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I return to Octopath Traveler, and try to decide who to recruit fourth. Will it be someone really interesting, to become a mainline character? Or will I grab someone uninteresting so that they can languish outside the main party until I want to use their path ability?
* I stare at H'aanit's village for a long moment, then go elsewhere. NOPE. Still not drunk enough to deal with her speech patterns.
* Let's go pick up a thief. If I remember which of these names on the map belongs to him.
* Which means traipsing through the woods, fighting ratkin archers and.... chipmunks? Let's see. "Marmots." Close enough.
* Once again, the MVP in the fight was the random townsperson who's following me around murdering my enemies. I have /got/ to recruit a tougher fighter.
* Heading south to Borderfall, murderizing marmots, tra la la... The person I'll find there is Therion, who is probably a thief! Or an alchemist! I hope he's a thief, because I've already got two people in my party who feebly whack things with staves, and one merchant kid who can use a bow. Please, give me someone with a sword. Someone.
* "They got more than they bargained for!" Tressa says so proudly after winning a fight. Aw. She's my favorite.
* North Borderfall Pass is all rocky cliffs and mist over pine trees. Nice.
* New enemies attack! What look to be birds with arms and swords, and a hyena. They are... "Cliff Birdian" and "Laughing Hyena". Fair.
* Also some red-eyed shadowy creature lurking inside a cracked egg, with one spindly claw extended. It's... Hatchling! Okay either Birdians are really dangerous from in the egg or something /horrible/ needs to be stopped from hatching from that egg.
* Bolderfall has some nice guitar music going on, and a very vaguely Western feel.
* The first person I Scrutinize unlocks 'a better chance when stealing items' so I'm pretty sure this is Thief Town.
* I also decide to guide her around. According to her Scrutinize she's heavily pregnant, but, hey, she can throw fireballs! "Oh, you're so adorable! I'll be glad to show you around." Much appreciated, Townsperson.
* I pause for a long moment to discuss how path skills work with a friend. It sounds like there's basically a Fancy and Scoundrel version of each of four types of skills. So Ophilia's Guide is locked by level, whereas Primrose gets a similar skill called Allure where it's got a percentage chance of failing, just like Cyrus's Scrutinize, which has a 'succeeds if you're high enough level' version with the apothecary called Inquire. The thief steals stuff instead of buying it from people. And then the hunter and warrior have some sort of flipsides skill set, of which I know one is 'Taunt' since I unlocked a bonus to it. Guess I'll find out eventually what those do.
* "Here in Bolderfall, the poor types live below, the wealthy up top. Us? Guess we're somewhere in the middle." Thank you for summarizing the local economic and social system, Old Man!
* I just took 1k from a chest in a large, empty house. But look. I'm playing a priestess. I'm sure that was meant as a donation to my pilgrimage, okay?
* ...why is a Pauper whose background is all about resigned helplessness after her father abandoned her willing to sell me a Spear Of Justice? Why does she even /have/ one?
* Therion's introductory line: "........"
* I mean, he does follow that up with "The famed treasure of House Ravus, indeed..." but it's not auspicious for him chatting to a nice priestess whose help he needs. We'll see how this goes anyway!
* "He is a lone wolf, as rugged and sharp as the harsh peaks of the Cliftlands." Oh, game. Dial it back a notch.
* His reputation for theft stretches far and wide! He has a mysterious past! He has messy white hair and a dramatic scarf! He's having the usual at a bar! Juuuust a notch down, game.
* Thief: "I heard that thief's at it again." (Other) Thief: "Really? What's he done this time?" Thief: "Lifted everythin' off a merchant leavin' the goldsmithy." Okay, Tressa objects to adding him to the party on principle.
* Flashback to: ten years ago, when Therion met someone in jail. Pardon me, in a 'particularly dingy gaol'. Very roomy gaol, honestly, if a bit low on furniture. Fellow Prisoner commiserates about guard brutality.
* The slang for thieves is 'tea leaf' and 'teapot' and, good god, I'm going to be thinking of the Chocolate Teapot Inc. used as an obfuscated Ask A Manager company type now.
* Therion reveals he stole a key from the guard while getting beaten up. He is very smug. I kinda hope he gets taken down a few notches.
* Our new buddy is Darius, and given this is flashback, I don't think this is gonna end well for him.
* Flash forward to... still in the bar, drinking. But in a /cool/ way, right?
* The bartender warns us off the Ravus treasure. You're not the boss of me! We're heading straight to Ravus Manor! Where there are a bunch of guards, but I'm snarky about it!
