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While SE is experimenting with their main series like Final Fantasy they decided to bring back the old days with a modern spice by making Octopath Traveler 2 and it just works.
It's and awesome jRPG where you play as 8 characters and go on a journey to uncover their past until all of their stories collide.
Those who played this already know my favorite character and the character I chose from the name of the title. Yes you choose the main character and the story begins from there. The game is sliced into character chapters which are spread around the world and for the most of the game are not connected with each other.
Each character is very different and offers a different story and different reasoning for adventuring. This keeps the game fresh throughout the story.
From the first sight it's a standard turn based jRPG. But inside its shell, it's pretty innovative (by today's standards) and unique experience.
Combat while seems very basic at first, is extremely deep and complicated. It provides multiple ways of defeating the enemies. Unlike in many other games, non-jRPG's included where there's usually one way to be the best, here you build different parties and use different skills and abilities to achieve victory. I can't stress enough how fun the combat is, at times it feels like tactical rpg.
Every boss has its own gimmick so all the encounters with them feel different since you have to use different approach.
As per usual you have attack, skill, item, defend commands and so on. But the point is that characters compliment each other and their combat potential is unlocked fully when they work together. Which means buffing, debuffing, healing, powering up, etc. And different combination of travelers could lead to different tactics but same victory.
Enemies on the other hand hand have shields. You must break the shields to do more damage to them. There a physical shields and elemental shields. To break physical shields you must attack with physical weapons. But also you must reveal the shields because they're hidden behind a question mark. They're weaknesses, hit them with right weapon/spell and the weakness is revealed.
The only annoying thing is that characters who are not in the current party are no leveling up. That leads to wasting time on grinding which I hate the most. Although you don't need the highest level to achieve your goals, it still helps. Mostly it's a combinations of gear, items and abilities which wins the fights.
Oh and finally there's day/night cycle. You change it at any time. It affects the monsters which spawn and some of the skills. And while at first it seems you can only change them manually, soon you realize that it has real cycles, if you wait long enough you'll see sun coming up.
Every character has its own default job which provides unique abilities which can be used in both – combat and outside of it. And speaking of “outside the combat”, we have plenty of side quests in this game which usually are not present in jRPG's or are very basic and function like fetch quests. Here a lot of the side quests have it's own story lines and could take traveling around the world to complete.
Later on every character can learn one additional job and on top of that you have secret jobs, no character knows by default. Each job provides new abilities and tactical opportunities.
Another thing you can do is to interact with most npc's. You can steal from them, bribe them, persuade to give you information, learn new skills, knock them out, even hire them as followers who can help you in combat. All of that could give you powerful items, unlock new locations, various perks such as discounts or new items in the shops or reveal the location of hidden items in the world. It's also used for completing some of the side quests.
Graphically the game looks very simple from the first sight, but when you start playing you start noticing how good it looks and how much artistic style means. The game gorgeous. It combines pixel art and old school looks with modern technology to make fro an impressive visuals.
Sound design is another area this game shines. Game is almost fully voices (every story dialogue and ending dialogues of the side quests). Voice acting is really good in jRPG standards. But where it really shines is the soundtrack. It's magnificent. A true masterpiece of a soundtrack. Each location has its own music. It also changes depending of the time of day. And then we have boss fights where soundtrack goes absolutely bonkers.
Performance is great for obvious reasons and the game has no native ultrawide support. But it works surprisingly well with ultrawide fix.
This game is a breath of fresh(old) air in jRPG genre. If you love such games it's a must play. Don't be afraid of the price, it's more than fair. It's a game made with passion which is rare these days.
Pros

Looks very pretty
Outstanding soundtrack
Good voice acting with most of the game voiced
Fresh take on the genre with interactable npc's and side quests
Extremely deep combat system
Multiple stories blended together
Eight characters to choose from
Epic boss fights
Job system

Cons

Leveling up everyone is painful


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