Soooooo not that long ago, I finished Octopath Traveler 2. I hadn't played the first mostly out of disinterest and hearing that the party doesn't really interact much, but my interest piqued with the second after hearing about it and watching a friend play it in call. Now that I've played it myself, uhhhhhh yeah is probably in my top 3 for this year.
I love each member of the cast (it's hard to choose my favorite but at the time of writing it's either osvald or partitio), I love each of traveler's stories and how they weave not just into some greater plot resolved at the end of the game, but how they contribute to painting the world and cities you visit with their differing perspectives. Oh and I absolutely love the combat in this game, the shield and break mechanics add not only a nice bit of nuance to fights, but also to your party selection and tactics, and I like how things like boosting, secondary jobs, and latent powers (new to this game) open up the party's versatility by quite a bit. Anyone can be anything, but some characters do it better than others.
I'd go further on my thoughts, but this is more or less preamble for a fun little art project to do with my characters. There are 8 jobs (4 more if you count the secret jobs) with 6 elements and 6 weapon types split between all of them, and each character has a starting one, and a second one they can later equip. Basically, I just wanted to draw my rats and 1 cats in outfits that matched the job i'd imagine they'd fit the most. And wouldn't you know it, they came out pretty well actually.
As you can see, Volt became a Apothecary and Scholar, Kilua a Thief and Hunter, and Skye a Warrior and Dancer.
Kilua's is probably the easiest to explain. Her characterization already paints her as a thief, her main weapon is a dagger, she has access to some form of darkness manipulation with the shadow manipulation and the dark typing, it's kind of a given. She could've done fine with just Thief, but her outfit is based off of Ochette's thief attire, who's normally a hunter. And with a hunter's use of electricity, focus on the critical stat, and particular brand of debuffs like abating orb and leghold trap fit pretty well with Kilua's multifaceted skillset.
Skye is also kind of easy to explain. With moves like eneverating slash and vengeful blade, I get the impression Warrior in this game fights closer to a iaido sword style, and that's exactly what Skye does. As for the dancer addition, it's less because of the outfit choice, as Skye's take on the attire is based off of Temenos's take on it whereas he's normally a cleric. No instead, it's because Dancer has wind magic, and provides buffs that increase damage and turn order speed, which I think just makes sense based on how I imagine Skye uses wind magic, which is less offensive, and more supplemental.
Lastly is Volt, and honestly it probably seems like it would've made more sense to make Volt a scholar, right? I mean Volt's main shtick is having really powerful electricity, Scholar is all about offensive magic and boosting it to immense amounts, it just works. And that's not wrong, but I chose apothecary because I think not only does the outfit translate to Volt's quite well, but apothecary as a kit (in OT2 at least) is a bit closer to what I imagine Volt's approach to a fight is otherwise. Apothecary I think is a very versatile class that excels in support (with healing and poisoning) and surprisingly strong DPS with things like drastic measures, all made better by the class's high hp to help tank hits and keep everyone up. A versatile class that I think helps work with Volt's more adaptive approach to a fight, albeit in a way that I don't normally think of for them. Volt's normal weapon is them using Iron Tail, but since that can't really fit the theme, sword or axe can make for fine enough replacements. Plus, I do kind of think Castti's want to lend a helping hand to all she can does translate to Volt's personality in some way, even if means they both get thrown into life threatening stakes.
And that's basically all I feel like showing right now. Full transparency, I was wanting to make individual posts with larger doodle pages for each character, and tbf, I might post more doodles related to this concept if I feel like it later, but I didn't really feel like putting that much into it all considering how long it takes me to finish things. Besides, I like how this is now.
Also funny little thing to leave you off with. When a character equips a secondary job in Octopath (either the first or second game), their costume changes to match that of the new class, with no way to change it otherwise unless you swap to another job. While I don't really care about applying that logic to my characters, if I did, then Volt's original class would've been scholar, kilua's would've been hunter, and Skye's would've been dancer. It'd be funny to sketch up what each of them might look like in those classes attires, but maybe another time.
Thank you for reading, and you have a good rest of your day!
