Project Octopath Traveler Demo Impressions

One of the biggest surprises of the recent Nintendo Direct was the announcement of a demo of Project Octopath Traveler for Nintendo Switch. I was surprised, in the first place, that Nintendo and Square were showing off the game. I thought Octopath was a long way off and might not be shown off too much yet. So to get footage and a demo on the same day was a shock and delight. I have to admit I’ve been pretty excited for this game. I love jrpgs and Square still creates some of the best. So how is the Project Octopath Traveler demo?

The Project Octopath Traveler demo is pretty impressive.

First of all, the graphics look just as great as they looked during the Direct. The characters in the game are sort of retro but far more detailed then you’d see in older games. Even more impressive is how the environments look! The towns and mountains and everything you see in the game looks three dimensional and extremely detailed. The blending of old school and new school graphics really works for this game!

The gameplay of the Project Octopath Traveler demo will remind you a lot of older games, like SNES Final Fantasy games. There are a few twists though such as the break and boost systems. And both of the characters you can play as in the demo have their own special abilities in and out of battle.

This demo gives you two out of eight characters you can play. There is a man, Olberic, and a woman, Primrose. Both of them have their own stories and different environments to play in.  Olberic has a special out of battle ability  to challenge almost any NPC to a duel. Primrose, on the other hand, has the ability to make almost any NPC follow her around and they can help her in battle! I definitely think Primrose has the best in & out of battle ablities of the two characters.

The battles in stories are pretty hard, though I think Olberic’s battles are much harder than Primroses’ overall. I do hope that in the final game there is an easy mode. I really like this game, but I find that a lot of battles are harder than they should be, especially since it seems early in the game for these two characters.

I do have a couple of other minor nitpicks about the demo. I thought that Project Octopath looked great on the TV and on the Switch. That said, on the TV, it was a little hard to read the words in the battle menu because they appeared so small there. The text bubbles for characters were almost as small on the TV. I didn’t have a problem at all reading either the battle menu or the speech bubbles on the Switch’s screen. I hope in the final game that the text in blown up a bit so that you can see it really good on the TV too.

And my final nitpick is that while it was great hearing voiced dialogue in the demo, I wish the quality of the voice work was a bit better. It wasn’t the worst voice overs I’ve ever heard, but it could definitely be better. Maybe these are just temporary voices made for the demo? It was cool to see English voice work already in this game though.

Finally, I just have to mention the HD rumble in this demo. Its really good! The rumble really makes you feel like you’re part of the game. And its not just used for battles, you get rumble when someone opens a door or when you spend money at the stores. These small touches make Project Octopath’s world seem even more real.

Despite my nitpicks, I really love this demo. I haven’t finished it yet but what I’ve played so far has made me really excited for the final game!

Have you played the Project Octopath Traveler demo? What do you think of it?