Octopath Traveler: Session 1

So, because reasons, even though I got Octopath Traveler on release day, I didn't start playing it until yesterday.  This post will be me discussing my first play session, my initial thoughts about the game after the first two sessions (I'm already in the second play session, which will continue later tonight; I consider a "play session" to be over when I go to sleep, even if it's split up around various other obligations like eating, exercise, and using the bathroom) will be in a followup post.

I find using gameplay time to define the length of an RPG or my progress therein to be too subjective to be of use, because I tend to mess around with various things to learn what they do and how best to use them, and early on I intentionally fight extra fights to get used to the battle system.  Thus, saying that this first play session was 10 hours means effectively nothing, since other, more tryhard players will ruin their blind playthrough by trying to speedrun and ignoring the story while feeling the right to complain about the things they're doing.  I vastly prefer to just describe my gameplay progress, which I will now do.

Starting out, the game has you choose one of the eight characters.  It doesn't really matter who you choose as after the first boss you fight, you gain access to the world map and at that point you can travel around to the other major cities and recruit the other seven characters.  You can even experience their back story, so you know exactly who they are and what their motivations are.  I picked H'aanit as my starting character simply because I like the whole ranger/hunter with a bow and a pet, and living off the land kind of thing, and she fit the bill perfectly.  Her path action is Provoke, which lets her fight NPCs in towns (and out in the wild) using only the beasts she's caught.  Oh yeah, she has this really cool mechanic where she can catch an enemy during battle and summon it for an attack or some other ability during battle later on.  Each one can only be summoned into battle a set number of times before returning to the wild of their own volition, so it makes sense to use them up while travelling so you can replace them with newer, stronger ones from later areas.  She also has a pet snow leopard named Linde that she can summon infinitely.

H'aanit is one of the two best hunters in her hometown of S'warkii (that I keep misreading as "S'wankii"), and without going into her story too much (play the game and experience it for yourself, dangit!), her master goes on a hunt and ends up requiring assistance of the urgent variety.  After a quick bit of looking around the world map to see where the other seven characters were, I realized that the cleric, Ophilia, was in the next town over; and I ain't gonna say no to having a healer in the party.  Ran over there and grabbed her.

Ophilia's story is possibly one of the sadder ones.  Not gonna delve too deeply into it, but basically she got orphaned because of a war, and taken in by the Archbishop of Flamesgrace (and in doing so, gained an adoptive sister named Lianna).  When I met up with her in her hometown of Flamesgrace, she's just made up her mind to do a once-every-twenty-years ceremonial pilgrimage of the Sacred Flame called "the Kindling" in place of Lianna, so that she can stay by her father's side while he's ill.  I love how the game introduces you to a character at approximately halfway through their story, it just feels neat.  RPGs have always had this vibe of "run around, assist others, and generally do good things for people", and this makes the characters feel a lot more human with relatively little extra effort required in the writing.  After she officially sets off on her journey, you can once again explore the world map to your heart's content.

Next up I tried to do some of the side quest stuff but got hopelessly confused when the incredibly basic things that I thought would resolve them failed to do so.  Ophilia's path action is Guide, which lets you take an NPC with you, and there are various side quest NPCs that need to find things or go places.  So naturally I grabbed one who needed to be escorted through the forest around H'aanit's village and back to her home town so she could be with her husband, and took her there.  Except that I then proceeded to explore the entire town and the area around it for good measure, and couldn't find her husband or any other NPCs with any dialogue that would progress the side quest.

I've done a few of the side quests that I've found to be extremely straightforward, but it seems like there might be prerequisites for the others, perhaps involving recruiting the other characters.  Recruiting a character opens up the side quests in their area, as well as spawning a few extra NPCs here and there, so maybe I need to do that for her husband to show up in the town.

I really like how the game handles navigating from one town to the next.  You gotta read the signs, man.  Surprise, it's an open world turn-based JRPG.  Whodathunkit?

Between getting Ophilia and making my way to Sunshade, I somehow managed to actually kill a Cait like it was nothing, and received a surprise huge monetary reward and enough experience for about three levels on both H'aanit and Ophilia.  I don't know how I did it, and I haven't been able to kill any more since then.  They have a really high evasion rate and flee from battle rather quickly, so even though I'm prioritizing them whenever I see one, RNGesus just isn't taking my side.

Anyway, once in Sunshade, I recruited one of the two characters from the original demo, Primrose.  Her back story is one of sadness as well, as she seeks to track down the people responsible for her father's death.  In doing so, she ends up working as a dancer in a tavern run by a guy who can only rightfully be described as a giant prick.  Basically, he's constantly abusive and demeaning towards his dancers.  He doesn't realize until the very end, once he gets what's coming to him, that Primrose was really the one using him, and not the other way around.

Primrose's path action, Allure, is similar to Ophilia's, where she can get an NPC to follow her.  This one has a chance of failure, though.  The game says failing will affect your reputation in town, but I haven't failed one yet to see how exactly you deal with that.  Tavern keepers have an option relating to it, so perhaps you just shove some money their way with a little *wink wink, nudge nudge* and your reputation magically gets improved?

At the very end of this session, I decided to recruit the merchant Tressa next, and left myself standing next to her in her hometown of Rippletide.  If you have the game and have been looking at the world map, you no doubt realize I've skipped over some of the characters, this started out as a coincidence and ended up being intentional.  I'm still gonna get all of them, I just wanted to get the ladies first ;)