Bravely Default: Flying Fairy (3DS)

[Thigolf]

 

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy (or simply "Bravely Default" in Europe) is an upcoming turnbased RPG for Nintendo 3DS. The game was released in 2012 in Japan. However, this year, an improved version of the game got announced, with improved graphical effects, now story events and other small improvements, which will be the version that will be released in Europe on December 6 and in NA in 2014.

 

The game is a traditional JRPG, mostly like the early Final Fantasy games (the title Flying Fairy, short FF, is even supposed to be a nod to that).

 

Just one example of the beautiful scenery in this game

 

You explore a big overworld with random enemy encounters that make your journey more difficult. While the character models are 3D, the towns are handdrawn.

 

Like a dragon is able to stop girls like these.

 

The battle system is pretty much the regular thing you'd get in a classic Final Fantasy RPG: Attacking, Magic, Summons, even Limitbreaks.

The title "Bravely Default" isn't simply a title without any relation to the actual game, however: "Brave" and "Default" are actually commands in Battle. The characters have something called BP: With the Default command, you can store up those points, while you can use the Brave command to use those stored points to attack multiple times without letting the enemy get a change to attack back. However, you can get negative BP, letting the enemy attack you multple times without being able to fight back. This system keeps the classic turnbased formular while adding a new twist to it.

 

What would a FF style game be without a Blackmage?

 

The Job system of other classic RPGs is also present in this game. There are over 20 jobs to choose from, classic ones like Swordsman or  Black Mage, but also stuff like Vampire or Time Mage are an option.

 

 The main characters: Edea, Tiz, Agnes and Ringabel

The starting plot of the game is rather simple, again, just like in early RPGs: The girl Agnes is in control of the Wind Crystal. This crystal gets engulfed by the dark, however, and so she sets of on an adventure to free it. He gets pursued by the Eternian's airforce, who seek the power of the crystal and the one who possesses it. On her journey, she gets joined by Tiz, the only boy who survived a tragic event that wiped out a giant hole in the Land of Gardisra, Edea, the daughter of a high tier in the military with a strong sense of justice and Ringabel, who seduces girls with his charm and posseses a book that is able to tell what will happen in the future.

 

The game will be released this december in Europe and Japan and 2014 in North America. Europe is even getting an Collector's Editon of the game!

 

Look how awesome it is!

[Autosaver]

 

 

This is creepy.

[buba]

This is creepy.

 

More like a reason to buy it.

[Autosaver]

They look 10 in the chibi form.

 

Bleh!

[Komodin]

 

 

This is creepy.

 

Hm, I don't know, man. The female one looks kinda nice...

 

But anyway! Oh, man, I've been waiting to get my hands on this games for ages now. As much as I'm still kinda annoyed that I have to wait until next year to do so, I'm just glad that we're getting it at all! 

[Salamander]

Tedious fanservice for the mystifyingly crucial paedophile audience aside, I'm looking forward to getting this.  I enjoy a good JRPG, and this looks like a considerable improvement upon 4 Heroes Of Light.

[Autosaver]

http://www.metacritic.com/game/3ds/bravely-default

 

The game is currently getting very high scores. It's the highest scored third party game on the system.

[Sami]

This game has one of the best fucking soundtracks of all time.

 

No, seriously. No hyperbole. It's god damn amazing.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwGR8dJe9gU

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGmj2JTKqoM

[Salamander]

So apparently the official Bravely Default Twitter posted the following message:

 

Bravely Default is a game that was designed only taking RPG fans in Japan into consideration. We thought overseas expansion was impossible. Seeing this much anticipation moves me deeply.

 

I've had for a while this kind of joking impression that Square Enix thought that westerners didn't care about any of their games except Final Fantasy - they haven't even bothered localising the last few Dragon Quest games, like X and the 3DS remakes of VII and Monsters - but apparently this is actually true.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the GBA and the DS absolutely stuffed with SE JRPGs that got localised and, as far as I know, did pretty well?  What happened to make them think that we wouldn't care?

 

Well, hopefully Bravely Default will be a game-changer, even if it does have creepy fanservice and moronic microtransactions.  Assuming it's half as good as the hype, anyway.

