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I think I'm gonna start with Cyrus because being a scholar appeals to me, a mega-nerd. I really want to know how the story is structured. The way it sounds is that there is no central "main" story but just eight character-specific stories that you can do all on one save file by recruiting everyone, which seems pretty cool. I wonder if there's an overall "ending" that happens when you finish everyone's story or something. I remember SaGa Frontier had like a final little epilogue if you finished all seven characters' stories. I suppose I could wait until I get home to check, but it sounds like that's 3 hours per save file, right? So you could make multiple saves to try out multiple characters and you'll just have to stop that save file at the 3 hour mark?
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Jun 14, 2018 17:56
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DalaranJ posted:Oh, I thought it was going to be structured like SaGa games. It seems like it's sort of like the SaGa games but you can do everything on one save file. It's like if the seven main characters in SaGa Frontier were all the recruitable characters and you could do all of their storylines concurrently, just sort of weaving them all together.
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Jun 14, 2018 22:42
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7c Nickel posted:This name is terrible. Why isn't it "Eightfold Traveler"? I assume it's a reference to the noble eightfold path anyway. Olberic Cyrus Tressa Ophilia Primrose Alfyn Therion H'aanit With this director, the title always has to have some sort of winking reference.
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Jun 15, 2018 02:40
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I thought I'd like Cyrus a lot but his voice just kinda irks me, and his plot setup isn't all that compelling to me. Maybe I'll try Alfyn next. Also, are rogue path actions more rewarding in some way than noble ones? It seems like having a chance to fail and lose reputation is an unfortunate downside that you don't have to deal with if you're doing a noble action. I'm a little bit less sold on the game after some time with the demo yesterday, though, specifically because of the lack of character interaction and not too much indication that there'll be a lot of it. It seems like the selling point of something like this, with an ensemble cast of eight characters each with their own goals and motivations, should be bouncing them off each other, right? Maybe they start to do that after the first chapter and the lack of interaction during the recruitment parts is a fluke? I worry a bit that the game is just going to be eight solo stories about people who just happen to be in the same party but never really interact. It's not like there's any lack of effort put into the writing! I was pretty impressed when I realized that any nameless NPC I could Scrutinize as Cyrus would have a little biography for me to read, and I have to imagine Alfyn can get the same thing (or something slightly different?) with his path action, so that's pretty cool. It's just that it's very odd to have the party members not interact at all as the group comes together and I don't think it bodes well. Harrow fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 13:58
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Terper posted:The inter-party character interactions are absolutely my biggest "Hmmm??", and have been for quite a while. With that said, a month or so back, Gameinformer wrote up their thoughts on the preview event some journalists went to, and they did detail an event between two party members. Well, that sounds a little bit better. I definitely hope it picks up later. Part of me wonders if the character recruitment process is just kind of a fluke because they couldn't quite make it work because of how many different permutations of party configurations there could be as you go, so all you're really doing is playing through each character's prologue and then after that things actually start, because they know you have all eight? I dunno. If it were me, I might have made these prologues a "flashback" or something. Like start with the whole party around a campfire or something and you pick who tells their backstory first, then just play through all the prologues solo and pick up from there. Terper posted:As for Rogue v. Noble actions, Rogue actions generally have their level/money restrictions replaced with a percentage chance to fail. So you will have the chance to complete a quest/receive a strong item earlier than you would with Noble actions. Ah, that makes sense. So far I've only really played as Cyrus so I only had a rogue path action to work with. For people who have played several/all of the prologues: which characters have the most compelling plot setups for you? Cyrus's kinda left me cold so I'm shopping around for who I'm going to pick as my "main" character.
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Jun 15, 2018 14:45
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It is somewhat amusing to me that mild-mannered, kind-hearted Alfyn's only available weapon (without sub-jobs, of course) is a big ol' giant axe. I kinda figured he'd use daggers and bows or something.
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Jun 15, 2018 15:47
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Folt The Bolt posted:What amuses me most about that is that Alfyn is the one that has the direct damage Axe skills. I'm probably going to make his subclass a Scholar down the line. Do we know how subclasses affect stats? I'm kind of curious if, say, giving someone like Olberic a subclass with magic would increase his magic power, or if it doesn't (or doesn't in any significant way) and it would be better to double-up on whatever the character is already good at.
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Jun 15, 2018 18:26
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Alfyn having the Final Fantasy Chemist-style Mix ability is definitely a strong argument in favor of making him my main character, honestly I wonder what would make the best subclass for him. Depending on how rare/precious ingredients are, Scholar might be redundant if he can deal other kinds of elemental damage with mixes.
