Project Octopath Traveler is a JRPG coming exclusively to the Nintendo Switch in 2018, at the last Nintendo Direct they showed off a bunch of this game while having a free demo and I'm going to talk about my impressions of the demo. The game's main idea is that there are eight different characters each with their own story and play-style. The demo allows you to choose two characters Ulberic a retired knight who protects the local village and wants revenge on someone who betrayed him, and Primrose the local dancer that is forced to dance everyday to appease her master and she hopes to take revenge on three men who killed her father. One of the first things anyone is going to notice is the graphics, and they look gorgeous they use a style that Square Enix is calling HD-2D, meaning they have 2D sprites while the area is still rendered in 3D while having lighting and fog effects giving the game it's own visual style. The only problem I have with the graphics is at points they have too much lighting or fog making it a little hard to see. The story is very intriguing and gives you great motivation to go on and the characters while being a little cliche are very relatable and the demo ends at just the right time too, right after you achieve something but you know your journey has just begun. The gameplay is your normal turn-based combat with a twist it's called boosting, every turn you get a boost point which you can then save up to do multiple attacks per turn or power up special attacks, there is also a guard system, every time you hit an enemy with a specific weapon their guard goes down represented by a shield once it goes down all the way you have one turn where you can do a lot of damage to the enemy while that enemy is stunned, combining the two systems you get a very fun take on turn-based combat. This combat system is great for example you have a boss with six guard points you attack three times giving you three boost points while lowering the boss to three than next turn you use up two boost to attack three times then immediately right afterwards use a special move for a 3x boost to do triple the damage, this is just one of the many strategies that I found while playing. I have found that the early enemies with one or two shield points are two easy as they will never have a chance to attack especially if you use boost points correctly but higher guard points and multiple enemies fix this problem. Now I just have a few minor nitpicks there are only three save files but since there will be eight characters in the game it would be nice to have one for each character that way you can play through all stories without having to delete your save file. I encountered Primrose in Ulberic's story after finishing it and going off the beaten path but when I got to her I just talked to her and she immediately joined no dialog, no sidequest, just walking up to her, I hope in the final product you have to do side-quest for these characters to join you. This demo was a lengthy two hour demo and I had so much fun with it the gameplay has ton of strategy in it and I hope this will help JRPGs comeback in the spotlight as I have never had this much fun with one before.
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