I'm not one for more traditional JRPGs generally, so me giving it a 5/5 should say something.

I loved this game all the way through. The chararacters are entertaining, the combat and job systems are fantastic, the music is excellent and there is a lot of meaty side content to enjoy. It also has some QoL features that I kinda wish all JRPGs had, such as x2 and x4 battle speeds and being able to change the frequency of encounters at any time. It also has some pretty nice social features, allowing players to use their friends' job levels or share useable to in-battle abilities, though I ignored the former because it felt a bit silly and I didn't want stupid Miis on my menu.

I also found the game fairly challenging on Hard, though a couple bosses did have really long fights in the first half. But it was SO satisfying to figure out how to beat bosses with the proper strategy and setup, even more so in the second half where you have more tools and such. Highly recommend not looking up strats online and figuring out your own way to beat the bosses. Though I do feel the endgame was kinda broken, as you have so many potentially broken setup possibilities, but it was a joy figuring those out too and trying to efficiently kill bosses. With the right setup, you can even Auto through some of the harder fights in the game (not counting the Nemesis obtained from the social features, which are a marked step up in difficulty).

The story, while nothing special at first and certainty not without its flaws in writing, was pretty cool, with an amazing finale. People love to complain about the later half, though, but I find the complaints as grossly overblown as Dark Souls' difficulty is. At worst, you can rush though the so called repetitive part really quickly as long as you have good strategy against the bosses. I'd also say this later half is not even a half, and more of a quarter. Unless you go for the side content, that is, but the side content during this part is actually really fucking great, specially in the last two chapters. Though I do feel a couple of the chapters could've been folded into a single one, I feel that they kept it how it is mostly to prevent missable content. And even then, there's still a brand new side quest during those, so whatever. So I can kinda see why people get filtered by it, but at the same I find the reaction extremely overblown.

Story aside, I found the characters extremely entertaining, though they're not particularly depth or anything. But I'm not one to think depth = good and simple = bad. The main players have enough depth for what they are, and they get more development through side content, with some really cool backstories too. I loved the asterisk bearers, all of them being very amusing in their own ways.

Music I touched on but I wanna repeat that this game's soundtrack is excellent. It feels like a bit of a crime that such a good soundtrack is limited by the 3DS, which has both low audio quality and low volume on headphones (at least my 3DSXL does). The one flaw the OST has it that it is very short. It's about 2 hours of music, for a game that I played for nearly 120 hours. I wish there was more to it just to alleviate repetition, but the soundtrack is so good it never tired me.

The voices also sound pretty compressed, probably because the game is nearly fully voiced save for generic NPCs and party chars, in both English and Japanese, while being a long-ass JRPG that has to fit within the limitations of the 3DS. Could've probably been alleviated by making the JP voices free DLC instead of bundling them in, but whatever. The compression kinda has some charm and it's not too bad. Voice acting itself I thought was pretty great (played in English) save for Agnès, but her voice made me laugh often enough that I can't be mad at her.

Gameplay is some of the most fun I've played in a turn-based JRPG. The job system is just fantastic, and the nice twist of the Brave Points elevated it further. You can use up (Brave) or store (Default) Brave Points to get up to 4 turns in a row, being able to go into a turn debt by braving into the negatives or play it safe by saving them up first by defaulting (which works as guarding too). BP are unique per character, also. It's just really fun because you have to think about when to Brave and when to Default, and the system extends to bosses so they play with the same rules as you, more or less. On top of combat itself being great dun thanks to BP, the job system is just highly satisfying as you mix and match the abilities of different jobs to come up with builds and setups. Finding a proper synergy is half the fun! There is also very little grinding, and even if you choose to grind it just goes by incredibly fast with x4 battle speed, auto (which repeats the last set of actions you did) and +100% encounter rates.

So yeah all in all, easily one of my favorite JRPGs. Kinda in shock that anyone involved with the boring slog that was 4HoL managed to make such a good game! Also in shock that people filtered so easily by the later "half" of the game.

the characters, music, plot, art, music, game mechanics, job mechanics, MUSIC, everything about this game is my favourite thing and there isnt anything i dont like about it.

the weakest points of the game are the party interactions that can come off as vapid when important things arent happening, and the pure amount of repetition which turns a lot of people off the game- which is understandable for sure but i 100% believe that it would be a worse game without it.

the player characters and villains are (for the most part) fleshed out and have unique dynamics with each other, and the plot is engaging, makes sense, and has some incredibly impactful moments. the depth of the villain characters combined with how imaginative the plot is absolutely Makes this game for me. it could play like absolute garbage and it would still be one of my favourite games, but the gameplay itself is genuinely fun and rewards players for experimenting with different jobs and job abilities, giving you a lot of freedom in how you want to play. exploring dungeons and fighting random encounters never felt like a chore and there wasnt a single boss battle that i remember not actively enjoying.

also the music is really good!!!!!

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.

Nice jrpg with a cool twist , best implementation of the job system in ff followed by its sequel , even if it’s not technically a final fantasy.

However , the final stretch of the story is bogged down by certain section that can feel stretched and rather repetitive even by intention and can sour your experience depending on how patient you are .

Also the music is pretty darn good.

Ringabel the best

Bravely Default is a game that truly lives up to it's title because while it still feels like the same JRPG we have come to expect from Square Enix; it has the courage to give us a new battle system, multiplayer experiences, and a story that all feels so familiar, but experiments far too much to be considered the same thing. Bravely Default is truly a rebirth of what a JRPG can be, and what some imagination outside the box can do for any given genre that is getting a little too old for it's own good. With a well written story, an amazing score soundtrack by REVO, and a lot of ideas that tie up together so wonderfully Bravely Default is a must for anyone!

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.)