Bravely Default

[Mal]

I just heard about this little gem by Square Enix, the company that I sadly look at with dead eyes. It has me intrigued.

 

Bravely Default is in essence a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (A game I know very little about so I'll be comparing it to games that I know) and well, the old style Final Fantasy experience. From first glance I can see influences of Final Fantasy V with the job system and of course the old styled FF battle system.

What I've heard that is different is the multiple endings, which could mean anything but it is a change from the FF formula. Anyways, take a look:

 

 

Game is dropping in Japan (Extended edition, they got the original back in 2012) and EU right now. NA release is scheduled for early February. Seems like there is a sequel in the making already, which is odd...

 

My own personal opinions about this... SE is really trying to court us old school FF folks. They also seem to have high confidence about it since a sequel is in the works already. Sure, the game seems to be getting good reviews so far but man, talk about jumping the gun. Though I suppose it is a 3DS game so there is far less capital investment thus less risks involved. If it turns out to be a good game then I am all for it. My decision of getting a 3DS isn't bad considering just hold loaded it is with JRPGs. Got to add this game to the mix.

 

Edit: I didn't realize that it had a 2012 JPN release. The coming release is for an update version with international release. Hurray!

Edit 2: Striking out is easier than editing the sentence...

Edited December 6, 2013 by MaliciousH

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

How is it jumping the gun when it's already been out for a year in Japan?

[Mal]

Forgot to strike that part out.

[FMW]

I know a fair bit about this game!  It reviewed well in Japan and outsold Square Enix's expectations leading to an instant sequel greenlight.  There's also a rerelease of the game with additional content, some bug fixes, some interface improvements, and some tweaks to the game systems to try some things out that they wanna play around with in Bravely Default 2 (or as it was recently announced to be called: Bravely Second).  This rerelease is what released in Europe recently and is coming to North America in February.  Dual audio voice tracks are another improvement.

 

This game did begin it's life as Final Fantasy 4 Warriors of Light 2 before transitioning away from the brand mid development.  But we've still got airships and crystals so... yay?  Much more importantly, the wonderful class system and character art from FF 4 Heroes of Light is back.  Though Mr. Amano, the illustrator who did Bravely Default (and FF Tactics and FF XII and the FF III and IV DS remakes) left Square Enix this past week, he's committed to continuing work on the Bravely Default franchise through at least Bravely Third.

 

Maybe what's most interesting about these games is how much player feedback is being considered.  There were 4 or 5 demos leading up to release in Japan with online suggestion forms that actually led to changes in the final game.  Maybe a month after full retail release there was a 100 question survey the director put up for players to give feedback.  Some of it was basic stuff (which classes did you use most.  Which did you never use, etc) but some of it was really big picture questions.  Would you like to see a sequel show encounters on the map, or random encounters?  Should those encounters be turn based or have a real time element?  I'll be super interested to see where they take these games since I can't think of another game in the genre that's kept quite such a close eye on the mood of the consumer base.

 

Oh yeah, and I totally want to play it.  Because FF 4 Heroes of Light with more ambitious storytelling and more expensive production values sounds good to me!

[Waldorf and Statler]

I really want to play it. Honestly Nintendo jerpegers are the only times I'm jelly of the Europeans.

[Mal]

I don't think the character designer is Amano since you can spot his artwork from a mile away. The artwork is by Yoshida (Another style you can spot), the same dude who did Tactics and Vagrant Story. Otherwise, good writeup FMW. Pretty cool SE is doing something like that. It'll be interesting to see where they take this series since they seem like they want to make it their own. Being so close to FF is both a good thing and a bad. Hopefully Second will mix it up in a good way... (Ugh... As a diehard old school FF player, I'm sounding really odd right now.)

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I've been keeping an eye on this one. It's one of the two JRPGs releasing next year I'm actually interested in (though it just released in Europe). The only thing I've seen that I dislike is the chibi character design for 3D models; I've always thought that looked fucking stupid. Otherwise, it looks like it could potentially be a neat game.

[Waldorf and Statler]

A lot of people seemed to be turned off by chibi models. The guy who's making the jrpg for PC/PS4/Vita on Kickstarter originally planned to use chibi models. I think that somehow they're easier to render and more visually appealing for artists. When he noticed the majority of the complaints were on the chibi models, and by notice I mean supporters told him, he hired a new guy to make it into a fully 3d game with 'serious' 3d models. He got more sells that way.

