Octopath Traveler II, not Final Fantasy XVI , will be Square Enix's best game of 2023.

This game looks phenomenal and may be the JRPG of the year. Looks to have great characters, the soundtrack is epochal, and it seems to learned all the lessons of the first game and its prequel.

Character Trailers

Agnea and Hikari

Partitio and Osvald

Temenos and Thorne

Ochette and Castti

Never played the first one. Looks intriguing though.

Really disliked the first one. But the visual style is awesome.

I don’t know about that. While I very much enjoyed Octopath Traveler and am certainly looking forward to the sequel I’m looking forward to Final Fantasy XVI more. Hoping both turn out great. Win-win.

No way, FF16 and FF7R 2 is out this year.

Yes way, because OT2 will be a better overall game than those two.

This game is made with heart, those games are made to just make money.

I'm confident FF16 will be better than OT2.

I'm looking forward to both; we'll see. Octopath Traveler 2 could be incredible because while the first was mid, it was clearly on the precipice of being great if some components could be executed well.

Enjoyed the first game and glad it's coming to PS. Always irked me playing jrpg with no platinum trophy as I am bit of a completionist.

The same.

No idea how it plays, but the visuals remind me of golden sun, and i am big enjoyer of those games.

It's hard for me to disagree with this assessment, but I really want to like ff16. At least they did away with the boy band aesthetics and are bringing back summons in a major way. Not sure if I'm going to buy the game, but at least it sounds better than the past few.

Given FFXVI's exclusivity, regardless of the merits between games, I think there'll be far more vocal fanboys online hailing its greatness of FFXVI, mostly because it's on PS systems and they do have the most enthusiastic for hyping fanbase.

Octopath Traveler II is pretty much a multiplat that's on all but Xbox systems. No doubt that'll also be used in console war mudslinging. I have a lot of opinions about its exclusion from Xbox but most feel it's attributed to some parity issue about publishing physical copies and digital only between systems. I've no doubt if MS would let them that it would be released as a digital only game. Seemingly exceptions were made when the first game was brought to Xbox as part of a Game Pass deal. If I were MS I would be open to allowing publishers to publish digital only even if they want to opt for physical on competing console hardware. After all a vast majority of sales these days are digital, even on consoles. It would make a lot more sense to focus on making the system more accessible to publish on with digital only options for publishers than to alienate them with extra upfront royalty burdens for physically printed options, this is a lot more attractive as royalties can just be distributed from the point of sale.

All that aside though, Octopath Traveller games have a much more unique presentation I find very appealing. But it's probably a more niche consideration. FFXVI's larger production value is far more in line with the higher production values people want out of games. In the end they're both Square Enix games and as far as their concerns go I think they'd be happy people be excited for either, if not both.

@lamprey263: Can we say now that it is the greatest game that was ever made now? Just to save time.😉

@Pedro: I'm not saying it, after I'm done with P3P and P4G I don't think I'll be able to touch another JRPG until 2024.

Really wish I could finish Octopath Traveler. I love the visual style and music is wonderful but holy fucking shit are the enemies the most spongiest enemies ever done in a turn based RPG, at least all the ones I've played. The battles take forever for me and it is a lot harder to grind and level up than most RPGs. Its more about the jobs, classes, and armor/weapons that decide your success in this game and after about 40 hours, I gave up. Kept getting my ass handed to me by the Miguel boss. Really fucking annoying when he hits your whole party 3 times in a row each instance and pretty much ends any hope I have of progressing to the end.

Come back to it later and learn how to break him before he moves. Debuff him as well. And Leghold Trap is one of the best abilities for bosses. The key to this fight is not let him go 5 times in a turn.

Battle guide for him.

https://octopathtraveler.fandom.com/wiki/Miguel#Battle_

The Tier 4 bosses are even nastier.

The first one was mediocre. Looked great and the combat was ok but everything else was severely lacking. Hopefully they really have learned and this is a large evolution in design and execution.

As for it being better than FFXVI….I’ll take that bet, no way OT2 is better as a whole then FFXVI.

Nah lol

How is it lacking?

The story and the characters are great and the soundtrack is a GOAT in the genre.

And the last two single player FF games weren't great and this one has red flags.

Tried to play the first one. Godawful combat, great music and garbage visuals. Seriously should just be a Switch exclusive. They like trash like this, or Gamepass they also like trash.

No, the combat is great and the visuals have inspired many other games.

That's not saying much, though.

Not if they haven't fixed all of the problems with the first game.

Octopath Traveller was charming, but the story did absolutely nothing with its multi-protagonist premise, and they had no idea how to balance the non-linear gameplay.

Did Sony money hat this so it wouldn't come to Xbox?

@texasgoldrush: the story and characters were paper thin. The “dungeons” were horribly designed. The connections between everything felt either forced or lackluster.

And FFXIV is solid. So, I have faith in Yoshi for what it’s worth.

@texasgoldrush:

I just have one question for you.

