I adore the paper doll Akihiko Yoshida aesthetic and am always a sucker for snappy job system combat! The characters in BD aren't the deepest but they're charming little sketches that play off one another well and really grow on you with time. And yet... I feel like this game relies a little too much on Final Fantasy nostalgia in a way that almost feels a bit like easy pandering. I never thought i'd say it, but i just miiiight be getting a little fatigued with magical crystals at this point!!! Even the attempt to deconstruct the trope (the crystals are actually BAD and must be STOPPED) is kind of done to death and equally prominent in the series? it hardly functions as an exciting twist or subversive moment. This is a consummately made and satisfying title with so much to enjoy, but as a classic JRPG obsessive there was a lot this game did that simultaneously warmed my heart and left me feeling a bit patronized. Which is what I signed up for, I guess? And that's the uncomfortable problem!

One of the best games on the 3DS, although I got it day 1 in February 2014 and didn't finish it until June 2022 – eight years later. This is because I don't like that you have to play the game six times, but at least the characters are fun, the music is fantastic, and the story is pretty good! It also has one of the best implementations of the Final Fantasy job system ever and is highly customizable, which means the game welcomes you to break it, which is a lot of fun. New job combinations popped into my head all the time as I was playing it, and felt very rewarding when it worked – one of my favorite combinations which I used in the endgame was making Tiz a pirate/swordmaster, which allowed him to use the pirate's 4x damage output without using any MP, which let him always hit at max damage (9999).

This game is really good, but you have to have the patience to get past the tedium.

