Eight Heroes and the Ghost of the SNES

The best version of my childhood was sitting in front of a CRT television with a Super Nintendo controller and nowhere to be. Lufia. Terranigma. Secret of Mana. Chrono Trigger. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Illusion of Time. Secret of Evermore. Star Ocean. EarthBound. Final Fantasy III. Harvest Moon. Breath of Fire. Mystic Quest. Soul Blazer. Each one was a world that felt more real than the one I lived in, and I’ve been chasing that specific feeling ever since.

Octopath Traveler was designed, without pretending otherwise, to recreate exactly that feeling. Eight characters—Ophilia Clement, Cyrus Albright, and Tressa Colozone among them—travel a world called Orsterra in a visual style the developers call HD-2D: pixel art sprites set against modern lighting and depth, making everything look like a SNES game that somehow grew a shadow. The story runs along a clean good-versus-evil architecture. That’s not a complaint; that’s the structure that made those original games matter.

It came out in July 2018 for the Switch and I’ve been meaning to get to it ever since. The itch it promises to scratch is one of the oldest ones I have, which is maybe why I keep finding reasons to wait.