Playing Through Octopath Traveler with Tressa Alone: A Merchant's Journey Without Companions and How to Beat the Bosses

The protagonist, Tressa, is the daughter of a merchant living in a port town. During her usual stock purchasing, she talks with the captain of a merchant ship and they become somewhat friendly, but an incident occurs in the middle of their conversation. Pirates have recently settled in a nearby cave and are doing as they please. Tressa offers them liquor laced with a sleeping draught and sneaks into the pirates' hideout.

Here the commentator explains the battle system. Combat in this game is classic turn-based, and Tressa switches between multiple weapons to exploit enemy weaknesses. Hitting a weakness chips away at an enemy's shield, and when it reaches 0 the enemy stops acting and enters a defenseless state called "Break" until the end of the next turn. As for recovery options, the commentator jokingly describes it as a world where HP-restoring fruit is oddly advanced.

The Chapter 1 boss is a pair, set up so that the remaining one powers up when only one is left. In response, the commentator took the approach of whittling both shields down to 1, then breaking them in turn and defeating both at once. They attacked one while spending the BP that accumulates each turn to boost damage, also used a precious all-target attack item, and finished them off with the remaining BP.

After the fight, Tressa wins the favor of the captain, a former great pirate, and is allowed to take one treasure. What she chooses is a single journal. The journal is only half written, with the latter half blank. Tressa resolves to write her own journey as a continuation of the record of a traveler whose name she does not know, and leaves her hometown determined to travel until every page is filled.

As Tressa's immediate goal after setting out, the commentator decided to visit shrines around the world. Because Tressa earns money just by walking, the commentator describes it as "life on easy mode," since funds come in from that alone. At a shrine, she acquired the Scholar job. According to the commentator, it is a job with extremely useful abilities, such as halving the encounter rate. After making one loop around the world this way, the commentator advanced the story by following in the footsteps of the journal's author.

Following the journal author's footsteps, Tressa arrives at a desolate backwater town caught up in a gold rush. Tressa seizes this business opportunity and sets up shop, but a young merchant named Ali sets up next door and draws in customers by calling out, "I'll sell it cheaper than the girl next door," and sales end in an overwhelming victory for Ali.

However, the landowner appears and confiscates their right to sell, and Ali, who resists, is taken away as well. The landowner had been buying up gold ore at rock-bottom prices and keeping the profits for himself. Tressa storms his mansion.

The boss is a large mercenary hired by the landowner, and his weakness is spear attacks. The commentator first increased BP with an item, then aimed for a Break over the following two turns. The flow is to break him with a spear attack using all the BP at once, then unleash a powerful attack the next turn. What the commentator introduces as merchant Tressa's greatest trump card is Hired Help, a technique that spends a large sum of money to deal heavy damage to all enemies. This time, they also equipped a job skilled with spears and aimed for a Break with the multi-hit "Thousand Spears."

After the fight, Ali and Tressa part ways. Tressa had at first thought Ali was just an unpleasant guy, but now looks back on him as a good rival. Through her conversation with Ali, she gains a new goal, the "Grand Auction," and Tressa heads to Victors Hollow following the journal author's footsteps.

During her travels, Tressa reunites with the captain for the first time in a while and obtains a treasure map said to have been left by a certain person. Captain Leon has no interest in this treasure, and the map is handed over to Tressa. The commentator says that if she follows the map, finds the treasure, and puts it up at the Grand Auction, she should earn respect.

Standing before the treasure is the Venomtooth Tiger, a monster whose poison looks like it will be a real nuisance. Its weakness is spear attacks, and the battle follows "the usual flow": first aim for a Break with Thousand Spears, and once it breaks, use Hired Help with BP. The commentator estimated the boss's HP at around 50,000 and figured it could be defeated with about three uses of Hired Help.

After the Break, its shield increases compared to before, making it harder to whittle down, but the commentator says the approach doesn't change and you just keep using Thousand Spears. Here the commentator had equipped the ability "Last Act," which occasionally allows an extra action just before the end of the turn, and this led to a successful second Break. After the second Break, the shield increases further. They had also equipped the "Counter" ability, which sometimes retaliates with a weapon on hand when attacked, and they rate it as surprisingly useful against opponents that attack many times. Near the end, HP was dangerously low, but since a Break was possible, they did not heal and went straight in for the finishing blow.