Bravely default se luce principalmente con su sistema de juego, el cual creo es al momento de escribir esta reseña el mas complejo y competente que yo haya visto en un rpg de este estilo, existen jobs primarios a lo final fantasy XII, que son los que condicionan tu estadísticas y tu afinidad por las armas y armaduras mas las habilidades propias de una clase, los jobs secundarios que te dan acceso a las habilidades de la clase pero que no afectan tus afinidades ni stats, y las habilidades pasivas, para las cuales llegas a tener hasta 5 ranuras, todo esto le da una cantidad de combinaciones y posibilidades bastante buena al juego, puedes utilizar la habilidad activa utsusemi que te hace esquivar un ataque físico con 100% de posibilidades con la habilidad pasiva "vuelta de tornas", que te da un BP cuando esquivas un ataque físico para conseguir un 1 BP a la vez que esquivas un ataque enemigo con toda seguridad, o también puedes usar el combo de "vuelo de fénix" que reduce tu hp a 1 para realizar daño dependiente de la cantidad de vida que tengas con "diferencial" que hace mas daño mientras menos salud tengas, y yaqué mencione los BP hablemos un poco de ellos, en este juego los BP son algo así como la moneda de cambio para realizar acciones, las acciones normales como ataques normales, usar objetos o el uso de ciertas habilidades activas consume un BP, en contraste, al terminar el turno todos los combatientes recuperan un BP, la cosa interesante es que aquí el comando de defensa denominado default no solo reduce el daño a la mitad sino que te da un BP, el cual se acumula, por lo que al realizar un default en un turno terminara con ese personaje o enemigo(algunos enemigos también hacen default) teniendo 2 BP, ahora, ¿de que me sirve tener mas BP?, ahí es donde entra el comando "brave" que te permite realizar mas de una acción en un turno consumiendo BP adicional, por lo que por ejemplo puedes atacar dos veces, o atacar y usar un item, o revivir a alguien y luego curarlo, la decisión es tuya, en condiciones normales puedes tener hasta un máximo de 4 BP(tomando en consideración el BP base) y en consecuencia realizar hasta 4 acciones en un turno. Estos 2 apartados hacen que Bravely default tenga un sistema de juego tremendamente solido y lleno de posibilidades que invitan a la experimentación y subirle el nivel a muchos jobs para tener siempre tener una configuración de party que se adapte de forma optima a tus enemigos, sin embargo existen algunos problemas en relacion a su diseño que le impiden al juego alcanzar todo su potencial, una de ellas es el reciclaje, yaqué para avanzar en la historia y sacar el final verdadero tienes que enfrentarte a 4 jefes aproximadamente 4 veces, dando 16 boss fights en total, lo cual me parece abusivo y tremendamente flojo, ahora, los jefes tienen cambios en estadísticas para que volverlos a vencer no sea un juego de niños, pero sigue siendo algo reiterativo.
Una de las boss fights esta muy desbalanceada por no decir rota, y me refiero a la pelea contra cierto personaje que llegado a un punto te traiciona y revela sus verdaderas intenciones, sus dos fases iniciales tienen cosas que las hacen molestas a su manera, la primera fase tiene masacre, un ataque físico a toda la party que te hace una cantidad MASIVA de daño aunque estés usando clase con buena defensa, y las segunda tiene un movimiento que inflige debilidades elementales para rematarte en el siguiente turno con un ataque elemental muy poderoso con la que puede pulverizar a tu party incluso si tienes buen nivel, hasta donde se, existen formas de salvarte muy concretas que recaen en las habilidades activas de job en especifico, lo malo es que en este juego no te dicen que habilidad pasiva o activa desbloqueara un job al subir de nivel, por lo que a menos que busques información externa puedes pasar una cantidad insana de tiempo buscando que job tiene la habilidad especifica que te sirve, o tambien puedes pasar una cantidad insana de horas subiendo de nivel lo suficiente para que su ataque no te haga instakill, lo cual es menos recomendable, finalmente tiene su fase 3 en la que te hace un combo del movimiento que te hace débil a los elementos y fulgor zeta, un ataque elemental tremendamente dañino, para lo cual es muy posible que ya no te sirva el método que utilizaste con su fase 2.
Otro aspecto muy cuestionable es que el juego te deja ajustar el encounter rate, ya sea incrementándolo, ideal para grindear, o bajándolo hasta desactivarlo completamente, lo cual puede mermar mucho el desafío al ya no tener que preocuparte de llegar al final de la zona con la mayor vida, mana y objetos posibles, y autosabotea el desafíos ambientales en los niveles, como trampas que te vuelven ciego o un piso caliente que te quita salud, pero lo mas insultante es el archipiélago de kutra, un area donde estan los mejores cofres del juego, es bastante larga, y tiene el añadido de que no puedes usar teleportita, para volver al inicio del nivel, por como te lo plantean parece riesgo/recompensa puro, mientras mas me adentro y mas me tomo mi tiempo mas loot voy a conseguir pero mas me voy a demorar en devolverme y es mas probable que te maten en el camino, pero todo esto se ve arruinado por la posibilidad de desactivar los random encounters, volviendo el archipiélago en un buffet libre de objetos de alta rareza completamente gratis y sin ningún riesgo añadido.
Dicho ya esto me gustaría dar unos pequeños puntos adicionales para ir terminando:
>la música y apartado grafico son muy buenos
>la caracterización de varios villanos se reduce a ser caricaturescamente malvados solo porque, siendo el caso de la invocadora de la invocadora o el salve maker los mas obvios
>Uno de los mayores plot twist del juego podría haberse evitado si el padre de Edea hubiera abierto la boca
>El verdadero villano final se siente salido de la nada y resulta muy poco interesante
Me gustaría describir a Bravely default como una joya a la cual le hizo falta pulirse, por las razones que ya mencione no puedo considerarlo una joya, pero si eres un entusiasta de los rpg que valora un buen sistema de juego por sobre todo y es capaz de soportar pifias en el diseño entonces Bravely default es para ti.
(Esta es mi primera reseña "seria", así que siéntete libre de señalar cualquier cosa que consideres un error.)

Decided to play this game to scratch a JRPG itch I had after playing Zelda. However, despite putting 60+ hours on this game, it still took me a longer while to actually sit down and finish it. Though it's not a bad game by any means. Before playing I decided to check what people thought of it, and nearly everyone mentioned a terrible "Endless 8" moment in the game that really drags it down. Despite this I decided to try out the game anyways to see for myself, if it is as bad as they say.

Firstly, I find the gameplay really unique, and a really nice change of pace from a slower turn based RPG. The brave system rewards "High Risk" gameplay and I absolutely loved it the most for the first couple of chapters. Later on though, when you've grown strong enough with a semi-/broken build, you'll find yourselves braving 4x every encounter for an instant win, which makes random encounters pretty weak. This also works with bosses early on, but later bosses will punish you for braving recklessly which is good unless you're running 3/4 DK with drain, then nothing's changed.