[Jolt_TH]

I have had the demo of this game for a whole actually, it's really good and I thoroughly enjoy it! Been hard to turn it off (running in sleep mode overnight to build the village ) not quite up with the tactics of default and brave, but I have been using them in different ways and I find it really fun!

Also I thought Ringabel was a girl! O.o

[Autosaver]

 

Sequel trailer

[pppp]

Sequel looks awesome, I'm having a blast with this game.

 

This is what Final Fantasy should be and should have never stopped being: Charming and unpretensious story, Classic turn based battles with a ton of costumization, wonderful orchestral music and tons of stuff to do.

[Fletch]

The demo is currently out in the North American eshop! Get to downloading, folks! (That's if you're in North America!)

[Balding Spider]

So after getting used to the battle system I'm having a blast with the demo so far, it's like Final Fantasy was never taken out behind the shed and shot.

It's so great, though I wish there were more ways to restore the town other than street pass.

[Autosaver]

Hm, I don't know, man. The female one looks kinda nice...

 

She's 15.

 

O.o

[MegasonicZX]

She's 15.

 

O.o

Hmmmm gotta have me some of dat chibi 15 year old body jk.

 

On a more serious note, I actually wasn't really too interested in this game when I first saw it and just dismissed it as another average RPG but I gotta say after playing the demo I really want to buy this now, I like the character designs I like the amount of customization you can use for the characters (seriously you can even set if you want to get exp or not and even lower and higher the encounter rate) and the battle system is actually pretty nice too, I like the risk and reward system that this game uses and it makes for some interesting fights when choosing between either holding back a turn or going all out.

 

Plus, this game has one orgasmic soundtrack seriously why the heck don't they put this much epic in FF at all.

[Salamander]

She's 15.

 

O.o

 

Funny you should mention that - apparently all of the characters were aged up a few years for the western release.  Probably exactly because of stuff like this.

 

I've been playing the game for a while now, and enjoying it a fair bit, aside from the occasional bit of grinding to level up job classes.  I've no idea if the amount of job points you get by the end will make things any easier, but to max out every job you'll need to have earned hundreds of thousands of JP.  I've found a decent place to grind so I've just settled into it now and am getting them all done while multitasking with other things (thank you, auto-battle) so that it won't be bothersome later.  I think I may actually be way, way overlevelled, but that depends on... well, spoilers I haven't encountered yet but have caught vague glimpses of online.

 

I've also just finished restoring Norende Village.  Fortunately, the full game allows you to connect to the Internet to get random guests to bump up the village's population, so you don't need to worry about the fact that you'll never ever Streetpass anyone ever.  And a good thing too, as if you only had one or two people I'm pretty sure it adds up to thousands of hours.  Whereas now, with my village's population at 25 and everything restored, I can actually turn my 3DS off for the first time in about a fortnight.

[Thigolf]

I loved this game to death, but then... 

 

They make you play it again and again for 4 TIMES. Seriously, I spent 50 hours or so with the first 4 chapters, there's no need to stretch it out in such a shitty way. What were they thinking?!

[Salamander]

I loved this game to death, but then... 

 

They make you play it again and again for 4 TIMES. Seriously, I spent 50 hours or so with the first 4 chapters, there's no need to stretch it out in such a shitty way. What were they thinking?!

 

Yeah, that's what I thought I'd heard.

 

Kinda glad I'm getting all my grinding done now in Chapter Four.  I'm at level 99 and working towards complete job mastery (I've already gotten everything to level 12 at least).  Not having to worry about my levels should speed things up a bit, assuming they don't do something silly like reset them (oh gods tell me they don't reset them).

[Thigolf]

They don't, and frankly, the difficulty is no problem at all, there's just so few times I can fight the same bosses over and over before getting incredibly bored.

[Salamander]

Now that I don't need to keep the game constantly on to repair Norende Village, I could always mix the game up with other games from my backlog if it gets tiresome.  I guess I'll find out how much I mind sometime soon.

[Salamander]

Well, I finished the game yesterday, near-on 100% (just a couple of incredibly hard optional challenges that I skipped out on).  Time for an in-depth review.  Spoiler tags for convenience, but also for actual spoilers, so don't read if you haven't finished the game.  Don't read if you have, either, as it's tl;dr beyond anything a person should actually have to read, but I had to get it off my chest.

