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overthinking entertainment
Octopath Traveller 0
The prequel to Octopath Traveler, and a console adaptation of Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent. Create your own character, rebuild your hometown of Wishvale from zero, and pursue the paths of Power, Fame and Fortune!
Currently sitting at 84 on MetaCritic.
Harper Jay MacIntyre, Kotaku, glows:
Octopath Traveler 0 isn't merely okay, it's genuinely great. It takes a story previously locked on mobile phones and expands it into a masterfully crafted experience of earnestly told adventure that isn't simply "good for an RPG" but great by any standard of the word. This is the best the series has ever been.
...
This version of the game, which removes all of the mobile version's paid mechanics, turns out to be the sharpest and most compelling Octopath Traveler thus far. Packed with some of the finest boss encounters and sweeping storytelling in the franchise, Octopath Traveler 0 stands up in an oddly sharp rebuke to its progenitor title and answers the question "Did we really need those microtransactions?" with a resounding "no."
Paulo Kawanishi, Polygon, opines:
Considering how great 2025 has been for RPGs, finishing the year out with a new Octopath Traveler game feels like a cherry on the top of a giant sundae. Octopath Traveler 0 is a natural evolution of Square Enix's critically acclaimed RPG series, combining its signature writing and challenging combat with a new town management wrinkle. It's one last treat for genre fans in 2025, but one that doesn't quite execute its most promising ideas.
Zek Lu, RPGFan critiques:
Octopath Traveler 0's gameplay, however, leaves much to be desired. While the gacha system from the mobile release, Champions of the Continent, is gone in this version, poor character balance remains. Many skills feel completely useless, and there is little incentive to engage with most core mechanics. Nearly every boss can be defeated using the same few attacks. Even the break system, which is supposed to exploit enemy weaknesses to temporarily stun them and deal extra damage, is almost pointless, since you can easily win most fights without using it at all. As far as I can recall, only a few optional bosses actually required me to trigger a break.
posted by pwnguin on Dec 07, 2025 at 4:08 PM
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Own thoughts so far: the early stages of character leveling feel restrictive; no combination class. Apparently later in the game this opens up to an even more flexible system than the previous iterations.
Combat is more or less as expected; probe for weaknesses, break defenses while banking up for huge turns. 8 total characters in the party feels luxurious and maybe contributes to some perceptions of difficulty -- doing sidequests to unlock characters or town reconstruction progress can presumably lead to overleveling.
Music and art is great. Story ranges from incredibly dark -- helping some mafiosos take back their racket from upstart mafiosos who introduced the community to cocaine "powder", for example--to lighter fare like finding a fisherman an apprentice. But I'm really not very far in the mainline quest(s), so reserve the right to change my opinion on this stuff ^_^
posted by pwnguin at 4:22 PM
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I am hesitant to pick this one up, largely because of the town-building aspect and the huge cast (apparently, you don't really get to know most of the characters, because there are 30 of them rather than just 8).
I really like Octopath Traveller 2 (I skipped the first one on the recommendation that 2 is in many ways the same game, but that it fixes most of the flaws of the first entry). It's one of my favourite JRPGs of the last few years. But the town-building aspect of 0 really turns me off, as does it's origin as a gatcha game (even though I would assume the gambling aspects have been reworked for a console release -- no need to milk the whales for more money every few weeks in this format).
posted by asnider at 9:11 AM
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(apparently, you don't really get to know most of the characters, because there are 30 of them rather than just 8).
So far I've only recruited 8, for a full party. Of the 30, four of them seem to be your core Wishvale crew. Eight of them seem to just be bonus characters from the original. I guess there's an ensemble cast I'll be recruiting in, but there is no gatcha mechanic remaining. The way recruitment works is you encounter them in towns (mostly pubs?), and go through a mini-quest plot to recruit them into your party and town. By the end, you know their personality and goals. Over time you unlock the usual cutscenes between characters, who, as residents of Wishvale, will have a natural reason to encounter one another even if not in your party. From their path actions, there seems to be further unlockables with them that I assume are gated on further progress in the main story that might involve more of their own plot?
The actual main quest plots then use your party as a framing device. Instead of 8 paths of generally uncoupled stories featuring one of the 8 characters, we have 3 (Power, Fame, and Fortune) featuring none. Using the Fame path as an example, you get recruited into a gang war, but the story is about the gang members, not anyone in your party. They might even show up in combat as a 9th party member briefly. And the thing that ties your party to theirs is a common enemy. Though it's a bit weird going Fortune first; while as a viewer I know the three parties behind the attack, I'm not sure how the Wishvale crew knows the witch was involved.
Where OT0 might fall down is in the main character. The MC is a silent protagonist and arguably it's your job as a player to fill in the blanks, via decisions you make and the dialog implied, but analytically, the MC has no personality, and the character you create seems to have no import in the events unfolding. I seem to recall the character creation screen selecting a voice but they never speak outside combat, because who's gonna record 6 game's worth of voice acting and never show the player 5 of them? Of course, the game is strongly implying that Satan is behind it all, trying to escape his prison in Wish.com hell. Presumably that will be the way they unite the 3 paths into the MC's plot.
posted by pwnguin at 10:23 AM
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