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Jun 15, 2018 20:58
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I really like Alfyn as a starting character. He has a good plot setup and I really loved how he fuckin' smack-talked a snake before and after beating the poo poo out of it  I think he's gonna be the dude I stick with as my "main character" guy.empathe posted:The dialogue is awful with like "seeketh" and similar fake olde English. Is this just the Hunter or is the whole game like this? It's probably just H'aanit. The four prologues I've played (Alfyn, Olberic, Primrose, and Cyrus) all had totally modern English dialog writing.
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Jun 16, 2018 03:21
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voltcatfish posted:characters outside of the party not gaining exp, if true, is really bad imo Yeah that's a design decision I will never understand. That said, it does use EXP scaling to make it really easy to catch people up. It's just... it wouldn't need that if inactive party members just got EXP in the first place.
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Jun 16, 2018 14:30
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I can't decide whether to start with Alfyn or Therion in the final game. I really like Alfyn's general story setup and attitude, but Therion is really fun from a gameplay perspective (a boosted HP Thief is a full self-heal and a ton of damage, it's awesome). Though I think I like Alfyn's voice acting better so he's probably the one I'll start with.
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Jun 17, 2018 21:11
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I feel like there's gotta be some level of importance for who you pick first, given that they're introduced with "you" pronouns and everyone else is third-person. Like whoever you pick first is supposed to be "you." I have no idea if that will actually matter at all but it seems like it will.
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Jun 17, 2018 21:16
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I wouldn't have really noticed the weirdness with characters not interacting if your main character had at least two or three lines. Other characters don't necessarily need them, but it feels odd to have Primrose going like, "I don't know why you'd want to help me, but okay," joining up with Alfyn, and then Alfyn remaining totally silent as they go to witness horrible trauma for Primrose and kill a guy. Just a line like, "I can't see someone in need and not help out" or something would've smoothed it over so much. Then give each character one or two lines they can say to any main character at the end of their prologue to the effect of, "It looks like we're going the same way, so we might as well stick together for a while." There, done. They don't even need to be voiced.
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Jun 19, 2018 17:46
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Your Computer posted:wait a second Hell yes it does. Though I'm curious if you're always going to wear the costume of your subclass, which is sort of how it was depicted in the trailer that showed off the class system, or whether you can still wear your default costume if you want. Evil Fluffy posted:I wonder how many people upset by the encounter rate are holding B and forgot this is a thing. I don't love that as a mechanic, but I can see how they would get there. If they've balanced things around there being X number of encounters over Y distance traveled, then traveling that distance faster means you're going to hit those encounters with less time between. I wonder if you'll hit roughly the same number of encounters crossing a map no matter whether you sprint or not. That said, I also didn't know ahead of time that sprinting increased the encounter rate, but the radar turning red as I ran made it immediately apparent. Good UI design! 
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Jun 21, 2018 14:21
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Mordiceius posted:So just to be clear - starting character doesn't really mean anything at all and I'll get to experience 100% of every character's story on one save file, right? I believe you can't remove your starting character from the active party, so that might matter to you. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's at least some part where your starting character has some special lines or something. Beyond that, they've said that you can do every character's story in a single playthrough, and nothing seems to contradict that. So pick someone for your starting character who you're happy to always have in the party and who you think is particularly cool, but that's about all you need to think about.
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Jun 22, 2018 16:53
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Unlucky7 posted:Personally, I disagree with this. All the first chapter scenarios were designed to be the one that the player could be playing first, and I think it would be even more jarring to have Alfyn go "WELL SHUCKS" from the peanut gallery as Primrose's story plays out. That...is an exaggeration I admit, but shoehorning a character into a story sequence that was never accounted for in the first place is always noticeable. See Marie in Persona 4 Golden! You know, right off screen, where she always was, honest! One thing they could've done is have the game start with everyone sitting around a table like that one piece of concept art, and then have them all tell stories about how they got to this point. You pick the order you play those stories out, and that's how the prologues happen. When you're done, Chapter 2 picks up there with the whole party together, and you never have to worry about where characters are during each others' prologues. One downside is that you go from everything being solo to having a full party immediately, though. But what I meant wasn't necessarily to have people chime in during each others' story scenes, but before and after. There's always a couple of lines when a character's prologue gets to the "this is when the rest of the party joins in" point, but there's never a response to those lines. Adding a response would make a huge difference. Similarly, they never really address why the characters stick together after that point--again, one or two lines at that point would smooth it over. As it is, there's just no acknowledgment at all.