 

Setting and story progression:

 

I feel as if there isn't really a huge amount of content in the game.  There are plenty of dungeons, to be sure, but not many towns, and the towns are really quite small.  As for the dungeons themselves, they're just networks of corridors; they aren't even especially labyrinthine, as any branches are just short ones to pick up a few chests.  There are also very few puzzles - there's a door-opening switch puzzle in one relatively early dungeon that just makes it all the more baffling that they never do anything like this again, and it reminds me of the way that Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light also had exactly one puzzle in a dungeon.  I'm not really very interested in dungeons which are just corridors in various different skins, and while some effort is made to distinguish locations with individual gimmicks, I'd have liked it if there was a bit more interaction involved.  Something to make you be thoughtful other than various kinds of floor hazard.

 

This is compounded in the repeat chapters of 5-8.  I get what they're doing: They want to trick you into getting the false ending by implying that you can do something different instead of going through the motions.  But there is no way to avoid this being an extraordinarily repetitious task.  Even if you go straight for the crystals, you're seeing the same sights over and over again, fighting the same bosses repeatedly.  The Underflow was not a dungeon I wanted to do, what, five times?  It doesn't matter that they're upgraded; it doesn't feel remotely different.  This is compounded by the repeat sub-boss battles.  Again, they've done something to make these feel different, not just by upgrading the battles but by later having you encounter several of the asterisk holders at once, and in different combinations - but it's still just a series of remixes that you do again, and again, and again.  It's actually almost a problem that there's too much optional content - they give you more to do, but the more you have to do actually increases the sense that you're doing the same thing over and over, rather than decreasing it.  It is a lot like Endless Eight: They can tweak things and present them differently all you want, but at the end of the day, it's the same material and we know exactly what's going to happen.  And it actually makes you care less about the world of the game, or rather the worlds, because the machinery becomes too obvious.  It just becomes a series of rote tasks.

 

Essentially, if they absolutely had to have repeats, then... well, I can see that the game having five or six different worlds really emphasises what's going on, but in terms of having to play it, two repeats would've been enough.  Maybe even one.  Yeah, definitely just one, with a much bigger overhaul.  Make it into a kind of New Game+.

 

Things I'd like to see improved upon in future games: Bigger world map with more towns.  Dungeons that have more of a sense of individual identity.  More puzzles rather than just hazards.  And please, no repeats.

 

Gameplay:

 

Battle system:

Bravely Default is clearly a spiritual successor in terms of its game system to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light, which uses a sort of foetal form of the Brave/Default system; you can defend to accrue up to four, I think, action points, and different kinds of action consume different numbers of points.  There's no such thing as MP; everything consumes these actions points, which levels the field between fighters and mages, interesting abilities and mundane ones.  Bravely Default develops this system and in some ways makes it considerably better; in other ways, worse.

 

Bravely Default uses Brave and Default to give you multiple actions per turn which you can spend or save.  It also brings back MP.  This has the same result it does in every single RPG, which is while physical fighters can do without their special abilities and still deal out stacks of damage to enemies, once a magical fighter's MP is consumed, that's it, they can only do tiny insignificant amounts of damage.  There is no level playing field.  Like in just about every other RPG, fighters can keep on doing what they're best at forever, but once you start using magic abilities, it won't be long before you have to waste an ether or go back to town to restore and start doing it again.  You can argue all you like that magic abilities are more powerful than physical ones and so need a limit, but the result is the same as always: Actually interesting powers are confined to use in boss battles.

 

Oh wait, except they're not!  Because like in loads and loads of other RPGS, you get all these cool abilities that can cause poison or sleep or other status effects, you can reduce enemy BP... oh wait, you can't use any of these powers on bosses, they're immune to status effects.  But that's fine, you can use them on regular enemies, right?  You don't need to.  Just beat them to death.  So what we have is the same problem that plagues RPGs, which is that the game gives you lots of cool toys to play with but you can never use most of them.  Great job learning from the past.

