This is a thread about Octopath Traveler 2.

[Kalir]

So, Live-a-Live remake came out a while ago and was pretty dang sick. Not just for the concept of the game, but to see how much it inspired games going forward, yet us here in the states never got a chance to see that formative step. Having played that now, after playing the first Octopath game and before playing the second, really helped put the entries into a greater perspective for me.

First up, the elephant in the room. Whoever was responsible for writing Primrose's story in the first game and/or the content of the gacha game? Buddy you need to quit that shit right now. I know you didn't for this game, because I beat it, and Throné's story is in it. Exploitative misery-porn trash is not a thing I am here for and you're not even good at it. I didn't even get Primrose in the first game because her story put me off from chapter 1, and while Throné's chapter 1 is a definite improvement... I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, the overview of the game, particularly in how it changed from the first iteration. Octopath series is about eight disparate adventurers that have their own goals but can meet up, adventure together, and unravel the tangled backstory that ties all of their plots together. The Live-a-Live inspiration became abundantly clear once I played that game: it's also about a set of eight adventurers that don't yet know they're dealing with a united foe (okay some of the details are different but shhhhh). Octopath mostly sets itself apart by letting all eight jabronis hang out in the same team as soon as their first chapter is done, as opposed to Live-a-Live being independent until the final chapter. This runs into the issue of those party members only being able to interact with tiny omake scenes with one another, but to be real, accounting for the permutations of party members in any one person's story is just a Lot and would be incredibly difficult to piece together coherently.

Gameplay-wise, the changes from OT1 to OT2 are mostly pretty good. Every character now has a worthwhile passive and a handy latent power to diversify each of them even beyond their fixed class, with basically everything except Concoct being significantly buffed (and Concoct didn't need a buff anyway, it just got reworked). There's also a day/night system that influences, among the usual suspects, what path actions you can take with NPCs, and it can be toggled more or less at will. Kinda halfbaked if you ask me, but it's not unwelcome at least. Bonus classes are no longer "fight this end/postgame boss to get it" and are much more rewarding to obtain, with significantly diversified movesets and even some unique methods of acquiring new skills for them. The base eight have been slightly balanced and reworked, mostly to cut out the cruft of identical copies of moves with minor changes (see: the Advanced Magic ability for Scholar). In short: game's good.

(Special shout-out to the Blessing In Disguise, an accessory that saw the one cool item in Golden Sun, the Cleric's Ring, and went "lemme show you how it's done kid". Love that thing.)

I'm gonna devote the rest of this post to talking about everyone's stories in full, going in order from least to most favorite (followed by the endgame/extra stories). So that'll be fun. These will contain full spoilers for the stories, so yeah. Don't click one unless you've either finished that story or decided you're done with the game before finishing that one.

Throné the Thief:

Spoiler

On paper, the concept of "cleaner for a crime syndicate wants out" is ripe with potential. Hell, the game Adios is exactly about that and that shit rules. And Throné as a character is not innately a bad one, at least as much as her side scenes with the other characters indicate. Unfortunately, the writing for her scenario is like if someone heard all the complaints about Primrose's story being a festival of abuse and murder of sex workers, and decided to take their story as close to the exploitative border of that as possible without actually crossing it as an act of defiance. It ends up being a tangled mess of weird filial piety and trauma, with absolutely no attempt to slot into the greater narrative of the setting beyond what is absolutely required, and which delights in taking agency away from Throné at every point.

Everyone else's story was great, or at the very least had parts in it I enjoyed. Throné's story was so bad I found myself writing a draft of how to make it less trash, Golden Sun LP style. I may post it here later, but for now, I want to cover everyone's stories, so we'll save that for later. Suffice it to say that not only does the story as presented suck, but the final chapter's addition of the character Claude and everything around him was so fundamentally awful I basically excised it outright and invented my own (effectively reinventing the concept of Sentinel Comics' The Chairman).

Story sucks.

Temenos the Cleric:

Spoiler

Of the eight, Temenos was the character I was least interested in to start out. A smug looking basic white anime boy, AND he's a church inquisitor? No and thank you. His inquisitorial powers are reflected by the Coerce night path action, which I think is supposed to be like an Ace Attorney psyche-lock sort of thing represented as a fight where the enemy has infinite health but has to have their shield broken to give you info, and it's kind of cool in presentation but it's hard to nail down exactly what is being accomplished.

Fortunately, his story has a little more flair to it. It's a murder mystery where you have to discover the culprit behind a string of killings with a theological backing, and Temenos brings his own Visual Calculus-like ability that lets him see the truth of things as though he was there at the time. He's aided on this quest by Crick, a straight-laced Sanctum Knight who makes for the strongest m/m pairing in the game with Temenos. Shame he gets killed though. Cowards. The Visual Calculus ability is cool and the story has some interest to it, but the payoff, at least in my opinion, ends up a little underwhelming since it's mostly setting the stage for the final storyline (which in turn I found underwhelming). Still, it's interesting enough.

Osvald the Scholar:

Spoiler

Yooo Count of Monte Cristo is sick! Except that's not what Osvald's story is. Except it kind of is. Don't worry about it.

Despite being a Sad Dad Drama, I enjoyed this story well enough, particularly the ending where Osvald breaks away from being pure Sad Dad to become an actually decent parent and also to learn Master Spark. I especially liked that the flashbacks took plenty of time to show that Osvald actually was a decent person to his family and that they all got along very well. Similarly, him leaving Elena in the care of Lady Clarissa at the end wasn't just him trying to shirk his parenting duties, but realizing that recovering from inflicted amnesia would be a thing that needs time to heal, and giving Elena the space she needs for the moment. And those are great!

