:54
Speaker
Like, and I know that might be a bit of a hot take. And I know there's a lot of people who argue that action RPGs is the way of the future. And those are the, the games that are better than turn based RPGs and stuff like that. But like, I like.
02:47:09
Speaker
Octopath Traveler 2 is like bringing me back to those feelings and love that I played way back, like those nostalgia feelings back when I was a little kid playing Chrono Trigger and then being pulled into RPGs. It's great to pull me back into that. I mean, to rip my heart out.
02:47:29
Speaker
in so many ways, but like they pull me back and I would argue that. It was kind of like what people are trying to get Final Fantasy to go back to. Currently rip your heart out in the same way or at all.
02:47:45
Speaker
It's a different kind of like, it's a different kind of feeling. And some of the endings are kind of like more gut wrenching and stuff like that. But like, you're right. It's a different kind of feeling with between Octopath and Octopath definitely is like the other side of it where it's, it's the, it can rip your heart out. It can stop at it. It doesn't care about your feelings, but it's still fantastic. So it's like, it may not top Chrono Trigger for me, but it's definitely looking like it might pull ahead of the others.
02:48:16
Speaker
It's like getting it's like getting a Final Fantasy six remaster for me in the sense of like how it felt and stuff like that is like it just brought me back to that era being the pixel stuff, but being like also being current era of like top for me. So so that might that might get some people angry at me, but that's my opinion. It's all good. We got hot takes. That's what, you know, we've got several streams.
02:48:46
Speaker
That's why we're here. We got hot takes. Yeah.
02:48:52
Speaker
Yeah. And so like, and again, I'm not like knocking action RPGs, not, no, but like comparing like apples to apples, octopath two hits more like old school final fantasy might've for people, maybe even like probably better. Like you're saying you've probably pulls ahead. Final fantasy nine has a better game for you. And like me, I'm struggling to, to think of like, if this is better than five or six for me or not, but like I, I, I'm leaning on that as it is. And so it's like.
02:49:22
Speaker
And then action RPGs are a different feel for me. It's a different kind of RPG for me. Makes sense.
02:49:33
Speaker
Yeah. And like, I'm going to say it right now. I know there's been a few places that have said this game was worse than the first one, or they reviewed it kind of lower and stuff, but one, it sometimes feels like they don't play all the way through the game. Kind of like mentioned is that these critics and reviewers don't go all the way through like we did. Um, and it could be, again, they were like criticizing it of not connecting, but they just didn't get that far, but also like.
02:50:03
Speaker
I think it's a bit of a spit in the face of this game that they did take everything from one and improve it. So giving it a lower score of one to me is completely false at that instance. It's like when you take your feedback and you take everything that might've been quality of life issues from the first one and you fix it in its sequel and then still giving us a powerful story, still giving us powerful characters that we love.
02:50:31
Speaker
um more actually I would argue um and like but also keeping things like the pixel graphics and the music and the sound effects and stuff like that the same and improving a little bit there but like focusing on stuff I'm going you can't I can't rate this lower than that like the first one at all because it's like in every aspect it's better than the first one for me yeah in every way and then that also means to me as a developer
02:50:59
Speaker
Thank you for like, like looking at your game, listening to the feedback and stuff, and then just somehow popping out a pretty well almost masterpiece in my opinion. I totally agree. Like 100%. I think the reviews that score this lower than a nine are wrong. Like are wrong. Or the ones that literally say that it is worse than the second or the first game is definitely wrong. And I'm going to stand on that. I will die on that hill of a defense of this game.
02:51:28
Speaker
So like it definitely felt like it was more like people who like, even when I was reading some of them, I was like, it just feels like you didn't play all the way through the game. Or maybe you, or it was somebody who didn't like the first game. They didn't like it. So then they're reviewing the second one. And then it's like, like this, I realize we are super passionate about this game.
02:51:48
Speaker
But if you're not into like turn-based RPGs and you're not into like sprite-based graphics and stuff, you might not be into this game. Wait, that's a perfect point. The people that reviewed this game the way they did probably started with Agnea. They probably started with Agnea. Dark is right. That's probably why they felt that way. He did Agnea, it was like, nope, and then they reviewed it. Yep, that's...
