Well, dang. If you’ve got a spare simile about hotcake sales, this would be the time to deploy it. Octopath Traveler is just burning it up at the moment. Again.

Since Nintendo Switch was first announced, a little exclusive JRPG named Octopath Traveler had been quietly soaking up the limelight. Casual fans may not have noticed it, in among all the Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild hype, but there it was in the background, gathering momentum.

A new retro-tinged JRPG from genre veterans Square Enix is the sort of thing that garners attention, of course. These days, after all, turn-based throwbacks like these tend to be labours of love from smaller indie teams, not genre giants like Square Enix.

Couple that with the fact that the Switch has been quite the success story itself, and you can understand that Octopath Traveler was in high demand when it launched. But this high?

RELATED: Nintendo and Square Enix Underestimated Octopath Traveler’s Physical Sales, And Now Everywhere Is Backordered For Months

Octopath Traveler Three Hours
Via: Nintendo Wikia

Just last week, Square Enix were issuing apologies to fans who were unable to get their hands on a physical copy. Now, they’re back. They’ve restocked the game. They’re harder, better, faster, stronger, and they’re… issuing another apology to fans who were unable to get their hands on a physical copy.

Oh, yes indeed. As Nintendo Life reports, this past weekend, Yodobashi Camera (one of Japan’s biggest retailers of games and electronics) received another crop of copies. They promptly disappeared from shelves within three hours.

As was the case with the previous dearth (last week we saw online backorders stretching forward for a month or two), Square Enix issued a super unhelpful Tweet in response to the stock crisis. It essentially reminds disappointed fans that they’re still able to download the game from the eShop. So… you know, that’s comforting.

Octopath Traveler is an excellent game, and eager genre fans (who were lucky enough to have gotten their copy) have been lapping it up for the most part. Besides that, it’s always super encouraging to see a third-party exclusive performing well on the system. This has always been a weakness of the Japanese giant’s consoles, after all. It’s crucial that supply is able to meet demand, though, so let’s see the response to this situation going forward.