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.

i know the latter half of the game is flawed and may drive some people away, but this is just personally one of my favorite rpgs of all time.

the brave/default system with the different job classes is extremely fun. you can build your team as you wish and create some really broken tactics. the cast of characters will forever be one of my favorites, and the soundtrack is memorable and one of my most played of all time. even the latter half of the game was enjoyable due to the slight changes each chapter brings.

i'm hoping this somehow, someday gets ported to pc/modern systems because i'd love to replay this on a bigger screen

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.

Familiarity through repetition.

The world rearranges itself subtly every new day we awaken.

Speak with all the possible versions of yourself.

I may write the biggest cope ever right now, but I can't help it.

I wish more people knew about this game and could give it a chance, but it being a 3DS title oddly holds it back while also giving it such a niche "you had to be there" fever dream of a vibe. This game is one big gigantic JRPG gem that I want MORE OF!!

The Brave/Default system is genuinely great, as it adds a more strategic twist to the classic turn based combat system and spices up the difficulty to a decent notch. The job system, while grindy, presents you with the option to keep abilities from jobs that you don't necessarily want to use. (Ex. A Knight could still have the passive abilities of a Monk or Pirate.) It just serves up a really satisfying platter of combinations for your characters to be built however way you want, with some combinations being insanely broken if you put in the time to nurture them. I love being an all powerful FREAK in a JRPG and don't mind grinding, so I cannot get enough of the class system in this game. It's a chef's kiss of variety and encourages you to swap classes often depending on the challenges at hand.

The plot of the game is also fantastic, and the music fucking rips. Each character, while their own degree of JRPG cringe, wrestle with their own issues that beautifully weave together as the universe's problems get much more dire.

That being said, the worst part of this game is definitely the last 1/3. I can swallow it just fine, but I can see why it puts a lot of people off. If it was shorter or executed in a different way, I could get by it a bit more but as it is, it makes the ending a bit of a slog to get through. It's a fantastic idea that ties the plot and conflict together, but it needed more details, more dialogue, more sense for it to work properly. It needed more than just ass blastingly difficult boss swarms to make it good. If you can get past that, you're in for a great finale.

Also please, this game has one of the best features in an RPG I have ever seen, and that is the ability to adjust random encounters. Please, please we need this more. You can crank that shit up to 1,000 to make grindfests much more manageble, or turn them off completely so exiting gigantic dungeons is less annoying. IT'S FANTASTIC. I'll die as a Bravely Default stan, BAYEBEEE.

todo mundo achava que a segunda narrativa criada na história da humanidade seria o (ou durante o) pós-modernismo, se a primeira foi a tragédia grega e seu destino como personagem principal - mal sabiam os estudiosos que o pós-modernismo é a terceira, já que a segunda é bravely default e sua tese sobre a coragem de fazer o que é esperado de maneira consciente, tomando a decisão padrão por brio e não por conformidade, trocando a fenomenologia hegeliana (outro ato de coragem) pela fenomenologia hegeliana (outro ato de omissão).

escrevi mais (em inglês) aqui: https://www.superjumpmagazine.com/bravely-default-as-ergodic-literature/

My first review.

Right from the start you get a CGI intro showing the motivations of all 4 main characters; Agnes Oblige, a Vestal of Wind who sets out to save the world from darkness by awakening the 4 Crystals. Edea Lee, daughter of the grand marshal of Eternia who seeks out his approval by capturing the wind vestal and becoming a skilled soldier. Ringabel, a charmer who has no memory and seeks to recover it with the help of an intriguing future-telling journal. And lastly Tiz Arrior, a young shepherd who lost his family to a mysterious pillar of light that swallowed his village.
With that out of the way, onto the gameplay.

