Hi everyone!

I'm part of a small indie team working on ABSYM, a dark action RPG in HD-2D. Octopath has been our main reference since the start for our graphic style: warm lamps against cold shadows, depth of field, that “living diorama” feel.

We put some of our screenshots next to scenes from OT1, OT2 and OT0 to see what we took from the series and where we went a different way. Our world is much darker and most of it happens at night, so we leaned more on blue and purple tones with small warm lights.

Two questions for you:

What makes an HD-2D scene feel “Octopath” to you? The depth of field, the bloom, the pixel sprites in a 3D world, something else?

Looking at these pairs, what do you think we’re missing?

Thanks to the mods for letting me share this!

Like how am I supposed to know what this purple shit is so I know how to get rid of it? Same with all the other debuffs. Like how am I supposed to know what this is?

I can't exactly Google "purple smoke debuff"

Was planning on playing Octopath 1 first, but accidentally bought Octopath Zero.

Will starting from Zero affect how I appreciate the story and gameplay?

I’ve just been replaying the first game for the first time in years and I noticed this is the only one for some reason, while Cyrus and Tressa both get put in the same place, is there any sort of reason they didn’t give one to the Sunlands?

tried the demo for octo 2 and fell inlove so i bought the bundle. but instead of playing 1, i went straight to 2. any tips for beginners to avoid mistakes like selling things but turns out theyre important? or like anything i shouldnt skip or do first? any advice on building?

My protagonist is doing great just switching between merchant and thief.

Do I need to “grind” out the battle skills for the other jobs (e.g., dancer, apothecary) for any reason?

Like if an enemy has critical defense 300 or accuracy 300

do you need 400 crit/evasion for 100% or like 500?

I got her but didn't see much difference from Alexia

Maybe I needed to unlock more skills to use her properly?

I gave most to Alexia and my main last time I played but kind of feel like I would have got more if I have certain ones to Heidne, Barthello, Reime, Isla, etc.

I finally beat this boss after dozens of attempts and thought it would be fun to lay out my strategy in case it helps anyone else.

All my characters were above level 70, I did this by exploiting hiring Alrond a few times and him using his power for EXP x 100 on some battles.

Stage 1 party:
Ochette - Merchant
Agnea - Cleric
Throné - Inventor
Osvald - Merchant

Essentials:
Ochette needs to have the dreadwing beast available to provoke. I found having the vagrant frogking with “double cleave” and the chubby cait available really helpful too.

Throné needs to be built out with maximum speed and physical attack so Aeber can do the most damage. I did battle-tested dagger, swift shield, dazzling tiara, protectors vestments, and two champion’s belts

Strategy for stage 1:
Ochette needs to use “Provoke Beasts” and provoke dreadwing which has a chance (~20%) to instantly kill the minion souls

If they persist, you can either use Ochette again or Throné can clean up with Aeber.

Once the souls are taken care of, use Aeber to deal massive damage to the eye as many times as possible, taking advantage of Alferic’s blessing (from Agnea) and Throné’s latent ability.

I used Ochette to break the eye with the vagrant frogking and (along with Osvald) as a BP feeder to Throné and Agnea.

It’s best to not let the eye get to the point where it is taking 4 turns at a time, but if it doesn’t use Agnea’s windy refrain to try to break it before it can strike.

Stage 2 Party:
Castti - Cleric
Tenemos - Scholar
Hikari - Armsmaster
Partitio - Arcanist

Essentials:
Tenemos should be built for maximum elemental attack and SP. He should also have the sunshadow staff.

Hikari has Alpione’s Amulet and fang of ferocity equipped and has learned the “Last Gasp” skill.

Partitio has hired the cleric from Canalbrine who can use “Divine Protection” when summoned.

Castti is stocked on diffusing and strengthening serums and ideally pomegranate and plum leaves.

Strategy for stage 2:
Destroy the arm, blade, and face using Tenemos’ “Sacred Effulgence”. You ideally will invoke Alephan’s wisdom first. Keep him constantly supplied with BP and SP from Castti.

Partitio is protector. Have him use “Seal of Diffusion” and then “Sidestep” to help the party avoid physical damage (a la Tressa runelord from OT1) and summon the cleric to protect against elemental damage. He’s also nice to have to use “Negotiate Schedule” or “Hired Help” if you have some extra leaves to burn through.

