I have been jonesing for a traditional JRPG for a couple years now. But every game I try just does not seem to hook me recently. This is exactly how I felt about 2018’s Octopath Traveler when I first played it at release. The idea was interesting: eight main characters. Each of these characters with their own stories and own abilities. To make it even more interesting, you can start with any of the characters’ stories and can recruit any of the remaining seven. You can interact with every character, or just one of them. Super interesting.

But a JRPG lives and dies on its combat system. Well at least for me. And Octopath Traveler’s combat system is really interesting and varied. You can learn a ton of different skills and run multiple different classes. Each class works differently together and the game really lets you explore this. There is also an interesting boost system where you can unleash weaker attacks for a few turns to build up your boost to supercharge a move. All the enemies have weaknesses and break points. Which all ends up with a wonderful combat system that lends to a ton of strategy in your party. I truly enjoyed the combat system in Octopath Traveler. So why did it not keep me interested?

Well, the honest truth is: the story is pretty boring.

Each character has their own story line and you have to work through their chapters to find out their whole story. But the stories, especially the first chapters, aren’t really interesting enough to encourage you to carry on. My first time playing Octopath Traveler, I was bored around the fifth characters’ first chapter. I never even saw the last three characters’ first chapters at all. I just… stopped playing.

Until this year. Once again, I started jonesing for a turn-based JRPG and decided to give Octopath Traveler another shot. Not only did I finish the game this time, I completed the game 100%… Was it worth it to come back to this game?

Well… it’s complicated.

I started playing the game with the intentions of just finishing the stories. But I ended up doing so so so much more. This time, the stories were interesting enough for me to carry on with the game (granted I did skip a lot of the dialogue because it’s still kind of boring). But the real star of the show was the combat system still. I had a ton of fun building my party and finding cool combos that you can pull off. The combat system alone was enough to hard carry me through every character’s second chapters. Around that point, I decided that I was having enough fun that I should try to 100% the game. By this, I mean get every achievement in the game (I played this on Xbox). But the achievement list for this game is essentially truly doing EVERYTHING in the game. You have to complete every character’s story. You have to completed every single side story. You have to fight every boss and hidden boss. You have to Max out every class. You have to hold every single item in the game. You have to hit the damage cap (which requires an insane level and a ton of luck). You have to open every single treasure chest. You have to fight and analyze the weaknesses of every single enemy. You have to find every single hidden item in the game.

This is a TON of stuff to do. Just as an example, there are 780 treasure chests in this game. That is for ONE single achievement… A huge ask for 25 Gamerscore. But I pressed forward. I was still enjoying the combat system and the stories were still… okay. It was a fun game and I actually truly enjoyed the first 50 or so hours of the game. My party was getting leveled up at a fine rate and I was unlocking cool new skills and strategies along the way. I was really enjoying it… But then the horrible truth of what I got myself in to came forward. I finished around half the parties’ stories and was really getting over the game to be totally honest. I just wanted to finish the stories and call it a day. But I had already dove in to the deep end. I had printed out checklists of every item scattered all over my office. I was a mad man checking every single chest and hidden item. I was in deep.

So I pushed forward. I finished all but one characters’ stories and got to the point in my guide where I should be opening the last treasure chest. I get to the chest. I open it… No achievement. I honestly thought about stopping there. I did not care enough about the game to continue. I had one single character’s story left, and I wanted to quit. I actually uninstalled the game and thought, “fuck it, I had enough.” As I played other games for a couple days, I couldn’t help but think of those God damn treasure chests. So I decided to go back and check EVERY SINGLE treasure chest in the game. All 780 of them. Luckily, it only took around 400 treasure chests before I found one I missed! I opened it. Thank goodness, it’s finally over!

Except I didn’t have my achievement.

The crushing realization that there was ANOTHER treasure chest I missed washed over me. I wasn’t stopping this time though, I pressed forward. After about 80 more treasure chests, I found another unopened one. I opened it and… ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! I had done it. It felt so good to finally get those stupid treasure chests marked off. All-in-all, re-searching the treasure chests took around six hours. Not that bad. I was finally able to continue on. I completed the final character’s story. I was near the end. There was just some final grinding to do before fighting the ultimate final fight. And the hidden items. I continued my guide and got to the final hidden item… I grabbed it… and no achievement. There are around 300 hidden items in the game. Not quite the same as the treasure chests, but still a substantial amount. I, once again, had to go through every single location to find this last God forsaken item. It did not take as long as the treasure chests, but man was I over this game by that point. I grinded to the appropriate level and prayed that I could beat the final boss and be done with this game.

Except the final boss is a complete and total nightmare. It honestly does not matter how leveled your party is, you have to rely on RNG. This is at the end of a boss-rush of eight of the previous bosses. You clean up those bosses fairly easy and get to the first phase of the boss. Which is honestly pretty easy… Then you fight the second phase of the boss with your OTHER four members that were not in your party. That means that not only does your main party have to be super leveled… Your four characters you weren’t using need to be super leveled as well…

Back to grinding.

After hours and hours of leveling. I was able to finally topple the final boss and his second form. Thanks to some lucky RNG. You see, the second form can kill your entire party in one hit. So you essentially have to tank all the hits with a single character. Then hope that the other characters can do enough damage to kill him before he gets a chance to hit you. But sometimes, the game randomly lets him go first! So sometimes, your characters die before you even have a chance to get your party ready. It’s a horrible way to end what could have been a really cool final boss. To leave it all to a coin-flip on if you get to go first or not is horrible design. Especially when you have to do the entire boss rush to get to the coin-flip. It took me 7 tries to finally kill the final boss. I was very over the game at this point.

But there was two achievements left: one for finishing the game with only one character and one for beating the game in under eight hours. I was extremely over the game, but to be fair, these achievements were really fun actually. My play through with one character was around 4 and half hours and I actually started to enjoy the game again. Although at this point, it could have been a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome.

But it was over! I had completed Octopath Traveler 100%. Was it worth it? Hell no. Was it fun? Eh?

Overall Octopath Traveler left a sour taste in my mouth. The combat system is really what carries here. The stories are boring and overall forgettable. The classes are cool and the enemies are cool. But there is a ton of RNG in the end boss that really sours the entire thing. The game honestly gets pretty boring, pretty fast. Which is not good because there is A LOT of game here. It took me around 160 hours to get every single achievement. Where around 90 hours of that was sort of a drag.

Granted I did this to myself by trying to get every achievement. But obviously the game wants you to do this or else that would not be the achievement list… right?

Because of this, Octopath Traveler gets a 2 out of 4. The game is beautiful and the interesting combat system hard carries. But the stories are just bland and forgettable. And the game itself just gets old super-fast. I honestly don’t know if I would recommend beating the game. I definitely wouldn’t recommend getting every achievement. For me, Octopath Traveler is a wonderful example of “sometimes less is more.” The game would have been an easy 3 out of 4, or even a 3.5 out of 4, if it just knew when to stop. When the whole idea of the game is having 8 main characters, and the worst way to play the game is to max out all 8 characters, maybe it’s not that great of a game. The one thing that it accomplished in spades, however? I think I am good on JRPG’s for a while.