My biggest complaint with the story here is mostly just with how static everything is for the first few chapters, of Osvald basically being consumed with single-minded revenge and disregarding everyone until the reveal that Elena is alive... but at the same time, I kinda get it. Narratively necessary and fitting, I guess. And Harvey is exactly the right kind of spiteful villain for this kind of story anyway, especially taking his huge "I'M NOT OWNED" speech when you do defeat him. So yeah, more good than bad on average.

Ochette the Hunter:

Spoiler

Before we can talk about Ochette's story, I first need to highlight how much of an improvement was given to the Capture/Provoke mechanics! Like holy what the wow! Not only do they give you a starter choice that stays competitive the whole game, not only does each monster have unlimited uses, they also let you turn monsters you aren't using anymore into food items! Which... would understandably creep animal-lovers out a bit, yeah, but Ochette's story has a major theme of ecological stability, including only ever hunting for food and making sure the ecosystem doesn't get overwhelmed by any species proliferating beyond sustainability or dying out.

The Capture mechanic stays relevant throughout her story, too. The three chapters you go to outside her first award you with a Creature of Legend, which can only be used at full boost but which is made appropriately powerful. Your own starter choice eventually powers up in a similar way during the final confrontation, which turns out to be against a super-powered, corrupted version of the starter you didn't choose. Oh, and that fight just so happens to be my favorite in the game since it has the ability to chow down on your allies to gain buffs... just like the new Cleaving Blow Hunter gets!

That said, the story element of the humans living on Toto'haha felt kind of tacked on when it's all said and done, and I REALLY don't like the fact that most beastlings speak only in two-word sentence fragments, with the exception of Juvah and Ochette who studied human language. Making Ochette, the viewpoint character, one of the beastlings was a good idea since it means her story must come from a viewpoint of this "other" culture, but the presentation is still undeniably awkward.

Hikari the Warrior:

Spoiler

Okay, now we've well and truly left the stories behind where I have serious grievances about them. Hikari's tale starts him off in the final area for his story, just before a coup from his murderous brother Mugen. So his story becomes about traveling the world to assemble allies, who dispersed after the last major war of Ku. That fits into the narrative of Octopath Traveler as a story more than most of the above since most of those deal with incredibly personal stories (or in Temenos' case, an investigation that could be damaged by having more people involved). Hikari's personality reflects this, as someone who strongly values allies and solidarity over brute strength, and draws his sword mainly to train and learn new techniques (which is so much better than Olberic's old boosted defend thing, but that's a tangent).

Is it amazing? Not really. But it tells the story it sets out to tell, and does it well enough. Special mention to Chapter 2, where Kazan galaxy-brains his way into freeing all the gladiators trapped in the underground arena because having to fight for your life every day suuuucks. (This is somewhat dampened by the revelations of the endgame, but I will leave that to its own box.)

Agnea the Dancer:

Spoiler

A lot of people online are giving this story a lot of flak. There's a lot of reasons for this, including that it's so much lower stakes than everyone else's stories and doesn't appear to connect with the overarching plot much, if at all. Or, y'know, just the boilerplate misogyny that's still around and will be for some time.

Ignore all of that. Agnea's story is a fun little charming tale of a small-town girl hoping to make it big and bring smiles to people's faces as a dancer. The final encounter is among the best of the encounters out there, helped along by the music sticking with a vocals version of Agnea's theme to represent her signature Song of Hope. Agnea herself is a delight, still ignorant of a lot of the world but unrelentingly hopeful and always aiming to learn more. They don't always need to be grim edgy stories where people die and kill and do horrible things for no reason, guys! Sometimes we can just have fun! It's okay!

There is just so much silly fun to be had here that I would have to retell the entire plot to get it all, and I don't want to rob you of that. Go be a star.

Castti the Apothecary:

Spoiler

I always choose the itemancer in my games wherever possible, and Castti is no exception. Hers is probably the darkest of the stories I emphatically like, because as grim as it gets (and make no mistake, chapter 3 is grim as HELL) it always comes back to a place of hope, and I am fundamentally a simple person who wants happy endings to stories. Likewise, Castti herself is a fun character who, despite being saddled with the self-described "mother hen" archetype has a very fun story to unravel.

It really feels like the writers tried to give everyone something unique about either their character or story structure, which was greatly appreciated after OT1, and Castti does that with her story by having plot-specific Inquire texts trip a flashback to a forgotten memory, which you use to piece together the truth of her amnesia. This comes with one of those trendy glitch-screen effects that's all the rage these days, but that's okay. I like those, and it fits here. There's also the mercenary Edmund as a recurring character in her stories who, when you first see him, your initial instinct is "oh this jerk is gonna be the chapter boss". Then bam, Castti yells the chauvinism out of him and actually gets the dude to change and learn. I like that! I like Edmund as a character!

Oh also Castti's story is gay as hell. Like yeah Crick/Temenos is gay but Castti blows them the hell out of the water and don't you tell me otherwise.

Partitio the Merchant:

Spoiler

An undeniable fan favorite and for good reason, Partitio's tale narrowly gets past Castti's for me in terms of favorites. Doing a merchant character in this day and age is a bold move that can very easily go wrong, and Tressa from the first game was certainly endearing but kind of missed the beat a bit (although I will chalk a lot of that up to the enforced symmetry of the first game). Partitio starts off right by stating that his intentions are to "eliminate the devil called poverty from the world", which is a BADASS line and belief. And then his chapter 1 is a flashback through his youth in a silver-mining town that's been brought to destitution by a greedy landlord, so Partitio resolves to go beat the hell out of them. Hell the damn yes THAT IS WHAT WE ARE HERE FOR!