GAMEPLAY

The world of Bravely Default (also known as Luxendarc) is like most other RPGs; a large overworld map with settlements and dungeouns you can explore. This part of the game is relatively simple and mostly serves just to connect all the places into one vast world.
However the true meat and potatoes of the gameplay is the combat.
BD serves an interesting take on the traditional formula, in more ways than one.
First is the very name of the game, Brave and Default mechanics. Defaulting makes you defend during that turn, reducing damage taken and storing up BP. Brave lets you spend those Brave Points by allowing you to perform multiple actions in the same turn. For example if you used Default 2 times, you'll get 2 BP which you can use in the next turn by Braving 3 times and performing several different moves at once. Bear in mind however that you can go into negative BP, making you unable to perform any actions and essentialy making you a sitting duck so choose wisely on what actions you'll perform.

JOB SYSTEM

Next change is the job system. Throughout the game, you'll encounter bosses known as asterisk holders, powerful foes that have their own unique abilities. Once you defeat them, you'll obtain their asterisk and their job as well.
This'll get lenghty so buckle up.
When you equip a job, there are multiple things to know; every job has unique base values. For example Knight has good vitality, Monk has good strenght etc. Next is arms proficiency. This tells you how well you can wield weapons of that certain type. Black mages are good with rods, thieves are good with daggers etc.
Lastly you have the specialty. Every job has one and it's an innate ability you get when equipping a job. Arcanist has Absorb magic damage, Ninja has Dual Wielding etc.
Now while you can equip a certain job and just leave it that, you can also equip a side-job. This means that you can have 2 different commands ready to use at any time; and this is where the combat truly shines.
It allows for some wild experimentation, regardless of your stats and arms proficiency. I won't say much more because it's more fun and engaging to just try it for yourself.
Next up are support abilites; these are pretty much what the name implies. When you upgrade jobs, you'll get abilities that have an active effect, rather than using it as a command. When you start out, you can only equip the ones with a cost of 1 slot (don't worry though, you get more as you progress), and this is where a good chunk of the strategic value lies.
A lot of these abilities are simple stuff such as Magic Defense 20% up, Physical Attack 10% up etc. However you also have some interesting ones like Holy One; reduces physical attack but increases effectivness of recovery magic or Zero, increasing the power of magic if the last digit of your current MP value is zero and so on.
Last but not the least we have Bravely Second.
The name might be confusing at first but the mechanic itself is really simple. Let's say you're having a hard time with a certain boss that's kicking your ass and your party is at critical HP. Well simply press START and you can pause time! This essentialy lets you perform an action at any given time, even during a turn. Of course this kind of freedom isn't free ironically, because every action you perform costs SP or Sleep Points. Once you spend one SP, you can put your 3DS to sleep mode and after 8 hours you'll gain SP. However the best use of Bravely Second is with the special moves.

SPECIAL MOVES

Early on, Tiz will meet the king of Caldisla, a kingdom where his village Norende was. He will name him the chairman of Norende restoration efforts, and despite the boring sounding title, this also one of the keys to fully enjoy BD. You'll get access to shops that sell recovery items, new weapons and such. Most of these shops however are centered around these special moves. These are the most powerful commands in the game which can let you cheese bosses IF you have it all planned out. Firstly every Special Move is centered around a weapon type; Staves, Knuckles, Katanas etc. Each of these moves can be customized with 4 kinds of parts; one lets you inflict elemental damage to a foe like Water, Fire etc. 2nd part is a simple power boost, ranging from 10 to 50%. 3rd part lets you make the move extra effective against a family of monsters such as Aquatic, Beasts etc. The last part infuses the move with a status ailment like Poison, Blind etc.
This is just for one type of moves, the others are Recovery, Enfeebling and Support, but we'd be here all day if i was listing those.
Now why did i mention Bravely Second for these?
It's because during regular gameplay the max possible damage is capped at 9,999. However if you stop time, that cap is removed, allowing you to deal ridiculous damage all the way up to 100K. Of course you still have to plan carefully to reach that level.

