Not many games give me chills just listening to the main theme... Mario Odyssey is truly an unrivaled experience (with the very small exception with Zelda BotW/TotK). I am begging, Nintendo, that they release the next 3D Mario soon!! I cannot wait any longer. It's been nearly a decade!! I was literally in middle school when Mario Odyssey was revealed... please lol.

I wonder what a Donkey Kong RPG would be like. I thought maybe it would play like Super Mario RPG.

Tbh I've always wondered more about if an instalment of Sin and Punishment was made into an RPG like what Sega did with Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Someone once told me that there should be a Kirby RPG, but that seems a little too obvious.

Maybe a Donkey Kong third person shooter that brings back the fruit shooting weapons from Donkey Kong 64.

Although it may be easier to build a revival of Donkey Kong Racing using the Bananza engine, specifically the Rambi Racing section but with much better controls.

I'm almost finished with what I'd qualify as the third arc of the game, so pretty advanced and I do share a lot of your thoughts there. 

Playing the mobile game and going to this version is basically an almost completely new experience appart from reusing most of the main story elements from the mobile game and some of its visuals.

All the side content, town building aspects, character recruitments are completely new to this game which I'm glad they went the extra mile to re-do all of this to accomodate the experience to a better pace than the bloating of the mobile version.

Combat wise, yes, it's arguably the best form of combat in the series, yet ... I'd argue that not having any of the characters be able to sub-class like in the other 2 games limits some of the potential strategic aspect the combat usually had. Which was technically replaced by the new skill system where you can equip "mastered" skills on to your characters.

The flavor is different this time around and it's welcome despite its familiarity with Octopath 1.

Ultimately, they basically made a game that stands with Octopath II easily and proved re-tooling mobile games into full-fledged games is viable if done with such care. 

I'm in the second Arc, I'd honestly rate it as one of the best RPGs I've played and mind you games like FF6 and CT are amongst that group.

It's hard to convey how good the execution of the game is, I never tried the mobile version so it's all new to me. I think the reasoning for sub class removals is balance more than anything as the large cast and 8 person party adds depth to the point that sub classes could render the party invincible it is however a lot of fun as the party becomes a large jigsaw to play around with.

I'm very curious to see how Rebirth shapes up on Switch 2.

Remake is one of the best third party ports so far, but that's a hybrid PS4/PS5 title, whereas Rebirth is firmly current gen. Still, given how the likes of Star Wars Outlaws turned out, I'm sure a solid conversion is possible.

I'll be picking it up for sure.

Escape From Ever After is a game that is now heavily on my radar— it currently sits with not a single review score below 9/10, alongside a 97% Steam store rating. Once more info is out on how long the game is and such (as well as maybe get it on a discount), then I’ll purchase.