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[vaibhavpisal]

I am not going to bore you with a lot of text, will just get to highlights and my opinion on its 'major issues'. There may be minor spoilers but it would be better to know them than otherwise.

I will break down all aspects of game like gameplay, etc and address individually.

Gameplay: This is first time I have played a square enix title with job system. I am not an expert in rpg systems but I have played mainstream games. I would put depth of the system on par with shin megami tensei games and even infinity engine games. You can spend endless time tinkering your party at any time. And amount of options available is positively staggering. I wondered how is it possible to balance these many abilities. To be honest there are some abilities that are overpowered, but you get to them late and have to really put in work to figure it out. And that's the beauty of it. If you put in the work, rewards are there for you to reap.

Graphics: it proves artstyle is king. Looks gorgeous on 3ds screen. Backgrounds have creative flair that best Japanese games feature. You can stop anytime for a few seconds, camera zoom out to give full view of area to take in the scenery. I did that a lot.

Music: This is no final fantasy. Tunes are pompous, spontaneous. But is highly enjoyable. It plays in my head when I am not playing. Its the best compliment I can give it. I will get the soundtrack.

Story and writing: Premise and plot is simple world saving affair. You could call it epic if you were not feeling cynical or judgemental.

What really brings it into its own is writing and characters. Each character has such distinct personality its amazing. They are all very relatable and believable. Final boss who talks for mere 10 minutes, is legendary. That's all it takes writing team to establish a character.

Side quests: Best in business. They unlock jobs. Too important to miss out and all bosses that give you jobs are distinct characters in well put together scenarios.

Repetition issues: I had read this game had repetition and entire chapters dedicated to backtracking and what not. I hate repetition. So it was naturally on my backburner. After playing it I did not find it repetitive. On the contrary, I liked gameplay to a point I actually enjoyed it. I will explain how its laid out and you be the judge.

First 80% of the game is completely new stuff. After which map opens up and you get an airship. When you have to redo the stuff, all you have to do is ride the ship to dungeon. Get to dungeon boss which is easy as you have unlocked map and shortcut previously. Defeat the boss which again is easy as those story bosses have elemental weakness and attack pattern you know.

It would take me 2 hours total to redo stuff that needs to be done. I obviously spent lot more than that. Out of 103 hours I spent on the game, that's paltry.

Needless to say I loved it and definitely looking forward to sequal. I hope it becomes a staple franchise for square enix and they make job system based games in future.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Jooxed]

Really sad i missed out on this when I had a 3ds. Look forward to Bravely Default II. Thanks for the writeup!

 

[Danjin44]

I also enjoyed this game, my biggest reason why I’m so hype for 2nd game.

 

[MagnesG]

Amazing game, even if I got burnt out a bit at the end.

 

[ExpandKong]

Great game, I agree with you on the overblown reaction to the repeated bits. Loved the characters and the soundtrack is incredible.

 

[ThatGamingDude]

I enjoyed the game, but agree with the repetition grievances

That was back in the day when Ninty was trying to make their mobile platforms more like phones and shit; that build your town part of the game was a pain in the ass and then when you complete it they don't even give you a fanfare, you just can't do shit with it anymore

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

It's one of my favorite RPGs on the 3DS. Messing around with class combinations and party layouts was a ton of fun. And if you want to skip to a story section, just turn off random encounters. It's a very cozy, convenient RPG.

I agree with you on the characters. Each person plays their stereotypical role, but every character has a full range of emotions and conflicting opinions, so story scenes punch above their weight, considering how cartoony the graphics are.

 

[Kamina]

Which one is better Bravely Default or Bravely Second?
Do you have to play them in order to understand them?

 

[Danjin44]

Which one is better Bravely Default or Bravely Second?
Do you have to play them in order to understand them?

Bravely Second is direct sequel to original game similar to FFX-2, so yes you need to play the first game. But the up coming Bravely Default 2 is similar how FFVIII is not sequel to FFVII.

 

[royox]

Op did you unlock the alternate ending?

Spoiler: Alternate ending

Just keep mashing the button nonstop when Agnes is praying to a crystal, no matter what Airy says

It changes the Tittle screen, very epic. Wish there were more games with a plot twist like that.

 

[royox]

Edit. Double post lol

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Op did you unlock the alternate ending?

Spoiler: Alternate ending

Just keep mashing the button nonstop when Agnes is praying to a crystal, no matter what Airy says

It changes the Tittle screen, very epic. Wish there were more games with a plot twist like that.

I did not. Maybe I should do it.

I am levelled up enough to take on the boss again. End game has landed me at convenient place to do it.

