Octopath Traveler 2: Best Party Setup guide
Choosing your party of heroes is a challenge in a lot of RPGs, but it's even more so in Octopath Traveler 2. Because of the game's highly open-ended nature, choosing the best party setup is particularly difficult.
With eight heroes total that can be recruited in any order you like after choosing your starting character, putting together a well-balanced party isn't guaranteed.
Making the right party composition decisions can really change the game, however, allowing you to shred even the most difficult of Octopath 2's encounters. This page will help you to pick the best party setup possible.
Finding the Best Party Setup in Octopath Traveler 2
Before we even get into our thoughts on the characters for the best party, we should talk about the party system more geneally. Specifically, we have one key thing to say...
Some party setups are inevitably a little better than others. However, there is no real outright best party setup in Octopath 2. The game is designed for experimentation, and you can make pretty much anything viable.
We give similar advice on our page listing the Best Job Combinations - our advice basically being, you should experiment what works for you, and also use characters you like. In the grand scheme of things, by the way, your choice of character secondary jobs & classes is far more important than your party composition - though naturally the two do intersect to some degree.
Naturally, when undertaking any given character's story events you'll need to have them in the party - and that'll go double when you unlock some of the Crossed Paths cross-over storylines.
But if you're still here, that means you really want some suggestions - and we'll give 'em to you. Here's our advice for the best party setup in Octopath Traveler 2 - and if you have any of your own, drop 'em in the comments.
The Best Party for Path Actions
In Octopath Traveler 2, each party member has two 'Path Actions', one for daytime, one for night. Despite the fact there's eight characters, these abilities basically break into four categories.
One ability lets you Obtain Items, by stealing or some other means. Anotehr allows you to recruit NPCs to fight alongside you. The third lets you learn Information that'll be helpful in exploring the world. Finally, the last Path Action type will in one way or another Grant Access to more areas of the world.
These four ability types are spread among the eight cast members equally. While the exact methods differ, the result is the same. For instance, Partitio can buy items from NPCs in the daytime, but Throne can steal them. Hikari can bribe NPCs for information at night, while Temenos can challenge them in battle to acquire the same information.
If you want to have a variation of all four Path Actions available to you at all times, day and night, there are only two party setups that allow that to happen:
- Agnea, Castti, Partitio, & Hikari
- Throne, Osvald, Ochette, & Temenos
Either of these party setups will allow you to do all four actions at any given time, which is extremely useful for world exploration. You can then use careful choices of job classes to buff out any issues you have in combat.
You might notice that this is a clever and deliberate piece of shrewd game design, too - these two party groups of four represent the two continents of Octopath Traveler 2. So if you recruit all the people on whichever continent you start on first, your first full party will be one of these two.
The Best Balanced Party Setup
It can be achieved with the above, but think about it from a strict battle perspective for a moment: your average player of Octopath Traveler 2 will want a party with balance.
There's a few roles you should consider. Broadly spekaing, we break this into three key groups:
- Attacker (Physical or Elemental)
- With base classes, this role can be most naturally filled by Hikari, Throne, Ochette, and Osvald, and potentially Partitio.
- Support (Buff or Debuff)
- Throne, Temenos, Agnea and Castti all have skills in this category.
- Healer (Restorative Magic)
- Temenos and Castti are particularly strong here.
You can achieve these categories through use of secondary jobs and job combos, though it's important to remember the core, native job of each character should also play an important role.
Generally speaking, we'd recommend having at least one of each of the three categories in your party - which leaves room for one more character.
For instance, a good team could be Temenos as your Healer, Agnea as your Support, Osvald as your Magical Attacker, and then Throne as both a secondary attacker and debuffer. You could then lean into these roles with your job combinations.