MARIANE VINCENT
UX & Game Designer
BREAKS
Game System Analysis
Octopath Traveler
Octopath Traveler is one of the first JRPGs I played. I got a little addicted to it so it was added to my list of top games.
​
This universe with a unique visual style and catchy music simply seduced me. Not to mention its characters with their own skills and purpose.
​
I was marked by this game, so I decided to analyze in more depth why I liked this game. While playing, I realized that what made me appreciate it so much was in fact its Fights .
Breaks System
The Breaks system is the heart of the battle system in Octopath Traveler and this is what makes fighting the unique play.
​
It's a player-centric system where each enemy has a set number of Breaks that the player musts break. The only way to break these Breaks is to attack the enemy with an attack that is vulnerable to them.
​
The vulnerabilities of enemies are initially unknown to the player. If the player attacks an enemy with a weapon or skill that is vulnerable to them, they break a Breaks and the vulnerability is discovered. This discovery remains permanent. So if the player later attacks the same type of enemy, the vulnerability already discovered is shown.
​
When the number of Breaks of an enemy reaches 0, its defense is broken. The enemy is stunned and will not attack on the next turn. During this time, the player can use any type of attack they wants. However, the next turn, the enemy regains all of their Breaks and the player musts break them again to do damage to them.
​
If the player attacks the enemy with a weapon other than the one related to vulnerability, they can still do damage, but the damage will be very small and not enough to be really effective.
System objectives
Add challenge to the player
Encourage the use of various weapons / skills
Encourage team diversity
Influence other systems:
Combat System
Weapons, Types of attacks, Special powers, Enemies​ , Vulnerabilities of enemies
Exaltation System
Recharge exaltation points,​​ use of exaltation points
Targeted skills
Tactical
-
The player will have to adapt to the vulnerabilities discovered to break the Breaks. In addition, they will have to adapt to the different enemies present and to the number of enemies in the same fight.
-
The player must adapt to the weaknesses of enemies to break their Breaks. In addition, they must adapt to attacks received by enemies.
​
Strategy
-
The player will have to plan their next actions based on the known or unknown vulnerabilities of the enemies.
-
The player will have to choose the 4 characters of their team in order to be effective in the combat of the region where they are located (the enemies being different by region).
Secondary Skills
Observation
-
The player will be able to observe the different enemies to try to determine their vulnerabilities.
-
The player must observe the number of enemies present and their number of Breaks.
Rules of Engagement
Reactive Rule
Player attack
-
When the player hits an enemy with an attack to which the enemy is vulnerable, the Break is broken.
-
When the player hits an enemy with an attack to which the enemy is vulnerable, the Vulnerability is permanently uncovered. So when the player faces the same type of enemy, the Vulnerability is already known.
​
Passive Rule
Cyrus is present in the player's team
-
When Cyrus is present on the player's team, at the very start of the fight, a Vulnerability of each enemy is discovered.
-
When the same type of enemy is present twice, the same vulnerability is discovered for these 2 enemies.
-
If the player encounters an enemy type they have encountered before, a new Vulnerability is discovered.
System Modifiers
Combat Order
-
During combat, the player can see the next characters to act (allies as well as enemies) as well as the order of the next turn. The order is updated when a character gains initiative or skips their turn.
-
Additionally, when the player selects an enemy on the battlefield, their icon is highlighted in the list to indicate to the player where they are in order.
-
This feature is very useful to help the player plan their attacks and strategies during their turn with each of their characters.
Exaltation System
-
During combat, characters accumulate Exaltation points each turn, up to a maximum of 5 each.
-
On their characters' turn, the player can use as many Exaltation points as their character has to increase the number of hits given (weapons) or the power of the selected attack ( skills ). This is very useful when a character has a weapon that is strong against an enemy with multiple Breaks or to do a lot of damage to an enemy.
-
This system challenges the player on the side of Management and Strategy , since using all their Exaltation points at once can be useful at first glance, but the player will have to be patient thereafter to gain back their points.
Secondary Classes
-
During the game, the player can acquire a rune for each Job (class) of the 8 characters. They can give these runes to any character in their party, causing each character to end up with 2 Jobs . These runes give the attacks and skills of the Job to the character wearing it.
-
This is a very big advantage for the player, since it means that they can own all 8 classes through only 4 characters. Having access to all the attacks and all the skills during each fight, they can therefore be powerful against all types of enemies.
-
This is a great advantage, but it can create a problem. Having all the classes through 4 characters, the player can simply choose their 4 favorite characters and only use these for the rest of the game, not doing character swaps. This can create an imbalance, since when it comes time to do the main mission of a character that the player does not use a lot, that character will be low level compared to the others and will not be very strong.
-
This problem also goes against the intention of restricting the game which wants to push the player to choose the 4 best characters in the situation they find themselves in.
Permanent Leader
At the start of the game, the player selects one of the 8 characters with whom he wants to start the game. This character will become permanent in his group and he will never be able to change it.
This creates a small imbalance in character levels, since the leader continually gains XP and therefore levels up much faster than other characters.
As the order in which the player "unlocks" the characters is not important as well as the characters with which he walks in his group, having the opportunity to change some of the leading character could have countered this problem.
The same enemies of different levels
-
When the player encounters a type of enemy that they have fought before, but that enemy is of different difficulty, they are counted as a new enemy. So even if the player has discovered vulnerabilities to the past enemy, the vulnerabilities of the "new" enemy are not discovered.
-
In addition, the vulnerabilities of this "new" enemy can sometimes be different than the same enemy the player has already fought, which can be inconsistent. However, it creates more varieties of enemies.
-
Luckily, when this happens, the player is able to correctly identify this "new" enemy by the fact that he does not have the same number of Breaks as the enemy of the past.
Potential Improvements
Combos
-
It could have been interesting to include a combo system where the player could have combined the attacks of 2 (or more) characters. This could have created powerful attacks during Boss Fights to do a fair amount of damage to the enemy when their Breaks were shattered.
-
The unique combos between certain characters could have pushed the player to vary the characters in his group more often to find the different specials.
-
Obviously, such attacks should have a cooldown or blow up the turn of the character with which the player has combined their attack.
Conclusion
The Breaks system is closely linked with the Vulnerability system. The player must find the vulnerabilities of the enemies in order to be able to break the Breaks and then do the maximum damage to them when the Breaks are all broken.
​
The Breaks system is set up to encourage the player to vary the characters present in his team, but also to vary the types of attacks sent to enemies. Although it has some flaws to "make" the player's life easier, the system works very well and complements Octopath Traveler's Combat system well, making it almost one of a kind.