 

How to solve this?  Status effects should work on bosses.  If that makes the game too easy, make the bosses harder.  Simple.  In addition, replace MP with BP so that you can always use interesting powers on enemies.  The game even does this for some stuff - the genome abilities Bone Crush and Energy Burst, for instance (the former of which, once again, doesn't work on bosses, which is where it would be most useful).  If everything consumes BP, you can use everything infinitely if you're just careful and tactical.  As to the fact that this wouldn't allow you to chain-cast some of the best spells, this is actually the perfect place to make use of abilities that lift the BP cap, or new ones which reduce the BP cost of abilities and things like that.  This is an opportunity.  Give us powers and let it be actually worthwhile to use them.

 

Jobs:

In terms of jobs, there is a similar issue.  There are loads and loads of jobs, and as you level each job up, they acquire gradually more impressive powers and more useful support abilities.  But: To master each job costs over ten thousand job points, and even average endgame battles come out in the mid-hundreds.  If you want to have mastered more than a few jobs, you need to grind.  But what happens when you need to grind is that jobs cease to matter.  You equip whatever the cheapest job commands and abilities that'll let you kill everything quickly, and then you run around in circles for literally hours.  The jobs themselves vanish into the scenery; you're never really using them or their abilities because you're just passing through them to tick them off.  So the result is that you have no incentive to really use a job.  Even just playing normally, then by the time you get your next jobs you'll barely have done anything with the ones you have.  I've no idea to what extent you would have completed job mastery by the time you finish the game, but I suspect you wouldn't be anywhere near mastering them all.

 

So once again, jobs become something that's effectively irrelevant until you've finished grinding, at which point you pick your favourites and then never use any of the others, because it's honestly kind of tiresome fiddling with the set-up all the time.  All that variety is more or less wasted.  You don't really see it, you don't get to use it, and the game is full of content that you're not going to see a lot of.  Why?  The game needs to find a way to encourage you to stick with jobs for quite a while, and as it stands it gives you too much choice in too short a game.  One way of shortening things would just be to make all four characters identical (they all have slightly different base stats, I think) and then lock each job to a single character only.  Say that progress on job mastery is tied to a job rather than a character, and only one character can hold that job at a time, so you can master a job on one person and then if they change jobs then another person can use that first job auto-mastered.  Grinding reduced, individuality increased.  And that's before I even suggest cutting the number of job levels to avoid filler abilities, and cutting the amount of JP you need to level up.  That jump from 800JP to 3500JP around level 9 is utterly ridiculous.  It should absolutely have been smoothed out.

 

But there's still a lot of wastage going on.  You unlock a great many support abilities in the game, and chances are you're never ever going to use most of them.  You're never even going to see what they do.  Too many options, too short a game.  This is largely because each job is, bafflingly, distinct from all but one of its support abilities.  The support abilities might as well have nothing to do with each job, because the job can't innately use them.  So they're more toys you can't play with.

 

The solution?  Rather than each job having a support "speciality," each job has all of its support abilities equipped all the time.  Using a job thus instantly becomes far more interesting and complex.  Levelling up and gaining a new support ability merely unlocks its equippability on your five-slot support list that can take abilities from other classes.  You'll also definitely see a great deal of the potential of a job and of its various abilities and their uses just by playing as and levelling up that job.

 

Heck, why not scrap job mastery?  Or just have only maybe two or three levels?  Think of the Final Fantasy I class change.  Anything that reduces the amount of meaningless grinding you do in a game, artificial padding, is a good thing.  You can't really call it a hundred-hour RPG if fifty of those hours aren't really spent playing it.  They've streamlined battles - good on them.  Now streamline everything else.

 

Graphics:

 

Pretty enough.  The hand-drawn look in towns is very pleasing indeed, and Ancheim especially because of the way it plays with the perspective.  More towns should have done something like that - not that they have more towns, of course.  The world map itself doesn't really look anything special - it's a fairly normal sort of style.  It works, I guess, but something more ambitious and original wouldn't have hurt what is already kind of an experimental game.  Why not hand-draw that as well?  Or have more stylised graphics?  Add some individuality rather than making it look like every other world map.

