Bravely Default Series

Heh, Godspeed Strike and Pressure Point are essentially carrying my offense right now. Shieldmaster with White Mage secondary has been working very well for my Gloria.

My game got broken the moment my first Beastmaster hit Joblevel 12 and I realized that their stats just tripled...

Yeah the Beastmaster capstone is kinda amazing.

I am disapointed with the thief. Success rate for steal (Even with a luck boost from the Freelancer ability) seems abyssimal.

Also the Gambler's passive is awful makes leveling the class a chore.

Ironically Gambler was the first class I hit level 12 with because I got 15x JP when I fought Bernard (whom I killed by throwing money at him for the sheer irony...and because I ran out of tamed beasts)

Berserker + Vanguard - Neo Cross Slash with two axes on 3 party members, 4 if you don't need a white mage. Every boss between chapters 2 and 5 no longer exists. And I'm playing on hard mode! Berserker hitting through default is so so good!

Granted there's a couple of bosses that's not the optimum strategy, but it's amazingly good. Especially when you get abilities like dual wield and raw power.

Edited by EruditeEsotericist on Mar 17th 2021 at 1:05:38 PM

I killed Bernard with the minotaurs from his own mansion, whom he's weak again and who each punched him for 2k a pop.

Having fought Galahad, I'm really glad I took the time to get Godspeed Strike. I'd hate to try that fight again without it!

Now, onto the artist behind it all.

The second fight against him battered me to Hell. Since I tend not to use mixed physical/magic teams, needing to do so sucked in the rematch. I was able to brute force my way through the "immunity to physical" battle, but not so much against both paintings.

Once I beat FFIX I'm putting BDII into my Switch for my next run.

They went full ATB with the battle engine this time? Noice, time to abuse Haste and Quicken trickery.

Sort of. It's still turn based - you can leave your device sitting and you won't come back 5 mins later to a dead party. But the turn order is ATB style.

I've been playing Bravely Default 2 recently, and I kind of wish that sailing accumulates hours when your Switch is turned off, not just when you have it on sleep while the game is still running.

Still, it's a lot of fun so far.

So, it's basically ATB under Wait mechanics. Nice.

So the JP bonus you get when you start a new job at level 1?

It applies to job orbs.

So save a job orb for a new job, instead of 750 jp, it's worth 1250.

There's one weird exception, the stat bonuses from specials are based on real time durations, not number of turns like most buffs/debuffs (They are literally timed to the music). So the longer you spend in menus selecting how to be use those sweet buffs, the less characters get to use them. It's weird coz they seem to be the only thing that ticks down during menus.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 24th 2021 at 8:29:03 AM

That's a straight up carryover from both previous games. It also means it's best to set the battle speed to its highest so the animations don't reduce the time you've got to select actions.

Using other specials resets the timer, so it's best to have all your characters able to use their specials, then space them out so that all the benefits apply for the maximum length of time possible.

Nonetheless is weird that this one mechanic is the sole one to operate on a different time scale than literally every other combat mechanics

I'm up to what I'm assuming is the actual end of the game (talk to the boat lady and go to the Outer Oceans), so I've been spending time finishing up other things before I do that. Mainly sidequests, but also grinding out job levels on everyone and job weapons from the challenge portals.

For the portals, I've been using a strategy that relies on using a Phantom/Salvemaker to incapacitate the enemy team and fully heal my team each turn without using up items, thanks to how Guaranteed Results combines with Master Medic. My Thief dishes out damage with GSS, and my Bravebearer spams Equalize to get everyone ready to go again. My Black Mage/Red Mage is on standby for when I absolutely need magic damage.

Something that's kind of bugging me: the passive abilities for some of the jobs, when taken together, can be rather anti-synergistic. The two that stick out are Berserker (You can freely choose actions sometimes when berserk! Oh, and also, you can't go berserk.) and Shieldbearer (In exchange for not getting BP when you Default, Defaulting makes you immune to certain status! Also, you take less damage at positive BP, but more at negative BP.). ^note Yeah, I know there are other ways to gain BP, but Defaulting is the, um, default method of doing that This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the job weapons didn't give you all of that job's passives at the same time, which just sort of makes those job weapons less desirable.

On that note, how come the job weapon for Shieldmaster... is an axe? Seems like the obvious choice would be a shield. Hell, one of Shieldmaster's passive abilities only activates if you equip two shields, which you obviously can't do with an axe in one hand.

The lack of Blue Mage in BDII disheartens me.

Beastmaster is kind of like Blue Mage

Alright, I've just started chapter 4 and am probably going to be boring and take the kingdoms in order. Some very brief observations of mine:

• I'm only just now realizing how much the lake in Halcyonia is a Peninsula of Power Leveling for jobs.
• I really hope the Genji Gloves or some equivalent is available because the stealing proc rate feels abysmal.
• This game feels a little back-ended in terms of Stuff Happening.
• Is the II in the title going to end up being part of #not aII fairies?

Having just beaten all of the portal bosses (save the one that needs to be unlocked via more story progression) I have to say I'm disappointed as the Eternian gauntlet in the first game did this concept much more cleverly. There's no real thought put into these teams and little synergy - the gimmick of them gaining BP in respose to literally everything means battles boil down to you either locking them all down with Phantom/Salve-Maker ailment spam on the first turn or dying horribly. I guess that makes them easy to farm from but it's still a letdown.

finished the game

honestly, you just need the skill that auto-captures monsters at the end of battle and you can sail through endgame with four beastmasters

What monsters are best to catch?

All of them, Beastmaster's second passive boosts your stats based on the number of captured monsters.

Aqua Elementals from that canyon between Savalon and Halcyonia cast Gravity which can hit bosses for the damage cap, only with 50% accuracy but dealing 4998 on average is still a strong Disk One Nuke.

So I finally beat the game the other day. Aside from a few quibbles the gameplay and Job system was fantastic as usual and I loved all the QoL improvements that made Job grinding so much easier and less of a hassle. Experimenting with different sets and coming up with some truly game-breaking comboes has never been more rewarding.

The story and world veered more towards So Okay, It's Average though. The story's competent and the party is likeable but the world lacking stuff similar to the more fantastical locations from Luxendarc like the Grandship or Florem and having fewer larger-than-life characters like, say, Barbarossa, made it feel like there was a certain spark missing compared to the previous two titles. I was also rather surprised that the fourth wall breaking felt very toned down and the meta-narrative elements introduced in Second like the Planeswardens that could've been used to tie the whole multiverse together were completely dropped.