

You can recruit other NPCs as allies through the use of bartering (wealth), fighting (power), and charisma (fame) to enlist. Each main quest has a major antagonist that shows off these qualities tenfold, while you, on the other hand, will be able to use those traits to your advantage. You'll be asked to pick one of three motivations for your character: wealth, power, or fame. At the beginning of the game, your initial party leader - in JRPG tradition, deemed the generic "chosen one" - is presented to you through gacha. How you fill your party up is where Octopath Traveler: CotC's gacha tactics come in. Swapping between these two rows for strategic healing and firepower makes Champions of the Continent feel like more of a challenge. They may be weak against physical or fire attacks, for example, and when receiving those attacks from your characters, their guards will break, exposing them to higher attacks from your party. In Octopath Traveler, enemies have weaknesses that correlate with your party's powers. Those two rows are also a great way to strategize with Octopath Traveler's weakness fighting system. It makes for a satisfying fight experience that goes beyond the mindless tapping of "Attack" for a group of weaker foes. If a party member needs to heal their HP or SP (magic), you can swap them to the rear row so they can passively rest. Instead of playing with a party of four, you can now use up to eight characters, and switch them between the front and rear rows during battles. The game has also completely done away with healing items - a novel idea for a JRPG. There's a mini-map that you can tap to automatically travel throughout a town or dungeon, without the need to hold your finger down on your screen.

Battles are much faster and more fluid now. If you can manage to bear through its opening text-heavy tutorials, the game is as straightforward as a JRPG can get, though an improvement from its predecessor.
