I’ve been enjoying Octopath Traveler II. It’s a nice version of old-school (i.e. “real” 
) Final Fantasy mixed with SaGa’s multiple characters with their own stories.
Combat is turn-based, complete with FFX-style turn order displayed at the top of the screen. There’s a lot of stuff going on though, in and out of combat, which I have mixed feelings about. It’s nice to have the options–buffs/debuffs, boosts, skills, special abilities, breaks, secondary jobs, path actions, a day/night cycle that you can switch between at the push of a button–but it can be a bit overwhelming at times.
Boss battles are long as hell, which feels epic…at first, but it can get tedious, especially when you’re twenty minutes into a fight before you figure out that maybe you don’t have the right party or abilities for the final stage and you’re going to have to slog through the first two stages again. On the other hand, that admittedly makes it all the more satisfying when you do deal that final blow.
The characters themselves are fun with good voice acting that’s (mostly) not annoying, though they’re a bit on the standard side–ninja guy, thief woman, beast girl, that kind of thing. But having eight of them makes the stories smaller-scale and more personal, less (at least so far 
) let’s kill the god-like villain and save the world.
Where they drop the ball is not having the characters interact as much as they should. There are a few crossed paths side missions that pair off the characters, but mostly the other characters literally disappear, except for battles, during one another’s stories. I kind of like that the narratives themselves don’t intertwine (at least so far), but it would add a lot to the game if other characters interjected occasionally and the dialogue changed slightly depending on who was in your party. (Chrono Cross did this 25 years ago with a lot more characters.) When Temenos is having some serious discussion about the secrets his religious sect is hiding from its followers, I want to hear whatever snarky comment Throné has to say, dammit.
It’s a good game, though, and I think this is the first time I’ve played a new JRPG of this scale (60-ish hours) in a long time, so I’ve been having fun trying to find hidden treasure chests and complete obscure side missions and work out how all the systems work without looking things up. (Mostly. 
)
