I find Bravely Second to be a decent step down from its predecessor, for a few reasons.
Firstly, I do not like the shift from a more classic JRPG cast of characters to mostly anime inspired personalities, a change that bleeds into the script pretty heavily, making the game's tones much more, again, "anime inspired".
To further explain this point, BD was constantly set on a specific set of tropes for its characters, which made the game much more akin to a Final Fantasy, while Bravely Second's approach ends up making me feel like I'm playing a Tales of entry, although less serious and with more comedy, which makes it even worse a change to me.
Secondly, while I consider Bravely Default my favorite sountrack of all time for a video game, the handing of the torch from Revo to Ryo as the composer ended up making this sequel's soundtrack just "very good" to me, which, simply put, means it's SEVERELY worse than its prequel.
Lastly, I really dislike the way you aquire Asterisks here, since not only does the game make you chose bewteen 2 jobs at any chance to acquire them, but the way it asks you so basically (to keep it spoiler free) makes it so that if you prefer X job over Y, you need to pick a choice which narratively goes against what you'd want to choose (ugh, it's so dumb that it's hard to even explain well).
The game also carries on with the only complaint I have with its prequel: a lack of "scale" in the world map, that results in a limited sense of wonder for the game world, a fault that represents one of the main strengths of classic Final Fantasy games (to which, again, the Bravely Default series heavily derives from).
Having said all this, Bravely Default is still one of my favorite games of all time, for my favorite gaming system of all time, and so even if this sequel is worse in some aspects, it still managed to be a blast for me overall, hence the very high rating.
Firstly, I do not like the shift from a more classic JRPG cast of characters to mostly anime inspired personalities, a change that bleeds into the script pretty heavily, making the game's tones much more, again, "anime inspired".
To further explain this point, BD was constantly set on a specific set of tropes for its characters, which made the game much more akin to a Final Fantasy, while Bravely Second's approach ends up making me feel like I'm playing a Tales of entry, although less serious and with more comedy, which makes it even worse a change to me.
Secondly, while I consider Bravely Default my favorite sountrack of all time for a video game, the handing of the torch from Revo to Ryo as the composer ended up making this sequel's soundtrack just "very good" to me, which, simply put, means it's SEVERELY worse than its prequel.
Lastly, I really dislike the way you aquire Asterisks here, since not only does the game make you chose bewteen 2 jobs at any chance to acquire them, but the way it asks you so basically (to keep it spoiler free) makes it so that if you prefer X job over Y, you need to pick a choice which narratively goes against what you'd want to choose (ugh, it's so dumb that it's hard to even explain well).
The game also carries on with the only complaint I have with its prequel: a lack of "scale" in the world map, that results in a limited sense of wonder for the game world, a fault that represents one of the main strengths of classic Final Fantasy games (to which, again, the Bravely Default series heavily derives from).
Having said all this, Bravely Default is still one of my favorite games of all time, for my favorite gaming system of all time, and so even if this sequel is worse in some aspects, it still managed to be a blast for me overall, hence the very high rating.