I booted up octopath 1 to see how different it felt in comparison as far as pacing, presentation, and voice acting went
the original DNA is here, but it's such a rough first go at this whole structure and, at this point, I'm convinced it was for a lack of company assets backing the project rather than poor design choices
the combat speed is glacial, what takes 20-30 seconds in 2 is a 3-4 minute affair in 1, and that's not even factoring the fast-forward feature in 2. character skills are full of redundancies and useless filler (2 has some, but not to this degree). the XP and JP accrual rate is miserable, causing the whole game to grind to a halt around chapter 3 of every character's stories. there's not a lot of interesting synergies to mess around with and each character doesn't have much in the way of unique functionality once side-jobs are unlocked
the english VO and dialogue writing is abominable. some of the worst in any JRPG. the visuals are surprisingly flat-looking compared to 2, likely a product of 2 doing a lot more with lighting
I was initially hesitant to believe octopath 2 could be anything good until jason schrier made a point of saying how much better it was. it's hard to think of a series that has had such a massive leap in quality going from one game to the next