While we were at PAX West 2025, Square Enix let us have a look at Octopath Traveler 0. the highly anticipated prequel to the critically acclaimed Octopath Traveler series. The demo focused on showcasing how the game refines the signature HD-2D art style that fans have come to love, while also introducing new mechanics that set it apart from its predecessors.
Paths of Octopath Traveler 0
The demo I got my hands on put me in the middle of a destroyed village, and I spent time placing houses or storefronts down on tiles. You have a specific allotment of houses and buildings you can have in the village. After messing around with figuring out how to build houses in the construction menu, I was able to fast travel from the map to the quest icon. The quest the demo put me on was to try and get Ludo in my party, and he only agrees to be in my party if I manage to defeat the lizard army on a random path in the desert.
Throughout the town, you can visit there are NPCs with white bubbles over their sprites. If you go up to these NPCs, you can talk to them or learn insights from them. To gain insights, it requires you to win on a random chance roll. The percentage of you winning that roll is shown before you attempt to learn an insight from it.
Once an insight is gained from an NPC, the other path actions open up to you. The path action lets you buy items from the NPC, or you can ask them just to give them to you. The last path action is to invite them to your village, or to be a helper in your party.
Combat In Octopath Traveler 0
There are eight total characters on your side of the screen during combat in Octopath Traveler 0. This is new for the series. Usually, you just have four, and you have to switch your party out later. Since you will have over 30 characters to choose from, it is better to be able to choose eight out of them instead of just four. Makes it easier to cover your bases, too. The boost system is back, too.
You have dots that get filled performing actions. You can use the boost to deplete one dot from the gauge or multiple boosts to deplete more dots from the gauge to make more damage or cause more attacks from basic attacks. If you are going for a strong skill, I would recommend boosting the gauge as far as it can go and maxing out the damage of that skill.
You will have four people in the front line and four people in the back line. The front line can do attacks and actions like normal. The back line just heals SP and HP on each turn. You can swap out the front-line character with the back-line character in the same order on the lineup. This makes it so the character can heal while the other, freshly healed character can do actions. This helps you manage battle resources better. If your character is out of SP for skills, then you can just let them regenerate in the back line. It also saves up on your item usage.
Each character has two weapon specializations they are equipped with. Each enemy has a weakness to specific weapons or elements. If you can find their weakness, you can break their barrier. Breaking the barrier stuns them and makes them more vulnerable to attacks. This helps maximize your damage.
Ending The Demo
The end of the demo is a boss fight with the leader of the Lizard army as Ludo joins you. It is important to break the boss as soon as you can, but also to defeat the weaker enemies around him. Boss fights are definitely a fight of longevity. You want to make sure your characters are in good health and SP. Swapping back and forth units from the back line to the front line is important, and making sure you have multiple healers in multiple slots.
I wasn’t able to see what happened after the Lizard boss leader was defeated, as my time with the demo was finished. I enjoyed getting back into Octopath Traveler, and I do think the battle system still holds up. The added dynamic of four additional party members in battle also gives you more options. I am excited to try out the game more when it launches in December.
Octopath Traveler 0 will release on December 4th, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
