I had a good time with Octopath Traveler, I beat that game last year. I will concur that to get to Ch 2 it does take a bit of grinding. The good news is that the subsequent chapters are not that bad and levelling gets quicker. I actually liked the voice-acting for the most part, but I have never been picky about English voice-acting. Certain bosses do require specific characters or classes to make it go faster that much is for sure.

I will say that they should have weaved the party into the other stories a bit better. There is an instance in Cyrus' Ch 2, I believe, that does not make sense if the other party members were there. But for it is worth, I enjoyed the game. Music was pretty good. I did get save scummy with trying to steal from people for good equipment or items. Overall I found it to be a solid entry from SE and a nice homage to older JRPGs.

The new Dragon Quest 3 2D-HD remake will have a similar graphical style which will be nice.