After the fight, Leon gives the gemstone to Tressa. He says that to him it is now just a pebble, and the letter is enough. Leon says that everyone has a treasure, and while riches and land are appealing, there is only one thing that is truly precious. For him, it is his ship, and the way of life that Baltazar taught him. Asked what her treasure is, Tressa answers that she doesn't know yet but will surely find it. With the item to put up for auction now decided, Tressa heads to Grandport, the port town where the Grand Auction is held.

In Grandport, a large market fair is being held, and the winner's prize is in the hundreds of millions of leaves. The commentator compares it to an amount Tressa would finally obtain only after walking for 3,000 hours. In town, Tressa meets a girl who cannot walk properly. This fair, it seems, is being held for this girl.

However, Tressa's journal is stolen. With Ali's help, she succeeds in splitting up the culprits' group and descends into the underground waterway.

The last to stand in her way is Esmeralda, and the commentator explains that this boss's attacks are extremely powerful. For that reason, they shored up their defenses before attacking. First, they restored HP and BP with a full-recovery item and used "Sidestep." The judgment was that by investing BP to stack a buff for four evasions and combining it with Counter, they could fight safely for the time being.

Ideally, BP should be built up by the time of the first Break, and once the boss breaks, you attack with Hired Help. What the commentator emphasizes is that the boss uses powerful attacks right after a Break, so before the Break you need to stack not only BP but also the evasion buff. They also explain that because the boss's weakness changes after the first Break, they needed to switch the weapons on hand in advance.

After that, they re-stacked Sidestep, and while keeping HP comfortably high thanks to the effect of Limit Break, they built up BP and waited for the next Break. When the enemy's turns came in succession, they attacked only a little and otherwise left it to Counter to trigger. On the second Break, they switched the weapons back and attacked with Hired Help, using the leftover turns to recover BP. Last Act gave them another turn, but the commentator chose not to get greedy and stacked Sidestep instead.

After that, the weakness returned to spears, and since the enemy acts twice in a row, they aimed for a third Break with Thousand Spears. The commentator says that thanks to stacking Sidestep in advance, the HP situation wasn't bad either. Counter was also triggering at a good rate. From then on, the weakness is fixed on spears, making Breaks easier to aim for. There are options other than Thousand Spears, but the commentator thinks "this is probably the fastest."

After finishing the fourth Break, the commentator guessed that this boss had HP worth five to six Breaks and saw a possibility of defeating it with one more. What proved useful here was a merchant technique whose success rate varies depending on the enemy's remaining HP. Because the probability is displayed just before execution, that figure revealed that the enemy's remaining HP was 20%. With the prospect of defeating it next time, they went for the finishing blow without healing and defeated Esmeralda.

From here, the commentator watches without touching the controls until the staff roll. On the stage of the Grand Auction, Tressa puts up the "nameless journal."

Tressa talks about her journey. As the daughter of a merchant in a small port town, she was always gazing across the sea, wondering what it was she truly wanted to obtain. It was at such a time that she came across this journal. Longing for the record of someone, whose name she did not know, traveling around the world, she left her hometown and aimed to become a full-fledged merchant. In the mining town, she met a merchant her own age who had a magical power she lacked, one that captures people's hearts and makes them happy. In the next town, she reunited with the captain who gave her the journal and was taught that there is only one thing that is truly precious. It took time to search, but this journey, which gave her so many encounters, was itself her treasure, Tressa says.

Just as she dreamed of the world through the nameless traveler's journal, if her own journal reaches someone, it would have the greatest value. That is why she wants to deliver this journal to you, Tressa pleads. Voices from the audience mock it as an out-of-place item, but Windham raises his hand. Asked to confirm whether he really wants this item, Windham replies that he has never gone back on his word in a deal, and states, "Allow me to give this nameless journal to my daughter."

Afterward, Tressa and Ali talk about the future. Tressa intends to return home for a while. Having gained more experience as a merchant than she could write in the journal, when she stood on the stage, she felt she might have become something of a full-fledged merchant. She wants to tell her parents that, she says. Ali also says he will use the money he earned as capital to open a shop once again in his hometown. They tell each other to be bigger merchants the next time they meet, and the two part ways.

The commentator sums up this journey this way: Tressa made no companions, defeated Esmeralda, entrusted her precious journal to the girl, and went back to her family home. They praise the highly open exploration and character-building systems as fun, and say that together with the Break-based battle system, they were able to enjoy a fun adventure.

The commentator further reflects that while the story in this game tends to become fragmented when played normally with eight characters, this time, by traveling alone, they feel they were able to immerse themselves more deeply in Tressa's story. At the end of the video, a scene plays in which the girl who received the journal follows Tressa, who is delivering happiness to someone somewhere in the world, and writes the continuation of her journal.