Square Enix’s upcoming 2D/3D retro hybrid role-playing game Project Octopath Traveler (working title) received a playable demo on the Nintendo Switch last year, and it appears they’re taking the 45,000+ pieces of feedback they received quite seriously. A developer vlog was published earlier today on the official Nintendo YouTube channel detailing the changes, which center on improving the player’s quality of life.
In addition to a new fast travel system and faster text speed options, character movement as a whole can be further increased by holding in the B button. Doing so comes at a cost, however, as faster sprinting increases the rate of random encounters out in the wild. When the going gets tough and the player finds themselves retrying the same battles over and over again, they’ll now have the ability to skip any accompanied cutscenes instead of being forced to sit through them for the umpteenth time.
The team of developers will be increasing the default text size, which was a major concern in handheld mode. To assist in making navigation easier, particularly within dungeons, a new 2D filter can be toggled, along with new landmarks being added to the environment.
They received quite a bit of feedback on the battle system, which is being rebalanced a bit to achieve their goal of making it feel equally fair and challenging, but not frustrating.
Quality of life is a wonderful thing and I’m glad to see the team taking their feedback seriously. Project Octopath Traveler is shaping up to be a truly wonderful experience for RPG fans and I can’t wait to get an official release date (or name). The demo sucked me in pretty hard and I’ll be all in on launch day, whenever that may be.
Cheap Boss Attack 
That is great news. I love a developer that listens to feedback and improves their game. All of these little things will really make a difference in the long run. Did you change the look of your blog? Or is it just me?
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Yeah, needed a change and picked a different theme.
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Well it looks awesome dude! I love the way your homepage looks :).
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Thanks! I’m actually not too wild about the splash page, but I like the more “professional blog” look of the individual posts. Seems to be the theme with WordPress… well, themes. I like certain things and loathe others, but don’t want to pay for more control over anything.
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I paid for my new theme and I love it. Migrating from WordPress was the right move for me. Your blog does look very professional when I click on an article :). I thought I was in the wrong place when I clicked on your Project Octopath post from my email lol.
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I can’t wait for this to come out, and I’m glad that Squeenix is listening to feedback. They seem to, uh, sometimes ignore that, but it seems as though the demo wasn’t just for players to get a taste of what to expect, but was also a vehicle to tell a very big and well known dev what we’d like to see.
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Square was really good with FFXV’s constant flow of meaningful updates, so I’m glad they’re continuing on with a smaller title like Octopath.
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It’s good to know they’re listening to their fans. I know that was a major issue some people had with them, though now that I think back, I might have just been bitchier a few years ago hehe. FFXIV improved upon the complaints people had about FFXI, and I never gave FFXII a decent chance until I met a certain fanatic. Shhh, don’t tell LightningEllen o.O
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Great to see developerslisten to their players. And this game looks so interesting tbh. I want to play it haha!
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There is a demo on Switch if you have one. Definitely worth taking a look at.
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I dont have a Switch unfortunately….. 😢
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this is cool to hear. I myself provided some pretty in depth feed back. I loved the game and like you, it sucked me in hard. I was ok with the battle system and controls, I said things along the lines of seeing if different character story arcs would possibly cross paths. Considering in the demo you ran into the other character, and they just join your party without saying anything. This would be cool for me if they did this.
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Yeah, I got the feeling that they just wanted to show off the game engine, sprinkle in a bit of story, and give us a taste of the combat. I’m glad they’re taking everything into consideration.
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