Bravely Default: Flying Fairy (3DS)

[Adamis]

My best friend, who bought the game when it was out last December, wanted to buy me a copy of it for Christmas, he had to order it at a videogame shop, and they only recieved their copies last week...

[Doctor MK]

My best friend, who bought the game when it was out last December, wanted to buy me a copy of it for Christmas, he had to order it at a videogame shop, and they only recieved their copies last week...

 

Oh dang, this game really is like gold dust then!

 

For those thinking about buying it but are still unsure, I say check out the demo as soon as you can and work out whether you can get on with the battle system or not. If you can, then you're in for a treat, and you should totally grab yourself a copy before it disappears from the shelves entirely.

[Danj86]

I have nothing new to add. I just wanna say I freakin' love this game!!

 

I'm gonna try and max out all job levels for each character before starting a new game+ on hard. Oh, but I still need to take on that secret boss. He wont let me win. ^-^

[Doctor MK]

Here's a neat little advert for the US release:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5JyGhbsPp4

 

Will you choose Brave or Default...?

[Balding Spider]

Just picked this game up and playing it. That's one way to start out a game.

[VO.SUPER]

Strong new releases helped sales of Wii U software and Nintendo 3DS software in February increase by more than 180 percent and more than 25 percent, respectively, over the same month last year. Wii U software sales were driven by the Feb. 21 launch of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which sold more than 130,000 combined physical and digital units in its first eight days on the market. This helped sales of Wii U hardware increase by nearly 25 percent over the same month last year.

In early 2013, Fire Emblem Awakening launched for Nintendo 3DS and became one of the surprise hits of the year. Bravely Default, which launched for Nintendo 3DS on Feb. 7, improved on the launch of Fire Emblem Awakening by more than 10 percent, selling more than 200,000 combined units in just over three weeks.

Other sales milestones achieved by Nintendo in February include:

Bravely Default and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze finished as the No. 2 and No. 4 best-selling software SKUs for the month of February.

Pokémon X and Pokémon Y for the Nintendo 3DS system sold more than 130,000 combined units in their fifth month on the market. This brought the life-to-date total to more than 3.4 million combined units in the United States alone.

Over the next few months, Nintendo will launch a series of games from fan-favorite franchises including Yoshi’s New Island (Nintendo 3DS, March 14), Disney Magical World (Nintendo 3DS, April 11), Mario Golf: World Tour (Nintendo 3DS, May 2), Kirby: Triple Deluxe (Nintendo 3DS, May 2) and Mario Kart 8 (Wii U, May 30).

 

 

PR email from Nintendo. Good for Bravely default.

 

Also, some NPD info.

 

1. Call of Duty: Ghosts (360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, PC)

2. The Lego Movie Videogame (360, PS3, 3DS, Wii U, Xbox One, PS4, Vita)

3. NBA 2K14 (360, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, PC)

4. Thief (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

5. Grand Theft Auto V (360, PS3)

6. Battlefield 4 PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, PC)

7. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (360, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Wii U, PC)

8. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, 360)

9. Minecraft (360)

10. Bravely Default (3DS)

- $887 million spent on new physical games at retail (9% increase)

- $347 million in hardware (42% increase)

- new game sales were down 9 percent to $318 million

- accessories were up 3 percent to $221 million

 

 

That is super amazing for a one system game to accomplish.

[MegasonicZX]

Man, with sales like that I guess I don't need to worry about this game having a low print run. Glad its selling well though, it truly is a great game (from the demo I played) and I can't wait to get it one of these days.

[Mystwalker]

I had to put a smile out after reading about how this game fared in sales. A 10th place is pretty impressive there, well done!

 

I got this game about a week and a bit ago through eShop and am currently at chapter 7, playing on Hard since the beginning. I guess I'm getting closer and closer to the true ending now. Overall it's been a pretty solid experience for me, apart of the small "What the hell?" moment in chapter 5. (I was told to skip most of the optional scenarios there, then a bit of grinding to overcome the sudden difficulty spike and it was ok.)

