Currently on an Octopath Traveler 0 binge. This little nugget keeps coming back to haunt me, and it cracks me up every time. [CW for pixelated meat, I guess?]

My thoughts thus far – at about 40 hours in, a large chunk of which has been puttering around and trying to explore things I’m not supposed to be able to survive yet – are that it’s kind of mid. OT1 had a very old-school JRPG vibe to it and you could tell that they hadn’t thought everything through on the first go, which is pretty understandable. OT2 was a goddamned masterpiece. OT0 feels like a step backwards from OT2 because they probably didn’t have a great sense of direction in mind when they started on it. Admittedly, I’m not all the way through the main story yet, but having something like 36 goddamned gacha game characters in here with very little story around any of them beyond a brief vignette and a couple of sidequests makes me think they were banking on the “shiny objects” factor. Add in that most of the experience thus far has been trope-laden cutscenes that always end in a “But m’lord, you must!” choice popup and yeah… I’m glad I didn’t pay full price.

At least I got to go John Brown mode and recruit enby Gollum.