OCTOPATH TRAVELER 2: new player, new to the genre, suggestions on other games and opinions, no spoilers.
I was commenting on r/patientgamers under a post about Octopath Traveler 2 and I am relatively new to the game.
It came out as a very long comment, so to further exploit the invested time, I decided to post it here.
I don't want to be mean or start a quarrel, I just want suggestions on different games I could try and people to share their experience on the game and if they felt similarly as me and if that changed with more time in the game and whatever people feel to share that is not spoiler, get gud or hate.
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I am playing the game right now (At this point more than 1 month, but I have only 10 hours on it), I really like it but it took me a lot (4-5 hours) to start getting into it.
I am not a fan of wasting 4-5 hours with this feeling of "maybe I should just drop-it", but the game is so charming that I felt something good would come out of it.
Right now I finally understood the exploration and how it works and the game became wayyy more rewarding.
But I do hate that, since exploration is my favorite part, there are soo many useless battles.
But I am still at the very beginning (like I did just chapter 2 of one character), therefore I find the fighting still entertaining enough, but I fear they will become boring the moment I will need to backtrack.
The characters are so mono-dimensional that I am not super invested in all of them, because I just don't feel them.
I have only tried all the characters from the left continent (i guess is a continent) and I love sai for being mysterious and the dancer, I forgot the name, because she and I are basically the same.
I do think the story is still entertaining, but not good enough to bring me back to playing most of the time, because I am not that curious about it and therefore it's hard to bring me back since I still have this voice in my head that says that the game is too slow.
I will still play it though because I just graduated and now my summer is starting and this is a perfect game for the steamdeck.
Travelling and playing this is going to be soooo good.
Especially at home where I have tons of free time.
I am invested in the combat system and freedom and the exploration and the job system because they are all new things to me.
I never played a game with jobs and secondary jobs and I am a hugeee fun of learning combos and combat and creating cool fighters with what I like.
I also like games that are not only min-max and this is allow you to be also more balanced.
It's overall an interesting combat system for me and I want to discover all the cool weapons to stack effects and do cool things while becoming the hero I need to be.
I am basically doing my own review here, this comment is not exactly for you all in the sense that I am just sharing my opinion.
Before this I played sea of stars, you all probably know it.
I really loved it because it was a good way to get back to the genre (I say "get back", but I essentially played just when I was a child), but I felt the story had the same issues (the characters are all good or predictably bad) and the combat system is a bit boring compared to this game, but it doesn't last as long so it's fine.
I loved it so much that I felt like getting more into this genre, and I think it's a good investment, but sea of stars is a weird comparison (i am noticing), because it's so freaking good in the things that it does, and it doesn't have much more.
In comparison,I feel that jrpgs tend to be veeeerryyyyyyyy wide and broad in terms of the things that they do, but half of those things are so boring to me.
I am discovering all of this now.
I heard that "chained echoes" is a good sea of stars counterpart, I honestly went for octopath traveller because it looksss way more charming and it scratched more of that itch, but maybee it's not the perfect choice.
But again, now I have time for also for the "non-perfect" choices and octopath is a good game.
I tried persona 5 royal before this, it didn't sadly give me any whatsoever joy (besides for the charming part, even though in a very different way) and I think I played it less than OT2 because it's much more overwhelming.
I heard a lot of people saying that P5R is not an entry-level entry to the genre and I thought It wouldn't be a problem because I don't consider myself a newbie for games, I am usually pretty good, but I guess I am a newbie in jrpgs and also I didn't have the time.
I think I will be back to P5R in the future, maybe it will feel less overwhelming, but not rn really, the combat system feels boring and the dating sim part seems cool, but at the very beginning is just confusing.
I know it's an amazing game, I am just not the perfect target as I thought I would be.
Finally, do you have any suggestions for jrpgs or games in general knowing what I just said?
Also, for OT2, I am really looking for the scholar job since I believe it will help with the random encounter rate, hopefully enough so that random encounters will not feel a problem even when backtracking, but just joyful moments to test my skills.
While posting this in this subreddit, I also got to see that there are 2 games I didn't know of that could be interesting.
OT3 who is not out yet and OT0 which I had no clue it was a thing when I bought this a few months ago.
Is the combat system of OT0 different and is this entry more beginner/time-wise friendly?