Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent is coming to the west this summer

Square Enix has announced that Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent is coming to the west this summer on the App Store and Google Play. Sign-ups for the Google Play Closed Beta are currently available.

Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent is a single-player RPG that serves as a prequel to the 2018 title Octopath Traveler. It initially came out in Japan on October 28, 2020, as a free-to-play mobile game. The launch was a success, amassing 10 million players in its first month.

The game retains the iconic HD-2D art style and traditional turn-based RPG mechanics, but now you can form a party of eight characters instead of four like in the previous game. The core gameplay experience is close to a traditional JRPG, where you move characters around the map and randomly encounter enemies while progressing through the main story and optional side quests.

Here’s the official story synopsis:

What do you seek at journey’s end?
A few years prior to the events of OCTOPATH TRAVELER,
Orsterra is ruled by tyrants hungry for “wealth, power, and fame”.
While the tyrants’ desires have unleashed a bottomless darkness upon the world…there are those who resist the darkness.
You will meet them while traveling the world as “the Chosen Ones” of a divine ring.
What will you obtain, and what will you experience through this journey?
Soon the story will lead you to the tyrants of the land.

The main story alone took dozens of hours to complete at launch with over 64 characters available, and it has become even longer since then with multiple post-launch updates that added new characters, maps, equipment, and more. Yasunori Nishiki, the composer behind Octopath Traveler, is responsible for the soundtrack.

The monetization in the Japanese version is done through a gacha system in which you can obtain playable characters with varying rarities. There’s no stamina system like those found in typical free-to-play mobile games, so you can play the game at your own pace without having to wait or pay cash for stamina regeneration.

Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent is currently available in Japan on iOS and Android and is coming to North America and Europe this summer.