The story is where it's really at. It has one of, if not the best iteration of the "Warrior of Light/4 Crystal" storyline in any FF type games. It managed to turn a generic tale as old as time to a dark/epic/multiversal storyline. I thought it has a really fantastic start to it, with OK pacing, until I've reached the beginning of CH.5.

I do understand the need for the repetition plotline, In fact if done right It would've made the game incredibly good.
Though in defense of the game, I find people's complain about CH.5-8 somewhat exaggerated. Firstly, it's not exactly the same, with CH.6 and CH.7 lore dumping you with a really major revelation about the story. And secondly, it's not that long, especially if you don't play the side quests (which is mostly the same sidequests as the previous chapters, just slightly altered), CH.5-8 can be done in 45-50 min each, if you go straight to each objectives every time. Upon reaching CH.5 you're already around 70% of the game.

SPOILERS
My problem with this part lies in the fact that we can already know or at least have a clue of the major plot twist about the game as early as CH.4 If we've done the vampire subquest (which I did), and was later hinted more in CH.6 and outright shoved to your face in CH.7 even the title screen literally changed to spell it out for you. This means that as early as CH.4 you can already tell that what you've been doing is a mistake. But unfortunately, what has been lore dumped to your party fell to deaf ears, apart from their discussion when they're being lore dumped, it's not really acknowledged by the party at all outside of it. Even after reaching CH.7 Where the game outright tells you, that what you've been doing all this time is bad and one of you is a traitor, even Ringabel outright said who the traitor is, our objective (that would doom the whole multiverse) is still the same with little mention of doubt as we are awakening the crystals. I think the whole party has only acknowledged their mistake once outside of being lore dumped in the end of CH.7 where Agnes apologizes and the whole party said that they must "tough it out to reveal the true evil", at this point I thought "Finally, they do acknowledge it" and due to this, I also thought that the reason they still continued to follow the traitor's scheme is to root out the real evil in the end. Then CH.9 comes rolling and when the traitor finally outright betrayed them, they've all got the "surprised Pikachu face" reaction. As if the thought never once crossed their mind. In the end, they really outdid the whole repetition plotline, I feel like the only reason CH.8 even exist is so the numbers of crystal you've awakened is rounded up to the nearest ten (20), this is the part where there's nothing new in the story and the plot would still be the same regardless if it exists.

Nevertheless, I feel like the True Final Chapter somewhat made up for it. The whole chapter, apart from the mid dungeon, is fantastic. Especially the True Final Boss Fight. I love how crazy and epic the whole sequence is. Not to mention, upon getting the true ending, you're rewarded with an actually important and touching end credit scenes accompanied by a masterpiece of a song. If it weren't for the well done finale, I would've gave this game a way lower score.

Overall, Characters are alright, Ringabel and Edea is my favourite. Music is definitely top tier, and I don't mean this lightly. It was a fantastic journey in the beginning with a really steep landslide in the middle but managed to come back in it's full glory in the end. This was a rollercoaster of storytelling.

Finally done with this game. This was a months long odyssey for me, and while it only clocked out at 58 hours, it really felt like at least double that at times. This game was sold and indeed is a fairly traditional JRPG, an old school Final Fantasy in everything but name, but with a modern touch and features meant to showcase what the 3DS could do. Some are really cool and very welcome, like the one handed control setup and the option to tweak random encounter frequency down to none at all which is a godsend for when the game gets very repetitive. Unfortunately, some other features kinda really date the game in a way I haven't seen often. The game really wants you to have friends playing the game, or find people that play it with Streetpass. You need them to do the town rebuilding side quest that gives you some of the best items in the game, and for summoning in combat or to share their progress on jobs. Now, to be fair, the game does give you bot friends that do a good job at filling in if you don't have friends. They're basically useless for summoning, but they do help rebuilding the town. Still though, you need to go online to get them and lord knows how much longer any kind of online servers for the 3DS have left seeing as how the eshop closed not too long ago, which would make a very integral part of this game worthless and actively hamper the rest of your experience. Not only that, but the focus on community has an actual ingame explanation and having only bots as friends makes the ending funnier.