* The guards are well paid, so I guess bribery is out. There are also adorable dobermans in spiked collars. Or possibly rottweilers? Hard to tell in chibi pixels. And wire for alarms on the walls. It's very fortress-like.
* The guards are harassing a merchant at the gates. (Somewhere in the future, listening to this story, Tressa is irked.) From this, Therion concludes he needs to dress up as a merchant who has /proof/ of fancy wares for the people in the house.
* But apparently the merchant who was turned away has wares: what he needs is a letter of introduction. And fewer than five people have ever gotten those letters. I begin to wonder how the Ravuses get food in their fancy fortress manor. Maybe they have gardens inside. Or shop at the equivalent of Nobility Whole Foods, at very high prices.
* The game lets me use Steal, which is Therion's equivalent of Bargain, except he has a percentage chance to swipe rather than paying money for things.
* The thieves from the bar follow Therion to say they want the treasure. No one's sure what it is, but with that many guards, it must be good! And they want to team up! But Therion is a lone wolf, baby, and is having none of it.
* It's an interesting contrast in narrative styles, right after Tressa. She was young and ambitious, well-liked, delighted with her own skill, and anxious but prepared to take on a really dangerous situation for the sake of others. I like her lots. Therion already has a reputation (if not attached to his name), and has a smug detached approach to everything. When he's confronted in the street by people he disagrees with, he trivially smacks them down and sends them off with an insult. It makes me like him /less/. Give me at least a little vulnerability on your characters, yeesh.
* Backstory where he had a friend he was /also/ smug at doesn't count, flashback. They have successfully escaped guards! They are doing well together! Therion, who is the younger of the pair, is clearly the smarter leader, once again! Sigh.
* I mean, it's basically trying to do the touching backstory for one of the pirates Tressa fought. How the heck do we justify those two teaming up?
* What the heck is a fancy-schmancy merchant doing in the lower part of the city, anyway?
* There are some serious narrative issues with this, as we cut back to Ophilia. Who is traveling with Cyrus and Tressa. So.
* First off, why would /any/ of those three--a priestess, a guy looking for a stolen book, and a merchant who recently fought off pirates who'd stolen stuff--want to join up with a thief on an expedition he's carrying out for no reason he's given other than 'Hey, money'?
* Second, given he just turned down /actual/ thieves who wanted to team up with him, why in the world does he want to bring along a priestess, a merchant, and a professor?
* Third, why did he even TELL them about all this stuff? Even if there were a more appropriate character to team up with, why would he tell that person? Argh! This is such a clumsy lead-in for this character. I can believe Ophilia offering to help random people with their problems, Cyrus is clearly interested in all sorts of things, Tressa wants adventure, but... none of them have a good reason to help Therion, and he doesn't have a good reason to tell them about his problems or accept their help once they offer. Argh.
* I mean, I'm going along with it anyway, because I want him in my party, but. Just saying.
* Therion approaches the gate guards with a letter of introduction! Pay no attention to the cleric, professor, /actual/ merchant, and random townsperson following behind. (And not shown in this cut scene.)
* Oh, I get a four-person party, not a three-person one. Excellent!
* I kinda feel bad for the random Townsperson that Ophilia is summoning to help fight these guards in the manor.
* After meandering cheerfully through the manor for a while, fighting off vicious guards, dogs, and, uh, magical guardian elemental lanterns?, we finally reach the... treasure room! (Kudos to the manner for having the easiest to navigate map yet. Though I still forgot which way I was going after a fight and backtracked more than once.)
* The treasure appears to be a single blue sphere on a stand, next to three empty stands. Therion is dismissive.
* ??? enters to tch at Therion's inability to discern its worth. He exposits that they increased security specifically to get the Absolute Best Thief in here. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE MANIPULATED, THERION?
* ??? is Heathcote, a Ravus butler. BUTLER FIGHT TIME.
* After the frankly /rather difficult/ boss fight, Therion's up to level 9, Tressa's 11, Cyrus is 13, and Ophilia is 16. Makes sense.
* Heathcote is pleased that Therion can fight. And also points out that Therion has gotten what's called the Fool's Bangle attached to his arm during the fight. Proof of a thief being caught, which is how it got that name. This is gonna ruin Therion's reputation! The only thing he seems to care about!
* Enter... negotiations. Lady Ravus enters to exposit that the treasure is a family heirloom called the dragonstones. The other three were stolen after her parents died. Therion is such an ass that I wish they'd poisoned him instead of just slapping handcuffs on him.