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Jun 25, 2018 02:50
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Your Computer posted:speaking of dialogue, I've been trying to figure out the faux ye olde English and I'm starting to be convinced they just wrote a normal script and ran it through a converter. It's so bizarrely bad. Holy poo poo, I haven't played H'aanit's prologue yet, that is horrific  Just go hire the guy who translated FFXII and Vagrant Story, cripes. He doesn't do actual Ye Olde Fake Olde English but he's very good at writing archaic-sounding dialog that still sounds like a human might say it. Night Blade posted:If any of you new to the genre like what you see here, I'd suggest you give the first Saga Frontier a look. The translation can be rough, but I at least suggest Asellus's scenario. This is good advice. Asellus's scenario is far and away the best one, so if you only play one, make it hers. It's a unique setup, has a great cast of characters, Asellus is fun to play as (everything great about a Mystic with none of the downsides!), and the plot is actually good. Other good scenarios include:
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Jun 26, 2018 15:47
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Zaphod42 posted:Alfyn - Super friendly good-guy who just wants to help everybody out. Pick this if you just want to help people. Healer who wants to tend all the sick the world over. Investigates people's life stories. Something that didn't come across in this description of Alfyn is that, during his prologue, he takes the time to be extremely sassy to a giant snake before and after beating the poo poo out of it with an axe. Alfyn is good and cool, is what I'm saying.
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Jun 27, 2018 14:50
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Evil Fluffy posted:His transformation mechanics make complete and total sense though? Alkaiser has to hide his identity, so he can't change in front of other people. He can change in front of robots because they can be ordered to never divulge his identity. He even threatens to wipe the medical robot if it mentions his super hero power. It's not that it doesn't make sense, it's just a pain to trigger whenever the story doesn't force a transformation on you. It does make sense and is completely consistent, though. Your Computer posted:I guess I know who I'm playing next Yeah Alfyn and Tressa are the best characters, going by their prologues. Alfyn's dialogue around his prologue boss fight is what 100% sold me on him as my first character
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Jun 27, 2018 18:00
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Hellioning posted:You have different sprites for each of your weapons. Tressa-wielding-a-bow looks different from Tressa-wielding-a-spear. He's asking about spear vs. spear, like does every spear have the same sprite
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Jun 28, 2018 18:31
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Tae posted:Square is cross promoting Octopath with their mobile game Huh, and here I'd been wondering why there wasn't a mobile RPG that basically took Valkyrie Profile's combat system, since it'd work reasonably well with touch controls. 
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Jul 2, 2018 13:50
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minya posted:Is there word yet on whether or not the full game will always involve all 8 characters? Or will it be designed for multiple playthroughs, where you select different starting characters and end up engaging with a different set of guys? You can recruit all eight characters and do all of their stories in one playthrough. I think what you do is sort of "activate" which character's story you're doing when you go to the area that continues that story, and they're functionally the "main" character during that time. There's a lot of level scaling there to make sure every new thing you come across can level up to meet you if you've been doing a lot of other quests along the way. You're also free to recruit nobody except your starter character if for some reason soloing sounds fun.
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Jul 2, 2018 20:59
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Your Computer posted:as for playing the game multiple times, it sounds like the idea is that you can play through everyone's story start to finish in a single game. You meet up and get the chance to play their prologue, and from there it looks like the world map will show you where to go next for each character's next chapter. A more interesting question that's still unanswered is whether there is even an overarching story at all or if it's strictly the 8 character stories Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. If it's like SaGa Frontier, there might not be any overarching story at all and you'll just get a sort of epilogue that opens up once you complete all eight personal stories. That's sort of what I'm expecting right now (give or take the epilogue, but I'm pretty sure some sort of wrap-up is needed in a long RPG like this), but it could really go either way. The main differences between this and SaGa Frontier (at least as far as structure goes) is that you can recruit all eight main characters and do their stories in one playthrough, and there aren't any other characters to recruit. In SaGa Frontier, you had to start a new playthrough for each of the seven main characters, some characters wouldn't join others, and there were a couple dozen other recruitable characters along the way.
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Jul 2, 2018 21:02
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Tae posted:The game is not SaGa. I dunno what SaGa is, but I'm like 99% sure you'll hate the game with expectations that it will be like a SaGa with the way people talk about it. I'm just using it as a point of comparison, since it's an easy one to make. In both games, there's a selection of main characters who each have their own personal story. SaGa games differ in how it all works, though. SaGa Frontier has only those personal stories without any overarching story; Romancing SaGa, meanwhile, has one core story with only some small differences based on your starting character, so playing through the game 8 times would have basically the same story each time, just with a different main character. Octopath Traveler has little in common with SaGa gameplay-wise (for one thing, it has a normal leveling system) and the ability to do all 8 stories in one playthrough is a big difference, too. But all I'm saying is that it looks like Octopath will be about those 8 character-specific stories without having some big overarching story that ties it all together, which is how SaGa Frontier was (again, with a different overall structure since you couldn't do it all in one playthrough). This looks like it won't take the Romancing SaGa approach, where characters' personal stories are mostly subplots in comparison to a big, central story.
