Man, what a game. The art and music are fantastic. The combat, with the Break system, was really fun...

why does this shitty game keep getting shilled?

The art style is disgusting. Those post-processing effects were created for 3d graphics, with 2d graphics they just dilute the artwork and make things look worse. Anyone who thinks this looks better than SNES RPGs is out of their mind. The UI is some lazy scaleform shit.

I start out with Therion and I'm immediately struck by the terrible writing. A random NPC uses the word 'friend' in a conversation with another NPC and Therion immediately has a childhood flashback to some fellow thief he befriended. Later on, another random NPC uses the word 'mate' and Therion gets a flashback to a moment when he referred to that childhood friend as 'mate'. And it keeps going like this. A 4-year old could write more believable characters and dialogue.

And the incident that kicks of his story? Some dude slaps a bracelet on Therion's wrist, a so-called Fool's Bangle that marks him as a failure, which he uses to force him to do his bidding. Do I even need to point out how retarded this is? Even if Therion can't remove the bracelet, he can just cover it up with his sleeve. And he is a thief, his entire profession revolves around not being noticed, why the fuck would he care about some bracelet? To add insult to injury, none of the story interactions take into account party members, they all play out as if a character is by themselves.

Then we get to the gameplay which is a big heap of 'meh.' It still uses the very outdated random encounter system. Dungeons are just straight corridors with an occasional side path for treasure. I've seen massive praise for the combat system which baffles me. It's a prime example of fake complexity. You get Boost Points for free every turn, there's no reason not to use them. Similarly, there's no reason not to exploit enemy weaknesses. These are shallow gimmicks meant to distract you from how banal and barebones the combat system is. There is no meaningful decision making here.

>Man, what a game. The art and music are fantastic
Octopath gave me a headache looking at it. The fucking filters and effects are terrible. Supremely-muddied pixel textures smushed across simple geometry with haphazardly applied DoF blur and bloom. Not to mention the drab color palette.

The game always looks like the screen's been smeared with vaseline due to the DoF, and the environments always look about that clunky. The sprites never feel like they're occupying the same space as the backgrounds, and they look like pixelated dog vomit, have virtually no frames of animation in or out of battle.

I'd sign up for optional fingering Tressa, if you catch my drift.

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After 30 hours, i felt the game worn out its welcome. The character stories weren't engaging enough, and i got tired of the break mechanic. After i got the first credit sequence, that was enough for me. The music was terrific, though.

>none of the story interactions take into account party members, they all play out as if a character is by themselves.

There is actually party interaction, it's called "travel banter", but it only happens with specific party combinations. If you don't have the right party combination OCTO/PATH, you get a mute party.

>Even if Therion can't remove the bracelet, he can just cover it up with his sleeve. And he is a thief, his entire profession revolves around not being noticed, why the fuck would he care about some bracelet?
Did you actually finish his story?

>no argument
either explain how that plot line is supposed to make sense or stfu

>There is actually party interaction,
I'm talking about the actual story. Like, there's parts of the story that are explicitly written along the lines of a villain going: "hmm, this character is alone, this is an ideal opportunity to ambush them". even though you have 4 characters in a party. it's completely retarded. the story basically never acknowledges you have a party of characters with you/

At the end of his story, it turns out that the fool's bangle was unlocked the entire time. Therion knew this from the beginning, but he chose to complete the job anyway.

That doesn't at all address the issue of how dumb that plot line is. why would heathcote think he could blackmail therion with something as silly as the fool's bangle? the whole idea of the fool's bangle being any sort of threat makes no sense.