 

I really enjoy the hand-drawn environments, the risk-and-reward battle system, and of course the music, that goddang music! I can't get enough of That Person's Name Is, no matter how many times I keep hearing it in game.

[Thigolf]

I owned the game since its release in December and still haven't beaten it because of the last view chapters.

 

Still glad it sold well, though. If they iron out the flaws of the first game, bravely second could become near perfect.

[Salamander]

That bodes well for the west getting Bravely Second: Cryptic Subtitle, then, or conceivably the potential Bravely Second: For The Threequel.  Hopefully the stunning revelation that yes, the west still likes JRPGs will finally net us Dragon Quest VII 3DS, too.

[Sean]

I keep trying the demo but I really can't get into this game. My team is fucking poisoned and slaughtered every time I attempt a battle, the mission system doesn't appeal to me in the least, I can't take advantage of the streetpass feature where I live, and overall I was a little let down by how generic of a JRPG it feels compared to the overwhelming praise it gets.

 

Based on my impressions is the actual game worth looking into or is it a lost cause for me?

[Doctor MK]

I keep trying the demo but I really can't get into this game. My team is fucking poisoned and slaughtered every time I attempt a battle, the mission system doesn't appeal to me in the least, I can't take advantage of the streetpass feature where I live, and overall I was a little let down by how generic of a JRPG it feels compared to the overwhelming praise it gets.

 

Based on my impressions is the actual game any better or is it a lost cause for me?

 

The demo isn't particularly representative of the way the game itself plays out - it's not a mission structure, it's more of typical JRPG and then the missions like in the demo are reserved for side quests. However, I'd still recommend making the most of the demo though, if only for properly getting to grips with the battle system. You need to know how to use Brave and Default effectively to win, and it's what makes this title unique from any other JRPG out there. Believe me, on my first time with the demo, I was completely lost and couldn't grasp it whatsoever, but I gave it time and eventually it all suddenly clicked and I was hooked ever since. Plus there's added benefits to the demo - it gives you a nice taster of the job system which essentially lets you customise how each character plays with a ridiculous amount of options, you get bonuses for completing missions which transfer over to give you a head start in the main game, and you can unlock (up to 20) villagers for the Norende Village stuff to carry over to the full game too. There's a fairly simple glitch you can take advantage of to max this total out, actually, and you don't need StreetPass to take advantage of it later on either - you can swap "Friend Invites" online and add 3 or 4 new villagers to your population every 24 hours. Obviously StreetPass is the way to go if you want loads at once, but it's not off limits if you can't fully utilise it.

 

The game isn't perfect by any means - the second half of it gets really repetitive - but the first half is a real joy and I'm so glad I gave it a chance. It's a JRPG that you can play any way you like, really. As I say, the job system is there so you can choose whichever playstyles suit you best and level those up more than others, and even little touches like being able to toggle the rate of random encounters makes traversing the world a lot easier (turn them off completely when you just want to run to your destination, or whack it up to max when you want to grind). It won't be for everyone, and I do definitely suggest spending more time with the demo to see if the battle system's core mechanics appeal to you once you are able to master them, but other than that it's a solid game for the most part.

[MegasonicZX]

Yeah and make sure you switch there jobs around too since the freelancer ability is basically just the base job without much use (though you want to get the examine ability from it) it also really helps if you just do a couple of battles first near the town and using the inn before going off anywhere since this demo starts you off a fair bit underleveled for some reason.

[Salamander]

The demo is basically terrible and unrepresentative of the game as a whole.  (I think in Japan it was actually one of a series of demos which each focussed on a different aspect of the game.)  The real game may have flaws, but it does not just leave you stranded and underlevelled in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of powers and abilities you know nothing about how to use.  The real game also does not ask you to have StreetPass to grind up Norende, just an Internet connection.

 

My advice for the demo is to just grind Valkyrie job levels until you get the Crescent Moon all-striking attack, and things will start to look up.

[Junko]

Bravely Second OP.

[Salamander]

Hmm, it's out in only three weeks now.  Since I have the text saved, maybe I should remake my Bravely Second topic now that we have the opening and also, more importantly, know that the game has a centaur in it.

