Ohai all,
If you’re reading this then I presume you’re wondering what this is all about, yes? I hope so, because I’m hoping to turn this into a long(ish)-term thing for the next couple of months on/off-stream.
I felt like doing a little project on stream to try and keep my self motivated and what’s better than playing games? Re-playing a game you’ve stupidly spent nearly 180 hours of your lifetime playing… all over again.
The game in question is Octopath Traveler, an adorable little JRPG from Square Enix (hmm.. wonder what other game they make which I also love?) in collaboration with Aquire which was released in July 2018 originally for the Nintendo Switch and only a few months ago, found a second home on Steam for all you PC people.
My first glimpse of this game was on my friend TCLovesGames’ stream not long after the game came out and another friend started playing it too. At that point in time, I was Switchless and it felt like a very bleak world, indeed! Anyhoo, I thought the art style of the game was adorable and I’ll admit, it was the game which finally made me give in and a get said Switch not too long after.
The game’s art style is bloody amazing. If any of you have been at the streams I’ve done recently playing the game, then you’ll know I never shut up about how “pretty” the sand, snow and water is — they basically look like glitter! Even the towns look like they’re from those little old pop-up books, so much so, that the game’s collector’s edition came with one — made up of eight familiar scenes from the game for each Traveler. If I could compare the game’s battle styles, it would be similar to some early Final Fantasy games (a franchise I’ve played a bit of, but don’t really care for. I blame tedious cutscenes).
So, I started streaming the game myself on August 7th 2019. It was also a bit of a celebration as it was my first proper stream from the Switch with my super-duper capture card. As I said earlier, I’ve played the game before (except the post-game, I’m working on that.. levelling up level 80+ characters to their max level 99 is HARD!!) and pretty much fell in love with it.
Time for the admin bit! I’m doing these write-ups to hopefully provide my little gang of Minions who show up to my streams some updates on the Octopath gang while I’m levelling them up a bit off-stream. I’ve been playing the game in the (proper) OCTOPATH order, because the first letter of each character’s name spells out well.. Octopath.
My order for playing is:
Ophilia, the cleric
Cyrus, the scholar (he’s basically the Sherlock/Doctor Strange of the Octopath word.. might have a girly crush on him *ahem*)
Tressa, the merchant (her mum has the WORST VOICE EVER.)
Olberic, the warrior
Primrose, the dancer
Alfyn, the apothecary
Therion, the thief (he competes with Cyrus for my favourite)
H’aanit, the hunter
There haven’t been any major casualties just yet, other than my terrible on-the-spot-activate-panic-mode planning during Ophilia’s first boss fight, a friend during the first stream called this a “tactical regroup”. If all of your travelers die in battle, you’ll see a Game Over screen, something I only ever saw during the demo, and you’ll have to resume from where you last saved the game. Octopath isn’t like Fire Emblem where there’s several different difficulties, aka lunatic mode and if your units die in battle, they’re gone forever. I’m trying to avoid any Game Overs at all costs on-stream (haven’t really thought of any forfeits yet — I should’ve by now!).
I could bang on about this game for ages, but I’ll keep that for the other posts I’m hoping to do. At the time of writing, I’ve finished each character’s first chapter and currently levelling them all up off-stream ready to jump back in with their second chapters fairly soon (hoping mid-October, with everyone around level 40ish).
Meanwhile, you can get a recap by watching all the streams (so far) on my Twitch archive in this convenient little collection/group/folder/whatever I’ve put together here.
