JRPG General - Video games were never meant to be shorter than 50 hours.

[X Prime]

The final boss in E33 isn't even really a stand-in for God, which immediately puts it ahead of, say, Xenoblade.

 

[HexFag]

The final boss in E33 isn't even really a stand-in for God, which immediately puts it ahead of, say, Xenoblade.

The final boss of E33 is quite literally the God of the painting depending on what ending you choose. You either kill God or enslave him to the evil piano for the rest of his/Maelle's life.

 

[X Prime]

The final boss of E33 is quite literally the God of the painting depending on what ending you choose. You either kill God or enslave him to the evil piano for the rest of his/Maelle's life.

Not really. The playable Verso is just the painted version, he does not have Painter power. He's just the emotional crutch for Maelle.

Now one can claim Renoir is essentially a small g god, but the difference here from the usual JRPG is that he is clearly right.

 

[Polyboros2]

Does Octopath 2 fix the damage sponge problem Octopath 1 had? I really enjoyed my early time in Octopath 1 but the longer I played, the more I felt like every fight was a slog and enemies took way too long to kill due to the weird scaling.

I dunno maybe I was in a bad mood and dropped it too early.

Yes. Bosses are still damage sponges, but that's kind of the Break and Boost system. I felt like Bravely Default was much more oppressive than Octopath 1 in terms of random encounters taking entirely too much time to take down. Octopath 1 starts ok but by the third act for everyone it feels like you are underleveled horribly and grinding out levels is a slog.

Octopath 2 is better with a combo of random trash can be taken down quickly, while bosses are still a protracted battle challenge. Also several of the characters can be absolutely BUSTED in terms of damage, Hikari and Osvald especially, that let you make most boss fights much shorter.

I skipped 1 as well because everything I read about it told me there wasn't even a semblance of a connected plot both within 1's different character's paths and between both 1 and 2's overall plot.

In 2 there's a common thread in 2/3 of the paths that all comes together in the true ending to explain why bad stuff is happening all at once (with some interesting twists).

It was definitely a gamble for me to pick up but I don't regret it. You just have to know going in about the gimmick. I would have been kinda pissed if I bought a game with what looks like a party traveling together that instead turned out to be isolated vignette's with a common theme.

Octopath isn't really about a connected plot. It's more of an Anthology series where you have 8 different stories you can explore how you like. Live-a-Live is the real spiritual ancestor of this game, but they only met up at the very end of that game. I find the best way to play an Octopath game is to pick a party of 4 and complete the game, then play the other 4 as almost a sequel game. 2 is actually better set up for this, as all the Path Actions are fulfilled by a party of 4 made from each continent. So the 3 characters you'll most likely encounter first on a playthrough are the best 3 to take through the game with you. 2 also gives 4 side quest pairings of 2 characters, and the Throne and Temenos's is fantastic, but 1 had special dialogue depending on who you brought to different towns. It wasn't as fleshed out, not voice acted, but I still remember fun interactions between Primrose and Tressa.

It's still my favorite JRPG franchise and I am looing forward to Octopath 0 later this year, even though it's recycling the mobile game.

 

[HexFag]

Going through Xenoblade 1 right now and I always hate in games with dual audio how they won't go all the way to subtitle all forms of dialogue. Tales of Vesperia and Resonance of Fate both had this and I missed out on some great party banter because I wanted to be a dirty weeb and play in the original language the game was made for. I more or less HAVE to play the English dub as the in-battle dialogue isn't subtitled ALONG with the fact that the subtitles in the cutscenes are synced for the English audio as opposed for the Japanese audio.

I can't complain though, this dub is very solid. It just sucks to have less choices due to poor planning/handling of dual audio.