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Jul 2, 2018 21:16
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Zaphod42 posted:Nah. The thing is that each map destination is labeled with whose story it advances once you complete the prologues. It pretty strongly telegraphs that those stories are the primary plot. It doesn’t just stop with the prologues with only a few subplots later on.
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Jul 2, 2018 21:27
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Your Computer posted:I'd love to hear where you got "pretty obviously" from Zaphod, because as far as I know they haven't actually revealed or talked about any of it yet? I guess other than it's a JRPG and JRPGs usually have a big ~save the world~ plot. Yeah, I think the thing is that the vast majority of JRPGs have a big, central story about saving the world. But the thing is that a game about a handful of personal stories isn't at all unprecedented, and I think the SaGa lineage is pretty clear here even with the differences. Like it definitely could still have a main, central plot, but the fact that the chapters are separated by character pretty strongly suggests that the characters' personal stories will be the main focus.
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Jul 2, 2018 22:11
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Yeah, it's certainly possible, but I think if there is a central plot it'll be mostly background until the end. That's just a guess, but I'm basing it mostly on each character having their own chapter progression. If I had to guess, if there's a central plot, it'll be something that sort of appears around the edges of each character's story, with the final boss unlocking as soon as you finish at least one character's story all the way through (to allow for solo playthroughs). Maybe something changes if you do all eight before fighting the final boss, whether it's an optional harder version (Romancing SaGa had a similar mechanic) or unlocking the "true ending" or something. minya posted:It seems certain characters are just objectively more powerful than others, yeah? I started with H'aanit and her beast summon thing was so much stronger than anything Therion or Alfyn could muster. Alfyn's a healer, so that's not too surprising. That said it remains to be seen how things scale. It might be that H'aanit's beast summon is really strong early on but falls off later and leaves her on a more even playing field. Or maybe not, who knows.
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Jul 2, 2018 22:47
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Zaphod42 posted:Just talkin out my rear end, but that's the impression I got. It could go either way, just feels like that is way more likely and that's the feeling I got in the demo once I got past the first stuff, it seemed set up to be pretty neutral to who was in your party otherwise. I'd actually like to be wrong, since we do have more JRPGs with a main plot than without. And maybe it being called 'octopath' is a hint in that side's favor. I think the reason it's neutral to who's in your party in the demo is because you're just doing each character's prologue, and those are always going to go the same no matter what. They (perhaps understandably) didn't write lines for all the other characters for everyone's prologue, even though I wish they would have. Things might change later on. The thing that points to the characters' personal stories being the majority of the game is how you can see each characters' next chapter on the map, and they're sort of independent of one another. That said, I hadn't played Ophelia's prologue and that definitely sounds like a setup for a save-the-world plot the way people describe it. My current bet (if I had to put money on it, which I thankfully don't) is that each character is going to have some thread going through their story, whether it's a prominent one or not, that leads up to the same final boss, but there won't be a big core JRPG plot. It'll be more like, you can go face the final boss after you finish at least one character's personal story or something like that, because they all lead up to the same boss through different paths. You can already see some connections between them (for example, it looks like the evil order from Primrose's prologue also shows up in Cyrus's) so it's easy to see how they might start to intertwine. I just hope that the characters acknowledge when that happens.
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Jul 3, 2018 13:25
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Evil Fluffy posted:I suspect subclassing is going to make the "who is most useful I'll make them my MC" considerations largely moot. It's also possible that it just doesn't really matter at all. I forgot who, but someone said that the only character who has to be in your party is the main character for whichever chapter you're currently doing. If that's the case, then all eight characters will have roughly equal time being a required party member (y'know, assuming you do all eight stories).
