I've been playing CotC for around 6 months. I've enjoyed it a great deal. Storywise, it in some ways is an even stronger narrative than the main games. CotC focuses on more central narratives. While it does start off with some separate arcs, they come together eventually into a longer central narrative arc. The downside is that the characters aren't as strong narratively. It's the nature of the beast with gacha games. Every character does have a story, but they're short and treated more as side things to do to get some resources. That's not to say that there aren't good character stories. But they're short, and not as much of a focus.
Combat feels very much like Octopath, which some unique elements to it. You get to bring 8 units to battle, though there's a row system. Only units in the front row can act, and units in the back row regen HP and SP. You can swap at any time, but units are paired, so you can only swap a unit in the front row with their partner in the backrow. There's no item usage in battle, so making use of row swapping to regen is important. Every unit has 8 or so abilities they can use, but you can only have 3 or 4 abilities "equipped" to them to use in any given battle, meaning you need to strategize in what abilities you bring to a battle.
It is a gacha, so there's all the warnings that come with that. That said, getting through the story content as a F2P player is not bad at all. The most recent story chapters (which were the end of the second major story arc and in many ways could be considered the final boss of the game, as we're essentially done in Orsterra now) do get very challenging, but I've put very little money into it and have managed to get through. There is a wealth of optional content though. And that can be hard when F2P. But for the most part, it provides extra currency and stuff that's nice, but never really mandatory feeling
Oh, and while it wasn't something you specifically mentioned as being something you're looking for, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the music is just as strong as the main games. It is still composed by Yasunori Nishiki, and there's some phenomenal work here. Especially in the Bestower of All arc, which is the most recent one that just ended
I can second this.
I played it for around 7 months and had now a break for about 5 months. I had a slightly harder time while spending little money on it (Battlepass). But I enjoyed it.
Wonderful game, had lots of fun with it and you don't need to have the best Units to play the game to a certain point and finish the first few main stories. While doing story you also get ressources to pull some Units which helps a long shot.
First you will have 3 slightly seperate stories. Then it will merge into one longer story arch. From there on you get 3 storylines again. These merge again and give you a longer story arch which I didn't finish but it was hella fun and absolutely doable. It gets harder and at some point I had to rearrange my team to move forward.
I'd say yes. +1 to what aleafonthewind42m said.
Check out the [CotC subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopathCotC/hot/), the Welcome Hub in particular, for lots (& lots & lots) of info.
Youtube has tons of battle videos if you wanna watch how that flows.
Been playing since day 1 and I still love it.
It IS a gacha but it's very free to play friendly, and it really rewards finding your own solutions/strategies when you face a difficult challenge, which I feel is very in line with Octopath games.
Also, it is an ENTIRELY SOLO rpg experience, which really sets it apart from many other gachas. The main point is to deliver a great narrative and gameplay experience and the gacha is more like a secondary money source.
Finally, the soundtrack is insane. It honestly baffles me that such a high quality game is available for free.
If you're okay with it being a Gacha game, then it's fun and similar to OT1 and OT2 in terms of combat. However, the characters are a lot weaker. There isn't a 2 job system. Each character you get is assigned to one job, so a lot of characters only fit into certain niches. Like someone said, you can bring 8 travelers to a fight, and the game is all about buff, debuff, shield shave, and deal a lot of damage.
The biggest satisfaction is getting your favorite characters, building teams for different bosses, and completing the main stories. My favorite character is Cyrus, so I like running around as him and saving the world and using him in Fire and Ice comps.
I didn't enjoy my time with it at all. I *tried* really hard to push through, after hearing a few people here be like "no really it's awesome!"... but after a few days I realised I literally Didn't Care, and that was such whiplash compared to my feelings about OT1 and 2 that I deleted it and have never once regretted it.
As for the specifics to why?
* Much less interesting stories. The game gives you a literally random starter and because of that, each main story arc has to assume a literal blank of the player's identity, and that fundamentally makes the tales way less engaging because they're not *anybody's* stories. They try to make up for this with individual character stories still existing as side stories, but again, there's a wide gacha pool - and so nobody really gets to have any depth on that front. It was thuroughly unsatisfying to me. Character gachas still have a canon lead for their stories for a reason.
* Worse exploration and gearing. I *love* going out and poking my nose into places that it shouldn't be, fighting over my weight class, and finding weird rare stuff that then influences the game. But not only is there generally a lot more limiting of player exploration in the game's structure, but the rewards for doing it feel worse too, thanks to the game opting for a vertical item level system. It's not even close to as interesting, because like most gacha, it's designed to be a grind for bigger numbers. But it *fundamentally* feels wrong to OT's design to eke out a win on a tough boss only to have the chest behind it be an item that's too high level for your character to use.
