I do find interesting how not only I, but a lot of us “perceive” certain games and define them to a specific season of the year. RPGs, for instance, are “winter games” to a lot of my friends. I live in the southern hemisphere, so the concept of winter is one I don’t entirely grasp. It doesn’t snow in my city, and when it gets cold, it’s mild at best. Not counting the fact that December equals summer, which means extreme temperatures. It was the month that I opted to, instead of being on the beach or near the ocean, my last weeks of 2025 were spent exploring every nook and cranny of Octopath Traveler 0.
Originally released in 2020 for iOS and Android as Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, I was surprised back then by how good the story and companions were – at least for a mobile game. I didn’t play much due to one crucial and unmistakable feature: Gacha elements. I am not a fan of them, and probably never will. Thankfully, none of it remains in Octopath Traveler 0 – which is both a blessing and a “curse”, so to speak.
Whereas both Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler II are intertwined tales about a group of people, 0 asks you to create a main character, the one that will be “The Chosen One”. That’s not a naming convention I’m using, you are literally called, multiple times throughout the story as “The Chosen One”. And if you think that’s one big RPG trope, buddy, you are in for a banquet of tropes.
Its story isn’t revolutionary, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor does it try anything out of the ordinary you haven’t seen in the past two decades of RPGs. What it does instead is provide a better and tighter tale than Octopath Traveler I and II due to its focus on its main character. The first couple of hours are spent on setting up the main protagonist village, Wishvale, some key players – be them friendly or not – and give you a good reason to go after the main villains. And nothing better than a village burned to the ground to kickstart your journey of revenge.
If you have played Octopath Traveler, Octopath Traveler 0 expands the continent of Orsterra in big ways. You will revisit regions such as the Woodlands — home of S’warkii and learn about its inhabitants almost 1000 years before the events of the first game — to defeat Auguste, a supposedly genius playwright that kills its victims in search of “thrill”. Auguste is also one of the key figures in the burning of your village, an act that, to him, is just another inspiration for his plays. This, of course, being an RPG, Auguste will be the least of your troubles. A lot of it revolves around eight divine rings that supposedly gives the wearer the power of “a god”. I told you this game has a lot of tropes, didn’t I?
But perhaps you won’t go directly to the Woodlands and instead will go to Emberglow. Unlike most RPGs, Octopath Traveler 0 is both linear and non-linear. Square Enix tries to carry forward the series tradition of “choose your own story” by setting up three main paths: Wealth, Power and Fame.
All three have been reworked from the mobile game, dropping specific requirements such as time, party members or materials needed to advance or complete it. It does come at a cost, though, pacing.
One would think that removing such requirements meant that Octopath Traveler 0 is a much shorter game, right? Wrong. The pacing is like trying to set an entire forest ablaze with a box of matches. As I hit the 25h mark, a friend commented about playing its demo and going through the “highly telegraphed tragedy”. I replied with, “Yeah, it is pretty ‘by the numbers, but it does go hard”. And I mean it.
Even if you stick to the main story, the first 20h are extremely slow paced and very, very linear. You’ll walk around “small towns”, go to dungeons, watch a lot — and I mean a lot — of cutscenes that could’ve been cut in half. Part of me wants to “blame” the fact that Octopath Traveler 0 story comes from a mobile game, and that means small play sessions, a lot of “The Story so Far” and its chapter structure. The other part of me wouldn’t have it any other way.
There are certain types of games that are built for specific “perverts” like me. Take, for example, the Xenoblade series. Each entry takes around 80hrs minimum to beat. It’s the kind of game that you beg your friends to play, with the typical phrase: “I swear it gets good after a couple of hours” — “couple” meaning probably 20 hours or more. You know they won’t play it, you know they don’t have the time, but you still try it. Because, to you, the way these games slowly build up into something grand is fascinating. A lot of that also applies to Octopath Traveler 0.
Every slow buildup, every conversation that sometimes feels like it lingers a bit too long on the screen eventually rewards you with a grand finale – one that absolutely makes up for all the linear paths you have taken up until that point. Be it the Wealth path, the Fame path or the Power path. And not to say when all these paths converge to an even bigger story — something I’ll avoid speaking about due to spoilers.
I will say this though: It is, by far, the most dark story from the series. It doesn’t hold back any punches and even filled with tropes, it has its standout moments of me genuinely going “excuse me, what did I just read?”. Like one corporal that says the blood of kids smells different when you cut them. This is the tip of the iceberg; it only gets worse and crueler.