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Jul 3, 2018 13:50
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Momomo posted:I finally sat down and played a bit more of the demo. So far I've only played half of them (Primrose in the old demo, and now Ophilia, Therion and doing Alfys) but some seem more story involved than others. It feels like the first two were pretty heavy on story, while Therion really only got a plot at the very end, and Alfys only exists for like five minutes before you converge and join his party. I have to wonder if that means some characters will be more prominent than others. I think it's just the way the prologues are structured. If you pick Alfyn first, it doesn't feel any different from anyone else's prologue as you do the whole thing solo. I'm guessing that each character just has a different jumping-on point in their prologue for when you do them with the rest of the party. Momomo posted:Also, going into Alfys I figured having a party of three would make it a lot easier to fight the boss. I probably made it harder on myself by trying to keep everyone alive, but I still managed to die to it. Not sure how you could really fight that thing solo, but I am excited to see the difficulty be a thing. Alfyn's boss is pretty easy solo. The thing is that the level scaling is no joke. The first boss you fight generally isn't very hard, but they ramp up in difficulty pretty quickly as you get more party members.
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Jul 5, 2018 15:00
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Zaphod42 posted:Bosses are scaled to your level. The ones you fight later are tougher, regardless of order. I suspect the reason they ramp up so steeply in the prologues is both because they scale to your level and because the game knows that you're going to have more party members for each one. That's most obvious in how many defense points bosses start to have for three- and four-character parties, because now you have way more chances to chip away at them on any given turn. The combat system really starts to click once you have a full party, too, so I'm excited to see what late-game bosses are like.
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Jul 5, 2018 15:53
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Frankston posted:I had an hour left on the demo so I played it again and man this game looks and sounds so good (well aside from the hammy voice acting perhaps). Yeah that's really really normal for the genre. Even JRPGs that don't use sprites only rarely show armor on your character model. Like Zaphod says, you do have at least some customization because your subclass can change your sprite. Some of the subclass costumes are pretty great, too.
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Jul 5, 2018 23:01
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Sprites changing for classes is fairly common, but not for equipped armor. Even in 3D JRPGs it's more remarkable when armor shows up than when it doesn't.
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Jul 5, 2018 23:06
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Your Computer posted:heck yea they are The Bravely series has my favorite Red Mage outfit 
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Jul 6, 2018 15:03
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Alfyn is a good boy and he is my friend (and main character pick) I thought I'd like Cyrus more but his overall setup kinda bored me, and I ended up liking Alfyn's whole "I'm going to help people with an aw-shucks attitude but secretly I'm cold as ice and will sass a giant snake before and after beating the poo poo out of it with an axe" thing. I hope the experience scaling for lower-level party members is significant because I'm sure I'll be switching up my party constantly.
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Jul 6, 2018 15:12
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Tae posted:Jason Kotaku's favorte rpg this year is Ni No Kuni 2, take that as your will It doesn't have a ton of competition Harrow fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jul 6, 2018 |
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Jul 6, 2018 21:09
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Detective No. 27 posted:There's a GameXplain video where he xplains that due to the way the game is structured, there isn't much interaction between the party members. Each character is basically alone in the cutscenes in their particular storylines. There are times where party members do talk to each other but he gave the impression that they're few. I don't really love the sound of this. It almost sounds like they planned on making them eight completely separate stories like SaGa Frontier and then just mashed them up at some point without really changing anything else. If that's the case, I'd probably prefer it if all eight stories were completely separate and the characters never met up at all. Just have a bunch of minor characters with a few lines each that anyone can recruit and make the game much more explicitly just be about jumping between all these different stories that are taking place at the same time. That'd be less jarring. Obviously it'd be a huge amount of work to write a separate cast of party members for each main character, but just using the SaGa Frontier model (where most recruitable characters are just random NPCs you meet and join up and maybe have some relevance to one character but that's it) would've been fine.
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Jul 6, 2018 21:14
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Bean posted:Legend of Mana was awesome and it had three plot lines that didn’t touch for poo poo, we’re all gonna be okay. I think it's okay if the plotlines don't really interact with each other, I just think it's jarring that the characters are all in a party together that whole time. If they were eight totally separate stories (that you could still do on one save file by just jumping between them on the map screen), with like some minor side characters to fill out each character's four-person party, I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. I think it's just going to be hard to get over the idea that these eight people are traveling together but have basically nothing to say about the no-doubt intense poo poo they're supposedly dealing with together.
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Jul 6, 2018 22:07
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There are supposedly party banter segments but not during any of the actual plot cutscenes
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Jul 6, 2018 22:08
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Panic! at Nabisco posted:No interaction during character stories is slightly disappointing but definitely not "I'm out" disappointing, for me at least. Just reminds me of SaGa Frontier's story modes more, where character stories were largely self contained and your party members might comment but not in such a way that it intrudes on the character's personal story. I think the difference for me is that SaGa Frontier doesn't have all seven characters in a party together and no other recruitable party members. That makes it a lot more jarring. I'm still definitely not totally at "I'm out" levels of disappointed but it's definitely going to be something that nags at me throughout the game.
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Jul 6, 2018 22:27
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