The Best-Written Mobile JRPG Ever - Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent Review
As someone who spends a lot of time playing and writing about mobile games, I’ve also spent a lot of time wondering what’s holding mobile games back from getting precisely the same level of critical adoration as console and PC games. Take my favorite genre, the role-playing game, as an example. PC has a legacy of incredible RPGs stretching all the way back to the ’80s (even a little earlier, really). Consoles were the birthplace of Japanese RPGs, spawning beloved franchises like Final Fantasy that are still popular today.
But what of mobile RPGs? We’re over a decade into the evolution of mobile gaming, but there are very few examples worth citing of must-play role-playing games on phones—and even the few that exist are often just mobile ports of older RPG classics like Chrono Trigger and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or more modern cross-platform releases like Genshin Impact.
Maybe it’s the gacha-centric monetization that pushes some players away; maybe it’s the seemingly contradictory idea of playing through a lengthy, epic adventure on your phone. Or maybe it’s something altogether simpler but infinitely more difficult to fix: Most mobile-first RPGs simply aren’t very well-written. Time will tell whether Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent actually becomes one of those rare examples of beloved RPGs spoken of in the same breath as the genre’s masterpieces, but I can say with certainty that it at least breaks with the platform’s trend of writing being an afterthought.
Set before the events of 2018’s Octopath Traveler (which is available on PC, Switch, and Xbox One), Champions of the Continent tells the story of a continent besieged by three villains who control “rings of divine power.” These artifacts give the big bad guys control over the three concepts that corrupt humanity the most: wealth, power, and fame. Those three elements serve as a running theme through this game’s multiple interweaving stories, and they also help build a set of antagonists who are instantly understandable, incredibly evil, and deliciously fun to hate.
Herminia is the Master of Wealth, a literal witch who has hoarded money by taking over the drug trade in the town of Valore and ruthlessly pitting gangsters against each other. Tytos, the Master of Power, is the sociopathic leader of a band of former criminals who has used faked stories of heroics to take over the city of Emberglow, becoming a cruel, warmongering dictator in the process.
And my personal favorite is Auguste, the Master of Fame. This flamboyant playwright is considered a genius by the people of Theatropolis, but very few people know where he gets the inspiration for his brilliant stage productions: by committing serial murder, primarily of pretty young women. He’s an absolute bastard, written with a dash of psychotic glee that’s reminiscent of some of the best villains of Square Enix’s past.
With each of these foes set up, Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent provides the player’s randomly chosen starting character with a ring of divine power of their own and the freedom to pursue whichever bad guy they want. That storyline freedom, an element borrowed from the first Octopath Traveler, is quite lovely. It means that if, like me, you fall in love with Auguste’s over-the-top villainy, you can choose to focus on him and just push through his storyline. Or if you so choose, you can play each path one chapter at a time, keeping them at approximately the same point of progress until you’ve reached the current end of the road.
Don’t expect to reach that end quickly, though. The main storylines alone should provide at least thirty to forty hours of gameplay, and that’s if you don’t get distracted by side content. On top of the main story, each of the party members you can recruit via gacha in Champions of the Continent has their own set of “traveler stories” that flesh out their personality, and there are further sidequests from non-playable characters as well. It easily adds up to dozens of hours of content, and all of it is written with charm, wit, and a surprising amount of emotional depth and maturity.
Oh, I mentioned a dirty word in that last paragraph, though, didn’t I? Yes, it’s true: Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent has a gacha system, and it’s a fairly expansive one as well. The game has well over sixty possible characters to pull at launch, and it’s sure to continue adding more in the future.
While I’ll admit that the gacha system feels annoying and unnecessary, it’s also blessedly easy to ignore, even compared to some of the most player-friendly competitors in the space. I haven’t spent money on the game yet and have progressed pretty deep in without hitting a point where I felt held back by not having a full crew of perfectly buffed five-star characters. Octopath Traveler provides gacha pull tokens as rewards for progressing the story, and you can also earn tons of rubies (the currency you purchase with real money to buy gacha pulls) for completing daily and weekly tasks, as well as an extremely lengthy list of feats (essentially achievements, like raising your full character roster’s level to certain milestones, discovering new areas, opening a certain number of treasure chests, and so on).
Perhaps the most important reason why the gacha situation in Champions of the Continent feels slightly less slimy than normal is that, unlike the vast majority of mobile RPGs, Octopath Traveler is one hundred percent single-player. Square Enix has astoundingly (but wisely!) chosen not to wrench in an out-of-place player-versus-player mode. There is none of the usual competition that, by its very nature, maliciously pushes players towards spending money just to catch up or keep up with the whales at the top of the leaderboard. Square Enix has plans to continue adding new chapters to the game’s story, but as far as the publisher has said, there are no plans to expand things outside of the solely single-player space. I do not begrudge anyone being annoyed by the inclusion of gacha monetization in this game, but I implore you not to let it scare you off from playing it and enjoying the wonderful RPG that Square Enix has crafted here.
