Jump to content

Search the Community

Showing results for tags 'Bravely Default II'.

  • Search By Tags

    Type tags separated by commas.
  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • Forums
    • General Nintendo
    • General Gaming
    • Power On

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start

    End


Last Updated

  • Start

    End


Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


About Me


Member Title


Nintendo Switch


Nintendo 3DS


Nintendo Network


PlayStation Network


Xbox Live


Steam


Discord


Twitter

Found 3 results

  1. The third entry in the confusingly named Bravely series, Bravely Default II marks the franchise's leap from the 3DS to the Switch, from handheld to HD console. Even with that technological leap though, BDII retains all of the core elements of its predecessors, including turn-based battles, a job system that allows you to customize your party, and a classic sense of JRPG difficulty that demands that players fully consider how best to assemble their party for any given challenge. This latest entry is once again an absolute delight for JRPG fans, even if the changes and additions feel rather minimal. As with the previous games—and, for that matter, most Final Fantasy games—the story revolves around the four elemental crystals of wind, earth, water, and fire. Prior to the game's intro these crystals have been stolen from the kingdom of Musa in a vicious attack, and the now destitute Princess Gloria must retrieve them. Thankfully she encounters three helpful allies and the four heroes set off to right the world's wrongs. The set-up is perhaps too familiar for anyone that has played virtually any JRPG, and it certainly takes too long to get the ball rolling and really become interesting and engaging, but if you can put up with that slow burn development, BDII tells a solid JRPG story. The characters start out a bit bland but once they have time to flesh out their personalities and get into their personal motivations for joining Gloria's quest there is some fun banter to enjoy. The most surprising aspect of the story is how truly dark it gets at times. Perhaps it's the cute, doll-like design of the characters that made me assume the story would stay relatively light, but there are some bleak moments that caught me off guard. Just know that this game isn't afraid to tug on your emotions at times. BDII uses the same core gameplay structure as its predecessors, which might warrant some explanation. You can swap your characters' classes by collecting Asterisks, powerful artifacts that are earned when you defeat their previous owners. Jobs change your stats, weapon proficiencies, and give you access to different spells or abilities—black mage, obviously, can use black magic, while the monk can use various physical attack abilities. Longtime Final Fantasy fans will recognize all of the early-game Asterisks, as it seems like Square Enix can't develop a game like this without relying on the tried and true classes like the ones just mentioned, but the latter half of the game opens up into some more unique and interesting jobs. One of the joys of these games is swapping and combining different classes to build a powerful party (each character can have a main job and a sub job to access two sets of abilities), and BDII strikes a nice balance of useful and interesting Asterisks. There are good reasons to use virtually all of them, it's not just one or two that feels overpowered, and experimenting with them as you progress really draws you into the nitty gritty of tracking stats and abilities. It's easy to eat up time just thinking about your party's composition. So that's the Asterisk system explained, but the other key aspect of BDII's turn-based JRPG gameplay is the brave/default system. Brave points allow a character—or enemy, as monsters and especially bosses will also make good use of brave points—to take multiple actions in a single turn. Using three brave points, a white mage can raise an ally from the dead, cast heal on them, then cast protect and shell for additional defense. In order to accumulate brave points you have to default, which puts the character in a defense block for that turn. If you're willing to get a bit risky, you can use brave points even when you don't have any, and that character's turn will be skipped until the negative brave points are paid off. Managing brave points smartly is almost always the key between victory and defeat and it's what makes boss fights particularly engaging in the Bravely series. BDII does change up the turn-based combat formula a little bit though. Instead of being strictly turn-based—i.e. selecting each character's action(s) at once then watch them play out according to their speed stats—characters act independently, so someone with a particularly high speed stat might act twice before someone with low speed. It's a small but significant change that definitely affects how you strategize, and changes how bosses will keep you on your toes. It's not too difficult to adapt to though, and even if it is different from previous games it's still reminiscent of plenty of other JRPGs and provides a lot of fun challenges