OCTOPATH TRAVELER 0

I agree with the general sentiment that this one isn't as good as its predecessors but if you enjoyed them and can stand the series overall formulaic-but-competent presentation it's safe to say you'll enjoy this one too. A lot of assets are reused, whole towns and zones, some of the soundtrack, it didn't bother me but if you played several of the games in sequence this would probably be more grating. I also didn't mind changes to the class system and characters; you have a customizable silent protagonist main character (you can eventually re-customize freely) who can unlock and switch classes but each of the 30ish characters you can recruit have a single class with variations on their class-themed kits. While on its face this is a step down from every character being able to dual class, since your active party is now four pairs of 2 characters, as long as you're smart about who you pair each active character slot is effectively two classes anyways. The part about this that kind of falls apart is that recruiting characters is very much not freeform, who is available depends on story progression and they're doled out very slowly and somewhat unevenly relative to how long it takes to plod through the story. I'm maybe over halfway through the game and I still only have a single somewhat-poorly-kitted Cleric. The town-building is alright, but also similarly poorly paced; it takes forever to get basic shops and you're at the mercy of the quest-gated-progression of path actions to assemble villagers, building customization options, and farm & ranch supplies. The story is boring and serviceable, the voice acting is pretty bad, and there's lots of gating by level scaling, but again if you're looking at the third game after playing either of the previous this won't be news to you. The cutscenes feel weirdly slow, this is the first time I've had to leave it on fast forward and just pay attention and read quickly. The combat is still just barely engaging enough to avoid being too boring too quickly and the soundtrack is still nonstop bangers. Easy recommend as long as you temper your expectations.