Octopath Traveler II Review (CuscusPie)
Suffers from the same issues as Octopath Traveler I. There is no party interaction whatsoever - All the characters are strangers to each other, despite being in a party. The game is essentially 8 side stories, with no main story. If you're looking for good JRPGs, I recommend playing Chained Echoes instead.
Great graphics, though.
Edit:
And to recruit main characters, you sometimes still need to help complete strangers do dubious things without questioning their motives. Also, with Temenos you play a massive asshole that goes around, beating up innocent townspeople to obtain infos. Ochette captures beasts, makes them fight for her, and then turns them into Jerky once they are of no more use to her. Her main companion animal must be constantly on the edge, always wondering when it's her time to become shashlik. Hikari likes to force innocent grannies into duels. Like wtf, lol. It's kinda funny, but nonsensical.
Edit2:
It's strange that commenters defend these issues by saying that the final chapter resolves them. It doesn't matter if the final 10% has a unified story and character interaction, when the first 90% don't. It's just weird to have 8 protagonists that do not interact with each other in any meaningfull way. Still playing this game because I already played all the better games, but it's anything but great.