Dude, the battle system of this game is easily the best I've ever seen in an RPG. The sheer amount of customization options available give it a metric fuckton of replay value, and the BP system adds an astounding level of depth to what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill system. This game has challenged my ability to strategize and plan ahead in a way that any other simple turn-based system never could.
If you honestly didn't have fun with this, then I don't know what to tell you, because gameplay-wise this is easily one of the best RP Gs Squeenix has put out since Final Fantasy Tactics.
Eh... all of the cool stuff you can get access to is kinda mitigated by the grinding necessary to get it, personally. It's entirely possible to get through the game without realizing that some of the stranger options even exist
Zennistard, I even said that combat-wise the game is fine. Experimenting with builds was the high point of the game and yeah I liked it... but I've played other games that require strategy going into big fights that also had much better plots. Persona 3 comes to mind regarding a game with both great gameplay and story.
My problem is with the story. The godawful story that's just absolute garbage and should've never gotten the green light. And even the gameplay suffers from the repetitive time loops, to the point you don't hit that point of needing to plan boss fights seriously until the group fights in chapter 7. And even then, Stillness + Ninjas man. I didn't use it but I know plenty of people breezed through the game with that.
Also Hylarn, grinding is actually like... nothing in this game. Once you hit chapter 5, just do autobattles in the Eisen region and have everyone spam healing moves. Most effective if someone has Healing Lore and Epic Group-Cast. You'll be level 99 and have maxed out every job in but a short while and then you have no incentive of doing random battles again aside from filling out the beastiary. Hell, you'll actually hit level 99 long before you finish mastering every available job.
The problem is that once you do that you might as well just turn off all random encounters, and in doing so the game really, really starts to feel empty and lifeless. A handful of towns in game world that has so little to offer, with very little variance on what the characters actually do going from place to place. Final Fantasy 3 wasn't that ambitious of a game outside of the jobs system there too, but at least had the sequence where you turn yourself super tiny and have a boss fight against a conventionally-sized mouse. Aside from its customization stuff Bravely Default just doesn't have anything to offer. For such a big, hyped-up project with so much promise it just left me so unsatisfied I had to stop playing it partway through because Shovel Knight'd just come out and like hell was I going to delay actually having *fun* with a game.
Also Hylarn, grinding is actually like... nothing in this game. Once you hit chapter 5, just do autobattles in the Eisen region and have everyone spam healing moves. Most effective if someone has Healing Lore and Epic Group-Cast. You'll be level 99 and have maxed out every job in but a short while and then you have no incentive of doing random battles again aside from filling out the beastiary. Hell, you'll actually hit level 99 long before you finish mastering every available job.
...I wouldn't consider the several hours that takes to be 'a short while', but okay (and I think Florem is better for that)
I don't want to get in the semantics of where to grind since that's not really what my complaints are bout. But I will say though that grinding even for several hours is pretty much going to happen anyways. The enemies don't change at all in chapters 5-8 and there are no new enemies outside of those ones until you get the final dungeon. The increased toughness of the Jobmasters makes it difficult to really use them to level-up the jobs you haven't used much of yet, and conventionally playing will have you just fight the same enemies over and over again anyways. So it's either grinding over the course of travels from area to area, or just getting it all out of the way in one go.
Dude, if you want a throwback to oldschool Square RPG's, Final Fantasy: The 4 heroes of light is definitely the superior option
I didn't buy it because I wanted an oldschool-style RPG, I bought it because it was a new title with a lot of hype behind it that -as far as I knew- coincidentally happened to be an oldschool-style RPG. It started out that way but it certainly didn't stay that way.
"Persona 3 comes to mind regarding a game with both great gameplay and story"
You lost me there.
I'm not sure about you but I find the story interesting. Sure the story after chapter 4 gets boring and all but I'm there for the story and game. And it has a split ending as well. The sidequest, though optional actually gives more background of the story. If you reach the end, you're probably going to get confused with the angel and how the sage and De Rosso knew about what will happen so I think the sidequest is helpful.