A lot of people like to joke that Partitio is really bad at capitalism, and there's lots of discussion about how, to roughly quote Disco Elysium, capital cannot be critiqued because it subsumes all critiques into itself and uses them to its own end. And yeah, we're talking about a sixty-dollar video game here. That said, Partitio isn't a capitalist at all. Despite having a great deal of respect for his story's nemesis and his former teacher, Roque (a true capitalist who has at least two company towns in his name), Partitio rejects his beliefs entirely. He sees technology as something that should better everyone's lives rather than being hoarded by the wealthy few, and has no interest in building up raw capital except to help others out by giving it to them. I've said multiple times before, and will again, that Partitio is the kind of person who would fight to the death for universal basic income as a policy.

While I can see the problem with his story ending up with him hiring all of his former adversaries and hoping they don't fall off the wagon and back into capitalist greed, Partitio is just such a delightful character, and his story is presented with so much fun and bombast and love, I can't help but enjoy the entire thing. The supporting cast he helps out along the way is fun too, even if they have a hard time competing with Partitio for the spotlight, and I very much like how he has specific "Scent of Commerce" sideplots that, while not exactly fully optional, give you a lot more to learn and discover about the world. And, of course, his final boss being Roque in his Scrooge McDuck suit and top hat driving a tank that's also a train is great. We need more stories like this.

The Final Story:

Spoiler

Sadly, the final story is kind of a dud. It's basically a bunch of death cultists as a continuation of Temenos' story summoning the latest god of chaos and destruction into the world, and also retconning/brainwashing some beloved characters from other stories into the death cult to be sacrificed. And while most of the stories do actually connect to this one in some way (Agnea and Partitio's stories only get connected by the aforementioned retconning/brainwashing of minor characters), it kinda lacks the punch or the cohesion to really tie the room together. Hell, depending on how you look at it, some of the reveals here might make previous stories actually worse.

Ah well.

 

[Violentvixen]

I'm still going through Fire Emblem Engage but am excited to pick this up when I finish that.

 

[Peklo]

I picked Throné in the demo and that sure brought back vividly the Octopath writing touch in full force, from the treatment of women, sex workers, inept parental drama and everything else described. That and other parts of the production really made it evident that nothing about the series has changed in the interim beyond the smallest of additive system functions.

Throné's class archetype is just about my favourite, so that informed the choice in its way, but if I ever steel myself for the full game I'm looking forward to Castti. Oldest woman in the cast, "I'm a healer, but..." skillset, pretty good design (even though I believe Ikushima's range as a designer and artist is being stretched fairly thin by all these projects his work is front and center in). Last time around Tressa was the protagonist pick and wound up the narrative I liked most too, so maybe whatever faults this writer and writing team have, merchant characters click better in the affected style.

 

[Kalir]

Hey remember when I said I was gonna post how I'd fix Throné's story?

Yeah let's do that. All of this should be more than able to fit into the greater narrative as established by other character stories, which is mostly a testament to how little Throné's story already does that.

CHAPTER 1: ONLY WAY OUT

Spoiler

throné is a member of the blacksnakes, a crime syndicate operating in new delsta known for their highly controlling structure. not only are the bosses abusive pros literally calling themselves mother and father, each member is collared upon initiation, with each collar being lethally poisonous if forcibly removed and only being unlockable with keys held by mother and father. the story begins after a failed heist, where throné and her companions pirro, scaracci, and donnie are rapidly fleeing their pursuers. the door on their route ends up blocked and donnie perishes, leading the crew to suspect each other. father uses this to his advantage to have the surviving crew battle for supremacy on the basis that there is a traitor in the group. although this is entirely unfounded, pirro kills scaracci and attacks throné anyway, who reluctantly fights back and kills him. this traumatic event gives throné her goal for the story: get out of the blacksnakes by killing mother and father, taking their keys to unlock her collar.

how to fix this:
-on the whole, this is the most coherent part of throné's story with the most promise, so in broad strokes it can stay untouched. they still get trapped by a heist gone wrong, donnie still dies, father still tries to get everyone to play amogus, throné still resolves to escape the blacksnakes by killing mother and father. those all work.
-my issue is with the group's dissolving. throné has way more rapport and promise with pirro and scaracci than she does with mother or father. so rather than sacrificing them on the altar of angst, we'll let them both escape from this chapter alive, and here's how.
-on the mission to assassinate diamante, pirro gets there first and kills him, but scaracci isn't there. he's actually the last to the scene. pirro encounters throné as normal and they fight, with pirro's ambition to climb the ranks and strike it big being enough of a driver to attack her (and, of course, he's been told that throné is a traitor and doesn't buy her response that scaracci is the traitor).
-importantly: pirro doesn't know this is a test by father, and takes the info he was fed at face value just like throné does.
-however, throné doesn't go for the kill, calling back to how she does not take a life if she doesn't have to. instead, scaracci turns up on the scene, ready to kill pirro in her place acting on his info that pirro is the traitor.
-and once that info comes out, all three of them realize they've been played against each other. this is still as strong a breaking point for throné to leave the blacksnakes as any other, but this time, she asks pirro and scaracci to join her and be free together.
-scaracci is all in, since while he is a spiteful coward, the spite against father and his machinations wins out over his cowardice, and he vows to kill father himself if throné refuses to do so like she did here.
-pirro, on the other hand, is much more reluctant to throw his lot in on this coup attempt. he only relents because throné has already thrashed him, and he would definitely lose a 2v1 against her and scaracci. he comes up with a plan: the two men escape by the canals and get intel on where mother and father could be hiding, while throné reports in that she killed both of them to keep their suspicions low.
-the upshot here is that, rather than having a weird mess of a story where filial piety attempts to be beaten in place with a rock, we now have a story about found family being more reliable, even if they're messed up, than an abusive "birth" family.
-oh, and ditch the poison collar thing. too much of a logistical headache to give everyone in the story a killswitch that never happens. they can just be permanently locked on that's fine whatever

