Octopath Traveler 0

Octopath Traveler 0 delivers a tight, compelling story with challenging turn-based battles and satisfying Boost-and-Break tactics, all wrapped in atmospheric HD-2D beauty. Building your own village and exploring the world feels rewarding and familiar thanks to the strong soundtrack and recognizable style. Fans of the series will feel right at home once again.

Octopath Traveler 0 is more than a spin-off or a nostalgic exercise; it is a deliberate attempt to redefine the series’ direction. By abandoning its familiar episodic structure in favour of a more focused narrative, the game signals a push toward greater maturity in the world of Orsterra, where heroes remain human before becoming legends. While not flawless, it serves as an important test for the franchise’s future, showing an apparent willingness to evolve. At its best, Octopath Traveler 0 offers a deep and engaging experience, skillfully blending tactical combat, gradual storytelling, and striking visual design.

Octopath Traveler 0 provides the perfect JRPG comfort food this holiday season, promising to keep you engaged and entertained to the very end - as long as you enjoy turn-based combat.

Octopath Traveler 0 is a rich, retro-style JRPG with deep party-building and a charming town-building system. Despite some heavy exposition, its strong arcs, villains, and excellent soundtrack make it a content-packed experience.

In terms of story length, character progression, and the sheer amount of content layered across its systems, Octopath Traveler 0 is undeniably substantial. That said, from a design standpoint it never quite achieves the cohesive feel of Octopath Traveler I and II. Some of its more awkward mechanics feel like the byproduct of trimming down mobile-style excess rather than purpose-built systems, with these issues only becoming fully apparent in the later stages of the game.

I don’t play Octopath games for the plot. This is more true than ever before with Octopath Traveler 0. This story spends several long hours being a gigantic bummer. It’s bad enough to mess up the pacing and sap my enthusiasm. On the other hand, the mechanical systems at work are as intricate and rewarding as they’ve ever been. I love tuning up my gigantic party, tweaking their skillsets, and unleashing them on the world at large. If it’s a little too easy at first, that’s okay. The music and the visuals are as excellent as I hoped for, and there’s a whole town to rebuild as well. Like the previous games, there’s a lot to love about Octopath 0. It all comes down to what you’re looking for.

Octopath Traveler 0 is the perfect game for newcomers, but it doesn’t quite live up to the sky-high expectations of true die-hard fans. As a result, it’s a pretty solid game, but not as good as it could have been.

My favorite Octopath game. Storyline is gripping, music is splendid (with some recycling from earlier games), gameplay is fun and engaging. Meeting each new character is exciting, with some favorites. The hand-drawn portions are beautiful - I just wish there were more of them, particularly in character dialogue. HD-2D works great for gameplay, but struggles a bit for character investment. Including hand-drawn portions when the characters speak would enhance immersion. Regardless, I loved this adventure for each of my 90 hours of gameplay.

The game does feel like a step back from octopath traveler 2 due to worse graphics, worse storytelling, and just overall a less "finished" product. This is primarily due to this game being based off of a mobile game, and although a good enough job was done to make the game not feel like a mobile game/ gacha, free to play game, you still experience remnants of it being a mobile game and thus brings down the overall quality of the game. For starters, having so many playable characters definitely feels like a mobile game/gacha as some of the characters are just not very useful, and with limited dialogue and story impact it just doesn't make me want to change up the characters to use for battles as the game isn't as difficult compared to the mobile game. Also, the storylines/quests feel like it was more intended for a mobile game that gets story updates every so often. The game just feels too long and has too much dialogue. I feel like this could of been reworked further and cut out some of the pointless dialogue. For example, I have 60+ hours in the game already, and I'm only about 75% done with game. For me the game peaked when playing the master of all storyline, as I was also complete the wishvale storyline at the same time. And that's only about halfway being done with the game.

At its best, it is a boring grind-fest. At its worst, it's just a crappy mobile game dressed up as a console/PC release. It's just ok enough to keep playing once you've sunk enough hours into it. But after 80 hours, I could not bring myself to play another minute.

I have to give this game a low score. Fix the audio and it will go to 9/10.

If SquareEnix aimed to create a game, that is a pain to play, then they succeeded. The battle system is a pain, because it's build on a stagger system and the problem that comes with stagger systems is, that battles need to take long, so you can utilize the stagger system. Enemies need to have massive health pools and battles need to drag in for longer, than they are fun. And then you have bosses with 20 shields you need to break in order to do damage and if you beat the boss there's a phase 2. There's way to many multiphase boss fights. They shouldn't be any multiphase boss fights. Also this game has the same problem as all the other Octopath Traveller games, that your party isn't existent in the story. While some of the individual stories are well written, this really drags down the story overall. The only positive thing about the game is the artstyle and the music. Everything else just ****.