My problem with the backstory stuff with De Rosso is that this *massive* exposition dump gets thrown at you, but it explains a ton of shit that doesn't necessarily need to be (the asterisks) and overcomplicates the forced moral ambiguity that makes up the first four chapters.
For that matter, the fact that the Agnes that De Rosso and Yulena met in the past is supposedly the Agnes from the iteration just prior to the game's first one also makes the whole timeline fucked up beyond belief.
Well, I think you'll be happy that this doesn't happen in Bravely Second End Layer as all the new asterisk bearers are plot relevant.
Your opinion, Steam, but I personally really enjoyed Bravely Default; it was a refreshing break from Square Enix's stupid design changes present in FF 13 and the like (or so I've heard; I'lve only really finished this and IV). That, and I think every moment is fantastic; sure, the Sacred Flower Festival is something I tend to skip, but that's the ONLY thing I skip (aside from the "Whew, we won" after defeating one of Lord De Rosso's dragons). I absolutely love the writing, and how Ringabel grows and matures as a person in particular. So, you may not like it, but it's still better than most of SE's stuff nowadays.
Persona 3 comes to mind regarding a game with both great gameplay and story
Uh... sure. I personally found Persona 3's story to be meh, the entire game suffered from horrible pacing issues and the gameplay was not all that different from what I had played before.
But Steam, this should teach you to not play a game that is being hyped up.
Steam, if you're playing a game like Bravely Default for the story, then you're not coming into it with the right expectations. BD is the spiritual successor to the SNES-era Final Fantasy games, and before VI Final Fantasy never actually had that great of a story. IV was full of contrivances and relied heavily on tropes that were cliche even at the time it was released, and V was far too light-hearted and comical to have the level of emotional depth that came to be expected of the rest of the series.
Bravely Default is a game that is fundamentally about its combat system. And in my view, that's all it takes to be a fantastic game in its own right.
@Zennistrad: Depends on the player, then. Each demands something else from a game. For example, I demand the story and characters to be great in an RPG or Visual Novel. Because those two games mostly rely heavily on having an interesting story to keep the player engaged.
A fighting game, I'd say requires good controls and fighting. I don't play a fighting game for the story. (As Persona 4 Arena seemed to think it was a Visual Novel and not a fighting game)
Leave a Comment:
Should have never bought this
Believe me, I was pumped when I first got Bravely Default. I thought I'd be getting a great throwback to oldschool Square RP Gs where the belts-per-person ratio is low and the writing is simple but not stupid. The prologue rocked for me, but before long the glamor of the writing began to decline with Chapter 2's stupidity over a fashion show and contacting Olivia that it lost me. For a genre that's long-since generally hammered out gameplay, story is what keeps you invested and Bravely Default's is just a massive middle finger.
What really turns me off though is how clever the game thought it was being and how it kept shoving its alleged cleverness in your face. The sidequests drop hints about the grander plot, and some of them (such as the Vampire quest) all but spell everything out. But because they're optional sidequests, they have no real impact on the actual overall narrative and nobody bothers discussing them at all. I've played old and more recent jRPGs with better writing than this. Final Fantasy 1 had better writing than this drivel. At least that game kept its space-time tomfoolery in line.
Mechanically, it's sound... although boss difficulty is all over the place in and near the endgame. The dynamic with the Jobmasters was fine too and I rather liked Edea's interactions and relationships with them. Honestly I'd rather the game have just been about that with Edea as the focus; a simple but fun story. She's the most well-rounded and interesting of the heroes. But Square couldn't have that. Instead they had a game that disregards all sense of pacing in the second half for tedious busywork and congratulating itself over making an RPG with one of the worst stories I've ever seen. All this buildup, all the obnoxious false-starts about getting the plot into high gear, and you get a final boss without a hint of originality and whose archtype has been done better in pretty much every medium of fiction.
With only a 400 word limit for this review, I can't get into everything right here, but I'll be willing to take this to the comments if anyone has questions or want to discuss anything. But I leave you with this: supposedly the title means to "Bravely go against what's expected of you". Take that as the hint and don't buy this garbage. Play a good RPG instead, old or new. There's plenty out there.