Octopath Traveler 2

I tried to like this game, expecting some of the annoyances on the previous opus to be fixed... Well, I was disappointed. It's still absolutely grindy, with repetitive encounters all the way. (And avoiding them is possible, but you'll end up under leveled, which is a death sentence). More than half of my play time is spent in mindless combat against the same creatures, using the same spells and attacks... Graphically, it's good, slightly better than the previous opus. Storylines are decent at best. Still barely no interaction between protagonists (although a little bit better with the cross path quests, but they feel like additionnal content placated on top on the rest, with no meaningful ties to the main story itself). The voice acting is good, the the writing is probably directed toward young kids, with extremely shallow designs for both protagonists and NPCs. (Except Oswald, I'll admit). The enemies are unredeemably "I want to kill everyone while laughing maniacally" with no inner conflit at all. The allies are somewhat better, but either they die tragically, or they betray you, no inbetween. The whole combat system is built on an illusion of choices. You have a lot of options as to which passives you want to use. And 90% of them are useless. The rest is basically imposed by the game and bosses. Does your build make huge attacks? They you need the Warrior last passive to hit more than 10k at once. Does the boss have a one-shot mechanic? Then you need the anti-oneshot passive on basically everyone. If you try to make a fun build, the game with shut you down. Attempt to make some buff permanents? The bosses will cleanse them. Try to focus on evasion? Don't worry, most bosses have perfect accuracy. Build a tank to capture the aggro, sacrificing precious passive slots for that? Who cares, two third of bosses have only AoE attacks. And if that wasn't enough, the luck factor is extremely high. "Hey, the boss will do three attacks at the beginning of the round, one of them will put everyone at 1hp, and another one is an AoE".. well, yes, of course, the order is random, and it might be a game over. The devs love their gimmicks which invalidate any tanking strategy.... Removing a hero from the fight without any warning, nor way to protect it? Don't mind if I do! Yes, you usually free them by breaking the boss shield... but what if this was your main shield breaker? Oh, bad luck! In their quest for balance, the devs have casted the fun aside, leaving only their contempt for the players seeping through the game. You are here to grind, and you will NOT cheese a single fight. The one truly good thing about this game is the music... except that the best tracks at the heroes themes, which you only hear at the end of chapters... In short, I cannot recommend this game at all, unless you like repetitive tasks and being shoehorned into using the same strategy over and over...