Never played this series: Do you need to play every character from the beginning to get the whole story?

[Sparrow]

I've played almost 0 jrpgs in my time. If I want to experience the story in the best/most full way, how do I do that?

I played the demo and you can start with 1 of 8 characters. Do I need to play the game 8 times to see everyone's story in its entirety?

Just confused as to how the game might work. :)

[Melodia]

No, you can do everything (get every achievement even, nothing missable) on a single playthrough.

Basically you go to various towns to experience chapters in the various characters' stories. For instance let;s say you start with Partitio, then go recruit Agnea in Coprdale. You then later on can go to New Destla to do Agnea's chapter 2 and Clockbank to do Partitio's chapter 2. Etc etc etc.

It's somewhat intuitive once you start playing.

[Sparrow]

Originally posted by Melodia:

No, you can do everything (get every achievement even, nothing missable) on a single playthrough.

Basically you go to various towns to experience chapters in the various characters' stories. For instance let;s say you start with Partitio, then go recruit Agnea in Coprdale. You then later on can go to New Destla to do Agnea's chapter 2 and Clockbank to do Partitio's chapter 2. Etc etc etc.

It's somewhat intuitive once you start playing.

Ok, so will this also let me experience every character's chapter 1? Or will I need to to start separate saves in order to experience them?

[Nibbie]

Originally posted by Sparrow:

Originally posted by Melodia:

No, you can do everything (get every achievement even, nothing missable) on a single playthrough.

Basically you go to various towns to experience chapters in the various characters' stories. For instance let;s say you start with Partitio, then go recruit Agnea in Coprdale. You then later on can go to New Destla to do Agnea's chapter 2 and Clockbank to do Partitio's chapter 2. Etc etc etc.

It's somewhat intuitive once you start playing.

Ok, so will this also let me experience every character's chapter 1? Or will I need to to start separate saves in order to experience them?

When you visit their town and recruit them, you will be asked if you want to play through their chapter 1, just as if you had started with them. The only thing your starting selection truly does long term is lock that character into your party until you complete their story. You are otherwise free to experience everything in one playthrough in whatever order you wish.

I will mention that these two games are fairly unique in this regard, so even experience in other JRPGs may not help much with the specifics of this.

[InfernoX250]

Its a non-linear RPG that isn't required to understand the first game.

While its "assumed" to be on the same overall planet more or less given a few "Notices between the continent of the first game and this one due to one specific NPC saying where he was from, you dont need to understand the overall lore of the first.

At worst maybe just some in jokes or references thrown around like to other series Square did over the past ten years like the Bravely Default series from the Nintendo 3DS era.

You basically pick a character as your main or the "traveler" and the thing to know is that this character is always locked into the party until you complete their story. You get the other characters early on too and proceed with their stories in any order you wish.

The thing to consider is what you believe you would like or consider the best advantage with your main hero or heroine. Each of the 8 has a fixed base class that detemines their core powers, but they can also gain the jobs of the other characters as a secondary class later on to make more flexible combinations. Aside from that each also has a unique talent they carry regardless of their class, for example Ochette the hunter, her talent is capturing enemies and unleashing them as auxillary abilities in battle or consuming them in the overworld/battle to make consumable items with various effects from healing to powering up others. While anyone else can get the hunter job as a secondary power, regardless only ochette can do this power with the beasts.

Everyone also has 2 options for interacting with NPCs, a day action and a night action. Some actions are considered noble in that they have no downside but you must be "Strong" enough to preform them. Others are considered rogue or if you fail to preform and succeed, you can suffer a loss of rep, too much NPCs wont interact with you until you pay a fine at a local tavern. This isn't anything like baldurs gate 3 complicated, just adds vareity in how you can get stuff or solve side quests.

There are 5 types of interactions
Info- Inquire (noble), Scrutinize (rogue), bribe (pay money no issue)
Battle- Challenge (noble), Provoake (sick beasts on people, rogue) mug (attempt to take items by force, not rogue) Interrogate (no conquenses, battle to break shield for info)
Item gathering- entreat (noble people give you free ♥♥♥♥), Steal (try to loot for free rogue) purchase (buy it off them)
Recruitment, get NPCs to follow and aid you in battle or provide other unique effects, Allure (rogue), Guidance (noble), hire (pay money to get a goon), and feed (pay someone with food to follow you, needs specific type of food for NPC)
Subdue, knock out someone in the way ambush (knock them silly) and soothe (medical drug to put them to sleep, requires specific item)

Some NPCs are always present, others relcate during day or night. Some only active in one time of the day.

The game has a hidden "strata" or "rings" determining boundaries for the danger level or appropriate challenge from the inner most being easier to the outermost boundaries of the world generally being harder. This isn't fixed as some areas like islands may show level 45 or so being a late game zone while close to another early game zone, but the game tries to softly direct you.

The game will bulk up some monsters as you hit higher averages such as early zones that were level 1 would soon jump to 5 and then cap at 11 while other zones would go from say 20 to 30ish and outer most areas would have 40-45 etc.

There are also plenty of dungeons in the world, but their levels are fixed. If you want to have a good challenge you can do them at the right time or just leave them and yeet the boss without issue later on, its your choice.

The game can be pretty hard if you don't know what you are doing but it can become easy too. Overleveling isnt going to kill every fight either, leveling up alone is very low scaling, your power is dependent on items more than anything else. Its not like some other RPGs like bravely default 2 more recently which had scaling for certain classes.

Its a case like the warrior and mage, each knowing a specific specialty with physical and elemental as expected, if the warrior has elemental spells from a secondary class or the mage is been given a class with access to more weapons, they can both preform solidly in the other catagory so long as they have items strong in that catagory.