I have sitting next to me, Bravely Default, resting in my 3DSXL as minutes casually tick by. Although I am typing this now, I am gaining levels in the game, and it feels good.

Bravely Default at it's core is a solid RPG. It has the staples that you want and have come to expect from the genre. You control four charming characters as they tramp about the world trying to save it. I don't want to go too deep into the story as it is still new, but it is interesting and well pieced together. The game has voice acting, AR integration, and an in game encyclopedia to keep you up on all of your lore. It crafts a beautiful world that you will be happy to spend your time in.

Your characters gain levels and job levels as you play so meters are always being filled. I haven't unlocked all of the jobs yet but there are plenty to choose from and they each level up to level 14. Each job level gives you a new type of ability to use so every number feels important. Experience points are gained through your standard turn based combat. Bravely Default begins forging it's own path here as the combat comes with a twist. Your characters have a set number of turn points that you can spend or save. You can have one character take four turns immediately if you want to spend their points but then they have to wait a few turns until they get their points back to the starting 0 point. Defaulting defends your character and lets them store up an extra point to use later.

The real gem is the use of social aspects in the game. Over the course of the game you are rebuilding a village that will give you access to certain items depending on what you have built in it. You start off with one citizen building a store and that chore takes an hour, but with 2 people it takes half and hour and so on. This time ticks down as your DS is in sleep mode too. You increase citizens by street passing other players which gives you a bunch of other things to do with streetpasses as well. People you pass can be summoned into your game and you can use abilities they have as well. It actually makes me want to carry my 3DS with me so I can get more done faster. Brilliant use of the features if you ask me.

There is a slightly seedier part to the game though. You can buy these "Sleep Points" that let you take turns in between enemy turns. These points can be purchased or you can leave your DS on sleep mode for 8 hours to get one point. This feature doesn't seem particularly useful to me so I think it will be a part of the game that I ignore. I mention it just because I worry what sort of thing Square Enix will get itself into if it keeps following ideas like that.

Before I acquired Bravely Default I was still playing FF XIV pretty hard. I just hit level 15 and did I pretty large quest line. Pretty soon I'll be able to start doing dungeons. I already read up on the first one so I know how to heal through it. It seems really easy though. My big worry is that playing with the controller will make going through the dungeons harder. I wish I had the money to build a proper gaming computer. Despite my shortcomings that game awesome. I'm working on figuring out how to take screenshots so I can post them. I've been looking into that for a lot of games and it seems like quite the task to figure out. If you anyone has suggestions I'm willing to listen!

Games, Games, Games,

Chemystery