WORLDBUILDING AND LORE
Given how large the world is, you'd expect a good amount of lore to flesh out the locations and make them feel connected; in that case I'm happy to say it does indeed deliver on that.
All of the cities feel unique and part of one world at the same time. As for the lore, not only is the world and characters rich in it, but it's also delivered in many ways, subtle and obvious.
It can be delivered via simple exposition during the main story, talking to citizens of the towns, completing side quests, listening to the party chat, examining points of interests or just good old ludo-narrative storytelling.
Oh right about the side quests-

SIDE QUESTS

Side quests, or sub-scenarios as the game calls it, are optional missions you can do to either get to know the characters more or better yet, to obtain new jobs. I highly recommend doing them all because all of them are either self-contained sub-plots with their own nifty scenarios or something connecting directly to the main story. Basically you'll get some kind of bonus to your playthrough either way.
However after a certain event things become a bit of a mixed bag.

!SPOILERS AHEAD!
After Agnes awakens the 4 crystals, the Holy Pillar appears and you set out into it. After an intense fight on the ship's deck, you find yourself back in the spot the game started out from. At first it's confusing as all hell, but after a while you find out you've in fact visited another of the many Luxendarcs that exist in this universe. Now what does this mean for side quests? Initally, nothing really cause the events still play out basically the same, except you have the upper hand in having the memories and knowledge of the last time, and I will admit it is fun seeing everyone be confused on how your party knows everything. However this cycle is repeated multiple times, this world loop as it's called, which did drag down the experience for a lot of the players, especially considering even the main bosses get reused. The reusal also makes them feel lesser due to them reusing the same strategy and barely noticeable scaling. So if you want to experience the game in the best way, my advice is to beat every side quest in the first world, and then ignore them the next 2 worlds. In the 2nd to last and last world they get much better, shorter but also much harder.

SOUNDTRACK

Oh man, time to talk about this OST. Being composed by REVO (or Linked Horizon if you will), it is nothing but phenomenal, bangers all the way through. I'm gonna list some of my favorite tracks just to get it out of the way. Serpent eating the ground, That person's name is, Silence of the forest, all 4 special move themes, Horizon of light and shadow, Wicked battle/flight etc.
I highly recommend trying these out for yourself, even without the context it's a guaranteed bop. The OST as a whole has plenty of variety in theming and instruments. For example Tiz, being a shepherd, has the flute as the main instrument while Ringabel, being a ladies man, has the harmonica and castanets as the main ones. The music also knows when to be energetic, calm, melancholic and intense exactly when it needs to be. Oh and remember the special moves I mentioned? The best part of those is that, when you use them, that character's theme starts playing and you get a certain buff that lasts as long as the song does. Not only do you get to jam out, but it also encourages you to think fast in order to use those buffs to the max. You can also interrupt a song with another one and combine those buffs if you really wanna finish off your enemy.

ACCESSABILITY AND QoL
This might seem like an odd thing to include next to something like gameplay, music and such, but I must talk about how player-friendly this game is.
Starting off simple, when equipping a new job, your arms proficiency changes as you may remember. This means it can be a slog to change equipment every time, but fear not for these features make it a simple task. Firstly there is Optimize, a command that automatically equips the best possible gear for that character, and secondly you have a Favorites tab which allows you to save the job sets you have created and further simplifying the chore of job changing and saving you precious time.
Next up we have QoL stuff for battles; there is the option to speed battles up 2 or 4 times or to pause them, Auto-battle, which repeats your action from the last turn (great for grinding), Encounter rate meter that allows you to walk around freely when you want to progress the story or make grinding last a lot shorter. And my favorite of them all, the option to use left and right on the D-pad for inputting commands (right for yes, left for no).

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Bravely Default was an enjoyable ride throughout all the 96 hours I put into it (well, maybe not every single hour) and a must-play for everyone who's into RPGs or just recently got into them (like me). Overall rating i'd say is 9.5/10. Excellent writing, great story, phenomenal OST, always engaging gameplay etc.

P.S I haven't talked much about the characters and plot because to be frank, I don't really think I'd do a good job retelling it, but just to be sure
Ringabel best boy :)

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.