While dealing with illustrations will be Naoki Ikushima, who had cared for the Bravely Default monster design ; The plot, on the other hand, is curated by the FEAR team in Japan, known for various paper publications, including adventure books and other generic dissemination works.
The demo has therefore allowed us to come into contact with a world that is quite similar to Bravely Default, but which is not intended as a mere copy or a spiritual sequel. As the title suggests, Octopath Traveler, a name that for now is propagated as a provisional one, but which we tend to believe may be the final one, will bring to you eight different stories with eight different protagonists, each with its combat system and its vicissitudes to live and to solve: Of these events only two were at our disposal in the demo, that is, with the protagonist Olberic Eisenberg and that with Primsore.
Both in their introductory chapters lasted about an hour, with Olberic allowing us to spend more time searching for sub-quests and exploration, unlike what happened to Primrose, with which after half a game we were already in a very story driven environment.
Already thanks to these two stories we had the chance to understand how varied the gameplay will be, how to deal with one or the other warrior’s approach, as well as understand the motivations, as mentioned earlier, that they find behind their grip on the sword, or whatever weapon is used. What is in any case unchanged is the approach to the combat system, because all enemies will have to be fought following the system of vulnerability: each of our opponents will have an underlying footmark that will specify both the level of its Shield, we’ve also seen 6 for a boss, and boxes in which their weakness will be shown. In the beginning all questions will be, but each time you find a weakness of your enemy this will remain in memory for the whole game so that you remember, once discovered, how to act.
We do not talk of weaknesses to certain elements, of course, because Olberic, whose story will be explained briefly, is nothing more than a warrior, devoid of any magic ability at least in the first hour of play. In fact, the weaknesses we refer to using a specific weapon: our knight has both a sword and a spear with it, which allows more perforating attacks and consequently more performance against a certain type of enemy.
In addition to the normal attack, you will have many skills from yours, from the slider that will allow you to hit all the deployed enemies, or even those actions that will push you to a single attack but powerful enough to lower the value of your opponent’s Shield.
Once this number is zeroed, the opponent will be dominated, that is, it will be put in a condition of being confused and having to skip at least one turn: you can use that jerk to cure you, if you need it, but it’s clear that with the missing Shield the best thing to do is use the strongest attack you have it at your disposal.
Here comes the Power with its PPs: each turn will give you a PP, regardless of the action you have done before, until you can store up to five, beyond which you can not go. Using the R key before selecting the attacking opponent you can boost your warrior – whether it’s Olberic or Primrose – up to a maximum of three levels and get a x4 in the attack.