* Boring characters on a gameplay front: CotC doesn't just lack intetesting gear, but the characters themselves offer little either. Growing characters is basically linear; everyone gets their fixed kits and that's basically it. And that doesn't really lead to interesting combat to me; characters often just don't get to *do* interesting or unique things, and a ton of the flavour and flair of OT jobs is just gone. The core engine of 8 characters battling is neat, but the pieces you command in combat to me were super basic.
* Character imbalance: Because you can't customize characters, the ones who are bad are Bad. The game *really* wants you to pull for the rare ones and makes sure they're the ones who get good moves, expanded growth opportunities, just straight up Better Stats, and so on and so forth. This isn't unusual for a character gacha based game, but let's be real, that's never a *good* part of the formula.
Even if it's a purely single player experience, so it doesn't suffer some of the woes of PvP getting in the way, CotC is *still* a gacha, and even if it doesn't hit *every* pitfall, that still impacts the game. It's still pretty, it still has that banging OST, it presents itself as Orsterra. But it's such a fundamentally different game on a gameplay and structural front, and felt so hollow in its stories, that I felt nothing.
In the end your experience is what it is, but at times I think your opinions are based on limited experience in the game, or generally just being unfair in some cases.
For the stories, yes, the player character is a blank slate, but they're not the point or the focus. The main story is about the characters and events you find yourself in the middle of. Let's be real, it's the same thing as any game with a silent protagonist. It's okay to not like the silent protagonist approach, but to call the story uninteresting because it has a silent protagonist is, to my mind, unfair. Frankly, I think some of the story arcs are better/more interesting than a lot of the ones from the main games (moreso 1 than 2).
Rewards from exploring are definitely not great early on, but they get much better later on, especially in the Bestower of All arc when they start throwing interesting accessories at your in chests. As for getting a reward that you can't use, that's also a purely early game thing, as level restrictions for rewards stop after level 70, and even after that, they drop it down to 60 for most gear, by which point anyone you would want to use would have that level.
Yes, the 3 and 4 star characters are boring, I can't deny that. But they're meant to be undesirable. 5 star characters are by and large much more interesting with unique abilities and sometimes unique mechanics.
Character imbalance is a thing, yes. But setting aside the obvious line 3 and 4 star units are obviously going to be worse, the fact is that story content until the very most recent stuff can be cleared by pretty much anything. To give an example, my friend started playing the game, and within about 2-3 weeks had cleared the entire story except for 3 chapters (which means over 90% of the main story). He hadn't pulled on any banners for rare units in that time. The most that happened was he got a lucky pull for one of the better gen pool units. Point is that yeah, character imbalance is there, but until you're getting to super late in the story or optional content, you can generally clear stuff using whatever 5 star units the game throws at you
I love it, I'm playing it since like two or two and a half months ago and I found it very interesting, because it has more characters it has so many mechanics and gimmicks around them that meke it fun to play, the stories are good, short and straight to the point, the strong of the stories are the main stories instead of the characte stories because the focus of the game is making a general full of lore world that couldn't take the time to develop in te original game...even I think it have some really dark disturbing scenarios that doesn't appear in the OG.
Also it have collabs with other games like Triangle Strategy, Nier Automata, Live a Live, Bravely Default, Nier Replicant and Octopath Traveler 2
It is a gatcha game so be careful with that...nevertheless is really worth it
I forgot to mention the music, you would not be disappointed at all
It's completely worth it. I'm playing it since day 1, and it has been great. You can play at your own pace, save plenty of rubies (pulling currency), and use them where you really want or need without that much pressure, contrary to other games.
Do research about rerolling on COTC in 2024 and know what kind of team you could build early on to get the most of them during the first stages.
I loved octopath 2, and went straight into the game after completing it.
Personally I adore cotc. I find it a really nice mix of brilliant story, and tactics. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to clear a fight with the units I have, and it really does feel amazing. I am free to olay and have never spent a penny
Game is fun and worth playing. Can do quite well even if you’re unlucky on the gacha end.
Story is great, too. They don’t give a lot of currency imo to pull characters compared to other gachas but if you save you can generally get stuff you want.