 

As for the characters, the bobble-head look derived from 4 Heroes Of Light and from the DS's graphical limitations - and, ultimately, from the head-enlarging top-down perspective of early Final Fantasy games - continues to be workable, and the proportions are growing more realistic.  The style is starting to look more like a style and less like a concession to the system.  However, some of the job designs are... well, I don't want to say lacking, because that's not what I mean.  But there is sometimes a lack of individuality.  Many of the jobs basically have a male and a female version with the two males and the two females slightly recoloured to separate them, but they could use a bit more diversity for each character rather than for each gender - plus, sometimes the gendering is really pretty pathetic.  Have one female Performer have the ridiculous bunny maid look if you must, but not both.  The female Merchants don't even look like merchants, just like southern belles.  And let's not get onto the sleaziness of many of the female designs as opposed to their perfectly sensible male counterparts (Spell Fencer, Vampire).  Again, it wouldn't be so bad if they just had the sketchy ones for one female character and not the other, because then it wouldn't be so much gendered as it would be a representation of various cultural interpretations of the vampire or whatever.  As it is it's just creepy.  I have seen this game dismissed in some quarters as a "loli JRPG," and while that's clearly an extreme example, I cannot wholly refute the complaint, no matter how much I wish I could.  I know that doing a lot of character models is hard - but sort it out.

 

For that matter, if I'm calling for more effort and fewer recolours on the jobs, you may as well do that to the dungeon graphics as well, as several of those are clearly recoloured.  Although that wouldn't matter so much if, as I requested above, the dungeons had more individuality in their structure and gimmicks on top of that.

 

Plot:

 

Ugh, this is going to take ages.  I'm actually going to set this post aside for a while and come back to it later because I suspect I might just write more about this than about every previous section combined.  Nobody's even going to read this, are they?  Nope, thought not.

 

So, the game is named "Bravely Default" after the game mechanics, Brave and Default.  I think it's pretty likely that the latter preceded the former.  When you're giving a game a name like "Bravely Default," you have to make it plot-relevant as well, and frankly, there's not much you can do with a title like that.  I get that.  Certain aspects of the plot and your decisions as a player are set in stone by the need to have that title.  The problem is that the game's morality is utterly broken and the entire story needs completely overhauling in order to make the lessons it's preaching and the critique it offers on its protagonists to be even remotely accurate or relevant.

 

If you're reading this, you're probably aware of the plot switcheroo, a classic - ho ho ho, you're actually working for the villains, the evil empire was good all along, now let's all hammer the protagonists relentlessly for being stupid enough to fall for this obvious trap.  Except, like most times this plot gets used, there is absolutely no reason to believe, at least for the first four chapters, that you are doing anything but the right thing.  I'll go further: Throughout the whole game, you are doing the right thing.

 

What are the facts here.  Are the crystals shrouded in darkness?  Check.  Is the lack of the crystals' influence destroying the world?  Check.  Are they being fed on by demons?  Check.  Is the Duchy of Eternia attacking the Crystallist Orthodoxy for no publicly stated reason?  Check.  Are they using evil methods such as starving and working people to death, drugging whole cities to destroy their pacifist culture, and prolonging civil wars which were begun on pride rather than policy?  Check.  These are the things the Warriors of Light set out to fix, every single one of these problems is accurately described, every single one of them is a real problem which is destroying the world, everything the Warriors of Light do is to remedy these problems, and everything the Warriors of Light do does remedy these problems.  On what level are the Warriors of Light being foolish or villainous here?

 

Meanwhile!  Something like three members of the Council of Six of Eternia know that an evil demon god is using an evil demon pawn to set the crystals to run wild and break down the barriers between worlds.  Do they announce these facts to the Crystallist Orthodoxy?  No.  Do they announce these facts to individual Crystallist temples?  No.  Do they announce these facts to the public at large?  No.  Do they announce these facts to their own soldiers and officers?  No.  Do they announce these facts to their own family members?  No.  Do they announce these facts to the Warriors of Light?  No.  Do they announce these facts when confronted with the Evil One herself?  No.  Do they do anything to directly stop, oppose, or condemn the Evil One?  No.  Do they ever tell anyone, in fact, what's really going on, why the Warriors of Light are being tricked, what the implications of the Warriors' actions are, why the world is in more danger from Crystallism than Anticrystallism?  No.  Aside from the Earth Crystal in Eternia, do they actually capture any Crystallist temples?  No.  Do they place guards around the temples?  No.  Do they place guards around the crystals?  No.  Do they do anything to oversee the crystals and keep them out of danger of any kind?  No.