CHAPTER 2 MOTHER ROUTE: SLAVES AND SLAVER ACCESSORIES

Spoiler

throné heads to oresrush to track down mother, and gets in touch with a contact there known as the slaver. he introduces himself as the slaver, a man who buys and sells slaves. rather than give info on mother outright, he challenges throné to a game of russian roulette. if she loses, then she has to go kill the president. and if she wins... wait, no, wrong game. anyway she gets her info, the slaver dies, and nothing changes. along the way, she encounters a masked boy who looks like pirro. he has no further relevance to the story.

how to fix this:
-first of all: why the fuck are we A: introducing a slave trade in the hometown of notable goodest boy partitio that never gets mentioned again, and B: leaving it alone after the story is done? fuck that. throné frees the slaves after killing the slaver. this is non-negotiable.
-of course she takes two shots of maybe-poisoned drinks back to back still. she has so few chances to be her own character in the story, im keeping this one. badass.
-at the very least, if you must introduce a slave trade in oresrush and not have it demolished by the end of the story, at least make it abundantly clear that you just cannot do so now, since that would get the blacksnakes caught on to the plan REAL quick. but for my own tastes, we're assuming throné frees the slaves.
-or y'know. just don't have slavery thrown in as a half-baked plot point you ditch without a second thought
-ANYWAY pirro sent throné info about the location in oresrush. he didn't personally show up there to avoid suspicion being drawn to the location, though.
-the masked boy isn't just a weird coincidence that doesn't exist. he actually is pirro's younger brother. through fate and happenstance, he managed to get to oresrush and lives a reasonably, but not incredibly, comfortable life here. taken in by an elderly couple, he knows he has an older brother but not his whereabouts.
-the reason he wears a mask is because his adoptive parents told him that his older brother was captured by the blacksnakes, so he should wear a mask while in public so he doesn't get killed as a connection. upon discovering this, throné realizes she can offer pirro a much more concrete reason to stick with her bid for freedom than just intimidation, and tells the masked boy she'll find his brother.

CHAPTER 2 FATHER ROUTE: AFTER YOU

Spoiler

throné heads to winterbloom to meet with father for a hands-on mission to eliminate a rival gang. her main goal is to assassinate father while he, in turn, is focused on dealing the killing blow to whats-his-face the snowhares leader. this plan immediately hits a snag when father says "hey throné can you do the killing blow thx". when invading the hideout, throné sees a chained woman, sees herself in her shoes with the lack of freedom, and promises to free her after the mission. this never happens and the woman vanishes from the spot and the plot after the assassination, where father does exactly the thing throné set out to do and goes "oh you want to kill me good thats what i want meet me over there". throné accomplishes nothing.

how to fix this:
-even without adding scaracci here, the problem here becomes obvious: father is the one running the show. this is a story about him and not throné. throné doesn't have any agency for this entire chapter, and exists solely to pile onto her growing angst and show off what a cool edgy mastermind father actually is.
-let me be abundantly clear here: FUCK. THAT. NOISE.
-the chapter starts off the same at first: throné outlines her plan to ambush father when he's about to strike the killing blow, and father immediately tells her to lead the way, with the goal of putting her in the one position where she can't actually do that.
-the difference here is that scaracci is waiting on-site for the right time to attack father, with the exact same plan as throné. so while throné still hesitantly accepts father's sudden change of plans, she actually has a backup plan in place rather than just going "sure thing dad".
-throné still defeats the snowhares boss, and doesn't try to immediately go for the kill. instead, she actually follows up on her promise to the chained woman, and starts demanding info about the captives held here, promising that she won't kill him if he lets them go, and will kill him painfully if he refuses.
-this refusal to follow orders is what gets father to attack throné, not him being a galaxy-brained chessmaster. throné is still incapacitated, and the boss still gets killed afterwards, but rather than going "yes i wanted you to kill me which is why i tricked you out of the opportunity to kill me", father is just kind of disappointed that throné still refuses to kill her enemies.
-in particular: i want this to be another instance in a long, LONG list of times father has claimed that throné would come to enjoy killing like he does, despite her every insistence that no, she doesn't, she would rather just eat raspberries and have friends. instead of being an insufferable untouchable villain, he needs to come off as deliberately patronizing, in a way that doesn't mean anything to him and which is a straw beyond what broke the camel's back for throné.
-scaracci mistakenly assumes that father is going for a killing blow and attempts to ambush him at this time. unfortunately for him, father is still a highly capable veteran assassin and manages to avoid the killing blow, turning his full attention to scaracci. the two duel for a while and scaracci yells to throné to escape while she can. throné does so, leaving scaracci to an unknown and almost certainly lethal fate.
-along the way, she snags the key to the woman's chains off the boss' corpse and frees her, then hands the woman the key and tells her to get to somewhere safe, lie low for a while, and then come back to free anyone else. the woman thanks throné, introduces herself (let's go with the name dextra because i feel like it) and gets the hell out of there.
-so now, rather than her plan failing and needing to relocate because father said so, this first assassination attempt comes very close to success and even manages to get some good done in the world, with throné helping others find freedom where she cannot yet, and with scaracci growing as a character even if he dies here.