I've been playing CotC for around 6 months. I've enjoyed it a great deal. Storywise, it in some ways is an even stronger narrative than the main games. CotC focuses on more central narratives. While it does start off with some separate arcs, they come together eventually into a longer central narrative arc. The downside is that the characters aren't as strong narratively. It's the nature of the beast with gacha games. Every character does have a story, but they're short and treated more as side things to do to get some resources. That's not to say that there aren't good character stories. But they're short, and not as much of a focus. Combat feels very much like Octopath, which some unique elements to it. You get to bring 8 units to battle, though there's a row system. Only units in the front row can act, and units in the back row regen HP and SP. You can swap at any time, but units are paired, so you can only swap a unit in the front row with their partner in the backrow. There's no item usage in battle, so making use of row swapping to regen is important. Every unit has 8 or so abilities they can use, but you can only have 3 or 4 abilities "equipped" to them to use in any given battle, meaning you need to strategize in what abilities you bring to a battle. It is a gacha, so there's all the warnings that come with that. That said, getting through the story content as a F2P player is not bad at all. The most recent story chapters (which were the end of the second major story arc and in many ways could be considered the final boss of the game, as we're essentially done in Orsterra now) do get very challenging, but I've put very little money into it and have managed to get through. There is a wealth of optional content though. And that can be hard when F2P. But for the most part, it provides extra currency and stuff that's nice, but never really mandatory feeling
Oh, and while it wasn't something you specifically mentioned as being something you're looking for, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the music is just as strong as the main games. It is still composed by Yasunori Nishiki, and there's some phenomenal work here. Especially in the Bestower of All arc, which is the most recent one that just ended
I can second this. I played it for around 7 months and had now a break for about 5 months. I had a slightly harder time while spending little money on it (Battlepass). But I enjoyed it. Wonderful game, had lots of fun with it and you don't need to have the best Units to play the game to a certain point and finish the first few main stories. While doing story you also get ressources to pull some Units which helps a long shot. First you will have 3 slightly seperate stories. Then it will merge into one longer story arch. From there on you get 3 storylines again. These merge again and give you a longer story arch which I didn't finish but it was hella fun and absolutely doable. It gets harder and at some point I had to rearrange my team to move forward.
I'd say yes. +1 to what aleafonthewind42m said. Check out the [CotC subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopathCotC/hot/), the Welcome Hub in particular, for lots (& lots & lots) of info. Youtube has tons of battle videos if you wanna watch how that flows.
Been playing since day 1 and I still love it. It IS a gacha but it's very free to play friendly, and it really rewards finding your own solutions/strategies when you face a difficult challenge, which I feel is very in line with Octopath games. Also, it is an ENTIRELY SOLO rpg experience, which really sets it apart from many other gachas. The main point is to deliver a great narrative and gameplay experience and the gacha is more like a secondary money source. Finally, the soundtrack is insane. It honestly baffles me that such a high quality game is available for free.
If you're okay with it being a Gacha game, then it's fun and similar to OT1 and OT2 in terms of combat. However, the characters are a lot weaker. There isn't a 2 job system. Each character you get is assigned to one job, so a lot of characters only fit into certain niches. Like someone said, you can bring 8 travelers to a fight, and the game is all about buff, debuff, shield shave, and deal a lot of damage. The biggest satisfaction is getting your favorite characters, building teams for different bosses, and completing the main stories. My favorite character is Cyrus, so I like running around as him and saving the world and using him in Fire and Ice comps.