Do you own a PS5?

JRPGs tend to be too long and I am surprised you can play them back to back.

The non linear gameplay was pretty balanced and the game got tougher, not easier, the further you went along.

And actually the protagonists stories did intersect at the end.

In Octopath II, two characters will share side quests.

@texasgoldrush: Again, Do you own a PS5?

Seems like you have not played a 16 bit RPG, and no, the characters are not paper thin. There as deep as the story requires.

And the connections aren't forced, they either were affected by Lyblac's people or by Graham Crossford.

And just because FFXIV is solid does not mean FFXVI won' have problems. They look like two different games.

No, but FFXVI will go to PC.

Ahh gotcha. That's about what I thought.

Well FFXVI is exclusive to PS5 in 2023 and that's the year you're talking about.

lol so basically, you're hoping that a game you can play is better than a game you can't because, feelings?

Tough. I own a PS5 and I can play both games and don't have to nitpick over which on is better or wait a year or more for when I can eventually play the other.

Octopath 2 looks like a cute game, but Final Fantasy 16 will be a juggernaut and one of the biggest games on this year next to only Spiderman 2 and maybe Starfield if it really comes out this year.

Wrong

In fact, the reason why Final Fantasy XVI is Sony console exclusive is because SquareEnix is worried about underperformance with a multiplatform release. Final Fantasy games actually under sell their hype, like FFVII Remake.

Hogwarts will outsell it, Tears of the Kingdom will, Starfield will, Spiderman 2 will, and many other games. Final Fantasy actually sells behind the major AAA curve now days. Hell, Cyberpunk 2077 in a day, outsold lifetime sales of any FF game. Nevermind the PS5 itself isn't the hottest seller recently.

No FF16 will be better. I don't think FF7R2 is coming out this year anyways

@Pedro: "JRPGs tend to be too long and I am surprised you can play them back to back."

Don't give me that much credit. I'll be happy to finish one before Atomic Heart releases and there'll probably be a lot of other stuff to juggle I'll probably come back to the other eventually during some slower release windows.

Right now on P3P and honestly on fence about continuing as I'm disappointed by the game's visual novel compromise it made, I'd of much preferred a port of Persona 3 FES from PS2 than this. I think they went with the PSP version because it was formated to a wider display and not old 4:3 aspect ratio of Persona 3 FES on PS2, that and text from the P3P could be sharpened whereas the PS2 text and text window was a lower quality asset, that and I'm guessing same old "they lost the code", but I would have been fine with that. Still sticking with it but also on fence of throwing in towel and going straight to P4G.

Looks very nice. But so did the first one, and I didn't want to play it. Would much rather play this than a freaking FF game, but will most likely pass, like I did with the first one.

Also, they want 60 euro for it. LOL. Wake me up when it's 20 or less.

Yet this game looks huge with a ton of content. It is worth AAA price.

Hmmmm.

No.

having played the first one, no chance

Yet it basically addresses the issues of the first game, a first game that overperformed.

Please tell me, what have they really shown from FFXVI outside of cutscenes?

This soundtrack is already phenomenal

https://www.jp.square-enix.com/music/sem/page/octopathtraveler2_OST/en

The night music is incredible.

Octapath 2 would probably not be good. 1st one the gameplay is good but story sucked, it's like 8 mini stories and the characters don't even know each other.

FF16 could go either way.

No, the story is great, all the character stories were solid, but Alfyn's was a genre best. And the stories do connect at the end. They also did started talking to eachother at the end.

And it looks like you just ignored what Octo 2 is bringing into the game because the fact is that characters will have quests with eachother here, unlike the first game. This addresses the problem of the first game of characters barely knowing eachother.

Idk man, FF XVI is looking pretty good. It looks like a return to classic medieval FF games before VII and the fact the combat is being developed by ex-DMC devs makes me excited. After several disappointing FF outings I have a feeling Square will nail this one, especially after learning good lessons from VII Remake and now Crisis Core Reunion

That same logic goes both ways. FF XVI can also receive a lot of backlash from online anti-sony fanboys just for being an exclusive. Also, wasnt the 1st octopath a switch exclusive for quite a while?

I loved the visuals of the first one and the combat was pretty good.

But it was also had a lot of grinding. The lack of banter between the travellers (at least up to the point i played) was also disappointing. They were very meh characters. Xenoblade 3, Mass Effect Games, Baldurs Gate 2....That's how it's done.

I ran out of steam before I could finish it.

Do you have any source on that? I dont honestly know if you're speaking the truth or not but I'm finding that really hard to believe...

The digital sales alone topped 10 million at launch, with 8 million preorders. That would put it right at or past say FFVIII, X, and XV (and now FFVI is a 10 million seller). FFVII's total sales are wonky, but Cyberpunk definitely matched or cleared it by the end of the month and has clearly passed FFVII now.

So in a day, all but FFVII, but FFVII passed shortly after.