CHAPTER 3 MOTHER ROUTE: PROBABLY THAT ONE PART OF BLACK WIDOW'S BACKSTORY IDK

Spoiler

throné tracks down mother to her orphanage/training ground in wellgrove, bluntly called "mother's garden". this is one of a handful of places where blacksnakes initiations take place, kept away from the prying eyes of the townsfolk with the veil of being a church organization. throné infiltrates the orphanage on the trail of one of the newest recruits, mira, and discovers that mother is still just whipping the hell out of people for fun or to instill fear or some shit. throné fights her, and is prepared to strike a killing blow when mira, who was being whipped by mother just before the fight, begs and pleads for throné to spare mother, as she was the only person to be nice to mira. throné goes "lol no" and kills her, then says mira can come fight her later or something.

how to fix this:
-the broad strokes here are surprisingly okay. they're not as overbearingly terrible as the father side of things. instead, my issues mostly arise with mira being an obedient little girl who loves mother despite the whippings. and yeah, sometimes abuse is like that, but i dont want that to be a reason for throné to feel like an edgy antihero that crushes the dreams of kids.
-let's table that for now and go to pirro. throné meets him here in wellgrove, and tries to get a plan together with him to infiltrate the garden. pirro still doesn't trust throné fully and sets a trap for her at the orphanage, leaking her position to the bodyguard in there whose name i also forgot.
-throné evades and knocks out the guard, prompting pirro to show up and attack her. rather than being a full fight, though, this one gets defused quickly enough, as throné reveals that pirro has a living brother who would be happy to see him. climbing the ranks with a pack of killers suddenly becomes a lot less attractive than a comfy bed and a hot meal with no threat of constantly dying, so pirro relents.
-pirro agrees to assist throné fully, since he needs that same freedom to live that life, and gets in position to help out during the confrontation with mother.
-after being defeated, mother admits to killing marietta, and i don't want to try to get into the weeds of what info she leaks beyond than until i figure out how to de-fuck father 3.
-now, there's two approaches to mira here. the first and harder to do is to still have mira, under her heavy abuse, protest vehemently against throné killing mother. if that happens, throné can and should still kill mother despite mira's protestations. that said: throné (or pirro) needs to at least make an attempt to help mira past this, rather than just going "lmao kill me later kid". even if no actual progress gets done and mira just tries to throttle throné then and there, someone needs to see the damage mira has taken psychologically and try to help her.
-it would, of course, be much easier to have mira realize that she's no longer oppressed by an abusive crime boss and to try fleeing, collar and all, from her killers. the collar would still mark her as a blacksnake and thus a target for other gangs (including law enforcement), so pirro would have to try to get to her and help her to safety while throné continues her work.

CHAPTER 3 FATHER ROUTE: A STORY ABOUT NOT-THRONÉ

Spoiler

a pair of thieves named sebastian and marietta fall in love over their comparative skills in the fine arts of manslaughter and robbery. they retreat to an abandoned chapel to pledge their love and get married and have a baby, only for marietta to, according to the info mother fed father, have a different child with claude and kill the baby she had with sebastian. this caused sebastian to have so many issues he killed marietta, took on the name father and treated throné like a weird surrogate daughter, which is the first point at which she exists in this chapter's narrative. they fight to the death which is apparently what father wanted all along, and throné has a real tender moment with him after he's mortally wounded because the script demands she feels remorse for it.

how to fix this:
-in order to realistically fix this plot i first need to figure out what the fuck their intent was in the first place, which is damn near impossible. the more i try to rationalize it, the more my mind rebels against whatever structure was laid down.
-so here's what we're keeping from the above: father admits to having feelings for marietta, possibly reciprocal. throné kills father. everything else is just too incoherent for the sake of angst and edginess to try to piece together.
-first up: instead of the entire chapter being about more father backstory, we instead have it be about his interactions with throné. if my rewrite for chapter 2 had his attack on her lean into the patronization, this one needs to turn it way the fuck up. father should openly recount the "good times" the two of them had together over the years, completely ignoring or being perplexed at throné's adamant declarations that every influence he has had on her has sucked
-this comes to a head when the fight begins, and father smugly asserts that if she's never enjoyed killing, she won't stand a chance against him. in order to kill him, he claims, she would have to enjoy it.
-throné fires back with the declaration that no, she won't enjoy it. she has never gotten anything but disgust at ending another's life. but she's still fully prepared to do so here, because if she does, he will be one of the last two people she ever has to kill
-speaking of completely rejecting the philosophies of the writing, let's go back to the "what can a thief never steal" theme. instead of seeing it as a riddle in flashbacks, father poses the question to throné, who dismisses it out of hand as more of his controlling mindgames. this question can come back up in chapter 4 potentially, but here and now, throné should not give father's words any credibility whatsoever
-and that's it. throné doesn't mourn father, but she doesn't exult at his death either. she takes the stench of blood in, then tells herself that it'll be one of the last times she ever has to experience that again. fuck that guy.

CHAPTER 4: WHAT

Spoiler

throné tries the keys claimed from mother and father on her collar, only for them to not fit. instead, they work on the door that was blocked off during the failed heist in chapter 1. this door leads to a gondola manned by a dude that looks like the doorman at mother's garden, and leads to a forgotten wreck of a city called lostseed. lostseed is populated entirely by "vessels" with Spoaky infoblurbs when you inquire/scrutinize/bribe/psychelock them. throné is lured to the top of the castle by a baby's cry (and the mother tells her to kill the baby because edgy). there she meets claude, an effective immortal who apparently sired half the population of new delsta, including her. he also is totally cool with throné killing him and in fact created the blacksnakes (physically???) for exactly that purpose. he has the actual key to throné's lock, but now that she's free, she finds it a hollow victory having taken so many lives of beloved family members.