There were moments in which I had to step out of the room for a bit to breathe or even just sheer anger about what happened. How I got played out by a villain or just a very dumb decision of a character. It was during these moments I was grateful for Octopath Traveler 0 non-linear structure. Whenever I was done with a major plot beat, I turned to the side stories for a less “intense” narrative.
As I said above, Octopath Traveler 0 does expand a lot of the world of Orsterra. A lot of it is through its side stories – too many to count, almost literally. I have no idea how many I did during my playthrough. Choose one and you’ll meet interesting characters, learn more about cuisine, and have a better grasp about the gods of Orsterra. It was, by far, one of my favorite activities in the game. I would start one quest, then jump to another, then another and 10h have passed by in a blink. They’re just that fun. But it is not as fun as the glue that holds almost everything together: its battle system.
Octopath Traveler 0 adjusts the formula by removing advanced jobs found both in Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler II. Instead, you get over 30 recruitable characters – with two sets of skills and weapon types – and a party of 8 during battles.
While it does seem like a lot to juggle, reducing the job system makes it manageable and adds a lot of customization to your party. Sure, I would’ve enjoyed the game even more if they opted to give me access to advanced jobs and a full suite of skills for each character — but then half of this review would be about me gushing over menus. If I wanted that, I would write about Dwarf Fortress.
Locking characters into classes might sound like a bad idea on paper, but it plays to the series strengths of “find the weak spot, break the enemy gauge and obliterate it”. You still have the boosting system – which allows the character to do either multiple hits or increase the potency of a skill or spell –, well defined weaknesses and turn order.
There’s the right amount of tinkering you can do to make even the hardest battle feel like a breeze. You have your front line of four characters and the back line that usually applies buffs and debuffs during their turn. Sprinkle that with some great accessories and you have the possibility of creating devastating combos.
It does help that the enemy roster has enough variety to always keep me on my toes, especially during boss fights. Not only that, but every single character has an ultimate ability — which happened to be quite useful in specific side quests or when dealing with elite (optional) monsters.
And much like Square Enix HD-2D previous games, Octopath Traveler 0 battles are beautiful, with great lightning and effects that bring them a lot of life to the already majestic sprites. It does enough to trick my brain into remembering my younger self playing Final Fantasy VI and imagining the battles much like what we have nowadays. Goddamn you, nostalgia.
The system does have its flaws, of course. A lot of the characters come unleveled and, unlike in titles such as Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes where you can level them up faster, Octopath Traveler 0 relies a lot on the usage of the training facility – one of the special buildings that become available as the story progresses and you restore the now destroyed town of Wishvale. Yes, if you didn’t think that side stories, 30+ recruitable characters weren’t enough, Octopath Traveler 0 still has a town building aspect to it. One that I wish resonated more with me.
It never really became busywork thanks to its own set of stories, but there isn’t a lot of friction. You gather materials as you progress through the main plot, you go back to your town, you rebuild it, you watch the story unfold and that’s pretty much it. Personalization is quite limited and there isn’t a lot to do once you assign characters to facilities or even a good reason to check on it every now and then. It’s the part of the game that really screams “this is a leftover from the mobile version, sorry”.
I know I am placing a lot of expectations in what most games consider as an afterthought, but taking into account the scope of Octopath Traveler 0, I really wish Square Enix did a bit more, or better yet, used the opportunity to make a bit more compelling than material gathering and facility building.
The same complaint can be made to some of its visuals in general. The cities in Octopath Traveler 0 are much simpler in scale in comparison to Octopath Traveler II. Sure, it still has breathtaking vistas, but do not expect the same level of detail. Another aspect that clearly shows that at the end of the day, its life started as a mobile game.
Does it really matter at the end of the day? Not really. Not when you’re 140h deep in it, fighting larger than life bosses, gasping at even the most predictable twist due to how it’s delivered, crossing another side quest of your massive list and eager to start the next one.
For a year in which I played a lot of so called “revolutionary” games. Ones like Morsels that tries to put its own twist in the roguelite genre, The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- and its 100 endings, or even Project Silverfish — a fantastic rendition of STALKER with lizard people —, Octopath Traveler 0 stands tall in being exactly what it set out to do: a memorable RPG using a familiar framework.
Does it require a lot of time investment? Absolutely. Will it be a great fit for everyone? No game is, especially one with a dark tone. But inside of it there’s comfort, familiarity, I dare say even some level of “coziness” it’s hard to find in other RPGs.
By shedding its mobile origins – or at least most of it – and revamping what Champions of the Continent already did great, Octopath Traveler 0 wraps my 2025 by leaving me in complete awe. It is not only a memorable RPG, but it is also one that reminds me that a story is a good story regardless of the way it is told.
A Steam code was provided by the publisher for review purposes