 

In actual fact, the Duchy of Eternia are almost always evil, and actually always incompetent.  They never do anything to safeguard the crystals or protect them from dark influences, and more than that, they never do anything to reveal the truth about the plot against the crystals, against reality, or against the Warriors of Light, even when the Warriors are right in front of them, with the Evil One.  For no reason.  There is literally no reason why the Duchy of Eternia couldn't publish and proclaim every single thing they know about the risks of awakening the crystals and the true identity and aims of the Evil One.  But they never do!  Nobody even fights the Evil One when she's right in front of them and they recognise her!  There is really, totally no reason for them to be this reticent - except to actually cause the Evil One to succeed!  There is no in-universe explanation which accounts for the nonsensical behaviour of the Duchy of Eternia and the likes of Braev, DeRosso, and Yulyana.  The real reason they're that incompetent?  Because the plot wants the Warriors of Light to be "tricked" by someone they had no reason to believe would trick them because even the people who know about it never say anything about it.  It's incredibly poor, lazy writing which causes everyone to behave unbelievably and irresponsibly to secure a shock-value twist that makes no sense.

 

Let's also remind ourselves that, in the world the game starts in, the Anticrystallists have no qualms against torturing or murdering innocents for absolutely no reason.  They didn't need to kill Agnes but were going to torture her to death for fun.  And maybe that's only one world, but is there any world in which Fiore DeRosa, Profiteur, Qada, Khamer, are decent and reasonable people?  No, they're always crooks and psychopaths, and nobody calls them out on it or does anything to stop them.

 

Let's return to the subject of the title.  The premise of the "Bravely Default" title is that you're meant to have the courage to disobey what people simply tell you to do and to follow your own path.  It's meant to encourage you to disbelieve Airy, take a stand against her, and shatter the crystals.

 

Er, excuse me?  Doing that will irreparably damage the environment of the world.  The game doesn't actually show it happening when you do do that, but that's because the game is lazy, not because you're lied to.  Also, doing this - following the principles implicit in the title - leads you to the false ending.  To get the true ending and destroy the villain behind everything and defeat their plan forever, you have to not bravely default.  You have to follow Airy's words right to the end.  Which is also the morally right thing to do in every single world, as it saves their ecosystem.  Also, disobeying what people tell you to do and following your own path?  Isn't that what Edea does at the start of the game when she defects from Eternia owing to its obvious evil?

 

The game fatally undermines its own morality on every level.  It applies its principles inconsistently, constructs a nonsensical plot to rationalise its statements, fails to justify them even then, and requires you to ignore its philosophy in order to get the complete ending and save reality.  It's a failure on every level, saved only by the comic banter in the Party Chat sequences, which have nothing to do with the plot and therefore manage to maintain a semblance of rationality and interest.

 

In conclusion, Bravely Default is a deeply flawed game, but nobody who has ever played an RPG before will notice, because those flaws are by another name the staples of the genre.  The more I write about it, the more I hate it in my heart, and yet I know that I will buy the sequel.  This is because I am an idiot who naively believes that they might actually improve, and also because I like what they are trying to do, trying so hard with their clumsy, hoof-like hands.  That and it was kind of fun, too.

 

Incidentally, I completed the game with my Encyclopedia at 100% for all entries, all jobs mastered, all characters at level 99.  Here was my endgame set-up:

 

Tiz: Pirate (Dark Knight): Physical Attack 10% Up, Dual Wield, Buff Up

The theme for this character was "deal massive damage."  Buff Up was there to help out on his weak defences, Dual Wield let him use two of the best weapons in the game (the only better were Bows and Fists, which can't be dual-wielded).  Shell Split followed by triple Double Damage was a common opener, often followed with multiple combinations of Black Banes and Minus Strikes.  A lot of Tiz's damage output was hitting the damage cap at the end.