how to fix this:
-you can't. it's not possible.
-this isn't hyperbole. there is no way to repair this story because any attempt to use it as a framework is already doomed to failure. it's like trying to build a warehouse out of leaves and dead bugs. the material is simply not up to the task required of it.
-so let's ditch everything about this scenario except that there is a boss of the blacksnakes and his name is claude. cool? cool.
-throné gets the keys from mother and father, and they work on her collar. she also tries them on pirro (and mira, depending on if the narrative permits) and they work there too. so they could disappear off the grid and live peacefully on their own.
-except the story of dextra gives throné pause. yes, they themselves are free, but what of the rest of the blacksnakes? as long as the organization exists, it will imprison countless others like them, at the behest of a powerhungry person who exists beyond the law.
-dextra appears before throné at this time with worrying news: the blacksnakes are getting way more aggressive than before despite losing their two perceived leaders, stomping down on territory other gangs have claimed and scaling up initiation at a terrifying pace.
-throné doesn't know why the blacksnakes have gained momentum rather than losing it, but at this point, it doesn't matter. she's had her first taste of real freedom, and with it found people worth sticking with, far moreso than anyone with the title of mother or father
-so she sets out to new delsta's backstreets with the goal of taking down the head of the blacksnakes and dissolving the organization for good, so that nobody else is starved for freedom like she was
-lostseed can still exist as a base of operations for claude, but instead of being a creepypasta from someone's hacked copy, it's basically a criminal underbelly to new delsta big enough to count as a separate town. and instead of just going there because of mystery doors and mystery old men and mystery baby noises, throné and all the people she's helped to free need to find a way in, planned out like a big heist.
-eventually, throné ends up face to face with claude, who lays out why he's doing what he does. in short: he enjoys the personal freedom of being a powerful underworld figure with the biggest criminal syndicate in solistia, and doesn't care about how many other peoples' freedoms he quashes in the process. he has killed plenty of people before and enjoys controlling those below him with fear, threats, and promises. to him, there is nothing you cannot steal, and he exemplifies this in everything he does.
-if you must keep the whole "immortality" thing in, you can do that, which means i accidentally recreated the chairman from sentinels of the multiverse, who is a way better fit for antagonist to this story anyway
-naturally, throné rejects everything about this credo. she admits that she was born into a life where she must steal and even kill to survive, and where she had no agency to do anything except what her taskmasters ordered. however, given these tools and skills, she stole the only thing she ever really wanted: freedom, not just for herself, but for anyone subjugated by claude, father, mother, or that other guy from father chapter 2. anything or anyone held unjustly, she argues, needs to be stolen from the cruel and set free
-and then they fight and throné kills claude. except this time, it's not five-dimensional chess from off-brand zeus hoping to breed his own suicide, but a clash of ideals, of abuse and control vs. solidarity and freedom.
-that still leaves a messy aftermath of the blacksnakes now fully leaderless mid-expansion, but by this point, throné has freed pirro, dextra, mira, and probably some people from oresrush if that's still a thing. working together, they can limit the power struggles and free those that would take it. is that an imperfect ending? yeah. it's not great. but anything would be better than what the writers provided us to start with. that's a story that would be actively difficult to make worse

 

[Kalir]

Hey I got patch notes for how everyone and everything changed between versions. Spoils the hidden jobs for this game, so peruse with caution.

JOBS

Spoiler

Cleric:

• Prayer to the Flame: Replaced Sheltering Veil, which only boosted elemental defense.
• Heal Wounds: Cost increased, but folded existing Cleric spell "Heal More" into it via Advanced Magic.
• Aelfric's Blessing: Rework of Aelfric's Auspices, which repeated moves done by the target rather than giving them a second turn.
• Mystical Staff, Sacred Shield: Newly added.
• Moved "Reflective Veil" skill to Arcanist class and renamed it to "Reflective Barrier".

Scholar:

• Fireball, Icewind, Lightning Bolt: Costs increased, but folded existing Scholar spells "Fire Storm, Blizzard, Lightning Blast" into it via Advanced Magic.
• Alephan's Wisdom: Completely replaces "Alephan's Enlightenment", which effectively duplicated Osvald's latent power. It also uses the spell list from the old "Sorcerer" class, which has been removed.
• Advanced Magic, Stroke of Genius, Elemental Barrage: Newly added.

Merchant:

• Hired Help: Slightly different roster available, mostly with different damage types and effects.
• Ember: Replaces "Tradewinds" skill that dealt wind damage.
• Arrow of Fortune: Newly added.
• Removed old "Trade Tempest" skill that dealt wind damage to all enemies.

Warrior

• Aggressive Slash, Piercing Thrust, Enervating Slash, Vengeful Blade: Newly added. By and large, the existing Warrior skills they replaced (Level Slash, Spearhead, Cross Strike, and Thousand Spears) are available to Hikari as learned skills.
• Brand's Blade: Renamed from "Brand's Thunder".

Dancer:

• Sweeping Gale: Replaces "Moonlight Waltz" skill that dealt dark damage.
• Stimulate: Replaces "Panther Dance" skill that boosted an ally's speed for 2 turns.
• Dagger Dance: Replaces "Night Ode" skill that dealt dark damage to all enemies.
• Ruinous Kick: Newly added.
• Removed "Mole Dance" skill that boosted an ally's physical defense for 2 turns.

Apothecary:

• Healing Touch: Combines the effects of the old "First Aid" and "Vivify" skills into a single skill.
• Poison Axe: Combines the effects of the old "Amputate" and "Empoison" skills into a single skill, albeit without BP scaling to increase poison duration.
• Sweeping Cleave: Replaces "Last Stand" skill that had a scalar effect inverse to remaining HP.
• Replenish Health, Weak to Poison: Newly added.

