The sprites are also worth highlighting here, with incredible expressivity packed into the tiny figures: mannerisms, gestures, even actions like smoking all add up quickly.īut while the liveliness of the side cast is fantastic, it only further exacerbates the isolation of the main crew from one another. Unlike the travel banter, their short time on screen is put to good use building histories and personalities for the protagonists. Every one of the eight narratives weaves in side characters so skillfully that their relationships with the respective protagonists feel like the core of the game. The same separation apparently existed in the original Octopath Traveler (which I haven’t played), and I wonder whether it, too, felt so at odds with the story the wider game was telling. In fact, these feel more jarring than having everybody disappear, because they neither develop nor showcase any believable connections. Neither do the occasional, shallow side stories that see characters’ paths cross.

The occasional prompt to see “travel banter,” wherein two characters suddenly stand in a foggy nowhere world overlaid on their previous position and awkwardly chat as if they’ve just recently met, does nothing to alleviate this problem. Image: Acquire, Square Enix/Square Enix via Polygon

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