Octopath Traveler II Review (Laharl)
still obviously playing this for quite a bit but I will list the things they improved upon compared to the original thus far
1. the characters actually interact in combat and acknowledge each others existence. They also interact in specific duo chapters they are no longer just there with no dialogue with each other. Even in the original the only time it was acknowledged there was even a party storywise was the post game lol. They fixed this.
2. The stories of this game versus the 1st one are WAY better I personally liked Therion's in the original but for the most part here? I actually care about the plot of all of the characters they even made me ACTUALLY LIKE THE PRIESTS a lot. Temenos is a gem of a character.
3. this is a small thing but the starting chapter in 1 was always if you started with 1 you got 1 and it was balanced around having 1 member now if you had 2 it was balanced on that and so on. They changed this so all chapter 1's are unique and you cannot bring the other party members with you. Instead for a several of them you get temporary party members either for the whole chapter mostly or for a bit to grind levels with real fast. They even gave those temp members their own skill pool and unique dialogue. I actually really like this.
4. The added day and night system is fun and there are in fact more abilities for all characters outside of combat (and some in) from it. They still mostly gravitate towards the 4 actions in the original but with some twists. Getting info, obtaining items from npc's, knocking people out, and recruiting temp npcs to use in combat. none of this changed but the way it was implemented makes each character feel a bit more unique in how they do these things more so than 1.
ontop of this they added unique ways the 4 characters who can recruit people do so by giving either passive buffs like merchant selling things or battle buffs like the dancer combo with whoever she has to do a song ability on top of it. Not all of the recruiters have these unique abilities to combo with the NPC but its neat to see.
5. The Hunter character now has UNLIMITED uses of all monsters yes you read that right all monster abilities can be spammed forever as long as you don't turn them into food and keep them. This makes her SUPER versatile and really fun to use because of it.
6. You can now have duplicates of the base jobs other than the original. You want 4 merchants for some reason? you can do that by getting 3 licenses and using the base merchant. You do have to master the skills multiple times on various chars to get more licenses but it is a thing you can do. In the original it was limited to 1 per job at a time, that is still the case with the extra jobs not attached to any characters defaultly but thats fine its just nice to have that kind of versatility in builds to mess around with combinations.
7. Somehow the the OST is even BETTER than the first game I loved the first's music but this one man it blows it away and they even have different versions of all non battle themes for day and night its really nice!
8. Rebalancing was done to all jobs to make them more useful and also nerf a few of the super strong ones for better balancing. Some skills were moved to a different class some were removed and just fully changed for instance merchant no longer has as much weapon versatility with hired help 2 of the original weapon types are now gone so they can't do that anymore. On the other hand the dancer now actually feels MUCH more useful than before having an ability to lower shield gauge REGARDLESS of their weakness and overall improvements to the skills they have to not JUST be all about buffs they can now fight too and lost some of the buffs nobody really used anyway.
9. there is now a boat you can purchase when you get enough money like most jrpgs that let you reach new areas you could not before and access secrets. Bosses, loot, entire dungeons, quests, etc. this was not at all in the first game.
10. The unique talent bar that now charges for each character and does a different action is really fun think limit breaks but you can choose when to use them instead of being forced to when they activate. It adds more versatility to the cast on what job you should specialize in to make the synergy work out. I really like them as they all fit the character they are attached to.
thus far that is all I can think of but when I fully finish the game I will be back with more. I heavily reccomend buying this though its very well done!