Thief:

• Darkest Night: Replaces "Wildfire" skill that dealt fire damage.
• Surprise Attack, Swift Steps: Newly added.
• Removed "Steal SP" skill that functioned similarly to Steal HP. A similar skill, Mystical Staff, is available to Cleric.
• Moved "Share SP" skill to Partitio's EX skills.

Hunter:

• Precise Shot, Cleaving Blow, Abating Orb: Newly added.
• Draefendi's Bow: Renamed from "Draefendi's Rage".
• Removed skills "Rain of Arrows, True Strike, Arrowstorm". They're probably available as learned NPC skills, but most of them sucked, so I'm not about to investigate.

Inventor:

• New class entirely. Has no effects from previous game.

Armsmaster:

• Rework of earlier "Warmaster" class. Warmaster retained the ability to wield all weapon types, but each of their skills was generic AOE/single target moves with the exception of the sword one, and could work with any weapon instead of needing specific ones. Instead of Bulwark, they had "Nightmare Chimera", which performed a strong single-target attack with any weapon and then destroyed it. I prefer Armsmaster.

Arcanist:

• New class, but imported some abilities: Reflective Barrier as mentioned above, Seal of Diffusion (formerly held by the "Runelord" class under the name "Transfer Rune").

Conjurer:

• Combination of earlier "Runelord" and "Starseer" classes. The Conjure skills that apply elemental pursuits to allies' physical attacks were formerly single-target Rune skills available to Runelord, who also had Transfer Rune as above and Dark Rune/Light Rune to hit any element. BP Boost was a non-divine skill held by Starseer, and Dance of Immunity is a rework of Starseer's "Celestial Intervention" skill, but without the ability to target enemies to block them from buffing.

CHARACTERS

Spoiler

All characters:

• EX skills added. One is obtained by clearing their story, the other by finding the altar to that job's patron god while the associated character is in the party.

Ochette vs. H'aanit (Hunter):

• H'aanit started with Linde, a snow leopard, as her companion. Linde's strength was static at 3, and she could only use Sweep (Sword) or Pounce (Polearm) as her moves.
• Monsters no longer have limited uses.
• Monsters can now be prepared to turn them into food items.

Castti vs. Alfyn (Apothecary):

• Concoct was considerably reworked. In short: Alfyn used two ingredients at a time: one base (a seed or dust) that could be hazardous or medicinal with two grades of strength, and one added ingredient that chose the effect. All ingredients were usable for both types of Concoct. Notably, Alfyn's Hazardous Concoctions could hit any element. Castti's version streamlines the process by simply letting you choose the concoction type outright and letting you add up to five ingredients for extra effects, but notably she remains unable to revive targets as Alfyn could.

Throné vs. Therion (Thief):

• Blessing of Darkness added with the day/night cycle.
• Therion's passive was Pick Lock, allowing him to open special purple chests in every dungeon. Which meant if you did not have him as your starting adventurer, you would be forced to backtrack to dungeons with him in tow if you wanted what was in them. This sucked.

Osvald vs. Cyrus (Scholar):

• Study Foe used to be fixed at discovering one weakness per encounter, rather than increasing with each encounter. It probably doesn't make a difference, but it's nice at least.

Partitio vs. Tressa (Merchant):

• As she could not Hire people, Tressa had a completely different passive, Eye For Money. This had a small chance, on moving to a new area, to earn some leaves. This scaled both with distance traveled before entering a new area and area difficulty, but in practice you'll shore up the cash difference with Business Partners more often than not.

Agnea vs. Primrose (Dancer):

• Dance Partner was an entirely new addition. Primrose's passive was considered to be... her ability to summon NPCs in fights. Yes, really.

Temenos vs. Ophilia (Cleric)

• As above. Yes, really.

Hikari vs. Olberic (Warrior):

• Instead of learning skills by Challenging foes, Olberic could Bolster Defense, meaning he could use BP to sauce up his Defend to increase its damage shaving and Cover allies, intercepting hits they would take. On paper, this probably sounds really fun, but in practice it was just dull.

 

[Bongo]

I chose my starting character because I narrowed it down to just two travelers whose summary seemed to indicate that they were specifically setting forth in search of allies: Hikari and Ochette. They both seemed cool, so I flipped a coin, which chose Ochette. It's just as well, since it seems like there's some nice benefits to be had if you remember ABC: Always Be Capturing.

Now that I finished up Fire Emblem Engage, the time has come for me to start this game in earnest, so I'm heading out clockwise and just picked up Castti. I felt like Octopath 1 only needed relatively minor revisions to go from mediocre to excellent, so I'm looking forward to seeing if the reports are true that they've done just that.

 

[4-So]

Spent abouit 100 hours with this and ended up getting the platinum on PS. It's a game that I wish were bigger and had more content, a rarity for me since I'm usually looking for experiences without that kind of investment of time. Head and shoulders above its predecessor in almost every way. Certainly the best game of 2023 I've played thus far.

 

[Violentvixen]

Finally starting this. I played a little of the prologue demo prior to the game's release but wasn't able to come back and really sit down an play it until now. Very much liking it. Started with Temenos, then picked up Osvald, then realized I had two staff users which was dumb so picked up Throne and Ochette. Ochette seems like tons of fun, although I prefer Haanit's "I am tired of all this bullshit" personality to Ochette's bubbly one.

 

[balder the brave]

I wanted to like this game, but I found it chattier than I had patience for. Certainly not bad, but the dialog in both these games can be long-winded. Everything seems like it's repeated three times.

 

[Rascally Badger]

I just finished it this afternoon. I have some problems with how the game integrated the party members, or didn't as seems to be the case, but otherwise I really enjoyed it.

I never really figured out the Apothecary class, but I got some great synergy between Warrior and Merchant going that took care of just about every fight in the game.

