Heh. Can only talk to myself,but I love grinding on RPGs. So that is a plus for me.

Mine has just arrived! :3
Can't wait to open it up and get into it!

Edit: It sounds like a little bit of a shame that the stories don't converge and tangle more past a certain point, but it is a very original choice to make and I'm willing to give the dev team a huuuge benefit of the doubt on the story, since I haven't played it yet.

IGN isn't really a good site anymore, but most critics agree that it's a must own title for Switch. Currently scoring 84 on Opencritic. That's extremely high for a JRPG with the kind of visuals it has. I was worried that critics would review it harshly due to the full price tag, and the low level of graphics. Lots of sites like Metro like to give unfairly low scores for being a JRPG, and lots of sites don't realize that graphics matter little. The Disgaea games are great, but routinely score in the high seventies due to those factors. So considering that, being at 84 is absolutely golden, for Octopath.

This is the game I’ll buy a Switch for one day. The demos were utterly charming.

Do I dare ask if it ticks all your boxes to be a 'quality release' for 2018?

I was going to wait for reviews before buying this one, and since my doubts are cleared I'll go for it.
Can't wait!

Wow! So far so good! Really looking forward to play this game :)

85 on Metacritic is extremely solid. Well done to the devs and hope this does really well. We need more old school JRPGs. I'll enjoy watching people play this on Twitch for sure.

Jason Schreier from Kotaku called it "another botched JRPG experiment". His biggest criticisms are the big struktural problems in story and gameplay loop.
I will wait for other reviews from sources I know well but the game looks gorgeous and the battle system is great too so it would be a shame if his criticism is justified.

I wandered half of Athens today and couldn't find a physical copy. Had to download instead :(