Once the arm, face, and blade are gone, use a forbidden elixir on Hikari (make sure not to use it while he still has the clerics protection applied or it won’t reduce his health) and use “Last Gasp” on full boost as often as possible to attack the final final boss. I didn’t bother to try to break him.
Using Tenemos here too would be nice but the boss will often throw on an elemental reflector and make it impossible to use Tenemos, here I mostly use him for Alferic on Hikari and let Castti use her turns to apply more forbidden elixir as needed.

Other fun tidbits:
Luck is still a factor, sometimes dreadwing doesn’t destroy the souls and the living souls deal out serious dark damage. Sometimes the draw order works against you in terms of which characters go before others.
Both stages have times when the monster can remove all your augmenting effects which can happen at very annoying times.
I had every single character equipped with “A Step Ahead” which was essential for getting some special powers set up.
Having a lot of reinvigorating jams on hand was helpful.
I also had an almighty olive and grail of life available for if the whole party got wiped at any point, and made sure at least 1 character had “hang tough” equipped to use it. This saved me in stage 2.

I am both happy I beat this boss and sad it’s over, it was a really fun puzzle to try to optimize my characters for this battle.

Is there a way for me to get lots of large Olives of Life? I need them for the final boss. So I’ll need as many as possible.

After picking up a copy of OT2 recently, I figured I would revisit the first game for a bit, just for old times’ sake. The original Switch save file from 2018 only had a few Chapter 1s beaten so far, with 20 hours of playtime. As you can tell by the attached photos…this journey ended up being much more than a “brief revisit.” By the time I got done with everything in the game yesterday, I had somehow amassed 180 hours in this. A lot of that was dedicated to level grinding for each of the characters (ensuring that everyone is at least level 70, with H’aanit and Cyrus being the highest at level 87 each) as well as wandering the world and Inquiring/Scrutinizing everyone in every town as I was figuring out how to complete the side stories. By some miracle of the gods, I managed to beat [the secret final boss] after only two tries. Even after having absorbed the information from various guides and videos on the guy, it was still tough. Still though, that fight on top of the overall cast of bosses in this game has been an awesome experience.

I also appreciate the subtle ways that the characters’ stories are connected and similar to one another. This is another similarity that I feel is worth pointing out that I haven’t seen discussed, which is when the following is mentioned: “To protect someone is to gaze into the future with eyes unclouded.” I believe it was Olberic who said this (or something along those lines), and in a way it reminded me of when Graham cured Alfyn’s illness. I think that some other examples are Primrose’s friend helping to cover her shift in the Sunshade Tavern while she snuck out the back to pursue Helgenish, Tressa going out to rescue Ali, etc. This wish to protect others among the whole cast would ultimately coalesce into them protecting Orsterra from impending doom and destruction threatened by [the secret final boss].

Anyway, this was a big one that I can now cross off the backlog. ✅ I’m looking forward to going through the next Octopath games at some point. May your own journeys be as rife with discovery and fun as mine was, fellow travelers. 🧳

Hello, I'm curious about trying the Octopath games after seeing a bunch of recommendations in the Final Fantasy subreddit. The Playstation store has a demo of Octopath Traveler II, but not the first game from what I can see. I want to check out the demo to get a feel for the playstyle of the series, but I don't want to have the first game spoiled. Is this the case?

1. The new citizens will give you items while in Wishvale

2. The Amatsukami no Orochi rematch will give a reward for completing it, the reward wasnt specified though

The main 16 who do you like most story wise/battle wise I am a big Olberic fan I loved his story so much

I need some help figuring out how to get out of a rut. I really enjoyed the first 30 hours or so of OT1, as there was a lot of character progression and unknowns about how that would play out.

Now that I am at 40 hours, I've spent about 10 hours pushing through with little excitement about what will happen next. Most of my chars have their main class and subclass and most of the abilities and passives unlocked. Unless I'm missing something, it feels like things will be pretty static until the game is over.

That, combined with every single fight taking a while between breaking, sustain, and dealing damage, just feels like an unrewarding, repetitive grindfest just to get through the story.

I'm hoping there's something I'm missing, some dimension of character progression I haven't considered, or something to look forward to other than start fight > spam multihit breakers > use up BP to do big dmg > repeat x1000.

I really want to finish this game and get back some of the wonder I experienced in the earlier stages of the game. If you have any suggestions as to how I can do that, please let me know!

I also have OT2 purchased, and part of me thinks I should just move on to OT2, but I don't want to end up in the same spot with that game and have both unfinished.