 

[royox]

I did not. Maybe I should do it.

I am levelled up enough to take on the boss again. End game has landed me at convenient place to do it.

 

[Exentryk]

Bravely games have my favourite turn based combat ever. Loved both BD and BS. BS has even better gameplay, but worse in other departments compared to BD. Still, worth playing.

I wasn't too hot on the new BD2 though, as the devs have changed a bunch of things I liked about the series. Lets see how it fares.

 

[Melubas]

I played through about half of it before calling it quits. The gameplay was fine, but it was so full of JRPG tropes that I just couldn't take it. Crystals, clichéed characters, and padded dialogue. I know this is my hate of japanese writing shining through, and I totally get that if you don't care about that the game is probably good, but for me, nah.

 

[Porcile]

I liked it but I remember the battle system being a cake walk, so much so that even the Bravely 2 demo was just as easy for me.

 

[royox]

I played through about half of it before calling it quits. The gameplay was fine, but it was so full of JRPG tropes that I just couldn't take it. Crystals, clichéed characters, and padded dialogue. I know this is my hate of japanese writing shining through, and I totally get that if you don't care about that the game is probably good, but for me, nah.

This "cliché" stuff is the trap of the game and it involves the plot twist of the game. One of the best I remember. The name of the game is a hint of what the player has to do to break the "cliché" story and reach this plot twist, and the subtittle is A TRAP.

Bravely Default: Be brave and stop doing what you are told to do by default.

 

[Life]

I remember getting to a boss who was insanely more difficult than everything I had fought up until that point. That's when I realised the game wants me to grind for 2 hours, fighting the same repetitive enemies to boost my stats and win. Wasn't even that far into the game. That's when I realised, this isn't a difficult game - the combat isn't fun - I'm not being challenged strategically - I'm just supposed to sacrifice 2 hours of my life doing something I don't want to do, in order to keep the story moving? No thanks.

 

[Daymos]

Hard mode is REALLY hard.

I had some issues with the fact that you can turn off random encounters, speed up time, and auto-fight. I maxed out all the jobs by walking in circles with auto-fight on and time sped up while watching something on tv (or even playing ff15). In terms of dungeons later in the game I would just turn off encounters and walk to the boss. I liked the game but I felt a little sick for being able to 'cheat' like that.

Maybe I just need to set up my own rules and stick to them. I think it was gran turismo 4 and B-spec mode were I first encountered a system that ruined 'rpg' gaming for me. I've never really been able to deal with a balance-breaking concept like that that's aimed at the casual gamer. Since it's been like 15 years now I should probably learn to deal with it.. popular games and easy mode/features certainly aren't going to go away. At least there's dark souls.

 

[SantaC]

It was a good game. How was Braverly Second?

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I remember getting to a boss who was insanely more difficult than everything I had fought up until that point. That's when I realised the game wants me to grind for 2 hours, fighting the same repetitive enemies to boost my stats and win. Wasn't even that far into the game. That's when I realised, this isn't a difficult game - the combat isn't fun - I'm not being challenged strategically - I'm just supposed to sacrifice 2 hours of my life doing something I don't want to do, in order to keep the story moving? No thanks.

Somehow this never happened to me. I dont like grinding at all.

Difficulty curve felt like most final fantasy games as in dont avoid any battles and you would automatically level up correctly for each area.

 

[royox]

I remember getting to a boss who was insanely more difficult than everything I had fought up until that point. That's when I realised the game wants me to grind for 2 hours, fighting the same repetitive enemies to boost my stats and win. Wasn't even that far into the game. That's when I realised, this isn't a difficult game - the combat isn't fun - I'm not being challenged strategically - I'm just supposed to sacrifice 2 hours of my life doing something I don't want to do, in order to keep the story moving? No thanks.

When you reach the point of fighting 4 Asterisk bosses at the same time tell us it's not a dificult combat and it's not fun. You need a lot of strategy more than level in this game. It was never a "hard game". It's a game that requires recognising a pattern on the fitghts and use Brave+Default in the correct way to exploit that pattern.

Also leveling up in this game was retardedly easy with the golden eggs getting x10 exp after battles + fast mode.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

To echo royox , Bravely Default's combat feelt like a SMT or Persona game to me, in the sense that it is "hard" until you figure out how to exploit the weaknesses of the enemies in your area. You figure out more combos between classes and that's where the "grinding" goes. In the early chapters, sidequests offer additional classes for your team which usually come in handy for that chapter's boss battle and/or dungeon.

