Bravely Default

[Tanooki]

With the sale that is on this week with the buy one get one free deal at Best Buy it got me thinking about this game again as it was part of the choice list for the 3DS sale.

I was wondering how you all feel about this game having it out awhile now looking back upon it. I'll admit I've never finished it, I probably should but I find time hard to get and get distracted with a 2 year old around soon going on 3. Thanks to the screwball behavior in the designs of the FF franchise since 10 I've been fairly turned off to it between the weird designs of the character, the off and on MMO garbage, and in particular how they turned boss fights into cheap games of Simon Says (do this move, or get a death like blow punishment) so you have to buy lame guides or use online faqs/videos.

Bravely Default though, despite the name to me is a return to the classic pre-PS2 era Final Fantasy greatness only really revisited with the throwback resurrection of FF3 on the DS(and now tablets.) It's like they just couldn't for some reason call it Final Fantasy so they named the game after the risk vs reward system they implemented in combat ...brave to do more than one hit per turn or default to store up an extra turn skipping a combat turn and the tactic is amazingly fresh in the old way the design still exists. Visually the game seems very on par with FF9 just not with the junky old polygons and poorer textures that limited the PS1. You still have the crystals, the great music, the 'chibi' cute designs you found in FF9 that were a 3D mimic of the SNES era FF6 like stuff. Did any of you like the added town or Norende where you could rebuild and get cool freebies and buy extra useful junk through the traveling trader?

I'm glad to see a sequel is in the cards for this one and I bet we get it too. I'm not one for collector boxes much at all but I did bite on this one which is extraordinarily rare and if they did it again I'd probably snap it up too (as I am for FF Theaterhythm's sequel in a couple months.)

[kupomogli]

Bravely Default is a great game, but not quite on the same level of the classics in the past.

At first when playing Bravely Default, the class system seems amazing. It's pretty well done, but as you play through it there's things you'll come to realize very quick. Magic users outside of support classes are outclassed by chapter 2. Even equipping two staves/rods, the damage a single melee attack can do is going to exceed that of whatever the current available spell you have. It's not until you master the Spell Fencer class to get Phantom Weapon that they can do a reasonable amount of damage, but even then, it's still not on par to the kind of melee damage you can do. The best magic user in the game is actually a Monk. Phantom Weapon, Natural Talent, nothing equipped, any spell will take 9999 damage and with low leverage to do half damage for enemies and allies Comet might take around 6000. Problem is, you can make melee characters end game that are far better.

The Brave/Default system in combat does add strategy, but it also kind of makes battles turn into a one trick pony show. Just about every single random battle you'll brave three times kill them all in a single turn. There might be times where you won't be able to kill them in a single turn so you might do your thing the first turn, but second turn they're dead. Boss battles, usually turns into a brave until 3BP, save brave for your support characters, and your attackers will use brave down to -1BP(+1 at end of turn for 0BP.) Then you'll repeat. Default, default, default, go all out, default, default, default, go all out. So the Brave/Default system introduces some major flaws that each character only having one turn on other RPGs doesn't have.

Also, with as many different skills that you have in the game, you won't be using many strategies. The problem is that once you find a strategy that works better than another, there's no reason to ever use the lesser strategy. Want to see a class/skill combo that can restore 7BP to every character in a single turn. Early game it's not as good because you don't have Group Cast All, but you can still have your characters going multiple times each turn as soon as you reach Red Mage level 9 for each of them. This class/skill combo allows all your characters max BP every turn aside from the first. The other classes aren't customized well to show off beating the boss using auto battle. This class/skill combo with a Monk/Dark Knight, Dark Knight/Merchant, Spiritmaster/Salve Maker, Low Leverage+Rage/Dark Nebula/Rage/Dark Nebula combo has you taking off 150,000-200,000 damage every turn, ending with full health, and no boss or late quest bosses even stands a chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mI8sR7NZ5k

[drtomoe123]

Man, it legitimately bothers me how disappointed I was with the last half Bravely Default. The first half of the game was fantastic but the second half was just abysmal.

[Tanooki]

I haven't touched it in awhile. I remember getting into the civil war/fiery area of the game with the armies and walls. I know I need to either take down the optional signing bimbo or go north and deal with closing in on the fire shrine but I got distracted then forgot about it as I found some reason to pick my Kindle up again at night instead of a game before bed. Is that around the time it collapses because I recall enjoying it more earlier on and later it seemed to get more job picky about stuff and I'm not good at figuring out which few jobs are used to scam the system for easy almost cheating wins since I don't want to use a faq for the game to do that.

[kupomogli]

The game doesn't start really sucking until chapter five but it does get worse the further you progress.

If you do go back to it, just make sure if you're doing all the quests to get all the classes, that you're leveling up a white mage. You'll require dispel to beat a boss in that same area. You can get the spell at the town in that area you're at. There's really no other skills you require unless you're going to attempt to get the vampire class, then you need to level up the Spiritmaster class until you learn the skill adaptation to make it a whole lot easier. You can either use four BP to cast it on everyone turn one, or you can equip the skill Stillness that they also learn so the first two turns allies and enemies receive no damage so you can start the battle buffing your characters and then using adaptation at the end of the second turn right before Stillness ends.

[Tanooki]

It has been a good quarter since I touched it. I know where I left it, and as far as the party goes I'm almost positive it's hunter, monk, white and black wizard. I've never skipped a subquest to grab up an added job, but I remember that annoying singing bitch was giving me trouble so I was leveling at that point and got bored and got side tracked. I've more or less the whole time stuck to the same jobs though I have at the least ranked up all the ones to that point up to like lv4 or 5 I believe just to get some of the oddball perks that nullifies various conditions and magics. I found prior I was using the knight and he started to blow so I tested the hunter and found the bow damage alone and especially with the power shots earned through around lv6-7 did some ridiculous damage when they hit which is almost always. I've always bought all the spells and best gear each town had to exploit and I wasn't much for skipping chests ever in dungeons other than the locked ones I still can't return to yet.

Beyond that I can't really say and if I did fire it up again and tried to pick it up I'd probably get annoyed as it has been so long I may just restart though it would probably get played even less the distance as I have other games in the way like Kirby and Yoshi I got off that Best Buy sale a week ago.