* It takes a lot for a story to get me to root for the snooty nobles who avoid all contact with other people over the clever thief trying to rob them, but this game's succeeding.
* The thief now added to the party, I take a walk around town to rob from all the townspeople, scrutinize them, and... wait. I can scrutinize a dog?
* I can scrutinize a guard dog.
* Guard Dog doesn't like the boss and wants to go back to Victors Hollow. Next Guard Dog is "the embodiment of canine virtue", which is rather impressive. Third Guard Dog is "the lone lady of the lot" and yearns for her beloved in Grandport. Okay then.
* On which note I should wrap for the night.
* I stare at H'aanit's village for a long moment, then go elsewhere. NOPE. Still not drunk enough to deal with her speech patterns.
* Let's go pick up a thief. If I remember which of these names on the map belongs to him.
* Which means traipsing through the woods, fighting ratkin archers and.... chipmunks? Let's see. "Marmots." Close enough.
* Once again, the MVP in the fight was the random townsperson who's following me around murdering my enemies. I have /got/ to recruit a tougher fighter.
* Heading south to Borderfall, murderizing marmots, tra la la... The person I'll find there is Therion, who is probably a thief! Or an alchemist! I hope he's a thief, because I've already got two people in my party who feebly whack things with staves, and one merchant kid who can use a bow. Please, give me someone with a sword. Someone.
* "They got more than they bargained for!" Tressa says so proudly after winning a fight. Aw. She's my favorite.
* North Borderfall Pass is all rocky cliffs and mist over pine trees. Nice.
* New enemies attack! What look to be birds with arms and swords, and a hyena. They are... "Cliff Birdian" and "Laughing Hyena". Fair.
* Also some red-eyed shadowy creature lurking inside a cracked egg, with one spindly claw extended. It's... Hatchling! Okay either Birdians are really dangerous from in the egg or something /horrible/ needs to be stopped from hatching from that egg.
* Bolderfall has some nice guitar music going on, and a very vaguely Western feel.
* The first person I Scrutinize unlocks 'a better chance when stealing items' so I'm pretty sure this is Thief Town.
* I also decide to guide her around. According to her Scrutinize she's heavily pregnant, but, hey, she can throw fireballs! "Oh, you're so adorable! I'll be glad to show you around." Much appreciated, Townsperson.
* I pause for a long moment to discuss how path skills work with a friend. It sounds like there's basically a Fancy and Scoundrel version of each of four types of skills. So Ophilia's Guide is locked by level, whereas Primrose gets a similar skill called Allure where it's got a percentage chance of failing, just like Cyrus's Scrutinize, which has a 'succeeds if you're high enough level' version with the apothecary called Inquire. The thief steals stuff instead of buying it from people. And then the hunter and warrior have some sort of flipsides skill set, of which I know one is 'Taunt' since I unlocked a bonus to it. Guess I'll find out eventually what those do.
* "Here in Bolderfall, the poor types live below, the wealthy up top. Us? Guess we're somewhere in the middle." Thank you for summarizing the local economic and social system, Old Man!
* I just took 1k from a chest in a large, empty house. But look. I'm playing a priestess. I'm sure that was meant as a donation to my pilgrimage, okay?
* ...why is a Pauper whose background is all about resigned helplessness after her father abandoned her willing to sell me a Spear Of Justice? Why does she even /have/ one?
* Therion's introductory line: "........"
* I mean, he does follow that up with "The famed treasure of House Ravus, indeed..." but it's not auspicious for him chatting to a nice priestess whose help he needs. We'll see how this goes anyway!
* "He is a lone wolf, as rugged and sharp as the harsh peaks of the Cliftlands." Oh, game. Dial it back a notch.
* His reputation for theft stretches far and wide! He has a mysterious past! He has messy white hair and a dramatic scarf! He's having the usual at a bar! Juuuust a notch down, game.
* Thief: "I heard that thief's at it again." (Other) Thief: "Really? What's he done this time?" Thief: "Lifted everythin' off a merchant leavin' the goldsmithy." Okay, Tressa objects to adding him to the party on principle.
* Flashback to: ten years ago, when Therion met someone in jail. Pardon me, in a 'particularly dingy gaol'. Very roomy gaol, honestly, if a bit low on furniture. Fellow Prisoner commiserates about guard brutality.
* The slang for thieves is 'tea leaf' and 'teapot' and, good god, I'm going to be thinking of the Chocolate Teapot Inc. used as an obfuscated Ask A Manager company type now.
* Therion reveals he stole a key from the guard while getting beaten up. He is very smug. I kinda hope he gets taken down a few notches.