As for the actual game, I was enjoying it a fair bit up to a point. Graphics are lovely, all the towns in the game have a hand painted, layered look that for once looks even better with the 3ds, there's a decent amount of enemy variety, and the music is sublime. There's not one bad track in this game, and I love how each character has a theme that starts playing when you do a special move in combat, which gives you a buff depending on the move that lasts until the song ends, it's so fucking hype every time to hear Tiz's theme start playing. The combat is quite fun, the job system is pretty much lifted straight from Final Fantasy and you have quite a lot of build possibilities since you can use skills from two classes at once and choose up to 4 perks that all do a lot of different stuff, some can almost completely change how you play that character. I am also a big fan of the whole bravely/default system, which is basically borrowing turns from the future or saving them in advance by defending to act several times in one turn. It adds an extra layer of tactics that spices up the gameplay in a way only things like the ATB system on FF games or the press turn system on Megami Tensei have achieved. Unlike those two systems though, I feel like enemies in this game don't use brave or default a lot. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise, as that could've been too annoying. I also liked the story, even if it was quite simple. The main characters and their interaction had enough charm to carry the plot.

But then, it all takes a turn. Because of said story, you are groundhog day'd into playing the game again. The first time this happened, I was confused but intrigued. You basically play through a condensed version of the game that's almost a boss rush, and I had fun beating every boss again with my stronger party. But then it happened again. And then again. And then one more time for good measure. Every time this happened again I seriously considered just dropping the game, but every time the sunken cost fallacy won. By the third time I just turned off random battles completely which did help a lot with the tedium, and I never even felt underleveled. Each human boss does change their tactics a little each run, and they even start grouping together near the end for very challenging fights that were also pretty fun, but it was a massive fuckin slog. There is actually two endings, and having done both I think the true ending is okay, but the tedium it takes to get there was borderline deal breaker for me and I only got through with sheer willpower.

Pros:
+ Lovable and charming main cast that feels fully realized thanks to the character interactions in both the main story and in side dialogues
+ Job system is incredible, allowing you to fully customize your team strategically and aesthetically
+ Brave and default system makes it easy to wipe out small enemies yet exciting and challenging when facing bosses
+ The plot twist, the betrayal, wow

Cons:
- At a certain point in the story, it is glaringly repetitive and should have been executed in such a way that the gameplay did not suffer because of it (keeping it spoiler-free)
- Leveling can feel very grind-y, and while some QOL settings help mitigate this, it can still be tiresome
- Equipment feels a bit stale due to the lack of upgradability (gaining new equipment in a new region just to end up selling it to get even stronger equipment in the next); would have loved to see a bit more investment opportunity and viable variety in equipment pieces

Eu vou logo colocar o pau na mesa e dizer que a melhor coisa desse jogo é de longe a trilha sonora, e todo o resto é ruim.

Agora falando sério, por mais que num geral eu acho que eu gostei, tem muita coisa que me incomoda nesse jogo. A história de início é legalzinha mas enjoa muito rápido e a segunda metade inteira do jogo é horrível, não te dá ânimo pra jogar. Eu só zerei porque eu tinha mais de 20 horas no jogo e queria ver até onde ia. O final é legal mas não acho que valha a pena passar pela tortura de "zerar" 5 vezes o mesmo jogo só pra ver a conclusão da história. Enquanto a história vai decaindo a gameplay vai melhorando, mas a gameplay também é tão intrínseca ao loop que mesmo que ela se expanda muito no capítulo 5 em diante ainda sim ela se desgasta muito rápido, porque você fica visitando os mesmos locais de novo e de novo e de novo e de novo até nunca mais parar sem nenhuma novidade realmente boa.

Enfim, tirando a trilha sonora tudo nesse jogo é beeem mais ou menos, então eu só aconselho alguém jogar se realmente quiser ver sobre o que se trata. É um Final Fantasy sem a sensação mágica da coisa que só aparece nos 20 minutos finais, basicamente. Eu tava pensando em jogar o Second Layer e o 2 em sequência desse, mas eu quero tentar esquecer por enquanto que esses dois jogos existem.

The first meaningful advancements in turn-based battles since Final Fantasy X. The brave and default system is genius. It drives me crazy that Square Enix was so surprised by this game's success. Nobody stopped wanting turn-based RPGs, they were just starting to get stale and needed to be iterated on, not abandoned entirely.