[TheMightyEthan]

I think "serious" models are boring for lower-fidelity games like on 3DS, etc.  I much prefer basically anything that has a less realistic aesthetic.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I know I haven't bought games because of it. Though with that Kickstarter project in particular it just doesn't seem all that great to begin with. Seems to me like chibi models are resultant of budget decisions, a dev's abilities and/or hardware restrictions.

[Chronixal]

I've been meaning to try the demo but I'm kinda torn based on what we know so far. I love me some Final Fantasy but never really loved the job system in any game outside of Tactics and the graphics look like those ugly models from the DS games. Never mind the micro transactions.

 

That said, some old school turn based Jrpg would be nice. Like say, I'll try the demo and report back.

[Mal]

To me I think the chibi model are here due to one major reason. Sprites from back in the NES and SNES days looked awfully like chibi characters. Games like Lufia I and II even had chibi sprites (There is no other way to classify them). It was all pretty much due to the hardware limitation of the time. Even then it persisted into the PS era (and beyond? My brain isn't fired up at all). My beloved Final Fantasy Tactics character sprites/models are chibis. More for the Japanese crowd than Western markets but there might be quite a bit of nostalgic trip since it will seem very similar.

[Pojodin]

I've been meaning to try the demo but I'm kinda torn based on what we know so far. I love me some Final Fantasy but never really loved the job system in any game outside of Tactics and the graphics look like those ugly models from the DS games. Never mind the micro transactions. That said, some old school turn based Jrpg would be nice. Like say, I'll try the demo and report back.

 

I've been following the game for some time now, and am looking forward to it, but I definitely agree about the whole ugly models. I personally prefer HD sprites, but the game sounds like something I would enjoy.

[jayc4life]

I just got a 3DS on Black Friday so might have to grab the demo off the eShop and see how it is.

[jayc4life]

Right then. Who all's got it and what's your thoughts?

 

I'm loving it so far, but still on Chapter 1. It's VERY grindy, but I'm making up for it by gaming the village building timers, since they don't pause if you close the lid with the game open (like how you do to get the SP without having to use microtransactions). That's getting me a reasonable amount of good weapons, and the 3 villagers per day from online, combined with StreetPasses carrying over from the demo version, means I already have 20 people building me stuff constantly. Helps as well to have friends who bought it early, since they can send you their OP character moves as summons. Had a few early boss fights that I one-shotted due to this.

 

I do love as well that you have both an active class, and a passive class, and can mix and match certain abilities from both. As my time with the demo will attest, a Knight with a good sword, with the two-handed passive skill, using Crescent Moon from the Valkyrie class, is just a tad ridiculous.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I'm loving it, but I'm doing a weird system where I grind until a level I want, then do a dungeon with no random battles, until I find a save point and turn it all the way up near the save point so I can grind a bit more (if enemies give decent EXP and JP). I'll give more thoughts later as I'm super busy with college course work.

[Vecha]

Just bought this game tonight.

My Nintendo ID is AllergicDonkey...add me and I'll add ya back  

Can't wait to start getting into this game.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Since when are there ID's? I still have to use friend codes.

[TheMightyEthan]

http://www.nintendo.com/3ds/nintendo-network-id

[UnstableArk]

Far as I know, friends can only be registered via friend code still. The Nintendo ID is just for store purchases. Sucks, but whatcha gonna do?

 

Your friend code should appear on the top screen when you go to the friend list and select your own name.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I went ahead and registered. But yeah friend codes still seem to be the only way.

 

 

As to my thoughts for the game:

 

I'm about 1/3rd to halfway done with chapter 3. As of right now the game has been amazing. The combination of jobs with secondary and support skills leaves the player a great deal of combinations as to make the game what you want. This game addresses one of my major issues with jrpgs: look customization. While your armor won't show up, each class out of the who knows how many has its own look, so your characters will look different each time you switch classes.

 

I've been mainly discussing the game in the neoGAF OT, but so far I don't think I've enjoyed a turn based non SRPG as much as when I played P4G. So this should definitely put this game within my top 10 rpgs of all time.

 

 

The Story: So far it seems to follow basic fantasy tropes and it's a bit similar to FFX with one character (Agnes) being this super important person in the game and the rest of you helping her out along the way. Nothing groundbreaking, it follows the formula established by other games. But the twist of every ranking officer of the enemies having different classes is great as when you defeat them you gain their class. It has enough oomph! to keep you going forward and I haven't even begun to explore what is wrong with Tiz in the story. Ringabel and Edea's love courting/denial is very entertaining in itself, much more than Tiz' and Agnes' awkward flirting we've seen in many a story.

