When Telltale Games came onto the scene back in 20-aught-whatever with their brand new Sam and Max adventure game, I was elated. I’ve always been a big fan of point-and-clicks, and TTG did a really great job of capturing the spirit of those beloved old LucasArts games. Following up with projects like Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People and Tales of Monkey Island, the future looked bright for episodic point-and-click adventures.

But then something happened, and Telltale’s games made a dramatic shift from point-and-click adventures to more streamlined, narrative-focused experiences where 95% of the gameplay consists of quick-time events and a few dialogue choices. I don’t even like referring to this current generation of Telltale products as “games,” because they’re really just movies where you have to press a series of buttons to make it keep going every once in a while. Sometimes you get to make your character walk forward a few metres with the option of examining some random scenery details.

I have only played two games of this sort: Tales from The Borderlands and Batman: The Telltale Series. And while I would recommend both, because I did end up really liking the stories they told and the characters involved, neither one was especially fun from a gameplay standpoint. In fact, in both cases, the gameplay really just got in the way of the story they were telling. Sure, one might argue that your actions influence said story, but I don’t really care. The various twists and turns actually take away from the experience, as there are a number of lines in dialogue trees that don’t make a lot of sense or seem really out of place. I think both games would have benefited from a tighter, more linear script.

This isn’t to say that you can’t do a more modern take on the classic adventure-style game! I submit Life is Strange as a perfect example of how you can have a semi-linear game with a strong focus on plot, but still fit in some simple puzzles and gameplay that feels meaningful. Yes, you’re still set on a pretty straight path in Life is Strange, but at least you get the freedom to explore every scene and interact with other characters at your leisure. Not that its story is perfect either, as there is a huge variance in the quality of voice acting, and sometimes dialogue feels really forced and there are many lines that feel very stiff and/or unnatural. But my point is that the gameplay never feels like it’s detracting from the overall experience. Also there is never a single quick-time event.

At the end of the day, I think Telltale’s modern games are great stories that you can absolutely get yourself invested in. They have a certain style and charm that makes them easily distinguishable and a lot of fun. But they would really be better off as simple non-interactive mini-series. No “core” gamers like quick-time events and they make a rather high barrier to entry for casual players, so I guess my question at the end of this is; who are these games even made for?

I -and most other video game enthusiasts- have been ears-deep in a deluge of quality games these days, and that can often make it easy for certain games to get lost in the shuffle. One particular case was the unfortunate timing of the releases of Octopath Traveler and the Mega Man X Legacy Collections. With release dates just slightly more than a week apart, poor Octopath Traveler was destined to be left behind once all those Mega Mans hit. (And now that Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is out, even said Mega Mans will be ignored.)

Even so! I have been picking it up here and there to get in an hour or two a week, and I’m still really liking it! Progression through the game has not been quite as smooth as with your garden-variety JRPG, and I think that’s something that I really appreciate about it. One of the things that stands out most is that the entire world is open to you from the moment you clear your starting character’s first chapter. There are no plot gates or lands only accessible by boat/airship. The only thing limiting your travels is whether or not you can handle any area’s local monsters. There are convenient flags on the map which tell you where to go to progress each character’s tale, but that’s really all the direction you’re given. If you feel like you just want to grind up to the point where you can visit the edge of the world, then have at it!

At the outset, I opted to take a very semi-focused route, heading straight toward H’annit’s second chapter, and stopping in the towns along the way to recruit other travelers. But then I doubled back and checked out another town in the opposite direction. After that, I learned that secondary jobs are earned by discovering their shrines hidden around the world, so that became a pretty lengthy distraction. And finally, after having expanded my party to five (one more than can be active), I made it to my original destination and… got absolutely trounced. And by the regular monsters in the area, not even the boss!

Which brings me to why I started writing this in the first place: Octopath Traveler is hard! All the Chapter 1s are fairly tame, but with bosses that scale based on the size of your party. But once you begin hitting Chapter 2s, the difficulty ratchets up to eleven. Unfortunately, this makes grinding a bit of a necessity. It doesn’t take long, because enemies in your level range give out generous amounts of experience points, which seem to be the most important part of survival. Equipment gives nice stat increases, but is generally prohibitively expensive, and monsters don’t drop quite as much money as they do EXP. It helps that I recruited Tressa the merchant, who has several skills that make earning cash easier, but it still seemed like for every new piece of equipment I worked to afford, I gained a couple levels while grinding for the cash.

On the upside of it all, the combat system is still really fun, being a sort of puzzle where you need to balance your BP (that give you extra turns or buff your skills) with breaking enemies’ guards. It was easy at first, but as the monsters started getting stronger and coming in bigger groups, it became trickier to decide which ones to target first or when to spend those oh-so-precious BPs. Do you break all the enemies at once to get a free turn, or do you just focus on taking one down at a time? There’s way more strategy in normal battles in Octopath Traveler than in most similar RPGs.

The boss battles continue to delight me as well. Each one is trickier than the last, and many seem to have a gimmick that really forces you to adapt to different strategies. The boss of Tressa’s Chapter 1 was a duo of pirates who started out pretty basic, but once one of them took a lot of damage, the other began taking any attacks that would have hit his comrade’s weaknesses. And you would think, “Okay, this guy is taking hits for his friend, I’ll just use his weakness instead” but then those end up landing on the first guy, and you’re all like “aaugh these knuckleheads are smarter than I thought!” So you’re forced to use multi-target attacks or alternate breaking them so that they can’t stop you from hitting them with the correct weapon/element. It’s tough! And I love it! H’aanit’s second boss did something completely different, which was to re-roll it’s weaknesses and gain an extra shield point every time it recovered from a break. That battle in particular took roughly 20 minutes and I ended it with my two casters completely drained of MP and the whole party on the brink of death. It was thrilling! Usually battles so close are reserved for final bosses, but every single boss is like that in Octopath Traveler.

After that rough chapter, I’ve decided that may next goal is to recruit the final three travelers before moving onto any more advanced chapters. Hopefully even those easier scenarios will give me the necessary experience buff to make progressing the stories a little more manageable. Even if they don’t, I guess that just means I get to spend more time playing this really fun game. It’s win-win!