* Our new buddy is Darius, and given this is flashback, I don't think this is gonna end well for him.
* Flash forward to... still in the bar, drinking. But in a /cool/ way, right?
* The bartender warns us off the Ravus treasure. You're not the boss of me! We're heading straight to Ravus Manor! Where there are a bunch of guards, but I'm snarky about it!
* The guards are well paid, so I guess bribery is out. There are also adorable dobermans in spiked collars. Or possibly rottweilers? Hard to tell in chibi pixels. And wire for alarms on the walls. It's very fortress-like.
* The guards are harassing a merchant at the gates. (Somewhere in the future, listening to this story, Tressa is irked.) From this, Therion concludes he needs to dress up as a merchant who has /proof/ of fancy wares for the people in the house.
* But apparently the merchant who was turned away has wares: what he needs is a letter of introduction. And fewer than five people have ever gotten those letters. I begin to wonder how the Ravuses get food in their fancy fortress manor. Maybe they have gardens inside. Or shop at the equivalent of Nobility Whole Foods, at very high prices.
* The game lets me use Steal, which is Therion's equivalent of Bargain, except he has a percentage chance to swipe rather than paying money for things.
* The thieves from the bar follow Therion to say they want the treasure. No one's sure what it is, but with that many guards, it must be good! And they want to team up! But Therion is a lone wolf, baby, and is having none of it.
* It's an interesting contrast in narrative styles, right after Tressa. She was young and ambitious, well-liked, delighted with her own skill, and anxious but prepared to take on a really dangerous situation for the sake of others. I like her lots. Therion already has a reputation (if not attached to his name), and has a smug detached approach to everything. When he's confronted in the street by people he disagrees with, he trivially smacks them down and sends them off with an insult. It makes me like him /less/. Give me at least a little vulnerability on your characters, yeesh.
* Backstory where he had a friend he was /also/ smug at doesn't count, flashback. They have successfully escaped guards! They are doing well together! Therion, who is the younger of the pair, is clearly the smarter leader, once again! Sigh.
* I mean, it's basically trying to do the touching backstory for one of the pirates Tressa fought. How the heck do we justify those two teaming up?
* What the heck is a fancy-schmancy merchant doing in the lower part of the city, anyway?
* There are some serious narrative issues with this, as we cut back to Ophilia. Who is traveling with Cyrus and Tressa. So.
* First off, why would /any/ of those three--a priestess, a guy looking for a stolen book, and a merchant who recently fought off pirates who'd stolen stuff--want to join up with a thief on an expedition he's carrying out for no reason he's given other than 'Hey, money'?
* Second, given he just turned down /actual/ thieves who wanted to team up with him, why in the world does he want to bring along a priestess, a merchant, and a professor?
* Third, why did he even TELL them about all this stuff? Even if there were a more appropriate character to team up with, why would he tell that person? Argh! This is such a clumsy lead-in for this character. I can believe Ophilia offering to help random people with their problems, Cyrus is clearly interested in all sorts of things, Tressa wants adventure, but... none of them have a good reason to help Therion, and he doesn't have a good reason to tell them about his problems or accept their help once they offer. Argh.
* I mean, I'm going along with it anyway, because I want him in my party, but. Just saying.
* Therion approaches the gate guards with a letter of introduction! Pay no attention to the cleric, professor, /actual/ merchant, and random townsperson following behind. (And not shown in this cut scene.)
* Oh, I get a four-person party, not a three-person one. Excellent!
* I kinda feel bad for the random Townsperson that Ophilia is summoning to help fight these guards in the manor.
* After meandering cheerfully through the manor for a while, fighting off vicious guards, dogs, and, uh, magical guardian elemental lanterns?, we finally reach the... treasure room! (Kudos to the manner for having the easiest to navigate map yet. Though I still forgot which way I was going after a fight and backtracked more than once.)
* The treasure appears to be a single blue sphere on a stand, next to three empty stands. Therion is dismissive.
* ??? enters to tch at Therion's inability to discern its worth. He exposits that they increased security specifically to get the Absolute Best Thief in here. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE MANIPULATED, THERION?
* ??? is Heathcote, a Ravus butler. BUTLER FIGHT TIME.
* After the frankly /rather difficult/ boss fight, Therion's up to level 9, Tressa's 11, Cyrus is 13, and Ophilia is 16. Makes sense.
* Heathcote is pleased that Therion can fight. And also points out that Therion has gotten what's called the Fool's Bangle attached to his arm during the fight. Proof of a thief being caught, which is how it got that name. This is gonna ruin Therion's reputation! The only thing he seems to care about!
