Back in Orsterra

I spent the objectively best years of my life sitting in front of an old tube TV, deep in some SNES RPG. The games blur together when I try to list them—Lufia, Terranigma, Secret of Mana, A Link to the Past, Illusion of Time, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Evermore, Star Ocean, EarthBound, Final Fantasy III, Harvest Moon, Breath of Fire, Mystic Quest, Soul Blazer—but the feeling stays sharp. Each one mattered in a way nothing really matters to me anymore. I’d do just about anything to get back there.

The people who made Octopath Traveler understand something about that pull. They built it specifically to recreate what those SNES RPGs felt like, transplanted onto Switch. HD-2D graphics, a world called Orsterra, eight playable characters all tangled up in overlapping stories. Ophilia Clement, Cyrus Albright, Tressa Colozone, and the others move through a landscape that looks and feels and sounds like something from 1994, except it’s beautiful and technically sophisticated. The narrative is uncomplicated—light against darkness, good against evil, the familiar shape of an RPG you’ve already played a hundred times. But that’s exactly what you’re looking for. Not novelty. Just the right feeling.

I picked it up when it came out. Did it give me back what I was looking for? No, not really. You can’t actually climb back into who you were at ten years old. But sitting in Orsterra for those hours felt like remembering something real, and sometimes that’s the best you’re going to get.