Bravely Default II Impressions

Bravely Default II has been out for......flips through calendar.....6 days(?!) already and for a major Nintendo release I haven't heard a whole lot of buzz going around. I'm a little surprised at this considering the previous 2 games (that's right, there was a poorly named Bravely Second) were relatively well received. Granted I haven't jumped on it myself because I am dutifully working through my backlog, but I'm curious if any fellow duders have played and what your thoughts are so far.

I like it a whole lot but it’s laser targeted at me specifically. I love job systems, I like to zen out and grind out in jrpgs like this.

I've really been enjoying it! That being said, it's very much a Bravely Default game so if you played the previous games (I've only played the first, so I guess I'm really only talking about that one), you know what you're getting.

@efesell: This is exactly why I got this game.

Hearing about the lack of an encounter rate adjuster and auto-battle has deterred me from jumping in immediately like I thought I would. Those 2 features felt like absolute game changers to me for grindy job systems so hearing they were removed is a real bummer.

For those who're playing and played the previous entries, does it feel like the grind for job levels is comparable or has it been tuned to make up for the lack of grind-focused QOL features?

@imhungry: so I am not terribly far but the encounters aren't random and appear in the world and at this point have been easily avoided and they actively avoid you if you are a high enough level. Don't know if they will stay so easily avoidable but so far it seems like not being able to reduce encounters shouldn't be a problem.

As far as auto battle they do have a repeat button that repeats the action for a character during combat so while not being as mindless as autobattle has alleviated some of the issues I have with grinding.

@trh5001: Oh, I definitely wasn't clear in my original post but I want a slider to turn up the encounter rate for mindless grinding time. This is, of course, a problem specific only to dumb people like me.

@imhungry: So I am not sure how rare these items are but there are items that allow certain monster types to engage in things called continuous battles that make 1 encounter acually turn into numerous battles (minimum 2 max I have seen of 4) that give bonus jp.

For example I use an item called devil's delight which allows demon type enemies to engage in continuous battles I find one on the map and am in 2-4 sequential battles off of 1 encounter.

Not ideal for what you are looking for since it requires an item but it does look like they have attempted to do something to increase encounter rates

@trh5001: I used this method to max freelancer for everyone in like a couple hours so I think it works better than boosting the rate directly.

@efesell: it is what I did as well but I can't vouch for how common those items are later on so I didn't want to say if it was a good replacement or not.

@trh5001: I believe enemies generally drop the lures they like. I know I have like 99 insect nectar due to this.

Hats off to this game for including a truly terrifing Thief class for once. Thieves usually get the boring job of spamming steal over and over to get rare items and this time they have the job of 2-3 rounding any boss that doesn't punish physical attacks and every other boss once you have counter-savvy.

As far as mechanics and quality of life features goes, this game looks like something I really want to play.

...but do I really want to put up with tired JRPG tropes for fifty or sixty hours or whatever? Eh... maybe!? I am not opposed to it, but some part of me looks at it and says "you could just play Bravely Default on 3DS and get almost exactly the same experience."

On the other hand, I have fired up Dragon Quest XI several times since its release and quit every time because of the overly loud, in-your-face music and this looks like a more streamlined alternative. And I haven't played a JRPG in a while.

I would be so much more interested if this game was outwardly doing something different with its plot, characters, and aesthetic right off the bat. It could still draw from fantasy JRPG tropes, perhaps use them in a different way from minute 1 or something. The structure is there for someone to take old-school JRPGs and do something interesting, but it sounds like this game has a bunch of fetch quests and grinding.

@justin258: Fetch quests yeah there are a ton of them and they're kinda bad most people shouldn't bother doing them. You do quests in this game if an important character is involved because those are voiced and contribute to the rest of the game and you ignore all of the others.

Grinding I think is another matter because I HAVE been grinding since I like to just kinda kill time and max out the jobs. As a result I am wildly overpowered for everything at all times so I suspect that the difficulty curve is actually pretty gentle if you just play normally.

Is the grinding in this kinda like Final Fantasy IV/VI where you don't actually have to do all that much grinding? I don't consider doing battles between plot point A and plot point B "grinding", that's just playing the game, and I don't mind a bit of grinding. I'm not interested in having to do lots of grinding, or stopping the plot entirely to gain five levels just so I can beat a boss.

@justin258: Kind of? You never really need to grind for EXP if you just fight everything you come across. All that kind of gets taken care of.

But it takes a lot of job points to max out jobs and the fun of this games systems are combining Jobs and sub jobs and passives and then using it to hit a boss 8 times for like 9999 a pop. So if you wanna get everything out of the job system you would need to pop a squat at one of the grinding spots for an hour every so often to max out all of your new jobs.

But I really doubt all of that is strictly necessary from what I've seen so far.

After 100+ hours In Yakuza LaD and DQXI I found bravely very outdated and dull. Also I don't care if get criticized for this but the visual art style looks kinda cheap for a switch game. It's like SE didn't really out any effort into it and just released a 3ds port.

Its still a solid game for hard-core fans but 5 hours is as much time as I'll give this game. Octopath is so much better and thst game has its problems too

I just think it's a average rpg.

After 100+ hours In Yakuza LaD and DQXI I found bravely very outdated and dull. Also I don't care if get criticized for this but the visual art style looks kinda cheap for a switch game. It's like SE didn't really out any effort into it and just released a 3ds port.

Its still a solid game for hard-core fans but 5 hours is as much time as I'll give this game. Octopath is so much better and thst game has its problems too

I just think it's a average rpg.

What this game does though is make me appreciate games like Final Fantasy 12 specifically thr gambit system.

After 100+ hours In Yakuza LaD and DQXI I found bravely very outdated and dull. Also I don't care if get criticized for this but the visual art style looks kinda cheap for a switch game. It's like SE didn't really out any effort into it and just released a 3ds port.

Its still a solid game for hard-core fans but 5 hours is as much time as I'll give this game. Octopath is so much better and thst game has its problems too

I just think it's a average rpg.

What this game does though is make me appreciate games like Final Fantasy 12 specifically the gambit system.

For some reason I have a strong aversion to Octopath despite the things I dislike about that game being 100% represented at all times in Bravely Default.