 

Edit: This was kind of meant to be a reaction to the trailer on the previous page, but now that it's on its own this post just looks self-indulgent.  I'll go dig up the centaur.

 

 

Chariot and Wizard Asterisk Holders.  The Chariot job can triple-wield... despite the fact that neither of the centaur's two extra limbs have hands.

[Junko]

Bravely Second Treehouse stuff.

[Salamander]

Bravely Second: End Layer is a game people might have talked about more if my topic about it hadn't been deleted in the forum crash a while back, but it's been out in Japan for a year, it's been out in Europe for a couple of months, and it's been out in America for a couple of days, so now seems like as good a time as any to reflect on it with my review.  Full disclosure: I have completed the game, max levelled it, bought all costumes, have practically 100% enemy and item completion (just a couple of Ba'al refights I don't have because what shows up in Fort-Lune is essentially luck-based, and a couple of obscure steal items, one of which is permanently  missable), so I think I can probably speak credibly about the game.  If anyone has any more specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Bravely Second's relationship with its predecessor is an extremely close one, somewhere between an expansion pack and an iterative sequel.  The world is the same and features return appearances from practically every location in the original game, but with almost as many new areas added to the same world map, which has also been slightly tweaked in places.  It's a similar situation with the game's Jobs, a set of thirty split roughly a third new to two thirds old, and even, to a certain extent, the game's plot, which while totally original is very much a direct sequel to the plot of the first game (to the extent that a lengthy recap of the first game's plot is provided at the start) and reipeats a couple of the same broad plot points whilst being careful to execute them better than the flawed original.  As such, it's very much a game for fans of the original, and people who wanted to be fans of the original but found it to be rather lacklustre; Bravely Second is very much a complete game, lacking the empty space and desperate repetition of its predecessor.  (It is worth noting, however, that while the first game's soundtrack was praised, the musician was unable to return for the sequel and the Bravely Second soundtrack has been criticised for being slightly more generic.  I'm no judge, though.)

Story:

While Bravely Default was attempting to provide a new take on a traditional Final Fantasy "protect the crystals" plot, Bravely Second is more of a riff on the "save the princess" cliché.  The plot is well-supported with considerable world-building and manages to avoid being too generic, and there are some very clever twists and interlacing even with the first game... but story revelations towards the end of the game cause the plot structure to collapse somewhat, and some of the final twists make little sense.  There is also, frankly, more gameplay and story segregation than I would like concerning the power levels of certain characters, with Agnés and Edea inexplicably depowered without so much as a handwave explanation.  The game is also somewhat tonally inconsistent, with flashes of darkness and a few cool scenes resting uneasily against a plot which is often jokey or sentimental in a very anime sort of way, to say nothing of the couple dozen optional scenes exclusively about food; related to this is the way that the character of Magnolia as written seems significantly different from her design and the way the game's peripheral materials present her.  Nevertheless, a bold denouement and a heartwarming ending manage to hit the spot.  So there are minor qualms I have, in other words, about what is overall a plot that's considerably better than what we got from the first entry.  ...Whether or not the game deserves commendation for managing to avoid repeating itself at length in the final chapters (as the first game did) is debateable, but in context it's quite an achievement; the same could be said of the way the game determinedly ignores its prequel's morally incoherent plot and characterisation.  This game was left with a lot of baggage from the first game, and it handles it as well as could be expected.

World:

While, as I said, almost every location from the original game returns, it is worth noting that returning dungeons are almost entirely optional, and new locations are the order of the day for much of the main plot.  Towns and dungeons are well-drawn or well-designed with strong graphical features that make them feel like genuine locations rather than just another reskinned labyrinth; additionally, new dungeons often possess interesting gimmicks which relieve the monotony of what would otherwise be a simple dungeon-crawl.  The world map is a bit washed-out and generic, but once you actually enter a place, it's generally a joy to look at, to the extent that the camera could often afford to zoom in more than it does - which is not to denigrate the way the camera zooms out when the player is idle, which is a valuable scouting tool.

