Bravely Default was a game I’d always had an interest in playing: from what I’d read, it combined the character styling of the FFIII DS remake, with a fresh imagining of a Final Fantasy-esque world.

I picked it up about 18 months after it’s European release, realising the price wasn’t going to drop any time soon, as is often the case with big name series and developers.

My impression so far is very positive! I imagine I have a lot to play to finish the game, and there’ll no doubt be some post game content to play through too, but there are a few gripes I have. I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible!





Note: this isn’t a review; more of a few opinions i have about the game.





1: The Battle System

Firstly, the battle system is great, and although the whole game seems more or less built around the one mechanic, being able to borrow (”to Brave” ingame) and “save up” (to Default) turns to take extra actions immediately or later really does lead to some interesting strategies. However I’ve found for a most fights, I could quite simply just brave all of my characters to the maximum, and win in one turn. This repetitive battle style made me feel as though the battle system was for the most part just a gimmick, rather than a genre changing idea. I only felt that I had to change this “maximum brave” strategy in any major way when the occasional boss was giving me trouble, which brings me to my next point.

2: Grinding

There were very few places where I felt the need to grind, and these were almost exclusively trying to beat a tough boss. Extra classes (or “Jobs”) are unlocked by beating various bosses, and I did feel slightly compelled to try and pick them all up along the way, but occasionally a move or just the sheer power of the enemy would force me to step back. I’d need to either level in general, or try and work out a cheap strategy to win. These were unfortunately the only times where I also felt it necessary to venture beyond the most basic of the jobs I had unlocked.

Even in these instances, it was usually just to get a few Job Levels, so I could set each characters old job with sub-abilities from the new job, beat the boss and carry on. It’s the same feeling I got from Paper Mario: Sticker Star, where to effectively beat a tough boss you just had to work out which sticker was super-effective, and would more or less one-hit it. I’ve only felt under-levelled once so far, but using one ability to make a boss fight go from hellish to trivial removes a little of the fun.





In conclusion, I’m really enjoying the game. The characters are well written, the voice acting and levels are both wonderful, and the game is for the most part very entertaining. If this continues to the end, I’ll definitely feel as though I’ve gotten value for money.





(p.s. The grinding isn’t so bad, as you can put the encounter rate up in the options to speed it up)