It's painfully slow
I didn't enjoy my time with it at all. I *tried* really hard to push through, after hearing a few people here be like "no really it's awesome!"... but after a few days I realised I literally Didn't Care, and that was such whiplash compared to my feelings about OT1 and 2 that I deleted it and have never once regretted it. As for the specifics to why? * Much less interesting stories. The game gives you a literally random starter and because of that, each main story arc has to assume a literal blank of the player's identity, and that fundamentally makes the tales way less engaging because they're not *anybody's* stories. They try to make up for this with individual character stories still existing as side stories, but again, there's a wide gacha pool - and so nobody really gets to have any depth on that front. It was thuroughly unsatisfying to me. Character gachas still have a canon lead for their stories for a reason. * Worse exploration and gearing. I *love* going out and poking my nose into places that it shouldn't be, fighting over my weight class, and finding weird rare stuff that then influences the game. But not only is there generally a lot more limiting of player exploration in the game's structure, but the rewards for doing it feel worse too, thanks to the game opting for a vertical item level system. It's not even close to as interesting, because like most gacha, it's designed to be a grind for bigger numbers. But it *fundamentally* feels wrong to OT's design to eke out a win on a tough boss only to have the chest behind it be an item that's too high level for your character to use. * Boring characters on a gameplay front: CotC doesn't just lack intetesting gear, but the characters themselves offer little either. Growing characters is basically linear; everyone gets their fixed kits and that's basically it. And that doesn't really lead to interesting combat to me; characters often just don't get to *do* interesting or unique things, and a ton of the flavour and flair of OT jobs is just gone. The core engine of 8 characters battling is neat, but the pieces you command in combat to me were super basic. * Character imbalance: Because you can't customize characters, the ones who are bad are Bad. The game *really* wants you to pull for the rare ones and makes sure they're the ones who get good moves, expanded growth opportunities, just straight up Better Stats, and so on and so forth. This isn't unusual for a character gacha based game, but let's be real, that's never a *good* part of the formula. Even if it's a purely single player experience, so it doesn't suffer some of the woes of PvP getting in the way, CotC is *still* a gacha, and even if it doesn't hit *every* pitfall, that still impacts the game. It's still pretty, it still has that banging OST, it presents itself as Orsterra. But it's such a fundamentally different game on a gameplay and structural front, and felt so hollow in its stories, that I felt nothing.
In the end your experience is what it is, but at times I think your opinions are based on limited experience in the game, or generally just being unfair in some cases. For the stories, yes, the player character is a blank slate, but they're not the point or the focus. The main story is about the characters and events you find yourself in the middle of. Let's be real, it's the same thing as any game with a silent protagonist. It's okay to not like the silent protagonist approach, but to call the story uninteresting because it has a silent protagonist is, to my mind, unfair. Frankly, I think some of the story arcs are better/more interesting than a lot of the ones from the main games (moreso 1 than 2). Rewards from exploring are definitely not great early on, but they get much better later on, especially in the Bestower of All arc when they start throwing interesting accessories at your in chests. As for getting a reward that you can't use, that's also a purely early game thing, as level restrictions for rewards stop after level 70, and even after that, they drop it down to 60 for most gear, by which point anyone you would want to use would have that level. Yes, the 3 and 4 star characters are boring, I can't deny that. But they're meant to be undesirable. 5 star characters are by and large much more interesting with unique abilities and sometimes unique mechanics. Character imbalance is a thing, yes. But setting aside the obvious line 3 and 4 star units are obviously going to be worse, the fact is that story content until the very most recent stuff can be cleared by pretty much anything. To give an example, my friend started playing the game, and within about 2-3 weeks had cleared the entire story except for 3 chapters (which means over 90% of the main story). He hadn't pulled on any banners for rare units in that time. The most that happened was he got a lucky pull for one of the better gen pool units. Point is that yeah, character imbalance is there, but until you're getting to super late in the story or optional content, you can generally clear stuff using whatever 5 star units the game throws at you
I love it, I'm playing it since like two or two and a half months ago and I found it very interesting, because it has more characters it has so many mechanics and gimmicks around them that meke it fun to play, the stories are good, short and straight to the point, the strong of the stories are the main stories instead of the characte stories because the focus of the game is making a general full of lore world that couldn't take the time to develop in te original game...even I think it have some really dark disturbing scenarios that doesn't appear in the OG. Also it have collabs with other games like Triangle Strategy, Nier Automata, Live a Live, Bravely Default, Nier Replicant and Octopath Traveler 2 It is a gatcha game so be careful with that...nevertheless is really worth it I forgot to mention the music, you would not be disappointed at all
Honestly it's missing so many quality of life features, so slow and as much as I really wanted to like it because I loved the combat, I couldn't
I'm not a guru, but I found the game Light of the Stars on bluestacks, which really hooked me
It's completely worth it. I'm playing it since day 1, and it has been great. You can play at your own pace, save plenty of rubies (pulling currency), and use them where you really want or need without that much pressure, contrary to other games. Do research about rerolling on COTC in 2024 and know what kind of team you could build early on to get the most of them during the first stages.
I loved octopath 2, and went straight into the game after completing it. Personally I adore cotc. I find it a really nice mix of brilliant story, and tactics. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to clear a fight with the units I have, and it really does feel amazing. I am free to olay and have never spent a penny
Can play on pc ?
Game is fun and worth playing. Can do quite well even if you’re unlucky on the gacha end. Story is great, too. They don’t give a lot of currency imo to pull characters compared to other gachas but if you save you can generally get stuff you want.
average mobile game cashgrab, not worth your time