Octopath Traveler 2 - Partitio Chapter 5

Partitio's story comes to a close, and while it is slightly more coherent than Ochette's story, is still too overly fairy tale like for my taste. Basically, I am skeptical of the happily ever after crap going on, and I think a steamboat would have been more influential for this part of the world than a locomotive. Essentially, if we need a ship to get around, the people will need one too seeing as there are two different continents here.

As for the chapter itself, I get extremely lucky as you can see in the beginning by encountering the strongest of the caits and due to Partitio's EX Skill, am able to capture it. There is one more I encountered off camera that I was able to beat to further boost my EXP. This is important since I think Partitio's boss is one of the ones that should be done later than I did here. For one, Partitio doesn't really have a nuke skill (Arrow of Fortune?) to hammer a downed foe. Second, there is not much overlap between all of these targets to break them easily enough, and you need to break the small pieces to expose the big ones. Third, for how annoying this little mini-game is with a regenerating enemy and constantly adding gimmicks to the fight, it is just as bulky as all of the other final bosses. When all three of these overlap the way they do, it does not make for a very fun fight. Getting Armsmaster and at least the axe may have helped with nuking a piece down once exposed, but that is not in the most convenient of areas.

Anyway, in terms of narrative, this one is better than Ochette, but not as good as some of the others. We get a little bit of building here, where we encounter Thurston and have to deal with his pet. Then disgraced, we get to encounter him again in another gimmicky battle (this is Partitio's permitted one per game), who goes on to reveal Roque's plot, sending us to the island. Alrond is a little predictable in my opinion, but he serves as the more experienced foil for Partitio, realizing what Roque was going to do in the third chapter. This is demonstrated by him giving Partitio the check, then preparing the boat anyway to get one step ahead of Roque for the finisher. Roque then goes over the permitted gimmicky fight per game, and is humbled.

In the end, there is a lesson about the importance of people instead of possessions here as Roque is forced into Partitio's way of thinking as his reputation is destroyed due to his machinations. Alrond already reached the same conclusion as Partitio and the two throwing together gave them both what they needed. The only downsides here are that Partitio actually completes his character development in his first chapter by reaching that lesson and then spends the entirety of his tale trying to convince Roque, meaning Roque is the protagonist of Partitio's tale (seriously). Then the other part is that none of the other merchants we encounter in the world other than the one guy in Sai (see Scent of Commerce 1) seems to have any knowledge about marketing. Partitio just shows up, makes a lot of noise, and somehow succeeds...

What I am getting at is I found Tressa's story a lot more interesting in conveying the exact same lesson, except she had the Diary and put all of the pieces together in her final chapter to win the competition and bring it to an end. In the first game, the protagonist of Tressa's tale, was Tressa.