Of course one key part of any wonderful RPG, aside from the plot, is its combat mechanics. Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent also delivers in that regard, with a rewarding system built on the framework laid by its predecessor. With so many characters to draw from, Champions of the Continent also lets you take a large crew into battle. You can have eight characters in your party at any given time, with the four in front able to attack and the four in back acting as backup. The game’s slick turn-based combat system lets you swap any of the front party members with any of those in the back while choosing what to do each turn, and while characters are in the back line they recover hit points and spell points (which are spent to use magic and more powerful physical attack abilities, naturally).
The ability to swap characters to the back for healing provides frequent moments of powerful choice in Champions of the Continent, as do the boost and break mechanics. Each turn in battle, each member of the party builds up boost points. You can spend one, two, or three boost points at a time to “boost” that party member's next attack. If it’s a regular melee attack, that means the character will swing or shoot their weapon one extra time for each boost spent; for magic, the boost will just increase the overall power of the single attack. On top of that, each enemy you encounter has certain weapon or magic types that they’re weak to. Hit them enough times with one of their weaknesses and they’ll enter a “broken” state, preventing them from taking any actions for the next full turn and heavily increasing the amount of damage done to them.
In addition to rewarding diverse party lineups that have a lot of weapon and magic type variety, the boost and break mechanics also force players to make numerous meaningful decisions during battle, especially compared to the mindless auto-battle of many mobile RPGs. In fact, Octopath Traveler has no auto-battle functionality on offer at all. Even better, it allows particularly dedicated players to break the game in really fun ways if they’re willing to experiment enough.
Is taking on a level 20 elite monster when your party is only averaging level 10 a good idea? Of course not. But is it possible, with enough strategic smarts and patience, to actually grind out a victory against that much more powerful enemy? It is, and I have! And my reward was a very nice new piece of armor that none of my characters were high enough level to use yet. Oops.
I adore when RPGs are designed in such a way to let players punch above their weight class if they can figure out the systems well enough, and Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent definitely succeeds in that regard. It also emphasizes one of my favorite elements of any good RPG—and one that is often completely absent from mobile RPGs—exploration! The outdoor zones and dungeons in the game often look straightforward at first glance, but there are always hidden paths leading to treasure and especially challenging optional combat encounters like the one I mentioned above.
There’s only one serious criticism I’d levy at Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent outside of the gacha dilemma, but it’s a rather annoying one. Despite having the backing of a major publisher like Square Enix, this game does not seem to be very well optimized, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. Just loading into the game regularly took my beefy Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra upwards of a minute. And when tapping through some of the game’s many menus, I noticed a shocking (and aggravating) pause between each tap registering. While Champions of the Continent’s visuals are quite beautiful, fully capturing the “HD-2D” aesthetic of its console and PC sibling, it is still a pixel-art 2D game. There’s no reason that I can understand why just moving through menus is such a sluggish process.
This bizarre technical shortcoming may give you a headache when playing, but as with the gacha stuff, I genuinely believe it’s worth getting past it. I hope that Square Enix optimizes the game better in the future so that it loads and moves between menus in a snappier manner. I hope that the many RPG lovers who have understandably been turned off from trying mobile RPGs give this one a shot. And, many years from now, when all the story content that’s going to be made for Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent has been finished, and the game has started winding down, I hope that Square Enix does the right thing by removing all the monetization and gacha elements and making it a cheap, buy-to-play experience. If all those pieces come together, there’s a chance that this game might go on to be recognized as the modern mobile RPG masterpiece that it’s capable of being.
SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5
PLAY IF YOU LIKE:
• Octopath Traveler, or any of Square Enix’s beloved console RPGs. If you played and were a fan of the first Octopath Traveler, then spending some time with this prequel is a no-brainer. But even if you missed that one but love other Square JRPGs, know that Champions of the Continent matches the quality of writing of some of this publisher’s best-regarded works.
• Last Cloudia. As one of the more player-friendly (and better-written) mobile gacha RPGs, Last Cloudia covers a lot of similar space to Octopath Traveler. However, Champions of the Continent features a much more interesting battle system and a darker story overall.
💬 Have you tried out Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent yet? Let me know what you think of it! And if not, are there any mobile-only RPGs that you think are must-play for fans of the genre? Share your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll respond!
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