Following the first two Octopath Traveler games, we now have an interesting prequel that allows you to rebuild a town and still explore a vast land while doing it.
If you’re not familiar with the Octopath Traveler games, Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler II are somewhat traditional role-playing games portrayed in an “HD-2D” way.
As these games pioneered this art style, what that means is that the games take a tilt-shift-esque camera view and then use 2D sprites for the characters.
The result is something that hits all the gaming nostalgia buttons, but affords a surprising amount of scope and versatility to the world-building and combat.
The combat is pretty much the same this time around as well, with the break and boost system allowing you to build up attacks and then unleash a flurry of built-up attacks when your enemies are ideally at their weakest.
You also have a vast world to explore, and in doing so, you gradually level up your characters to enter more dangerous areas, and so on.
The first two games also had eight characters that allowed you to see a whole story from varying viewpoints, hence the name of the games.
This time around, we have a prequel where your hometown of Wishvale is destroyed early on, and then you are tasked with bringing people back to it and building it out again.
It’s a fun addition to the mix and works well, with the town building and its management adding more complexity to a game that was already quite involved.
Depending on the hardware you play the game on, that will limit the total number of buildings available. With the Switch 2 version I played, it apparently maxes out at 400 buildings, although I didn’t get that far.
The core game, though, is still what makes this all very compelling, as the combat is paced quickly, levelling up doesn’t feel like that much of a chore, and most boss battles are countered by levelling up enough to take them down.
One caveat to all of this is that since the first two Octopath Traveler games have been released, we have had the HD-2D remakes of the original Dragon Quest trilogy.
After finishing both of those releases utterly and getting the Platinum trophies on each, it’s clear that while Octopath Traveler may have created this new art style, it’s no longer the genre leader.
Overall, Octopath Traveler 0 is a worthy prequel to the first two games, and the new town-building setup is an engaging addition to an already very solid role-playing game.
Octopath Traveler 0
Platform: Switch 2 (Reviewed), Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Developer: Square Enix, DokiDoki Groove Works
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 4th December 2025
Price: $49.99
Score: 8/10
Disclosure: Square Enix sent me a copy of the game for the purposes of this review.
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