Anyone playing this? It's good. I'm about 13 hours in or so and I cannot put it down. Reviews seem to be slightly disappointed that it's too close to the first one, but I never played it, so that doesn't bother me. Random thoughts...

- The music is amazing.

- The writing is generally strong and is fairly good at avoiding JRPG cliches, although a few make it in (ahem amnesia). I especially like the smaller scale and more realistic feel - no one is saving the world (at least not yet.)

- So far the stories are pretty separate, but apparently there are sidequests that combine two characters at a time. I have not seen this yet, but it would be very welcome.

- I *really* like the nonlinearity. Yes, within chapters there's not much freedom, but there seems to be plentiful sidequests, and the ability to choose which chapter to do next makes it seem so much more open.

- Really enjoy the characters' unique abilities outside of combat. There's so much to do - every NPC has a background that you can learn, and sometimes it's surprising. Mildly disappointing that some of the characters' abilities seem to be more-or-less repeated.

- The combat is pretty fun and fast. Nothing too remarkable. I do wish you could avoid the random encounters when you want to.

- I enjoy the HD-2D style, but I wish the characters' pixel art was *slightly* more high-res / detailed.

Hard to pick a favorite character, but I just completed Osvald's Chapters 1-2 and it's pretty intriguing so far.

Oh, is... it?

Yes... it is.

I did not like the first game very much at all, and this is one of the all time examples of "Just make it again" in regard to sequels. It also does very little to address my main problem with the first game which is how disjointed it feels to bring together a bunch of individual protagonists of their own stories who basically never interact with one another.

Which is why it ended up being very surprising that... Yeah I like this game quite a bit actually. The characters and their individual narratives are carrying a lot of weight here and they're all interesting from the first chapter which I did not find to be the case in the previous game, which made it very difficult to muster up the energy to walk around and collect everyone.

But with that motivation in place there's a lot to enjoy. It's a big open world JRPG with a snappy battle system and a whole lot of flexibility with Jobs/Sub Jobs.

I've played about 40 hours of it so far, and yeah, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. In spite of still having some of the same structural issues as the original, this still feels like a significant improvement. Better world design and writing go a long way, and the additions to the already great combat system help keep it engaging.

I played bout 50 hours of the first game and stopped playing it becuase of how little fun I was having with it. I was the person who never cared that the characters never interacted, I like the idea that this world is full of stories that don't weirdly connect at some point (I know it kinda does but whatever), but the stories werent good enough to be interesting. The first game was repetitive to the point of annoyance and for me personally I never felt like I was doing enough damage.

Octopath 2 is very similar to the first game but I really feel like it does everything better. The characters and stories are much more interesting, the path actions are integrated into the gameplay better and I feel like the chapters were less repetitive. They no longer followed the Enter Town, talk to person, go to dungeon, fight boss format.

Overall it is a better game, I finished it this week and loved every minute of it, but I think if you were upset about the level of connectedness between characters this game doesnt really do much to fix that.

Rounding out everyone’s final chapters and they’ve all stayed very good, it’s a nice surprise all throughout.

Gameplay stays solid but I picked Ochette at the start who it turns out is just innately an unstoppable killing machine, and over leveled due to being my main.

So the difficulty has long fled the tiny cat girl and her zoo of horrors. I kinda like breaking jrpgs though so there’s a charm to this too.

As someone who really enjoyed the first, Ibwas surprised by how good the reception seems to be. It looked like that first game again, like they hadn't tried to improve it much. But apparently they have? So I bought it. I haven't played it much yet, though.

Well, after 80 hours, I finally finished this. Overall, it was a meaningful journey. I'd give it a 8/10 and say it was time well spent. I really enjoyed all of the characters and their stories. Yes, they're still not connected very well, and if they make another of these I hope they remedy this. My favorite character was probably Temenos - the idea of a cynical priest detective is pretty novel for a JRPG. I legitimately felt bad when his Watson (that is, Crick) died. His youth and naivety made him a nice foil for Temenos.

As for the ending... well, it's a little unsatisfying. After all of these individual, interesting stories with personal stakes and nuance, at the end we get a big bad evil that's not too interesting. I won't say it's tacked on, because there are many hints throughout the story that point to this, but it's completely impersonal and doesn't match the tone of the rest of the stories. It's just not going to be memorable in the way that, say, Kefka or Sephiroth were.

As for the gameplay, it is fun, but nothing too innovative as far as the combat goes. With the exception of the boosting and breaking system, the fighting is basically the same as any classic Final Fantasy-like JRPG. And like any good JRPG, you can totally break the system in funny ways by the end that more or less trivialize any fight. If you know where to find the good skills, that is - I really recommend a walkthrough unless you plan on wandering the world randomly for a long, long time.

Overall, this game gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. The music and art direction is fantastic. Although the story is pretty grim at certain points, generally it gives me the upbeat feeling of a classic JRPG, but with a level of openness and exploration that feels unique. If that's your thing, I recommend checking it out.

Man what a weird game.

I played the first 5 characters openings and really liked them. I did Osvald to start with, then Hikari, Temenos, Throne and Ochette and I really, really liked it. Like the original, the gameplay is brilliant, and the music/aesthetic are brilliant.

But...I haven't gone back to it in three weeks. The thought of having to do another three opening chapters is daunting, cause it's another three kinda boring intros, and I don't know. The game just did NOTHING to hook me in. I can tell it's a great game, and I'm gonna love the evolving combat, but like the original, the kinda crappy stories aren't sucking me in

Please tell me they pick up so I can make myself get back into it?

@sombre: IMO things pick up a bit after completing all 8 first chapters. At that point you have your roster set and you can explore the world with all of them together. I like the first chapters, but it's kinda a bummer to have to keep going back to a single level 1 character. You can also just pick one of the second chapters that interest you and save the first chapters for later. But if none of the stories hold any interest at all for you, maybe it's not your cup of tea.

I gave this game a shot since I'd heard that people that didn't like the first ended up liking this one. I played the demo of the first but it didn't do much for me.

I really wanted to like this one, but I think I have to put it down after about 25 hrs. I got all the characters. The story and characters aren't doing enough for me to deal with some of the systems I find more tedious than fun. The combat has a ton of options and strategy to it, which is nice, but to the point of feeling overwhelming to me. Random battles can be frequent and don't move that quickly, especially when considering all the options. You have several characters that can recruit NPCs, and I just didn't want to deal with that. That leads me to not feeling like I'm playing optimally. Plus there are a lot of NPCs to interact with and many options in that regard.

There is a multi-class system, but after 25 hours I've only unlocked one extra class. I'd like to see more of this system, but I think I have to let it go. Wish it did more with that earlier.

Just wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere. Glad everyone is enjoying it.

Played this for about 20 hours and while I liked a number of things, I also ended up feeling very overwhelmed. I’m very glad that it didn’t put me off from trying other turn-based RPGs though, because Sea of Stars ended up being one of my favorite games this year.