02:52:13
Speaker
I mean, they could like, especially if they played the first one, maybe they picked the dancer expecting like primrose. See, but that's actually interesting. That's an interesting take because I did the exact opposite. I thought about it and I was like, OK, what characters from the first game didn't I like? And I was like, I didn't really care for Therian, the thief. I was like, I didn't really care for the thief. I didn't really care for Cyrus, who was the
02:52:42
Speaker
the scholar, the scholar. I was like, I didn't really care for them and I didn't really care for Hanet. So I was like, those three are probably, I was like, I'm gonna- I actually didn't really care about Obric myself. I'm a little bit opposite where I liked Cyrus, but I didn't like Obric. Okay. I liked Obric because of
02:53:04
Speaker
I also liked Oberg because of his ties to the... his later ties to the true ending. I actually really liked Oberg. Oh, okay, okay, okay. So maybe I'll have a different opinion once I go through that. Okay, okay. You might. You probably... if you didn't really like him to begin with, you probably won't. Because, like, I didn't... I thought he was kind of cool. But I... yeah.
02:53:26
Speaker
So I went in with the mindset of, hey, I'm gonna at least consider the classes that I didn't like as my starting class because I want a different experience. So I immediately said, I'm not going with, I'm gonna try to stay away from Warrior and I'm gonna try to stay away from Cleric. And so I looked at all the characters and I was like, oh, I hated the thief class
02:53:55
Speaker
and I wasn't really a fan of the thief, maybe they improved it. And I was like, and this character kind of looked badass and I can make sure that I'm getting money and everything in the game, like getting money and getting items. So screw it, I'm gonna roll with the thief. And it was a good decision in my opinion, but like,
02:54:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think they just looked at everything. They looked at all the criticisms and they said, we are going to make changes. We're gonna make sure that the stories tie together. We're gonna make sure that there's more interaction than just like the Tales game esque, like push start to pop this up, something like that. So- Yeah, them interacting at battle was hype. I got so excited when they're like, your characters are like cheering each other on.
02:54:47
Speaker
And that was really devastated when you die. Like when, like Oswald, like one time Oswald died and Cassie's like, Oswald, no, we need you. And she like sounded like she was going to cry. And I was like, stop. I didn't mean, I didn't mean for him to die. Please stop making me feel bad. Making Polly feel bad.
02:55:09
Speaker
Oh my goodness, everything I could think of that I could have made criticisms for the first game. They just took all of that and they.
02:55:18
Speaker
made it great in this one. And like I had, I was like, KJ, I had like three characters. I didn't really particularly leave vibe with three or four characters that I wasn't super in love with in the first game. And now to go down to only one character I didn't is a huge improvement on story writing. Huge improvement on their part. You know what I mean?
02:55:43
Speaker
Like to me, going from like a few stories that multiple people can arguably say they weren't like super thrilled with. Like some people did like the Therion, but I, when I talk to people about, about Octopath one, there are several stories that people are like, eh, but in this one, it's like almost universally, it's just the one, unless you're an idol fan.
02:56:03
Speaker
Like, I've heard a few people like, oh, I love Agnio. She's idle. Like, I like idle anime. I'm like, okay, well, that's not me. I'm just like, Agnio's story was not it for me. But hey, I also like more like dark stories that are filled with things like betrayal and like having to prevent that. I should have tagged this Twitch stream with emotional damage. I should have tagged that as one of the tags. True.
02:56:33
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I guess my question is, do you have anything else or we can, we can kind of wrap up and give like the next month, like next time on turn based tangents. Yeah, I think we've pretty well like
02:56:51
Speaker
covered, I think we pretty well covered everything. One thing I also wanted to point out is that I found they had more like 2D imagery, and I thought that was kind of cool. I like that they added a little bit more of that from the second one over the first. I forgot to mention
Future Podcast Plans and Community Engagement
02:57:08
Speaker
that when we were talking about art styles and stuff like that. I do like the sketching and art style work of it. I always liked that in the first one, but the second one I felt like they did a little bit more.
