Octopath Traveler: CotC - AN IMPRESSIVE HD-2D PREQUEL WITH FANTASTIC EFFECTS

I recently tried out Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent and I got to say, this game is pretty impressive. Gameplay wise this game is set a few years before the first game Octopath Traveler.

Now I've never played the original first Octopath Traveler so I cannot compare the PC version to this prequel mobile game. But what I can say is that this game is pretty impressive. You can have up to 8 members in your party, and while they all can't fight at one time, you can swap the front and back row when you need to, to bring in the back row to let the front row take a rest during a big boss fight. I And you can manually control who gets swapped from the front and back row during each turn.

The controls when traversing the map are pretty simple too. You can either slow slide your thumb across the screen in order to control how your party moves, or you can swipe fast across the screen, which will make your team auto travel along the path you set for them, including taking turns on the path, and you can just tap the screen when you want them to stop. The combat has no signs of auto involved at all. You have 100% control of the field while in combat.

The only thing you can do is speed up the combat up to x2 the speed. Other than that, it's all controlled by you, which I think is very nice. The game does have a Gacha system, and at the moment the game gave me a fair amount of red gems to do the current event banner which is the Nier Automata collab. I did manage to get 9S in the one x10 free summon, but the other 2 x10 summons I wasn't lucky enough to get any of the Nier collab characters.

However I was able to rank up some of my characters to 4 star which was nice. The ONLY thing I found annoying with the gacha was after you do your x10 pull. Yes, you can skip that. But what you can't skip is the introductions you have to deal with afterwards. If you pull 10 new characters, you have to try and fast conversation skip by tapping the screen over and over again, just to get past them all. There is no way to skip this part as far as I can tell.

Honestly I think the gacha shouldn't be too much of an issue considering this is a single player game. Maybe the bosses might get harder, and you may need to shell out some cash for more summons in the future, but I cannot say for sure since I'm not that far in the game to notice if I get weak in combat. However for now, I think the games pretty impressive and I'm enjoying my time in the game, including getting all the gacha characters for my party.

I noticed that when you first start the game, you get to choose one of 3 story paths. I personally chose power, but the game said I can choose the other choices at a later date as well. I think it's pretty cool that not only can you pursue your main choice in the story, you can also go back and do the others as well. I wonder if it's like a new game plus? Or do they mean when you restart the game. Visually the game is absolutely stunning. The HD 2D art style with 3D CG effects is really impressive.

It gives off a very unique style for a pixel art game. I think the main game is also like this too. And I think it's amazing. I really want to get the main game and play it now thanks to this prequel game. Overall I'd say that Octopath Traveler: CHampions of the Continent is a very impressive game, both gameplay wise and with the visuals. I really enjoyed my time in the game, and I'd love to progress it further to learn more about the prequel story for when I do eventually buy the first chapter in the game on PC. I'm glad I took a look at this game, it's very intriguing and I can't wait to see what happens next in the story.