Bravely Default II - Review
About time we got another Bravely Default game, now broken free of its 3DS prison and arriving on the Switch. I enjoyed both of the previous games, though it’s been a few years now so my memory of them is a little hazy. Whether it’s been a while or you never got a chance in the past, the good news is that Bravely Default 2 has a new story with all new characters, no prior knowledge needed. There has never been a better time to leap into the series (besides you know, when the first one came out) so does Bravely Default 2 still have what it takes?
The story of Bravely Default 2 follows four characters - Seth is a sailor found washed up on a beach, his boat wrecked by unusually savage seas. Elvis is a scholar with his hired mercenary Adelle in tow, travelling in search of Asterisks to help unlock the secrets of a mysterious book. Princess Gloria is the last surviving royal from the city of Musa, a city that housed the four elemental crystals but now destroyed with the crystals gone. Her goal is to recover the crystals to restore the damage they are wrecking on the world, but more importantly is the crystals are needed to save the world from a dark fate. The journey to recover the crystals will take the group around their world, awaken the power of the crystals and stop the very evil looking empire from getting them.
There are some twists and turns as you would expect with a lengthy RPG. As always, there’s plenty of familiar tropes, although the story does make some really interesting detours. All helped by the fact that your party is only four members, so there’s enough time to give them more fleshed out characters. It’s also a nice change of pace to not be stuck juggling around an ever-increasing group of heroes.
While there is the main story, throughout the world there are people who have jobs for your group to fulfil. More often than not it’s fetch quests, running back and forth between cities and other locations across the map. Then there’s the odd side story such as Truff, a pig-like monster that can talk and is trying to search for his friend. It’s a lovely little aside with one of the more stand out characters, next to Dag the very Australian goofball bad guy. It’s a shame that the majority of the side quests are so light on substance. Eventually it’s easier to ignore them unless you happen to be in the area. The more involved side stories are obvious, they get a talking cutscene and everything. These ones are usually worth paying attention to, they can be where some of the more unusual Asterisks can be found. Those stories also have more meat to them, some of them are quite touching. The overarching story also has some quite emotional moments to it too, some darker moments surprised me. What starts off as a clear good VS evil story proves to
The Bravely Default series already has two main entries, but the games are a sort of continuation of the heroes of light genre and the job system that was set up in Final Fantasy 4: heroes of light. Bravely Default not only made fans of that era of Final Fantasy happy, but also appealed to RPG fans like myself looking for a new spin on turn based combat. The turn based combat is still there of course, but the Brave/Default mechanic is what adds another layer to your fights. You have BP, the points you use to take your turn, and you can use one action just like other games. Then you can decide to be Brave and use up to three actions in one turn, do this and you’ll have to wait a few turns to recover BP. If you don’t want to do anything just yet or want to go into a defensive state, you can choose to Default. Defaulting means you store a BP (up to three), and if you want you can take three actions in one go without the risk of going Bravely. It’s a real risk and reward system, do you go all out on an enemy for high damage and risk being exposed for several turns? Or do you take your time as you whittle their health down? The enemy also operates on the same mechanic, so you need to account that they could be building up to devastating attacks while also reducing your damage in Default. While you can brute force your way through combat with bombarding the enemy with multiple brave attacks, you’ll quickly find you won’t get far.
In Bravely Default, jobs are gained through an item called an Asterisk. These jobs are the same as your usual RPG classes - Mages, Warriors, Healers, and some other more niche class types I won’t spoil. Over many hours you’ll pick up a decent amount of these Asterisks to add a new job to your team, they’re often gained through boss battles. The jobs can be levelled up in a separate meter than your experience points, and as the jobs gain levels you can more abilities. Some abilities can only be used while you are still using that job, but some are passive and can be added to a pool of abilities regardless of your current job. You get a main job and a sub-job, which means you can specialise in two potentially very different classes. If the job isn’t going well against certain enemies or bosses, you can always switch jobs outside of battle. As long as you level up the job for that character, you can have a wide range of jobs to mix and match with.
If you’ve played a Bravely Default game before you would be familiar with the art style. On the 3DS, this more cartoonish ‘bobble head’ style worked well with the limited hardware. Now it would be weird for the series to lose that art style, but I will admit it looks strange seeing it on a more powerful console/handheld. With some characters the designs work better, although it’s a shame that there isn’t more of the lovely character art you can see in the menu. All of the cities are big fantasy RPG works of art, not all of them are easy to navigate, but they all look great at least.
It happens to sound great too, which shouldn’t be any surprise to Bravely Default or Square Enix RPG fans. Some of the music can get a bit tired, especially after a lot of fighting. Thankfully the battle music gets an update later into the game, which is a breath of fresh air so many hours in.
One of the biggest issues I had with the game was the difficulty spikes. They are brutal and make progress all but impossible without extra level grinding. Even switching the game to the casual difficulty setting doesn’t do much to help, your team can still be easily wiped out.
Because of the job system you have to go into those big fights with a levelled up job. Come across a boss where it doesn’t work and it’s back to square one. It wouldn’t be so bad if it felt like the game was playing fair with these encounters. Some boss battles have genuinely interesting ways to take them on, but they have so much HP that the battles drag on past the point of entertaining and dips into tedium even on Casual difficulty. All of this is made worse because the bosses often have some devastating moves that you won’t be able to prepare for as they absolutely bombard and devastate your party. Around the ten hour mark, you start to come up against several bosses with these kinds of moves. There’s plenty of fights where you’re rewarded by fighting smarter, but at the early stages of the game you aren’t equipped with as many jobs. Here is where the game regresses into its more retro RPG leanings by dragging out the game with level grinding. It becomes frustrating over the 40+ hours as way too much of that time is spent trying to over-level your team or losing 30-40 minutes to some of the more painful bosses. Getting wiped out almost immediately after hitting the last stretch of a battle with no chance to get into a Default stance brought out a fair few swear words during my time with the game.
With the previous games there were settings that would allow you much more flexibility around managing battles, but Bravely Default 2 feels like those settings were forgotten. While Bravely Default 2 has enemies you can now see in the world, it doesn't mean you should scrap the sliders for encountering random battles. Overall it feels like the series is starting to lose some of the more accessible features in place for leaning on the old tired RPG bloat.
Loading screens are plentiful throughout Bravely Default 2, they show up too often. When moving between floors in a dungeon it’s just a minor annoyance. But it's when it happens during lengthy story cutscenes where it becomes a real issue. Some really big story moments were really undercut by loading screens ruining the momentum of a scene. It was like having an ad break suddenly show up, a real momentum killer.
I have very mixed feelings about Bravely Default 2, on one hand it is great to see this enjoyable series finally out on a console. Yet at the same time this newest entry feels like a step back. I really enjoyed the time I spent with the heroes of light, sharing their journey through a surprisingly grim world. If Square Enix made a more accessible game to enjoy the story, I would be singing this game's praises much more. If not for all the great moments being followed by some bloated level grinding and a complete disregard for the players time. With that all said I really hope we get to see more of this series. The job system as well as the Brave/Default mechanics all bundled up with some charming characters make this game worth checking out - if you have a lot of time on your hands.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Nintendo
The Pros
+A party worth travelling with
+The Jobs and Brave/Default mechanics are still great
+Looks and sounds great
The Cons
-Difficulty spikes really sour the first third of the game
-Loading screens happens a little too often
-Feels less accessible than the previous games of the series