The reason to grind in BD isn't to arbitrarily go up a few levels. It is to unlock a particular skill to improve your party dynamic. For instance, have everyone (even your non-spellcasters) play the Red Mage until they gain 'BP Recovery' (+2 BP when hit by a Status attack) and then just group-cast poison at your own team, twice, at the start of any tough battles. Done! Suddenly a huge range of battles become trivial. The game is packed with devious little exploits like this. It wants you to break the system. Yet, later battles will still give you a tough time even with some of these exploits.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

To echo royox , Bravely Default's combat feelt like a SMT or Persona game to me, in the sense that it is "hard" until you figure out how to exploit the weaknesses of the enemies in your area. You figure out more combos between classes and that's where the "grinding" goes. In the early chapters, sidequests offer additional classes for your team which usually come in handy for that chapter's boss battle and/or dungeon.

The reason to grind in BD isn't to arbitrarily go up a few levels. It is to unlock a particular skill to improve your party dynamic. For instance, have everyone (even your non-spellcasters) play the Red Mage until they gain 'BP Recovery' (+2 BP when hit by a Status attack) and then just group-cast poison at your own team, twice, at the start of any tough battles. Done! Suddenly a huge range of battles become trivial. The game is packed with devious little exploits like this. It wants you to break the system. Yet, later battles will still give you a tough time even with some of these exploits.

Agree with this.

Although I might add, it never asks you to reprepare your party like smt games for every boss and gives you skills beforehand for most part. Saving you grinding that goes with those games.

 

[Life]

Somehow this never happened to me. I dont like grinding at all.

Difficulty curve felt like most final fantasy games as in dont avoid any battles and you would automatically level up correctly for each area.

I played on the hard difficult if I recall - because most RPGs are too easy and battles aren't engaging. Hard just meant you grind more in this game- so I dropped the game of course.

In a game with real difficulty settings - Hard is meant to test your wit, item managament and strategy - not test your valuable time grinding.

 

[hyperbertha]

I played through about half of it before calling it quits. The gameplay was fine, but it was so full of JRPG tropes that I just couldn't take it. Crystals, clichéed characters, and padded dialogue. I know this is my hate of japanese writing shining through, and I totally get that if you don't care about that the game is probably good, but for me, nah.

Ok you hate japanese writing. But what other writing is their? Western? Outside of few exceptions like Plainscape torment and Witcher 3, can't think of a single western game that approaches the japanese in terms of storytelling.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Agree with this.

Although I might add, it never asks you to reprepare your party like smt games for every boss and gives you skills beforehand for most part. Saving you grinding that goes with those games.

I dunno, personally I had to re-tool my party at least once when going up against the biggest bosses. Usually there was some hidden timer or elemental weakness switch mid-battle that threw me off. But you're right. It never forces you to re-prepare and certainly not to the degree of an SMT or Persona game.

 

[Vawn]

Bravely Default is great - it just drags out too long. I didn't live the game the second half as much as I did the first.

I still prefer Octopath Traveler, but I'm super excited for Bravely Default 2.

 

[MagnesG]

I played on the hard difficult if I recall - because most RPGs are too easy and battles aren't engaging. Hard just meant you grind more in this game- so I dropped the game of course.

In a game with real difficulty settings - Hard is meant to test your wit, item managament and strategy - not test your valuable time grinding.

I didn't spent my time grinding much either on hard mode, only a couple of retries on some bosses. There's a plethora of battle strategies/character management involved plus the BD system sequences to factor into, unlike those typical classic FF RPG experience which you mentioned are too easy.

Too bad you waste your time grinding.

 

[ExpandKong]

It’s funny too because I maxed out levels and job levels for every character and the final boss still gave me trouble.

The game gives you the tools to make grinding trivially easy while also expecting you to put more thought into your strategy than just smashing your face against mobs for hours until your numbers get bigger.

TLDR: get good

 

[MagnesG]

It's like Octopath all over again.

 

[Life]

I didn't spent my time grinding much either on hard mode, only a couple of retries on some bosses. There's a plethora of battle strategies/character management involved plus the BD system sequences to factor into, unlike those typical classic FF RPG experience which you mentioned are too easy.

Too bad you waste your time grinding.

I didn't waste any time grinding cos I stopped playing it, as mentioned. And yes, I trust that the strategy elements you mentioned are there - but at the time the only way to gain any access to those options was by levelling up jobs up aka grinding.

It puzzles me that 30 years on and we still tolerate the same repetitive "random encounters" - battles which are never challenging or thoughtful - and which take up about 60% of RPG playtime. - perhaps even more. WHat used to be my favourite genre is seemingly becoming a disliked one - and its frustrating cos I know RPGs can be better, much better. But why make them better when mediocre sells? Why make them better when mediocre is regarded as "amazing"?

