And every time you think "oh, I've seen these kinds of villains before," they always manage to dig the hole closer and closer to hell in ways you don't see coming. And they revel in it, both they (and their voice actors) are CHEWING the scenery and it's GLORIOUS.

Sorry.

MAAAARVELOUS!

And finally...the villains. Holy god damn the villains in this game are SOMETHING ELSE. They're evil, evil, EVIL in so many different ways. You got your atrocious billionaire, your self-convinced "hero" general, a playwright who only gets inspired by tragedy, and by that I mean straight up murder...

This game also expands the gameplay by adding a second row for characters, pairing them up (quite similar to Chained Echoes actually). So now it's WAY easier to make a well-balanced party that has all the things you want. I want Octopath games to play like this from here on out.

Octopath 0 gives you, at most, 4 stories at a time. Three major villains to go after, and one about building your town. This works so much better because you can complete stories in one go, rather than having to bounce between them (though you can play like that too if you want.)

It saves the game for me. Not only do you get fewer stories at a time, when you have multiple, you can do them completely before going to another one. It drastically fixes the level recommendations this time around.

So first of all, I bounced off of Octopath 1 and even O2!

Because the game gives you 8 characters' stories right off the bat to do. But the leveling...basically means you do 8 "chapter 1" segments. Then 8 "chapter 2" parts. Later on you can kinda...finish some out in order but I didn't get there.

4. :3

These are usually the same people who, when hearing that someone doesn't drink, start treating them like a pariah.

Or even worse, like a weird cult, they try to "convert" that person by trying to find alcoholic drinks they might like.

but I totally don't have personal experience with that >.>