Genre: RPG
Developer: Acquire Corp.
Publisher: Nintendo

Octopath Traveler is designed to look like a children's pop-up book, and this masterfully executed concept is dazzlingly original. What's more, the developers opt for sprite art drawn in the classic tradition, along with textures in deliberately constrained bit depths, but augmented with modern-day effects-- making the release look like some sort of alternative-future 3DO or Saturn game. The battle scene sprites, replete with over-sized boss characters, are straight out of time-honored genre entries like "Shining in the Darkness" or the "Phantasy Star" games. A bit of snobbishness creeps in to the character animation, such as when activating a special dialog ability, or during cut-scenes-- but it's more than compensated for elsewhere.

Where Acquire uses augmented, traditional pixel art with the graphics, they opt for a run-of-the-mill, contemporary-sounding orchestral sound track. This approach is a missed opportunity on two fronts: while the music's occasional moody battle theme or dungeon song is mildly atmospheric, too many of the tunes are boring, forgettable, sweeping Hollywood pieces, many of which are painfully sappy; and second, the choice runs contrary to the game's philosophy of "old-meets-new": a modernized chip-sounding aural selection would have fit better with the title's modus operandi. Voice acting, mostly limited to cut-scenes, is better done than in most Japanese releases, and much of it sufficiently fleshes out the various character personalities.

Octopath Traveler has, bar none, the best battle engine ever to grace a conventional JRPG: enemies have weapon or magic-type specific weaknesses, and juggling their guard disruptions with the usual combat considerations lends a nice strategic rhythm to the proceedings. The user interface as well has all of the genre's best trappings. But like Masashi Takahashi and Tomoya Asano's "Bravely Default" games, they once again struggle with structure and pacing; the first part of this release, upwards of fifteen hours of gameplay, is a bafflingly predictable "repeat the exact same pattern eight times". At that point, the job system become unlocked-- but then the player is faced with over-leveled enemies, requiring dull bouts of grinding. This stop-start cadence troubles the game throughout.

Mechanically, Octopath Traveler is immensely well-designed. But the game surrounding those mechanics leaves a lot to be desired; the pacing and overall game flow feels stuttery, and the absurd amount of save points and constant town visits is comically disruptive. The game is also obnoxiously preachy; other JRPG's, such as Micro Cabin's outstanding 3DO game "Lucienne's Quest", deal with social issues-- such as the Miminaga slavery episode-- but only in short bouts; Octopath Traveler, on the other hand, never ceases bludgeoning the player with one-sided tales of excessively hyperbolic injustices and victim mentality, and with some of the most unnecessarily drawn-out dialog this side of Hideo Kojima to boot. The presentation also comes off as a little flat, evidence that it is possible for a game to be too polished. For fans of the genre and other developers alike though, Octopath Traveler at least provides the visaul aesthetic arrow towards the future, and still contains the accoutrements of JRPG town-and-overworld adventuring.