02:57:19
Speaker
Okay. But yeah, I think we covered literally everything. I think we've had some hot takes on here too. So some people might be throwing hands currently. Oh yeah. I'm so ready for all of the backlash, but we'll see. I'm excited. We'll see. It'll make for a good conversation.
02:57:37
Speaker
But yeah, yeah, 9.8 and KJ says in my top 10 high up in my top 10. Yeah, same. I would argue also same high up on my top 10. Okay. Pretty well damn near perfect, which is shocking. I know you alluded to it earlier. Do you want to tell everybody what our next game is and what the plan is going forward?
02:58:03
Speaker
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the plan going forward. So KJ and I have been politely bullied.
02:58:14
Speaker
into trying the, I thought that's the best way I could explain it, politely bullied or pushed into trying the trail series. So KJ and I have never played the trail series before. We played a little bit of some of the demos at PAX East, but we were already at that point interested and we had already planned on
02:58:33
Speaker
doing some of the podcasts on Trails Games. So we are starting the next game if you guys want to join us playing off stream with us is Trails in the Sky. It was the game we were told to start with first.
02:58:49
Speaker
Um to get into the trail series because they all kind of connect to each other So we kind of have to start with the older ones to get into more of the newer ones uh and uh, we're definitely so uh shout outs to pea stone underscore on twitch and kane highwind on twitch, uh for basically bugging us
02:59:14
Speaker
forever since knowing us pretty much to play the trail series um because we are finally diving into that and we're playing trails in the sky and in actual fact we're doing back to back we're doing trails in the sky and then we're doing trails in the sky is it sc is number two second chapter yep yep second chapter so sc second chapter we're doing them back to back
02:59:40
Speaker
The way we're hoping to plan it is that, so from now until probably towards the end of May will be when we do the podcast because I have a really busy month in May. So I've told most of my viewers and stuff like that, told KHA that I have a convention, my largest convention that I sell my art at is at the end of May. So we're giving me as much time for the first one as possible.
03:00:08
Speaker
But then we're playing SC right away after that. So it'll be May's Trails of the Sky and Trails of the Sky SC will be June.
03:00:18
Speaker
And it might be the case that like we don't we because we can we can kind of be flexible about that. It might be the case that because so from what I've heard, Trails in the Sky one and then SC are like back to back like they're they're almost like Golden Sun one and two where they're split games, but they are like they pick up right after each other with like extending the same story arc. So it might be the case that we play both games and then do like a
03:00:47
Speaker
A review of one and two. A bigger podcast episode in June based on Polly's availability and my availability. I know your birthday. I say your birthday. Your actual birthday is in June. Actual birthday. Thank you for specifying that. Well, actually, you'll have some of that.
03:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, around that to plan around. But yeah, if worst case is we end up doing sort of a podcast episode at the end of the end of June to kind of go over both games. And I think what we're going to do is we're going to continue to sort of record other games.
03:01:28
Speaker
other podcasts rather, off-stream. And then we're still publishing those to Spotify, to Google Podcasts, to Amazon Music Podcasts, all that stuff. Yeah, so we'll still have like episodes play in May. And I really thank KJ for this one because one, we knew like the plot that connected kind of like the Golden Sun one and two.
03:01:48
Speaker
with Trails of the Sky but also to it made sense to push them up even just in that because with May being so busy this way it's a little bit less of like I like I have to get one like one done because I feel like I'm gonna be
03:02:03
Speaker
trying to play as much as possible of one and two. And this way we do like a special episode of June of one and two. And we'll have other recordings. I know KJ and I've talked and we're gonna do like a little bit of tease, but we've both beat Xenogears now and that's all we're gonna say. So we'll still have episodes playing like in
03:02:21
Speaker
and stuff like that just in case we don't do a stream in May and we might just do the stream of both games in June. It also gives our community a little bit more time because I feel like the community is going to want to play 1-2 back-to-back as well because they connect so much story-wise apparently. We're going in blind, the two of us, but
03:02:40
Speaker
It's just what we've heard from, uh, P stone and Kane and stuff like that, who've played the games. Um, and so, yeah, so just in case we don't stream one in may, um, and stream into June, it's just, we're going to just combine the two of them. If it ends up, or if it ends up working out that we both still end up beating the first one, we might do it in may and, and we'll figure it out. It just depends on how busy we are and stuff like that. So.