that require you to think strategically. Another change from the previous games is the way random encounters work. Monsters now appear on the overworld map or within dungeons and you can either try to run away from them or hit them with your sword to gain a bonus brave point at the start of battle. It's a perfectly decent system though it feels a bit odd since the older games gave you a sliding scale of how often random battles would appear, which already felt like the perfect way to handle basic monster battles. Now you can see what kind of monsters you're going to face though, so it is somewhat of an improvement. Chaining battles—fighting multiple battles back to back for a boost in job points—is a little trickier now because you have to actively hunt out chain battles by either attacking two enemies very close together on the overworld or by using special items that can trigger enemy reinforcements. On the other hand though, leveling and especially job leveling happens pretty smoothly in this game, so unless you just like having a bit of a level boost you don't need to worry about grinding as just fighting monsters regularly is typically enough. And that's kind of it for significant changes in BDII. There are a few minor additions as well, but for the most part this is very much a continuation of the previous games' formula, and I can't say it's not a bit disappointing that this latest entry doesn't do more to evolve the gameplay. But that's not to say the game is unenjoyable at all. It will still tickle that part of the brain that loves turn-based JRPGs: the long process of exploring dungeons, earning levels, and fiddling with your party's line-up to perfect your strategies. For fans of that kind of gameplay, BDII is RPG bliss and can easily consume your attention for weeks. Like most RPGs it's also a pretty long adventure. Most players can expect around sixty hours when it's all said and done, which includes tackling most of the side quests available and leveling up some jobs for a bit of experimentation. There are also optional superbosses which are no joke and will require all of your skill to beat—or possibly even specific cheesy strategies—so players that enjoy that kind of challenge can play even longer. BDII also introduces a card-based mini-game which, like most card-based mini-games, can eat up a ton of time if you let it, though it's also mostly ignorable if you're not interested. And like the previous games you can earn bonuses if you leave the game on while the Switch is asleep. In this case you don't need to build up a city or anything like that, you'll just earn passive bonuses by "exploring" while the system is asleep. It doesn't have quite the same community engagement feel as previous games but any little bonus is nice. Despite the stronger hardware the art style of the previous games is largely left intact; now it's simply in crystal clear HD. The effect is honestly a bit odd since the characters' doll-like appearances made a bit more sense on the 3DS's small screens, and they look a bit bland now. However, one of the highlights of the series is seeing all of the various Asterisk costumes for each character and it's still fun to check them out here. The rest of the graphics are fine, as the dungeon designs can feel a bit plain overall but the town graphics are as delightfully detailed and colorful as past games' cities. The music is composed by Revo again and it is just fantastic—it's everything you want out of a JRPG soundtrack. It's catchy and fun but never tiresome even after fifty hours of listening to it. The voice work is also quite well done in BDII with a fun collection of accent influences, barring a couple of odd/grating voices thrown in there. Bravely Default II, despite the new hardware setting, doesn't try to move beyond its predecessors much, and largely relies on the same formula. That's not a terrible thing though. The previous Bravely games were wonderful JRPG adventures, and Bravely Default II carries on that tradition beautifully. It's so easy to get pulled into this adventure and grow obsessed with leveling up your jobs and finding useful, unique combinations for your party. The story, though slow to get going, is engaging, the presentation is charming, and before you know it a dozen hours has flown by as you continually revamp your battle strategies. Fans of RPGs have found yet another excellent addition to the Switch's growing library. Rating: 9 out of 10 Asterisks
  2. You saw the title, the last demo for BD II is out now. In addition to DLing the demo before this game release on 2/26/2021, you can get 100 platinum coins. Thought I share that if anyone is looking forward to this game and want a taste of this game more. Not sure if its the same demo with listed improvement from the last mini direct or something else but the last one in March was good playground. So check it out!
  3. Not a lot to go on but consider me hyped—just seeing that town artwork takes me back to playing Bravely Default for the first time. Seems they took a page from the Xenoblade Chronicles book of naming sequels though. Bravely Default—>Bravely Second—>Bravely Default II. Makes sense.
×
×
  • Create New...