4/5

This was my first Bravely Default game, and it was a banger. I played this straight after playing Dragon Quest XIS, which I gave a 5/5, and found many similarities between the two throughout my playthrough. They both harken back to old-school JRPG’s in gameplay, story structure and presentation. For my money, however, Bravely Default elevates all three (maybe 2) of those elements in ways which make this game pretty much perfectly suited to my tastes.

I’ll start with gameplay because for me this is where the game truly shines. My most played switch game is Fire Emblem Three Houses, a game where I bore the (IMO) sub-par writing, story, and presentation for its golden egg – character progression and customization. Bravely Default 2 has a similarly addicting character progression and job system which is inspired by those found in Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy III and V and more. I was obsessed with levelling different jobs to acquire new passive abilities that I could then combine with other jobs and passives to create gnarly combos. The system gives you a level of control and freedom that encourages you to conceptualise how these skills might interact and see that play out. Jobs also affect stats and the weight of equipment you can equip – which is another fantastic addition which creates a push and pull to what you focus on when kitting out your characters. The gameplay is classic turn-based fare with the addition of braves and defaults which I think is excellent and opens even more strategy.

The highlight is the boss battles – where your team is really tested. I played on hard difficulty which was extremely challenging at first but as my team attained more abilities became gradually easier, yet always satisfying. Bosses also have counter abilities which you are forced to play around, meaning I could not beat down all the bosses with the same strategies – I do think that analysing targets should reveal these counters for easier strategizing. In terms of grinding, I never found myself grinding for levels throughout my playthrough. I did however grind for job points at multiple stops so I could unlock new abilities, and this was entirely voluntary and made easier using the monster treat items and 4x battle speed. I never found myself over levelled in doing this. There is a decent smattering of post-game content (job trials) which I didn’t dive fully into, but the few I did complete were good fun.

Dungeon crawling is also satisfying, primarily due to an early ability you attain that shows how many chests are in a given area. It's satisfying to figure out how the a labyrinth fits together and collecct all the treausure, which usually contains great equipment - making exploration rewarding which is an easy win for me. Finally, there is a fun board game built into the game which is always great. I found it to be fun but pretty easy to beat my opponents once I had a few solid cards.

I was very apprehensive about tackling this game after the behemoth that was DQXI as I tend to space out my JRPG playthroughs. In my experience the stories tend to have a plodding, bloated nature to them can wear me down throughout a playthrough, with some exceptions. Bravely Default 2 had all the warning signs of such a story early on – four warriors of light hunting crystals travelling from town to town – however, the whole thing was packaged with just enough freshness to keep me engaged. I found all four members of the party very endearing in a very simple and one-dimensional way. I especially enjoyed Elvis and his lame humour, but they were all fantastic. Their interactions with different people across the cities were to me quite charming, they tackle interesting themes like using religion to take advantage of your followers, grief, and the struggles of leadership. The exploration of these themes does come across as fairly naïve, but I personally don’t expect much more than that from a game like this, especially with its style of presentation. I feel like the game could be edited down to a nice 40 hours from the 60 it took me (including doing about three quarters of the available side quests) by just cutting out a dungeon here or there, but I understand that they tried to attach a dungeon to each asterisk (job) that you collect. Bravely Default 2 strongly sticks its landing. The ending had me guessing right until its true end, and I think it thoroughly earns its cheesiness.

The presentation is the only part of the game I found lacking at times. The aesthetic is a mixed bag. I absolutely loved exploring the beautiful cities – where it is presented like an updated version of the old 3D character models on a 2D backdrop. The designs of the cities themselves were very creative and immediately engaging. I also liked the overworld exploration, where it’s a fully 3D miniature kind of exploration, like the old Final Fantasy’s. The camera was pretty whack in these overworld sections as you don’t have full tilt control over it so sometimes can’t see baddies running up to you. The character models really threw me off at first, but they slowly grew on me as charming. However, the performance of this game is pretty shocking. The framerate consistently drops both randomly and when performing certain tasks like talking to people, there are obvious frame pacing issues and even menu’s chug sometimes. I would have absolutely preferred a hit to the ambitious aesthetic of the game for some smooth performance. I found the music to be wonderfully old school, and the voice acting very solid, with a few occasional misses. Just the fact that it is voice acted is so novel for me in this style of game and I found it adds a lot to the characterisation of your party.

This is an absolutely easy recommend for me to anyone looking to recapture the style of games like the old school Final Fantasy’s.