Despite some missteps, Octopath Traveller 2 is a little more refined than its predecessor

JRPGs do bloody hate God. There's that old joke of a JRPG's first quest being to collect chicken eggs, and it's final quest tasking you with slaughtering a deity. Five years ago in 2018, Octopath Traveler embodied that distaste for deities, albeit with decidedly less egg collecting to go through first.

Now, Octopath Traveler 2 is still dutifully continuing the mission. Square Enix's 2D-HD JRPG pits eight heroes against the world, each on a quest to right a personal wrong, before uniting together in one big overarching quest to save the world from those evil Gods once more. It's all very standard JRPG stuff between the two games, but there's several aspects that differentiate Octopath Traveler 2 from its predecessor, for better and worse.

The good news is that Octopath Traveler 2 has a new layer to combat, one which seems inconsequential at first but pays off in a huge way. This is 'Latent Power,' a metre for every character which builds up whenever they take or deal damage in combat. When the gauge is full, activate your Latent Power ability to perform an ability that changes between Octopath Traveler 2's eight heroes. One hero's Latent Power might see them able to act twice in one turn, and another's the option to focus hit-all spells down to targeting one enemy.

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