Jobs:

As noted above, returning jobs are completely optional, whereas new jobs are almost all mandatory.  Some jobs are cut from the original, but their features have mostly been folded into new jobs; additionally, the features and abilities of all old jobs have been tweaked and rebalanaced slightly - partly as the number of job levels for each job has been reduced, resulting in considerably less grinding.  With that said, several of the new jobs feel too much like a reimagining of a cut job from the original, while some class features aren't quite as exciting as advertised, aren't well-explained, or in one notable case just plain come along too late in the day to be useful.  Partly because of the Sidequest system (which I'll cover below), you do get some jobs quite late in the game, but with the amount of JP you're earning by then it's easy to bolt through the early levels of a job and neglect to pay proper attention to their abilities; I feel like Final Fantasy V got this right, in giving you nearly all your jobs in the first half of the game with the idea being that you cover all the early levels and spend the late game on job mastery.  Nonetheless, it is fair to say that all of the new jobs are, at the very least, interesting, and contribute to the sense of originality and quirkiness of Bravely Second over the relative conventionality of the first game.  The standout new job is the earliest one acquired in the game, the Wizard, the Spellcraft ability of which is so brilliantly flexible as to be vital to all spellcasters.

Sidequests:

A new innovation for Bravely Second, and the vehicle for delivering old jobs.  Occasionally, you will encounter pairs of Asterisk holders from the original game bickering about some subject close to their heart... or occasionally completely arbitrary and off-the-wall.  You will follow their story through an optional dungeon before eventually having to side with one against the other in their vision for the future; learning a bit more about the Asterisk holder you sided with, and gaining the job of the one you didn't.  Most of the debates follow logically from the game world itself and are supported by world-building, but like I said, some are kind of silly and arbitrary; for instance, the first sidequest you'll encounter sees two Asterisk holders arguing over whether to use a certain magical artifact to provide water to desert peoples, or to experiment with risky alternative energy sources, but a later one is about whether some kid should join the police or become a private eye.

It's interesting and definitely important to provide essentially fresh characterisation for the Asterisk holders of Bravely Default, whose identity and backstory get muddled by the many-worlds nature of the first game, and the world-building helps to make the game feel a bit more developed; however, quite a few people have noted that it's far too tempting to let which job you want to get decide your ultimate decision, and your decisions don't really have a visible impact in the world either.  I'd have liked to see these go further, but they're a good start, and I hope the system returns with a rethink in the probable third game (yes, they do hint at one).

Grinding

This remains an issue, but not necessarily in the way you'd think.  The game provides estimated levels you should be at for each dungeon, and I never had a problem with being underlevelled; indeed, the game gives you tools to make levelling easier, or to stop yourself from gaining more levels.  However, while the game doesn't force you to grind character levels, I feel that it does end up encouraging you to grind for other things.  For instance, the Bestiary records multiple comments, tips, and conversations between your party members for each monster's entry, depending on how many times you've fought it - so you're encouraged to get into lots of fights to fill out your bestiary.  This easily results in you getting quite overlevelled, and as a result I was actually overlevelled for much of the game.  However, despite being overlevelled, I had to actively grind for quite a long time to master all of the jobs on offer!  So if you were keeping up with recommended levels, that suggests that you'd need to do even more late-game job-grinding - and bear in mind, this is still with fewer job levels per job than the original game.  So I feel that the game has a problem with invisible grinding encouragement for completionists.

Localisation Changes

Ah, the elephant in the room.  What modern game is complete without a bogus "censorship" "scandal"?  At any rate, if you're interested in this game you've probably heard something about changes made to it during localisation, so I thought I'd provide a full run-down:

Costume changes: In the first game, a couple of female character costumes were edited to be a little less revealing.  I gather that quite a few more female costumes in this game received similar edits, particularly Magnolia's costumes, which it seems were often genuinely more revealing than anyone else's - but I haven't seen any comprehensive image comparisons so I can't make a sweeping statement.  Changes like these are often to do with wanting to avoid the risk of a higher rating from ratings boards, as well as avoiding the appearance of child sexualisation (particularly an issue with the chibi designs of this series).  I'm also not certain, in the final analysis, whether Magnolia's original costumes even fit her character as written - I mentioned above that the way she's presented in a lot of the early material doesn't really match up with the final game.  Overall, though, I think there's an issue where some female job costumes risk looking just plain silly and hard to take seriously... while male job costumes are often too serious and kind of boring by comparison.  A little parity wouldn't hurt!

