I can’t say I expected much from Octopath Traveler 0. I’ve long admired the HD-2D role-playing game series but each new entry eventually leaves me cold. All of the pieces are there but they don’t solidify into an experience that’s more than the sum of its grindy, retro-infused parts. So I was surprised by just how much I immediately clicked with Square Enix’s latest tribute to the genre’s pixel art golden age.
It probably helped that the demo I played last weekend at PAX West pushed me right to the brink of failure in a tough boss fight I ultimately only survived after all of my healing items were depleted and only one party member was still barely left standing. Some fans have worried about Octopath Traveler 0 being based on a mobile game that came out several years ago called Champions of the Continent. While Square Enix already confirmed the gacha gameplay elements have been stripped out from this remake (the story has also been reworked), I can confirm, based on what I played at least, that Octopath Traveler 0 doesn’t feel like an obviously lesser entry in the series.
My roughly 30 minutes with Octopath Traveler 0 was what anyone familiar with the old-school, turn-based RPG series would expect: I ran around town, fought enemies in a desert, and eventually made my way through a brief, cavernous dungeon peppered with treasure chests and dead ends to the boss fight within. The HD pixel art with soft focus backgrounds is still pretty and effective nostalgia bait, and the music in the section of the game I got to play was exceptional.
But my demo did highlight two of the main features that set Octopath Traveler 0 apart from its predecessors. The first is a settlement sim mini-game in which you get to rebuild a town burned down at the start of the game from scratch. This includes both structures that impact aspects of your recovery efforts and the village’s development, like how many villagers come to live with you and the kinds of resources they harvest, as well as purely cosmetic features like cobblestone roads, trees, and benches.
You gather materials out in the world and build stuff by placing objects on a square grid. While I didn’t get much time to play around with how these systems interact with one another over time, it’s easy to see how the settlement sim elements offer another avenue of satisfying progression that will directly benefit the rest of your party on your travels. Combined with all of the characters you’re meeting and collecting on your adventure, it all feels a bit Suikoden-coded in the best way.
Speaking of parties, Octopath Traveler 0 lets you wander the world with eight instead of just four. During combat, half are relegated to a back row while the rest take turns attacking on the frontlines. Whenever it’s someone’s turn you can swap them with their buddy in the back if you need to take advantage of a different skill to exploit an enemy’s weakness or increase survivability for an upcoming onslaught. Even though they don’t get to act from the back row, these members of your party still boost the squad with free health restoration, skill points, and Boost Points at regular intervals.
The result is combat that feels a lot busier but also more dynamic. Maybe someone in the back row has full BP so you swap them in to unleash a super attack and stun an opponent. Or you need the dancer to come out and buff the team before swapping her out with the spear guy who can target the enemy’s weakness. It speeds combat up and also creates a satisfying second layer of party management. For me it hit a sweet spot that the level of in-combat decision making in other Octopath Traveler games hasn’t always managed to.
Out December 4 on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC, Octopath Traveler 0 seemed like a stop-gap release aimed squarely at existing hardcore fans while they wait for Square Enix’s Team Asano to eventually deliver Octopath Traveler 3. But as an Octopath Traveler sympathizer who’s long been on the fence about the series, my hands-on time convinced me this might finally be the one to break my skepticism.