The end of the game is monotonous and highly questionable, as anyone will tell you. The biggest offense in my mind is that in order to get what one would consider the "true" ending, one has to completely ignore everything the game is telling you about its themes. The game was more or less asking me to both do something extremely monotonous, AND be oblivious. I refused.

I welcomed this game into my home for a comfy 4 chapters. "What a nice time we've had" I thought.

By the end of Chapter 6 we were no longer friends.

By Chapter 8 this game was trying to kick ME out of MY house

Wow. The reviews on this one are polarized as can be.

Bravely Default is actually my favorite game, and I feel that a lot of what it does right is overlooked in lieu of what it does wrong.

The battle system stood out pretty well, with a job system similar to FF5's, and the ability to use party turns as credit.
I enjoyed the story as a unique spin of classic Final Fantasy games, and the characters were surprisingly easy to get attached to.
The art and music for the game is stunning. Akihiko Yoshida and Revo did a spectacular job bringing the world to life.

That being said, the elephant in the room is the second half of the game. Without spoiling anything, many consider this later portion to be repetitive and unnecessary. I'm not going to say it wasn't, but I will say there was a definite intention that the writers were going for. Was it perfectly executed? Absolutely not. It's a valid reason to drop the game, honestly. I would've if I wasn't so invested in every other aspect of the game.

If there's one thing I could say to anyone struggling through this second half, though, is that it's absolutely worth it. The ending is just splendid, and the epilogue-like section that follows the great finale left me with my mind blown.

I honestly don't know where to begin. Bravely Default was one of the most anticipated JRPGs in years. I remember everyone playing the demo and progress would carry across into the main game. It's good at luring you into a false sense of familiarity. You might think this is a typical JRPG with the only need to balance physical and magical attacks. There are over a dozen jobs in this game and they are crucial to getting through the many, and I mean many, dozens of bosses. Bravely Default is mostly a boss rush game with a few dungeons put in between to level you up.

The game starts out like any other typical JRPG. You have to solve a worldwide calamity, you are in a small town, you can visit shops, and you learn the ropes of the game. The main bulk of combat lies in Braving and Defaulting which allows you to borrow or save up turns. This is the key strategy this entire game and it takes trial and error to really learn when to do each of these during boss fights. You can bank up to three turns or borrow up to three. If you borrow turns in the negative you forfeit that many turns moving forward. This is great if you're powerful and want to get the battle over with or need to heal everyone fast. In combination with the right jobs and equipment, you can overpower many foes. Half of the jobs are locked away behind optional "asterisk" bosses while some are acquired during the story. The jobs are well balanced ranging between offensive and defensive types with supporting roles as well. The downside to this many jobs is the trial and error of knowing what jobs are best against what bosses. There are 14 levels per job and they don't level up super fast. You learn more job abilities as you level up as well.

It's important to balance your party. You don't want all offensive characters with none supporting you unless you're insanely powerful. The goal of the first third of the game is to awaken four elemental crystals with four guardians you have to beat to get to them. These dungeons are full of red chests with items and equipment, but some dungeons and areas have locked blue chests which can't be accessed until toward the end of the game. They contain some of the best equipment. There are save points usually before each major boss, and you can visit many towns to rest, and buy magic, armor, weapons, accessories, and items. The game consists of a large map that slowly opens up to you and eventually, you get a ship that can travel the entire map.

Now, I have to address the infamous final third act. These are chapters 5-8. Without spoiling anything you have to endure these chapters to see the true ending. You can skip this repetitive nightmare by breaking a crystal (I don't want to spoil more) and ending the game there. I sucked it up and endured cleansing the same crystals 20 times (literally 20) to see this ending. This is one of those things that makes me really have JRPGs. We could have just gotten a cutscene explaining what happens during these acts instead of literally repeating the same dungeons and bosses 20 freaking times. It was insanely boring and I wound up listening to music to distract me from the frustration. A lot of gamers will most likely just quit the game here or end it early with a false ending.

