Eh, too bad, as for me, I enjoyed it quite a lot, this might be the only JRPG that I will invest a lot of time since the PS2 era, even enjoyed the little story that the first village had with the boy and the bandits, yet to play the dancer's story, will play it when I get home.

There's nothing about his description that I didn't understand, he is essentially describing the experience you get during your first battle of the game; at approximately the 12-15 minute mark of the demo. I played for about 3 hours. Explaining the basics of how the game functions does not excuse the bloat of the system.

The vast majority of enemies require 1 or 2 hits to break, since you can do 2 a turn, you can break them every turn - stocking 3 points won't make a bit of difference in the outcome, it will only make the battle take longer.

If the enemy has 3 shields, then 3-special-3-speal works faster than that guy's strategy; or 3-1-3-1-3-1-3-1-3-1, will take a few more seconds but accomplish the same thing in the end. Although, the above strategy is just a variant of my above strategy. You very likely won't die if you do 2-2-2-2-2-2-2, because enemy attacks are weak, and healing is easy; and you'll actually kill the enemy faster since you'll be hitting more often while the enemy is broken (2-3 times instead of once).

The enemies basically have two weaknesses (sword or spear), you don't need more than 2 different command options that only take one command to execute, in order to do this. Then you can have the abilities menu with all the extra skills. All this extra song and dance is completely unnecessary. Pokemon is actually a more tactically rich game in the first 2-3 battles than this demo is in 3 hours - and Pokemon accomplishes more with fewer steps (I'm not a Pokemon fan, but it's a game I recognize as well designed).

All of that is somewhat irrelevant though. Let me frame it this way:

I am not arguing that the added steps cause unnecessary difficulty, the game is not difficult. I am arguing that the added steps are unnecessary to reach the ends. The original Dragon quest game already solved the issue of menu based attacks, you select it from a menu, and that's why mostly everyone does it that way; it's exactly what is needed to accomplish the task. Project Octopath Traveler adds extra unecessary steps to attacking, it gets very repetitive after the first few dozens of times interacting with the system - adding more shields to the enemies doesn't make the battle more interesting, it will just mean a different repetitious combinations of commands to complete the task of killing the enemy.

For example - What is a better experience for Super Mario Brothers: 

1. Hitting the A button to jump.
Or,
2. Hitting Up + A to jump?

If you say clearly 1, then I don't see why you're disagreeing with me.

If you say it's all a matter of opinion, then that's where we disagree. I don't think needless added interface steps, for the sake of being more complex, is good game design. It's bloat.

My issue wasn't with the battle system, honestly - it was a bit slow, but it's the early part of a JRPG, I expected that. I just felt that the voice acting on the early cutscenes comes out late EVERY single line. Like, I'm done reading before they even start speaking - they should start the voiceover about a second earlier and it'd be great. As it stands, I either have to wait if I wanna hear the dialogue, or skip it and potentially miss out on good delivery that'll immerse me more.

Thankfully, it legitimately seems like Square is trying to accept feedback and improve the product after the demo (a true beta!). When the website goes up, if it hasn't already, you should air your grievances there. For all we know they may flesh things out a bit more or clear up the mechanics a bit by the time the game launches. I'd doubt it, but it'd be more help than talking about it on a forum!

What you are complaining about then, or at least mostly, is that the game up to the boss is mostly easy due to the shields being low.What you are overlooking here is that:1 - every game in the beginning is easy, and this is a demo made not to overwhelm the gamers, and just give an idea of how the game works and what to expect, and thus its easy to "exploit" the system and 2 - If you do go a bit further after the boss, especially at the cave east of Highlands, there are much harder fights there, with enemies with 4 shields, and battles with groups of 3 enemies, each with at least 3 shields.It doesnt get extremely hard, but it is more challeging.

