Totally turned off by the chibi art style?

Not really. It's fine. Although I'm one of those people who sometimes likes anime (always hated the chibi style in anime though). However, the background art in towns could've used more fine-tuning.

Chibi art is what attracted me tbh.... reminds me of Fire Emblem awakening :D

Not at all. It's the exact same style that was used in the DS versions of Final Fantasy III and IV.

I think part of what saves it is that they don't have huge eyes and the general character designs are pretty good. Sadly that's not the case with Persona Q (the eyes).

I thought I would be but I'm actually fine with it. After playing the game for a bit I just forgot about it.

Well, Persona Q uses the same character art direction as Etrian Odyssey.

@icybankz: that's not chibi that's just feetless.

It looks identical to the art from Final Fantasy Tactics, and that's awesome.

Chibi characters aren't my favorite, but I don't dislike them either. They look fine for what they are. More importantly, everything else looks great and more than makes up for that.

Nah, the art style is alright.

But so far the story is dull, most of the characters are uninspired and the boss fights seem to require a bit too much grinding.

But that just me being a bit rusty with my JRPG's.

i played the demo alittle, seems pretty cool, looks good too... that maid lookin' one ;)

To be honest, I'm with you. I love the art work to unhealthy degrees and I really wanted to see that style represented in game with full-bodied models and all. Would've been completely fine with what Golden Sun: Dark Dawn did and have chibi models for the over world and cutscenes, but full sized animations, models, etc. for the actual battles. Here's hoping in any future installments they give it a go (doubt they do so in Bravely Second, but we'll see).

It was part of the reason I pre-ordered the collectors -.-

@amani said:

Yeah, that would've been nice. But while not exactly double the work, it does mean they now have to have two models for any character that exists in overworld/cutscenes and in battle.

I'm guessing that the chibi art style was a way to simplify the character models to fit within hardware constraints, similar to how they took out the feet (thus ankle joint) in Fire Emblem because the game started development before the 3DS hardware was finalized and they weren't sure if their character models were going to have too many joints for the system to handle or something so they figured who looks at the fucking feet anyway and/or now they look kinda chibi. Then it turns out their precaution was unnecessary because the 3DS did ship with enough horsepower that it could support the characters having feet and ankle joints, but it was way too late in development to go back and change all the animation.

I don't really mind the art style, but I do not like the combat screen - the animations are lacking and everyone is all bunched up. You can barely see the two people in the back half the time has the camera pans.

@garfield518: The animations are one of the things I found most impressive about the graphics actually. The enemies especially animate really well.

Sadly I think I'm leaning this way as well. I'm hoping it's just an issue of it being a demo and maybe I'll get into it more once I have the full game.

I was talking more about the player characters, specifically their idle animations - they just kinda... stand there and fidget.

I thought I was going to be turned off by the art style but everything else in the demo is just so good that the art style doesn't bother me anymore. Hell I'll even go as far as to say that I really like the art now that I've been playing it for a while.

Isn't this whole game supposed to be a throwback to Final Fantasies of yore? In that case, the weird proportions are pretty understandable. Remember that tiny, weirdly shaped sprites were standard in RPG's until FFX.

I definitely prefer this graphic style over trying to make it look realistic on the 3DS.

I'm more put off by the proliferation of witch costumes with garters and barely-there skirts on an almost entirely young female cast.

Where's the outrage anyway? The Polygon review hardly mentions the creepiness. Did the industry get over the sexism hysteria, or does this game get a pass for some reason?

I enjoy the art, its fantastic.

Sometimes I think the hats are too big, but I get over that fairly effortlessly.

In JRPGs, perhaps. Western RPGs were more like tabletop RPGs. Either out of books, or like painted miniatures. I can't think of an 80-90's RPG on the computer that had a chibi art style unless it was trying to play like a console game.

Though, I don't remember FF8, Parasite Eve, or Legend of the Dragoon having chibi characters. FF8 is where Square started to make their in-game character models consistent. In game and cut scene characters were at the very least very close simulacrum. Unlike FF7, which had chibi map characters, combat characters, nice cinematic cut scene characters, and blocky ass cinematic cut scene characters.

I do wonder which came first. Chibi characters, or JRPGs that used that art style. The big head did allow characters to show expressions that proportional character sprites would not be able to show.

I did mean JRPG's, though you can't tell me that the character models in late 90's DnD-based CRPG's aren't weirdly proportioned. They're not chibi, but they don't exactly look right either.

I didn't mean chibi characters, either, I meant weirdly proportioned characters in general. Final Fantasy IX still looked weird quite often, especially in the overworld. I'm no expert on mid-'90's/late 2000's WRPG's (or RPG's in general), but I can't name anything else from before Final Fantasy X where the characters were proportioned like real fucking people. Mostly, anyway. Except the hair. And Lulu's boobs.

EDIT: I'm also pretty sure that chibi came before JRPG's. I think early Dragonball episodes occasionally had characters drawn in a chibi style.

Bravely Default isn't Chibi.

I like how the characters are Final Fantasy Tactics-esque (they got no nose).

Turn based combat is too slow imo. Don't care about the art style, but dat menus.

I'm actually ok with the art style, music, story, characters...I just don't like the gameplay, they should've just made it like a traditional jrpg without the default/bravely system.

@canteu: chibi is Japanese for little and you can not deny that the characters are little.

agreed with op. I prefer more realistic and mature art styles

and dark storylines

I actually don't mind it too much, even though the chibi style is probably my least favourite part of the game. The art direction is superb though, from the design of the classes to the monsters and the cities, they absolutely beautiful.

I'm turned off by the sexualization of childish characters

It just looks like they're emulating the old final fantasy sprites as 3d models to me. What bothered me more is how the woman who appears at the beginning of the quick look just looks like a palette swap Rhinoa.

I don't like the in game character models. Normally I like chibi stuff but I find it hard to enjoy in this game. Which sucks because I actually like all of the art aside from that.

I like just about everything about the artstyle. It's the generic anime character archetypes that can be a little grating.