On top of these repetitive chapters, you can also repeat the optional "asterisk" bosses multiple times to level up your jobs. If you missed these asterisks during the first four chapters you can get these jobs later on, but the bosses are leveled to you. The benefit of getting them as they come up early on is you can level past them and make the fights easier. If you already have all the jobs you can just use these bosses to grind XP. There are some options to ease the burden a bit which helped a lot. You can actually turn random battles off or increase them. This is great for exploring a dungeon fully and then leveling up near a save or near the entrance. I really loved this feature and used it a lot. You can also reduce the difficulty down to easy any time or increase it. These options help push JRPGs into a more modern feeling and setting.

With all of that said the graphics are pretty and the music is great if repetitive. The same world map and dungeon songs will repeat a lot, but they aren't bad songs. The English voice acting is horrendous so I suggest the Japanese audio, and the story, while it does have a nice twist in the third act, isn't worth the extra dozen or so hours it will take to get through that third act to get the true ending. It's awful, boring, frustrating, tedious, and just plain not fun, and I can't forgive the game for this. No matter how good the rest of the game might be, or how unique the combat is, this third act is abhorrent and an obvious excuse to pad game time. I really hate, I mean hate, JRPGs that do this. It doesn't add anything to the game that a cut scene couldn't solve. Shame on Square Enix for this.

Overall, I'm not the biggest JRPG fan so others will like this more than I did, but that third act is unforgivable. I also felt there were too many jobs and the game's difficulty is through the roof. Towards the end of the game, you need to be doing close to the 9,999 damage limit to finish the game. To really finish this game and see everything that's here you will most likely need to hit the 99-level max at some point. This is an insanely hardcore JRPG and the casual Final Fantasy fans will probably quit during chapter 2 like I did when the game was first released. You will need to sink a good 100 hours just to see everything in the game including the bonus final dungeon that grants you the best stuff in the game to finish off the optional boss. While the graphics, music, and overall aesthetic of the game is pleasing this is a hate it or love it type of game.

Bravely default is such a odd experience for me.

If I have to compare it to something, it would be a ride to a weirdly balanced to a rollercoaster.
The first half of the ride is a pretty standard, but still thrilling and able to entertain you and make you feel so many emotions, even better than other types of similar titles.
Then the second half of the ride starts and.... it can big a slug-fest, that forces you to repeat some parts of the ride over and over again with little to none changes.

But if you endure... you reach the climax, the final part... the the final section of Bravely Default is one of the most incredible endings of a game that I ever scene, that not only it's able to suppress, scare, thrill and pump you at the same time, but also manages to fully and smartly use the console it was built for to its limits (lso it has one the best final boss theme ever created).

Bravely default was initially designed to bring back the charm and passion for classic Square Enix jrpgs in an era when these where towards extinction... and it absolutely nailed it.

It does have some big flaws, but if you are a fan of this genre... check it out. It is totally worth it.

