Bravely Default II impressions

While I’m a couple dozen hours deep into the game, I’m not ready to call this a review. I’m genre savvy to the Bravely series, and I know there’s going to be some kind of twist prior to endgame.

In the meantime, “Inverted Pyramid” method means I have to start this piece with the single most important piece of information. You already know that REVO is back to do the soundtrack, but I can confirm that it is as amazing as it should be.

Other parts of the game’s presentation are largely the same as in the final demo. There are signs of small tweaks, but everything I’ve said about its style and mechanics remains true enough to the final release. Oddly, the games true beauty is harder to see in stills than in motion.

The story revolves around half of the party hunting down and reclaiming the Final Fantasy-esque four elemental crystals, whose misuse has been causing climate disasters all over the world. The other half are deliberately collecting the series’ job-bearing Asterisks to study them. All the while, as you might guess, larger forces are at work manipulating the fate of the world.

I’m actually looking forward to seeing what comes of studying the Asterisks. One of the hallmarks of the Bravely series is doing extreme worldbuilding around what in other games would just be game mechanics you aren’t supposed to think about. What, exactly, the Asterisks even *are* is one of the few mysteries that remain after the first two games.

Speaking of which, the game’s difficulty curve is best described as tuned to access to Asterisks. Battles start off simple, straightforward and easy. Once you start collecting Asterisks, though, Bravely Default II will ramp things up. Monster formations start getting beefier in the areas beyond your first Asterisk-bearing boss battle. And once you have more than the starter jobs, you’ll encounter large groups of enemies with strong abilities of their own that make good use of the brave and default commands. Random encounters won’t be free, and the game expects you use them to test the potential of party builds and new abilities. I would even go so far as the difficulty curve is such that it expects you to try to break the game as best you can using the jobs at your disposal. This is especially true in boss battles. They’re rarely cakewalks no matter how prepared you are, because bosses hardly ever fight alone and become more powerful as you deplete their hit points.

The sidequests in Bravely Default II are much more numerous than before, though most take on a MMOish quality — Kill X monsters. Go to the marker on your map, pick up item, return with it. Run back and forth between two NPCs until they mercifully release you from your duty. Those sorts of things. But you don’t want to skip them willy-nilly, because there are several consequential sidequests, even if the stated goal is mundane.

Some sidequests lead to boss fights for new Asterisks and new jobs for your party to learn. Others take you delving into dungeons you’d otherwise not have to explore, and won’t be able to find all their treasures without the quest active. And several of the sidequests also expand the story. One simple fetch quest in Chapter 1 ends up being the only way to see how Elvis and Adelle first met.

Yet another thing gated behind a sidequest is a new feature that seems to want to emulate the StreetPass functions from the first two games. Upon completion of the quest, you will be able to borrow a boat and send it out to explore the ocean when the game is on, but the Switch is asleep. The treasures it returns with are always money, stat-boosting items, experience point-boosting items, and job point-booting items. If you’re a busy enough person, these expeditions can take the place of grinding battles to keep up with the difficulty curve.

Overall, Bravely Default II appears to be aimed squarely at series veterans, but not because of the story; that’s a new tale and different setting than before. And while I get a lot of entertaining out of that story, you come to a game with a job system because you want to play the job system. Combat is expected to be the meat and potatoes of such a game, with its ideal player eager to build new parties and try out different combinations of jobs and skills.

I was initially concerned that Bravely Default II was trending toward adding too much complexity, but it ended up being just more room to explore instead of a higher barrier to access.

All in all, Bravely Default II has been a satisfying experience, and I’m eager to see where the rest of the game takes me.