03:03:05
Speaker
But yeah, I'm really, really excited about it. Uh, I like see next to like nothing, like even like merch wise and things like that of trails, the trail series, but I've heard so many good things about the series and I've always wanted to dive into it. Um, KJ and I are also saying that if we're really enjoying sky, you might see some trails.
03:03:26
Speaker
game streamed by us potentially potentially so it's one of those things that we're like really really hyped in because we know this series is very beloved but it's not something we've ever experienced.
03:03:40
Speaker
Yeah. The legend, the legend of heroes trails in the sky. Yep. That is the full name of the game. It's available on PSP and steam steam. Yeah. And I'll be playing the, I'll be playing the steam versions because the PSP copies were way too. I will also be playing the steam version.
03:04:02
Speaker
SMT to persona. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. They're, they're generally, and they sometimes do go on sale. Um, I, I got my two copies on sale because P so was like, they're on sale. And I was like, yes. Okay. Let's go get them. Uh, so I bought a few trails games when they were on sale.
03:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, on PSP, they're pretty expensive. They're very expensive on PSP. Yeah, it's the market of like a lot of JRPGs right now, especially like retro ones and stuff like that, are pretty expensive to get the physical copies of them. So PSP ones kind of fall into that.
03:04:43
Speaker
Unfortunately, so we both kind of were like, and we don't know. The thing is, is we wouldn't mind owning them, but we don't know if we're going to even like them. So we have no experience in the series at all. Neither one of us. I was showing off, I have a Legend of Heroes game, but I've never played it for the PSP. So it's just like, we've never, neither one of us have experienced the series at all. So we have no idea.
03:05:05
Speaker
Um, going in, uh, but they're, they're pretty expensive there right now. So it's just like, let's just do the, the PC version. And we recommend anybody wanting to follow along with us, get the PC versions cause they're cheaper and easier to acquire. Yeah.
03:05:24
Speaker
All right. So I think we're, I think that that wraps up things. So thanks everybody for another episode of turn based tangents. It's been a lot of fun. A lot of hot. Yeah. Thanks for everybody coming in and also special. Thanks to Shane for writing in there. Um, that was amazing. Thank you for bringing your community over Shane. That was really sweet of you. Uh, if you're still here and anybody still lurking and hanging
03:05:46
Speaker
out. Sorry that we don't do as like big of like flowbo raid when we're doing our podcast episodes. And I was in the middle of a tangent. So it was about tangents. But but but we very much appreciate everybody who hung out everybody who came in. And everybody that's listening because we are everybody listening. Yeah. Everybody listening in. We appreciate you as well. Thank you all so much.
03:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, listening to our podcast, listening to the episodes and stuff like that means a lot to us. We're trying to branch out more. We're both really gung-ho about this. We've been really enjoying it. So getting the feedback that like people in chat like right now for those who can see the Twitch VOD or are here right now, or for those who are listening and stuff like that, like we could see people are really
03:06:34
Speaker
enjoying it, but also we really appreciate those listening who are listening at later dates and stuff. It really, really means a lot to us. We have a link tree now that links to everything.
03:06:50
Speaker
So it links to her YouTube channel, it links to our podcast, like the actual, like just the audio versions of them, like on Spotify and stuff like that, Amazon and everything. So we're on all kinds of different things. We really appreciate it. Hitting those follow buttons, hitting those subscribes, listening to our podcasts on those other platforms is just as fantastic as being here live while we're recording.
03:07:18
Speaker
so much to us and we thank you all to both mine and KJ's communities and those brought in to it with Shane and anybody else who rains during our streams. We really, really appreciate it.