* Enter... negotiations. Lady Ravus enters to exposit that the treasure is a family heirloom called the dragonstones. The other three were stolen after her parents died. Therion is such an ass that I wish they'd poisoned him instead of just slapping handcuffs on him.
* It takes a lot for a story to get me to root for the snooty nobles who avoid all contact with other people over the clever thief trying to rob them, but this game's succeeding.
* The thief now added to the party, I take a walk around town to rob from all the townspeople, scrutinize them, and... wait. I can scrutinize a dog?
* I can scrutinize a guard dog.
* Guard Dog doesn't like the boss and wants to go back to Victors Hollow. Next Guard Dog is "the embodiment of canine virtue", which is rather impressive. Third Guard Dog is "the lone lady of the lot" and yearns for her beloved in Grandport. Okay then.
* On which note I should wrap for the night.
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One is the interaction between characters, which is to say, there isn't any. There's no sense of everyone coming together to battle a common foe, because the way the game is designed, you don't need anyone else in your party. You can just get four people and go and ignore everything. You might even be able to do it with one? I'm going to google that. Yes, you can. It probably wouldn't be fun, but you could solo the full game. So because the game can't depend on any characters being there, it just treats them as if they're all gone, which bites.
I'll compare this to two other games.
In Tales of Vesperia, and in other Tales games, the entire POINT is bringing an entire group together. Vesperia starts just with Yuri Lowell, our protagonist, and as he goes about his friendly rivalry with best friend Flynn Scifo after having washed out of the knights, he ends up gathering a very motley crew about him, including a particularly terrible monster hunter, a 15-year-old mage with entirely too high an opinion of herself, and his dog. Each character has their own goals, but they also have a shared one, and -- here's the thing -- they interact. All the time. ALL THE TIME! It's great! There are so many little skits that you can trigger that have them joke around or look at weird flowers or complain about how cold it is or heckle someone's cooking ability. Even when the battles get a little samey and you're just trying to unlock a new ability, you still want to play because maybe you'll finish a battle and there will be a skit about how your doofy cleric-type threw a hammer at your mage after getting confused and someone might reveal a secret crush. It's great!
The second is Final Fantasy VI, which Octopath Traveler is basically cosplaying as. Like Octopath, FF6 allows you to finish the game without the full party. You can go straight to the end with three characters, if you can make it through with them. That's the second half of the game. The first half of the game is a trip through all of these characters, gathering the band, learning who they are, what they care about, what matters to them, and then Things Go Down.
Octopath wants this to be a largely non-linear thing, and not mandate that you take everyone with you. What that does, though, is make the characters themselves nonessential, and then that removed my ability to care. FF6 had cool systems with Espers and Auto-Crossbows and Runic Blades and all that, right? But what you remember from it is the Falcon coming out of the water, or the opera scene, or the Figaro Castle run-around. It's the characters and the story. Octopath's not interested in that, and that sucks.
That above is something I kinda knew going in, so the fact that I bought the game and then got disappointed by it is my own stupid fault. What I didn't know is that there's no reason to get all eight characters unless you want to see all eight mediocre stories, because it's just four characters copy-pasted on each other.
Your character who does the "hey townsperson come fight alongside me as a summon?" Primrose the dancer does that too, just with a Seduce option. Your merchant who gets items from people is the same as the thief who steals from people -- Get Item From Townsperson. Your character who gets Information about townspeople is the same as the Apothecary who does that too, it's just got a different name.
That's such a bummer to me! If you only have four out-of-combat things, give them to four people and make those four people really good. Just a bummer.
I am very surprised how much I didn't like Octopath, and I know I started with two of the three or four worst characters. Primrose's path, just... guh. GUH I SAY.
anyway your writeup is quite lovely and I'm having a very good time reading it I'll stop being a bummer now
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For me, a lot of a game lives or dies by its protagonists; I'm rather impatient with games that even have great secondary characters if I'm stuck with a jerk as the main. So I like that I can grab Therion for his skills but otherwise ignore his jerkass story, and still effectively finish some storylines.
More importantly, I am glad that you're enjoying reading my summaries! I am already braced for a lot of wincing when going through Primrose's story, because I am just enough of a narrative completionist that I'll be grabbing her even though I don't really need her for the path skill. (Since, as you and Eric both noted to me, it's really four path skills with a Noble/Scoundrel version for each.) But it's rather easier to deal with annoying story bits when I can snark about it and know someone else will read.