 

[MagnesG]

I didn't waste any time grinding cos I stopped playing it, as mentioned. And yes, I trust that the strategy elements you mentioned are there - but at the time the only way to gain any access to those options was by leveling up aka grinding.

It puzzles me that 30 years on and we still tolerate the same repetitive "random encounters" - battles which are never challenging or thoughtful - and which take up about 60% of RPG playtime. - perhaps even more. WHat used to be my favourite genre is seemingly becoming a disliked one - and its frustrating cos I know RPGs can be better, much better. But why make them better when mediocre sells? Why make them better when mediocre is regarded as "amazing"?

Where did you stopped playing really? I never recalled if I ever hit a big wall where I had to brute force my builds to proceed.

I'd like to think that these random encounter are there for you to test your strategies and experimenting, not necessarily only as step for levelup, and it's not that different from confronting monsters in the overworld. You can even set up the encounter rate so I can't really imagine what a better way to improve the system.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

It puzzles me that 30 years on and we still tolerate the same repetitive "random encounters" - battles which are never challenging or thoughtful - and which take up about 60% of RPG playtime. - perhaps even more. WHat used to be my favourite genre is seemingly becoming a disliked one - and its frustrating cos I know RPGs can be better, much better. But why make them better when mediocre sells? Why make them better when mediocre is regarded as "amazing"?

Most rpgs are made of random encounters or similar battles.

Do you have a better idea that could improve them? Other than designing every encounter personally by one of the designers to feel fresh. Cause that would take a lot of resources for development.

 

[Life]

Most rpgs are made of random encounters or similar battles.

Do you have a better idea that could improve them? Other than designing every encounter personally by one of the designers to feel fresh. Cause that would take a lot of resources for development.

Just because most rpgs are the same in the battle department - doesn't make it OK.

Solution is simple, make it easy to level up and gain new skills/strategy options. Make enemies much less common - but in return - you give them good AI, attacks that surprise and test the player - and make battles last 5 to 10 minutes each. Each battle has to be different and then you mix/match the enemy types and keep the player on his toes.

In between battles you come across puzzles, NPCs, hidden chest, etc etc.

Yes it takes time and resources - but we're talking about making a proper game here - not a copy paste formula from decades ago with better graphics and colours.

Edit: Also, you must include envinroment/tactical positioning within battles - it's such a simple way of adding depth to battles and yet most rpgs dont make use of it.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Solution is simple, make it easy to level up and gain new skills/strategy options.

This is exactly where this game excels at. It has 24 jobs that you level upto level 14. All of them are trivially easy to level upto level 9.

Thats a ton of abilities and you can equip any of them regardless of your current job.

Solution is simple, make it easy to level up and gain new skills/strategy options. Make enemies much less common - but in return - you give them good AI, attacks that surprise and test the player - and make battles last 5 to 10 minutes each. Each battle has to be different and then you mix/match the enemy types and keep the player on his toes.

I wonder if it would be even possible to design game with these requirements.

Easy to level up but challenging enemies. Without hitting level cap within few hours.

 

[MagnesG]

Just because most rpgs are the same in the battle department - doesn't make it OK.

Solution is simple, make it easy to level up and gain new skills/strategy options. Make enemies much less common - but in return - you give them good AI, attacks that surprise and test the player - and make battles last 5 to 10 minutes each. Each battle has to be different and then you mix/match the enemy types and keep the player on his toes.

In between battles you come across puzzles, NPCs, hidden chest, etc etc.

Yes it takes time and resources - but we're talking about making a proper game here - not a copy paste formula from decades ago with better graphics and colours.

Edit: Also, you must include envinroment/tactical positioning within battles - it's such a simple way of adding depth to battles and yet most rpgs dont make use of it.

Hmm it's more like you preferring a different game design, not simply a solution per se. How do you tackle the playtime, budget and resources to get past all of these then? Your preferences are not that clear either, it just look like a clutter of features with no clear core game design. Also mix/match of enemy of enemy types had been there since ages, just not that often, only apparent when you get to a new region, budget and all that.

I get that when you don't feel excited about experimenting the battle system everything will feels boring or not worth the hassle in an RPG, but that shouldn't be the reason to just knock off the thing and calls it mediocre and unthoughtful. The strategy is all up there even with you blaming the lazy grind you chose to do. It's ironic that you want the genre to be different and evolving but you still refuse to properly learn the tricks, I just really don't understand this thought process especially when I had blast playing through it, at least before nearing the end.