 

Agnes: Spiritmaster (White Mage): Epic Group-Cast, Angelic Ward, Rise From Dead

The theme for this character was "healer and protector."  White magic was used to heal with Epic Group-Cast causing it to output it at its most potent, while the Spiritmaster got a lot of leverage out of Enigma with occasional Fairy Wards and Stillness for set-up.  Angelic Ward helped to resist damage, Rise From Dead was so I didn't have to rely on items to raise her.

 

Ringabel: Conjurer (Summoner): Summoning Surge, Magic Critical, Default Guard

The theme for this character was "ultimate mass attack."  It took me a while to decide whether to give him Black Magic, Time Magic, or Summoning, but I don't regret my choice as Summoning Surge is really nice.  Default Guard helped him on defence whilst racking up Brave at the start of the battle, at which point I'd invoke Susano-o and Deus Ex and then double-cast Susano-o, and, if still alive next turn, quadruple-cast Susano-o.  Summoning Surge and Magic Critical ensured a more-or-less guaranteed quadruple 9999 on that second turn.  Ringabel really carried most of the multi-Asterisk-holder battles; everyone else basically set him up so he could tear the enemy down all at once.

 

Edea: Swordsmaster (Vampire): Counter Amp, Genome Ability Up, Two-Handed, Physical Attack 20% Up

The theme for this character was "counter specialist."  She was honestly the least useful member of the party but I really liked counterattacking in Bravely Default, and ended up building this Edea to take attacks and turn them right back.  I know there are better combinations, like Utsusemi with Transience, but I wanted a secondary job which I'd actually use multiple abilities from, and I only really liked the Ninja's Utsusemi and not anything else, so that was out.  Vampire and Genome Ability up let her make trouble with Fireball and occasional uses of Energy Burst - the latter is fantastic for what few random battles I was still fighting at this point, when I forgot about the Conjurer's Obliterate - with White Wind making her a secondary healer in some circumstances.

 

Some thoughts on the upcoming sequel, Bravely Second:

 

The secret movie impressed me with how much it looks like they're shaking things up in terms of aesthetics.  It already looks completely different to anything we see in Bravely Default - far more mad evil science, with a dash of the Soviet thrown in for good measure.  Magnolia is a breath of fresh air, too - she actually has a personality, and Ringabel and Edea carried a lot of Bravely Default because they had real personalities and Tiz and Agnes kinda didn't.  Still, though, I really cannot believe that they used that "Ba'al Buster" pun.  It's unbelievably silly.  But fair enough, I guess, if they're retaining that sense of fun.  Looks rough for Tiz, though - I got the impression that he'd been out cold for long enough for the world to change considerably, so I assume that Agnes and Ringabel and Edea are all dead by now, barring time-travel shenanigans, which can't be ruled out...  I'm also guessing that Airy's sister will be this game's new Airy, too, only presumably not evil.

 

One thing I'm hoping for, quite apart from the streamlining I mentioned above which I honestly don't think they'll do, is an all-new set of jobs with none directly taken from Bravely Default.  That would really shake things up.

[Doctor MK]

Ahead of the US release date, Bravely Default stock is running low across the world

 

I can definitely vouch for this in the UK. Never seen a retail copy of the game on any store shelves (excluding download codes for the digital version), and hardly any online retailers have it in stock either. Which has been quite a pain really, as I recently got hooked on the demo and then decided to seek out the full version. Luckily, it was (and still is) available through ShopTo so I was able to pick it up there, but that's pretty much the only easy option at the moment.

 

I did have a stock alert for it set up on GAME too, which triggered after I had already bought the game from ShopTo, but the new stock was only available for a couple of hours at most - they can't have had many more come in, that or there was a lot of demand for this otherwise rare game. It's like Fire Emblem all over again!

[MegasonicZX]

Yeah, everybody seems to be running out of copies on this game and amazon hasn't had any (CE) copies for pre order for a looonnng time now. Starting to think I should've pre-ordered this when I had the chance (then again, I don't really have the money for it).

[Autosaver]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/bravely-default-collectors-edition-nintendo-3ds/3044042.p?id=1219086346410

 

Still available at Bestbuy.