Octopath Traveler is famous for its multiple protagonists, so when Square announced that Octopath Traveler 0 would be focusing on one character, it made me curious. The franchise lives and dies by its eight playable characters—it’s literally in the name—so relegating the story to a much more traditional singular viewpoint seemed to go against what the franchise is all about. Thankfully, there’s a lot to love about this new entry.
As opposed to the previous two games, the protagonist is a player-made character. There wasn’t any of the character creation process in the demo, and nothing about how it pertains to the way the character plays. In fact, the demo skipped most of the introduction and dropped me straight into the town building. My only knowledge of the protagonist is that they are rebuilding their hometown after something happened to it.
Which brings us to the town building: it’s cute, but shallow, mostly boiling down to placing buildings like ranches and shops on the map. The demo doesn’t show much more, but it was implied that you’ll be filling it out with people you meet along your journey. I didn’t spend much time here besides placing a ranch and looking at the beautifully rendered 16-bit chickens.
I quickly moved on to the small part of the story that was shown, where a companion and I head to a desert town to seek out a famous merchant to move back to our town. He says no, of course—unless we could maybe deal with the lizard men that have been robbing people. I, of course, agreed.
As I set out on my quest, I hit my first encounter and was introduced to the combat system, where you control eight party members simultaneously: four in the frontline and four in the backline. The four in the front can attack, use items, and cast spells, while the four in the back heal HP and Mana. Each character is paired with another, and the two can be swapped between front and backline with the press of a button. It’s dense, and to say this was confusing at first is an understatement. That said, as you play it becomes much more manageable, and you start picking up on tricks like when to swap out casters with their much meatier partner to take a big hit.
Closing Thoughts on Octopath Traveler 0
The demo culminated with a boss fight against the Chief Lizardman, and dear reader, let me tell you—it was a challenge. It took me 23 turns to take him down, and maybe a lot of that was me still learning the combat system, but I came out on top feeling accomplished, like a good boss should.
The initial changes in story and focus seemed to go against what the series is known for, but I feel the new combat system more than makes up for it. I came away from the Octopath Traveler 0 demo very excited to see the full game.
