Octopath traveler II
Op Playstation 4 en 5, pc , Nintendo Switch
A thief, a dancer, a merchant, an apothecary, a warrior, a scholar, a cleric and a beastly girl are sitting in a cafe. Who are you bringing? It’s a question that you go through Octopath traveler II must answer several times. You travel criss-cross on the continent of Solista, from harsh winter landscapes over seas and deserts to rainforests and bustling cities, with an ever-changing cast.
This game looks fantastic. Not only are the environments created with an eye for detail, they come to life with special effects – shimmer, fog, sunbeams, dust, confetti – that you can ‘feel’ with your eyes. At the same time you are catapulted back to the nineties with pixelated minifigures. That mixed HD-2D style (high definition scenery with two-dimensional characters) is an art form that Square Enix unleashed on us in 2018 with the first Octopath traveler and the after Triangle strategy in Live a live now reached a new high.
The stories won’t win any prizes for originality, but they will captivate. A pharmacist with amnesia, a girl searching for legendary beasts, a priest investigating a murder mystery: plenty of variety. A tip: not all English voice actors are equally good, it is more pleasant to listen to the Japanese voices and read in English.
Almost every chapter culminates in a big fight, and that’s where it shoots Octopath traveler hit twice. It’s wonderfully nostalgic to take turns fighting, as it’s been done for decades in the Final fantasy-games of Pokémon. You don’t need good eye-hand coordination, brains are enough. This way you get ‘break points’ in every turn that you can save up and use at the right time. The ‘camera’ curls around the performer’s back, colorful clouds of dust swirl around and the enemy creaks: it immediately makes you happy.
Final boss
Everything is accompanied by an often epic, sometimes frivolous soundtrack, with which the first Octopath already scored high. The sequel is an improvement across the board, by the way. The biggest criticism of the first game was the lack of interaction between the eight characters. They walked one behind the other, fought side by side and in the end there turned out to be a somewhat forced overarching evil, and that was it. The new game does have some talking and joking, and there are also fringe stories where two of your guys go out together. Yet the eight stories are still not masterfully intertwined – a dancer who wants to become a world star travels together with a warrior: hardly believable. But in the end they find a way to tie it together again, and the final boss will be a challenge for even the most seasoned player.
Captivating stories, beautiful music, beautiful images, addictive battles, good for fifty to a hundred hours of fun: it is one Octopath triumph.
