Octopath Traveler: Character Review Part II

I’m finally done recruiting all 8 members in the game when D was out slogging her guts out teaching the bastard language to the polite nation of Japan yesterday. While I initially had trouble deciding which member to remove from my party of 4 in place of other members due to the merits of their individual skills, I quickly found that the decision isn’t that hard after all.

The game is really well-crafted such that it makes it difficult giving up any of the characters’ skills (apart from a couple). But as I go along, I felt like I lost a limb not having certain characters in the party, and thus, managed to make the decision which character to abandon. This, however, makes it difficult when I have to level up the ones I don’t favor as much in order to complete certain missions since I have my favorite members in the party and don’t really want to remove either.

Before going into the rest of the character reviews, there’s one thing I found out about restoring reputation before recruiting new characters. When you talk to them, you get the option whether or not to hear their tales. If you select No, they join your party immediately, but your reputation doesn’t get restored. So, be sure to select Yes. You can always hold onto the B button to skip through them after.

Now, on to the characters.

Tressa the Merchant
Tressa’s path is the ability to purchase items from NPCs. So, if there’s something Therion sees and is unable to steal, you can still obtain them by using Tressa to purchase from them. Put simply, Tressa is like the ethical version of Therion.

Tressa’s father and mother hold a Beastly Scarf and a Dragon Scarf respectively. The Beastly Scarf restores 100 HP after every action and Dragon Scarf restores 6 SP after every action. Equipping both to Ophilia means I don’t have to worry about the healer’s health and SP as much and can focus on using her to heal others. But the problem is, both scarves cannot be stolen. This is where Tressa comes in. While they do come in a hefty price, I found it worth it spending money to buy them. But the next problem is, I already spent a huge chunk of money buying some other items for Ophilia and Cyrus previously, so how do I make more money quicker?

Here comes Tressa’s greatest strength. Tressa can collect money from monsters during battles. Apart from that, having her in the party means she will randomly pick up money as you walk along, thus gaining you cash more quickly than if she weren’t on the team. You wouldn’t really notice the random money found on the ground unless you pay attention to the top left corner of the screen because there is neither sound nor vibration to notify you. She just quietly finds money and picks them up, and the notification text will quietly appear on the top left corner of the screen. So, if you need money, have her on your party.

Olberic the Warrior
In games like this, you can expect the warrior to be the strongest among all and according to D, Olberic doesn’t disappoint. Olberic’s path is the ability to challenge NPCs to a fight. Put simply, Olberic is the ethical version of H’aanit, who provokes people into a battle. While as a warrior, Olberic is supposed to be strong and presumably is, I already have H’aanit on my party at a much higher level, so I see no purpose in having Olberic on the team as well. The greatest benefit I see in Olberic is that he wields both the sword and the polearm/spear, the latter of which none of my other characters have. But remember, H’aanit has Linde, the monster, which attacks with either the sword or polearm. That gives me even less reason to have Olberic on the party.

The only benefit I see Olberic has over H’aanit is that I get to select to use the sword or the polearm and choose which monster to attack while Linde’s choice and target of attack is not controlled by me.

Primrose the Dancer
As mentioned in Part I of this post, Primrose’s path is allure, which is similar to Ophilia’s guide. In that sense, Ophilia is somewhat the “ethical” version of Primrose. But Primrose had a sad past that resulted in her becoming a dancer, so it’s not fair to judge. So far, I haven’t really noticed any of the other characters’ strengths in dark elements, so I would say the merits of Primrose would be her dark element dance attacks. Apart from that, I do not see much benefit in having her on the team as she’s neither exceptionally strong nor the best at healing. Due to the passage I took, I realize I had all of my favorite characters (skills-wise) on the team before recruiting the 4 I am writing about today, so that makes it even more difficult for me to give a better review since I took them off my party as soon as I could. But I’ll come back and update at the bottom of this page if and when I do find something worthy to mention.

Alfyn the Apothecary
I never knew about the term apothecary until I found Alfyn. Apparently, it is a person who makes and sells medicine, which is what Alfyn does. Alfyn’s path is inquire, which is similar to Cyrus’ scrutinize. But the relation between Alfyn’s path to Cyrus’ is similar to the relation between Ophilia’s and Primrose’s. To put it in SAT format, Alfyn : Cyrus as is Ophilia : Primrose. While Cyrus’ scrutinize has a certain percentage of success, Alfyn’s doesn’t. Alfyn is always able to inquire, so that is the strength Alfyn has over Cyrus, which also makes Cyrus’ scrutinize redundant. To put it simply, as with the above characters, Alfyn is like the more ethical version of Cyrus. However, as Alfyn is unable to inquire into each monster’s weaknesses, I still prefer to have Cyrus on my team. So now you see how beautifully the game characters have been crafted. Each character is the ethical version of another. And it is by chance that my passage went this way or did the creators crafted it to make my journey this way? Hmm…

Now, as an apothecary, Alfyn’s skills is similar to Ophilia in that he can heal. So, he is really the combination of Ophilia’s skills and Cyrus’ path. But Alfyn’s strength is, he can concoct potions to create either herbs to heal your allies or poison to harm the monsters. Trouble is, you never know what combination of item to combine with what combination of other items will give you what item. So, you have to just try them out during battle, which is a shitty thing to do especially if you’re fighting a boss. So, all those apparently useless items you found are actually things that Alfyn can use to concoct useful stuff. And the best time to try them is when you’re roaming around fighting lower level monsters.

I’m not sure if it works that way but if possible, I intend to use him to concoct as many items as possible and then removing him from the party. But if I have to immediately use the items I concoct, I’m not sure if I will actually find use of him.

So based on today’s review, you can tell my favorite party consists of Therion, H’aanit, Cyrus, and Ophilia—3 of whom are unethical versions of their counterpart (O_O does that mean I’m unethical?). Since I started with Therion, I can’t really take him off the party, but if I were to start the game anew, I would likely choose to begin with H’aanit and probably choose Tressa in place of Therion. After all, I like money more than items.

Hope this is useful review for you.