Bravely Default may just be one of my favorite RPGs I've ever played. At the time of this review, I've played through and beaten this game 4 times now, and it's far from my last. I first played Bravely Default in 2015, and my life changed ever since. This one 3DS game is probably one of the games that has the biggest influence on my life.
Bravely Default's strongest selling point is its Jobs System, and it is one of the most engaging systems I've encountered. The Jobs System basically functions as classes for your characters to choose from, and there's 24 jobs in total, each with unique affinities, abilities, and support skills tied to them. While there's a lot of customization that can be done with that alone, you can select a secondary job for each of your characters! With that, you can produce an outrageous amount of unique party combinations, allowing for individual playthroughs to have wildly different parties. While some combinations are definitely better than others, it's really fun to try and experiment what could work. And on top of all of this, each job grants support skills that you can then add to your characters. These can be specific stat modifiers, unique abilities, or certain in-battle quirks. While I also would say some support skills are definitely better than others, I wouldn't say it to the same extent as job combinations. But this all comes together to create some of the most interesting and open customization in any game I've ever played! There are noticeable limits, but there doesn't feel like there is any.
Combat is also really fun! The game takes such a simple mechanic, but polishes it to such an amazing extent, that of course being the game's namesake, Brave, and Default. Defaulting is the game's guard, but every time you Default, you gain a Brave Point. This leads into Brave, where you can Brave up to 3 times, allowing a specific character to act 4 times per turn. There's a back and forth of building up your Brave Points, and using them to act more often. However, it's not as basic as that. Some abilities are dependent on BP amount, and some use BP to be used. Sometimes you'll have to use your Brave Points early in order to respond to a boss' attacks. And you also don't need Brave Points in order to use Brave, though that comes with the risk of not being able to act for a number of turns. This all leads into a beautiful balancing act of knowing when the stockpiling your Brave Points, and when to use them! This is neglecting the fact that every enemy also have Brave Points of their own to use!
Now, I love the story. But I can't really talk about it in this review. I tend to keep my reviews relatively spoiler-free, and for a game like this, I don't want to spoil it at all. But having now played through this game in full 4 times, the story is so much smarter each time. The game really is able to throw you for a loop, there's some really good red herrings in this game, and some great foreshadows that you probably will only notice on a repeat playthrough. I really think Bravely Default's story is well crafted. And on top of that, I really love the characters. Of course all of the major bosses you come across are really fun characters, but the main four are so fun. They have an amazing chemistry between them, and it makes all their interactions so worthwhile to me.
And this leads into what Bravely Default has been most criticized for, which is the game's second half. Now, I constantly see criticism about Bravely Default's second half, and how it is both tedious and repetitive. And yeah, it is, but it's used in such a way that I can't help but compliment for that. I think the game wants you to be frustrated and annoyed, because I think the game is purposefully testing the player. In the absolute start of the game, a characters says to you, the player "say that you'll stay, 'till the very end". And with the first half of the game, that half of the game tests the resolve of the main cast. I feel like it then evolves in the second half to be a test of resolve for the player. And though I won't describe how, the game tries to convince you to stop playing it, which I think works in tandem with the tedium and repetition. While I see where people are coming from with their criticism, I can't help but see it in a positive light, as a really good design choice.
And speaking on that, Bravely Default has so many amazing Quality of Life choices that I think other RPGs really should take from. For one, Bravely Default allows you to control the odds of random encounters! It ranges from double the encounter rate to no random encounter at all. And it's so nice because when needing to level grind, double the encounter rate is perfect, but if you're already far enough leveled, you can turn off random encounters to not have to deal with them! Level Grinding is so easy as well, I was able to max out every single job, and get to level 99 for each character rather easily. For one, depending on what occurs in battle, you can get some bonuses, and the more you fulfill those parameters per each battle, the boost gets larger and larger, meaning you can gain levels super easily. And on top of that, a certain support skill you can obtain in the later half of the game makes grinding an absolute JOKE. Bravely Default has some of the best Quality of Life choices in any RPG I've played, and it kinda sucks that neither of its sequels really have the same choices made.
And there's so much more I could talk about for Bravely Default. I could talk about the game's story for hours on end, especially with the game's ending, which I still get hyped over in every playthrough. And I've yet to even mention the amazing soundtrack made by REVO! Bravely Default to this day is still one of my favorite games of all time, and I beg for people to give this game a chance. I absolutely love this game.

It's not a bad game, really. It has a very solid battle system and job system. The brave/default system is interesting but ends up being a lot more shallow than you would think since it often just ends up being used in 2 ways: spamming brave at the beginning of a random encounter to end it quickly or defaulting to the max for boss fights and unloading all the attacks at once. The only reason to ever really break away from those strategies is spending however many BP you need to do healing with a white mage. There are some smaller nuances that appear around the halfway point like one or two enemy attacks that drain BP and some jobs that use skills with BP costs, but it's not enough to radically change the combat. That being said, the brave/default system only improves on the typical turn based combat so it's a welcome addition. As with any other game with a job system, it's fun to level up jobs and the support abilities you can carry over makes it feel more rewarding to level up multiple jobs, but none of the jobs I got were very interesting compared to other games. The artstyle is cute and the music is nice but severely lacking in variety. My biggest issue with bravely default is that it falls into the worst pitfall a JRPG can have, and that is that the party members are not very likable at all. Tiz is an extremely generic hero, Agnes's naivete and distrust of others just comes off as annoying, and Edea and Ringabel have the same back-and-forth in every other scene. From what I played (up to the end of chapter 3) the plot was nothing special. The only promise for something interesting was the twist I had already been spoiled on for some time but I know that with that twist comes having to repeat the first half of the game all over again with minor changes so I didn't have the motivation to go on. I can see why people like the game, but the flaws were just in spots that I couldn't ignore for the sake of a job system I've experienced in several other games.