Octopath Traveller 0 is the upcoming prequel to Square Enix’s love letter to old-school RPGs — and it’s looking like a spectacular return for this beloved series.
I sat down with a 30-minute demo of the title. Here are some of the biggest changes and newest features.
Brick by brick
Towns are a staple in JRPGs; having a great place to stop, rest, chat with NPCs, and spend your hard-earned cash is a must. So when I jumped into the build and saw that I could start making my own little hamlet, I was right in my happy place.
Rebuilding the town of Wishvale feels like it’s going to be a huge part of the story. It gives you a base of operations to return to, and plenty of ways to spend your cash and items.
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During my 30-minute demo with Octopath Traveller 0, I spent an unseemly amount of time messing with layouts and placing NPCs. You have a selection of buildings, like item shops, blacksmiths, farms and homes to place. With each building, you can do some basic colour tweaks and place decorations to customise your village. But the big thing I found was that you can place NPCs in each building, and depending on the NPC you place, they give different active and passive buffs.
So, placing one NPC in the item shop might reduce prices. But another might give periodic item or resource deliveries. I can see this system being a real drawcard for folks wanting to customise their own little village.
Getting personal
For the first time in an Octopath Traveller title, you’ll be creating a custom character to take with you on your adventure. As part of my demo, I had a quick mess with character customisation. This was very akin to something like Stardew Valley. There are sliders to select hair styles, options for eye colour and plenty of little tweaks.
I’ll be keen to see how this evolves through the story. In past games, choosing a different starting hero had a significant impact on the story, offering a unique perspective. I love the customisation, but I do wonder how this will affect the replayability.
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Elemental, my dear Watson
Combat is a big numbers game in Octopath Traveller — it always has been — and Octopath Traveller 0 seems to be keeping that trend strong. You have eight characters in your party, divided between four in the front row and four in the back.
Each of your characters has classic JRPG jobs, from fighters to mages and healers. Then enemies will have weaknesses to specific elemental attacks. So each fight boils down to testing different elements to understand the enemy’s weakness, then rearranging your team to blast them down with the right element.
The Octophath Traveller 0 demo I played through included a dungeon delve in a heat-blasted desert. We needed to get to the bottom of an ancient sunken temple filled with heavily armed lizardfolk. The final boss against the lizardfolk king was a huge fight, as he had a huge health pool, but also kept summoning additional supporters to fight on his side.
It’s a great fight system, and one I’m really looking forward to messing with more when the game launches on December 4th.
Octopath Traveller 0 is set to release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC via Steam.
Nathanael went hands-on with Octopath Traveller 0 with thanks to Square Enix.