What people are here trying to tell you is that they see the potential in the game and its battle system, not that its particulary challeging the time you have with the demo.And its not bloted.Once you get Primrose or the Warrior(I keep forgeting his name) you get two members on your parties, and the variety of strategies you can use dramastically increases, and its especially needed in that cave I mentioned.

Now, if you find the changing the weapons an useless step, that makes it more "complicated" to play, or that the weapon affinity system is pointless, then I have nothing to say to you other than the opinion of most users here, which disagree with you.But that just goes from taste to taste.I personally like it.

I found the demo boring, but even I think you don't understand how the combat works.

so is TTYD bad cause it uses like, 2 different action command butons for defending?

I must be missing what is hard to understand here.

Let's use this enemy. It takes 3 to break.

Then every second sequence, you break, and do some extra damage on the next hit. You go again and 2x. It is the enemy turn. you do 2x. it hits you back. you do 2x, break and do some extra damage. You use a boosted spell. It is enemy turn. You 2x, it attacks, etc etc.
This sequence looks like this:
2x, enemy attack, 1Break1hit, 2x, unbreak 2x, enemy attack, 1break1hit, 2x, unbreak 2x, enemy attack
With a net of
Normal hits: 6
Break hits: 6
enemy attacks: 3
remaining boost: 0

Now if you do this sequence:
2x, enemy attack, regular hit break, charge, 3x attack break, boosted spell, 2x, enemy attack, regular hit break
You get:
normal hits: 3
Charged hits: 5
Break hits: 0
enemy attacks: 2
Spells: 1 + charge
Remaining boost 1

Now, break hits deal 50% more damage, charged up moves do 55%, and every boost of a spell is 100% more

So the total damage breakdown is: (using 30 base)
1)
180+270

2)
90+250+750

The math is hard to deny here. on top of which, the enemy attacked three times in your scenario.
Also, if you do 2x every attack, you dont get a chance to boost your skills, which do insane amount of damage compared to normal attacks. I mean look, even with primrose or the knight, a boosted skill does 750 damage with only 2 bubbles. That's 15 of your attacks. I just don't get how you're not seeing this.

This is a video of someone overhitting, as you say is the best way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJM7M7TdHs4

This is someone who used the system correctly: (her voice sucks, so just mute it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADsMx8Bl4G8&t=1261s

This is a level 4 (top) with an upgraded dagger
vs
a level 3, with the base dagger

I read the OP and saw the update. As far as I can tell, his sytem for the boss would be 1,1,1,1 break, max special, 1, 1,
In this instance, within the same 7 turns as given above, he doles out 1500 + 180 for 1680 whereas my alternative scenario resulted in 1100.
The main difference being that his results in being hit 6 times, (at from what I saw, 40-50 damage per hit) or 300 damage, which is within striking range of double the dancer's health bar. With 200 hp, the accurate actions would have to be 1,1,1,1,max special, potion, 1 -then 1,1,1 break for a complete repeating pattern of 1,1,1,1, maxspec, potion.

An alternative pattern would be
1,1,2break, 2xspec, 1, 3x break, 2x spec
this results in 150 +1500 and being attacked 3 times for 130-150

so it's 1680 + 300 hp loss, potion loss
vs
1650 + 150 hp loss

I understand your point that you can beat them anyway without the min-maxing (minimal strategy). But games like these ramp up over time, as others have said. It's likely that the game was simply at an easy enough level where you not giving af didn't affect win.

TC kinda shot themselves in the foot saying there was no benefit. Not liking the system is okay, but there's an obvious benefit and gap to the boost system. 

and as the game scales, that will become more and more obvious. 

I think their biggest issue is that it isn't EXACTLY like a traditional RPG, because we all know we haven't had enough of those already. 

who is TC? Techcrunch?

Only played it for about 15 minutes ... yeah some things are good ... the battle system needs some work. I find it hard to play in portable mode, the characters and text feel too small.

Oddly enough I think this game might have the best usage of HD Rumble, lol. Even things like door's shutting "feel" spot on, it's almost weird.