Just finished Octopath Traveler II. This is a Windows game (also released on consoles) which runs great in CrossOver. I was able to run it at native resolution ("almost 4K") on my MacBook Pro 16" (M2 Max) and got a solid 60 FPS at high settings.
I know there is a general awareness of CrossOver, but I don't see much chatter about it on this board (compared to, say, the Mac Gaming subreddit). There are so many Windows games that can be run fine on Mac, but it unfortunately takes a bit of tweaking to get things going smoothly sometimes, and the experience is a bit "clunky" compared to what you get if you just pull a game down from the App Store.
For this game, I used D3DMetal (part of Apple's Game Porting Toolkit) as the graphics translation layer. I did notice occasional stutter. Aside from the initial shader compilation stutters which are expected, I noticed a stutter of maybe a third of a second which would randomly occur every 10-20 minutes or so, and I could never figure out why. This seems to have gone away when I stuck the GPTK 3 beta in there, which I was using for the last couple of weeks of playing.
As for the game itself, I'd say that the target audience is people who enjoy "classic JRPGs", but if you are one of those people then this is a great game to check out. It's one of the best examples of the "HD-2D" artstyle put to work that I've ever seen. It does have the same problem of the original Octopath Traveler with the story, that is you are bouncing between multiple unrelated stories as you progress with the different party members... but they have made an effort to make things more cohesive last time around, and unlike the original game, they have a segment towards the end which ties together a lot of the individual threads.
(There is no narrative connection to the original Octopath Traveler; you wouldn't miss out on anything by skipping that one and starting with this game.)
I found the difficulty curve to be perfect... maybe a bit too easy at the start, but there were plenty of bosses that gave me trouble and required multiple attempts and rethinking, starting in the mid-game. I tried to avoid looking up strategies until I was done — I know there are some game-breaking builds that you can put together — but I did hit a wall and had to look up a few tips as I was working on the final chapters. I appreciate that you don't have to grind so much in this game; towards the late-game, grinding to level up actually doesn't help you very much, the party build (equipment/classes/skills) and general strategy matter much more than what level you are at.
Music is great. Fully orchestrated, with chorus/vocals in some tracks too.
My playtime was just over 100 hours (took me a bit over 4 months). There are plenty of side quests that I didn't do as well.
I included some screenshots taken of the game running in CrossOver on my Mac in the spoiler block below.
Anyone else checked out this game?
I know there is a general awareness of CrossOver, but I don't see much chatter about it on this board (compared to, say, the Mac Gaming subreddit). There are so many Windows games that can be run fine on Mac, but it unfortunately takes a bit of tweaking to get things going smoothly sometimes, and the experience is a bit "clunky" compared to what you get if you just pull a game down from the App Store.
For this game, I used D3DMetal (part of Apple's Game Porting Toolkit) as the graphics translation layer. I did notice occasional stutter. Aside from the initial shader compilation stutters which are expected, I noticed a stutter of maybe a third of a second which would randomly occur every 10-20 minutes or so, and I could never figure out why. This seems to have gone away when I stuck the GPTK 3 beta in there, which I was using for the last couple of weeks of playing.
As for the game itself, I'd say that the target audience is people who enjoy "classic JRPGs", but if you are one of those people then this is a great game to check out. It's one of the best examples of the "HD-2D" artstyle put to work that I've ever seen. It does have the same problem of the original Octopath Traveler with the story, that is you are bouncing between multiple unrelated stories as you progress with the different party members... but they have made an effort to make things more cohesive last time around, and unlike the original game, they have a segment towards the end which ties together a lot of the individual threads.
(There is no narrative connection to the original Octopath Traveler; you wouldn't miss out on anything by skipping that one and starting with this game.)
I found the difficulty curve to be perfect... maybe a bit too easy at the start, but there were plenty of bosses that gave me trouble and required multiple attempts and rethinking, starting in the mid-game. I tried to avoid looking up strategies until I was done — I know there are some game-breaking builds that you can put together — but I did hit a wall and had to look up a few tips as I was working on the final chapters. I appreciate that you don't have to grind so much in this game; towards the late-game, grinding to level up actually doesn't help you very much, the party build (equipment/classes/skills) and general strategy matter much more than what level you are at.
Music is great. Fully orchestrated, with chorus/vocals in some tracks too.
My playtime was just over 100 hours (took me a bit over 4 months). There are plenty of side quests that I didn't do as well.
I included some screenshots taken of the game running in CrossOver on my Mac in the spoiler block below.
Anyone else checked out this game?