Tomahawk to Hawkeye: In the Japanese version, a certain job, or Asterisk, is called the Tomahawk, and the Asterisk holder is based on romanticised (and sexualised) representations of native Americans in the frontier era; in the western version, the job is called the Hawkeye and the design and character are based on cowboys.  I think we can probably all agree that erasing a native American and replacing them with a cowboy reference was not the most sensitive editing decision they've ever made, but the character in question is right on the line between representation and stereotyping, cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation.  There's probably nothing that could've been done here which someone wouldn't have criticised, but a middle ground choice might have been better here.  Incidentally, I remember an early developer video in which the Bravely Second developers joked about how this character would give the localisers trouble.  Thanks, guys...

Sidequest endings: This is the one about which there's been the most misinformation and misunderstanding.  I explored sidequests above, and how you must choose whether to side with one character and their cause, or another.  You can then repeat the sidequests in New Game+ to choose different options.  Now, here's the thing: In the original Japanese version, no matter what you chose, the sidequest ended in a downbeat way with the characters bemoaning what they did to the losing side; to get a better ending, you had to New Game+, repeat the sidequest... and make the same decision, and you'd get a slightly better ending.  To get all the jobs and all the scenes, therefore, you had to play the sidequests four separate times in four save files.  This approach was received with overwhelming negativity by Japanese players when surveyed on the game, and as a result, the developers edited the sidequests for the international version to remove some (but not all!) of the bad outcomes entirely and skip straight to the good outcomes; I also suspect that they rewrote the remaining bad outcomes to be less negative.

Minigames

Norende Village reconstruction is back in the form of the lunar fortress of Fort-Lune.  The emphasis is on repairing institutions which will provide you with special move parts and supplies for supply-based jobs.  Sadly, I feel the design of the area is a bit more boring than that of Norende; that is, it's a good picture, but it's fairly regular and predictable in its organisation.  Later on you'll be able to build a Buster Ship to delevel invading Ba'als, making them easier to defeat... but I'm not sure it was necessary to give the Buster Ship, in contrast to the ten levels of the ground institutions, a full ninety-nine levels to upgrade.  This basically extends the purpose of the original Norende reconstruction minigame, which... honestly seems to be to ensure that you never close Bravely Second and never turn your 3DS off.  I literally had my 3DS on for several weeks straight, just in sleep mode half the time.

Chompcraft is an idle clicker.  It's... competent?  Okay, I honestly have no idea why this exists.  Once everything's fully upgraded, you can grind for a couple of hours to get like a trillion CP which you can exchange later in the game for like a million PG, but I don't think it's actually the most efficient means of money-grinding; they should probably have made it so generating more CP actually revives Chompville in some way (it doesn't).

Conclusion

I know I made quite a few criticisms throughout this review, but I actually feel quite positive about this game.  With Bravely Default, the more I reflected upon it then the more faults I saw, but Bravely Second is only flawed in a normal sort of way.  It's a good game.  It's certainly a better game than its predecessor - a more interesting game, a more original game.  If you liked the first game and want to play something like it again, I would recommend this.

Threequel

...Not least because there will almost certainly be another game.  Or at least, the developers clearly think so!  There are several plot threads left unresolved by the end of the game which are teased pretty explicitly as being of future importance, not all of which have even been widely noticed (make sure to talk to everyone at the end of Chapter Four).  Personally, I'd be more than happy to see the developers continue to refine the work they've been doing on this series, and to support the future of RPGs on handhields - and as such, I'm looking forward to Bravely Try: Vile Words (or whatever it ends up being called)!