 

[Violentvixen]

Went for a chapter that had a recommended level a few above my current one and it seems l made a poor decision, I made it through the midboss but the boss of the chapter is wrecking me in his second stage (Osvald's Ch 3).

I don't even have all eight characters yet so oops. If I start another character's chapter do you know if this one will reset (as in I'll have to redo the first part of this chapter), or can I just come back later?

 

[4-So]

Based on my experience with the game, I think you can just come back later but I don't know for sure. Seems like you could just go a tavern keeper to continue a story later but I never abandoned the chapters, so, again, I don't know for sure.

 

[Violentvixen]

Based on my experience with the game, I think you can just come back later but I don't know for sure. Seems like you could just go a tavern keeper to continue a story later but I never abandoned the chapters, so, again, I don't know for sure.

I was indeed able to! Having everyone and a couple second jobs made that much easier

Agnea's story however seems to be preschool level "you can achieve your dreams" with a weird creepy touch on top. There are certainly "positivity" stories that are done well in games but this is not one of them. Her early conversation with her sister where she says "I'm not going to allure people, how dare you suggest that" and then immediately using allure is incredibly weird. Honestly her story makes me more uncomfortable than Throne or Primrose's, there's something really, really off about the tone of it. It feels like she's so naive she's about to be hurt or taken advantage of at any moment, maybe?

Edit: Okay right after posting this I got to a good example of the weirdness of this story. Ch 3 spoilers, the head of the troupe you're helping gets stage fright and runs off. You go find her and give a very boring pep talk but her responses have a weird suicidal undertone. After the cutscene you allure her into following you somehow (I honestly don't have a clue) and she performs. Which, okay I guess, but seems like we're not addressing an underlying issue here. THEN, the character who just had serious stage fright surprises Agnea by putting her into the performance with no notice? That... seems inconsistent? And it's implied she won't have stage fight anymore now that you've allured her to the stage? What.

 

[q 3]

I've now finished everyone's story except Temenos and IMO they're all pretty underwhelming at best compared with Castti, so on the one hand I'm happy I started with her but also it's been kind of downhill since then. In particular the game's thematic ambitions often seem to exceed either the quality of its writing, the limits of its format, or both.

 

[Violentvixen]

Ochette caught a Queen Octopuff so that's fun. Not the most useful but fun.

Just finished Partitio's chapter 3 and his story is so dang weird, I like it. Also very much appreciated the automatic fast travel for this chapter, would have been annoying to have to do that myself.

Also I like Ori a lot and wish she was more involved in the story, she seems fun.

 

[4-So]

Also I like Ori a lot and wish she was more involved in the story, she seems fun.

She has a further role to play. I'll leave it at that.

 

[Violentvixen]

Wrapping up everyone's final chapters and noticed that when I beat one of the side stories the lit parts of the symbol on the loading screen go out. Already seeing a lot more acknowledgement of an overall theme than in the first game so curious what the final boss situation will be.

Also damn this was beautiful:

 

[q 3]

I liked their crossed path better than either of their main stories. Their post-ch4 Mikka/Pala sidequest was also great. Both came much closer to the resolution I wanted for Hikari's story in the first place. The Castti/Ochette crossed path was also pretty touching.

Meanwhile I'm done with all eight character stories, just have the second Throne/Temenos crossed path left before endgame, but am mainly slowly making my way through all the optional dungeons and sidequests. Some of the sidequests are real stumpers! I laughed when the obvious solution to the "guy who can't wake up on time" had a whole extra scene for how it didn't work.

 

[Violentvixen]

I laughed when the obvious solution to the "guy who can't wake up on time" had a whole extra scene for how it didn't work.

Oh yeah, I need to go back to that one

 

[Violentvixen]

She has a further role to play. I'll leave it at that.

Unexpected!

Beat it. Vide was tough and it took my five tries until I remembered Arcanist has reflective barrier, then it was pretty great. I had to walk away from the game for a bit because the game crashed on my fourth attempt and I was very annoyed, but that was the only crash I experienced the whole time, weird.

I liked the first but they've done so many improvements on this one, it's great.

 

[4-So]

Yup. I quite enjoyed it. It's my personal GOTY at this point.

 

[Bongo]

I've slain the final boss. That was a great fight! The combo of hitting Temenos with Sealticge's Seduction so that he can keep everybody safe with Prayer for Plenty turned out to be the most important thing to bring.

I understand there's an epilogue with a superboss, and I might come back and do it someday. But for now, I've got over a hundred hours on this save file and I'm ready to be done.

 

[SabreCat]

I've loved this game except for Throné's and Osvald's stories, I'm sitting around 80 hours, I'm busy writing fanfic, and I am finding myself super stymied by the final boss sequence. I managed to clear phases 1-2 once, then wiped on the third, and haven't managed to get past the first phase again since.

 

[Violentvixen]

I seem to remember using a lot of reflection spells for that one from one of the special classes.

 

[SabreCat]

The only special class I found was Armsmaster, lol, and only two of the special weapons for it...
I guess if I have to, I'll load an old save and look up a guide on where to get the rest of the extra jobs.
I'm trying Temenos+Sealticge, now, as Bongo recommended above, which has helped quite a bit! I was shy of combos like that because of the boss's tendency to erase all your buffs, but maybe it only does that in the first phase?

 

[SabreCat]

Ah! Got there!
The final phase does have a retaliatory buff-stripping effect, but it was still worth my while to do the Temenos+Sealticge thing. Not so much Sacred Shield, but Prayer for Plenty yes, as the overshield isn't itself considered a buff.
Dohter's Charity is also pretty wild when you're spewing elixirs across eight characters! Lets you pick whoever to do a boosted Concoct, lol.