 

The Characters: Tiz and Agnes are the weakest half of the game. Tiz is basically an everyday man who gets swooped into the adventure, the super nice and awkward joe do-gooder. I assume his character is there is to be the relatable one as he's very mild in general.

 

Agnes' character isn't bad,  she's just another sage-like character you see in every game who is suffering for the world. Her english voice acting can be cringe-worthy at times. The problem is I don't want to switch to the japanese just for her as I can't stand Tiz' japanese voice even more than Agnes' english voice. I don't want a child-voice 18 year old.

 

Ringabel and Edea basically save this game from having crappy main characters. Edea being a noble knight with a temper and Ringabel being the funny/charming casanova who is thinking of the ladies 24/7. Their voice acting is superb, especially Ringabel's cocky voice in general. His theme song is the best as well, if you haven't heard it listen to Love's Vagrant:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz4Ya6BEUpk

What a song. Seriously.

 

The side characters and enemies so far have been pretty black and white. The game is trying to tell me how this isn't so black and white as it seems and that the "other guys" actually have a reason to do what they're doing, but every single enemy so far has been either a cartoon bad guy or a somewhat decent character who at the end says "you just don't understand our cause". Well fucking explain it then. Because the douchebags in your team aren't exactly helping your case.

 

The Presentation: The artstyle is charming and the chibis have grown on me quite a lot to be honest. The music is repetitve and that's the game biggest fault in this department, but the music it DOES have is fantastic (see above video).

 

The Gameplay: This is broken down into two aspects: the combat/exploration, and the social interactions.

 

The combat and exploration. First let me get exploration out of the way. It's fairly standard overworld map and move from point A to point B while having random battles. They added a flying/swimming ship as well which makes travelling different, but it isn't anything to write home about. A big issue people are noticing, is how little money you make in the first half or 2/3's of the game by doing combat. The equipment gets fairly expensive and you don't have the money to get shit. There are cheap work-arounds to this that can be said "break the game" by abusing the system, but it's up to you if you want to do them.

 

The combat is though. The brave/default system has become so great in my opinion that next time I play a turn based rpg I'll be finding myself trying to default to get more attacks. I won't go over the system, the game does that for you pretty extensively. But the combination of being able to decide whether you'll default or do 4 attacks and be left idling is great. The combination of jobs for buffs/debuffs and area attacks. I also love how you can use specials to give your team many turns of ultra sweet buffs and debuffs for enemies. Definitely the combat is one of the best aspects of the game. Certain combinations of skills and classes also 'break the game' over how much damage you do, but I consider it very much planning and strategy.

 

The social elements actually work really well. You can have friends who play the game be summoned to do their registered attack during a fight. This'll net you friendship with them in-game. Also there's a village you must maintain. I cannot stress how much time I've spent on this. You get villagers that do the building for you in each store. You start out with one but the more you streetpass people the more you get. For those of us who simply don't have enough folks to streetpass, the game set a system where each day you can add 3-4 villagers. This is great as it doesn't fuck over people who don't live in an area with many 3ds owners.

 

As to the village you'll want to upgrade it asap. Some of the stores really help you out. There's the special attack moves, the weapons store, item shop etc... some of the things you can get in the weapon and armor stores you can't get anywhere else and they make a difference. But they're also very costly.

 

 

Over-all: I love this game. I've been obsessing over it this past week, and I mean that in a negative sense. I've spent so much time reading on classes and combinations, not to mention debating it in NeoGAF that I feel I have a grasp on how I want to evolve my characters. I've stopped watching tv/anime to play this game, and that should say a lot about me. I give it a 9/10. EASILY. It still has flaws in the writing and the way you can overlevel very easily. But it's a near perfect game.

[Vecha]

W&S...you need to add me. I need a Brave friend.

Really loving the game too...took your advice and have been upgrading like mad. Unlocked ALL regions( I think?) and keep getting a shit ton of free stuff from them. 

I'll add my friend code here in case people love me so much that they need Vecha in all areas of their life. 

 

1461-6243-3768 

[Waldorf and Statler]

ill add you in a few. i think my friend code is in the 3ds friend code thread.

[Vecha]

Added you. Waiting for us to become True® friends. 

[Waldorf and Statler]

The only kind of friends.