Bravely Default 2 Demo Impressions

If you read my review of Bravely Default you would know that I loved it and think it's one of the best JRPGs of all time despite its rocky final act. What's funny is that I wrote that review in preparation for my playthrough of Bravely Second, which I never finished. It wasn't bad from what I've played but it wasn't nearly as good as the first game. Worst of all was that it didn't feel like a proper sequel, it felt more like an add-on pack. It was disappointing but little did I know at the time that a proper sequel would be made. Announced at the 2019 Game Awards, the only announcement that was anywhere near decent at that shitshow by the way, Bravely Default 2 is set to release later this year exclusively on Nintendo Switch, though given recent events I wouldn't be surprised if it gets delayed. Fortunately, the kind folks at Square Enix recently released a demo to give fans a taste of the game before it's release and I thought it would be fun to go through the demo and give my early impressions of it.

Now given that this is a demo and the game is still currently in development a lot of what I'm going to be talking about is subject to change. The demo makes it clear that the enemies are much tougher than they would be normally so I won't be judging the demo based on its difficulty and I'll mention any changes I think are exclusive to this demo. Right off the bat, the game looks gorgeous. The jump from 3DS to Switch is obvious as the visuals have been improved tremendously while still keeping the series signature style. Cutscenes play out similarly to the first game but some are more dynamic, taking advantage of the jump to a home console. The Music is also fantastic but I obviously can't give a full judgement based on the little I've heard, but given that composer for the original is back, I think we're in for an auditory treat. Even the voice acting seams good, though the constant chatter in battle did get annoying after a while, I hope there's an option to tone that down in the full game.

The first thing I did when I started playing was open the menu to mess with the jobs system, that was my favourite part of the original and I'm happy to report that, from what I've played, it's looking to be just as good in Bravely Default 2. It works the same way, you pick a main job and a secondary job with the main giving you access to a unique ability and the secondary being more a compliment. In the demo there were five jobs to pick from, Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage and Vanguard, all of which were in the previous game, except Vanguard which is just Knight but under a different name. They serve the same functions they did in the original with some new abilities thrown in for good measure. You can level each job up and learn new abilities, some are used in battle and others can be equipped to add different effects. The demo only lets each job go up to level seven but if this is anything like the first game the actual max level will be about double that. The demo gives you a lot of JP per battle so you can experiment with each job and try out different combinations. There were three changes I noticed in regards to the job system. The first was that each job has new redesigns, the new Black Mage and White Mage designs are great and help Bravely Default forge its own identity outside of Final Fantasy. Each character also has a unique outfit for each job rather than have the girls having one and the boys having another. The second thing I noticed was that the Mages now unlock individual spells by levelling up. In the original you would unlock spell levels but you would have to buy the individual spells in order to use them. I do not think this is an actual change for the final game, I think this is a demo only thing and here's why. The Black Mage job does not learn any equipable abilities, it only learns spells, and given how many spells it could learn I sincerely doubt they will learn spells this way, my guess is that it's similar to the original.

The third thing I noticed ties into changes made to the weapons and special moves. Special moves are now determined by the job, not the weapon, and can no longer be customised. At least not in the demo, they might add that back in when the full game releases but considering the social aspects of the game have been axed I doubt it will return. I'm not too bothered by these being removed because I expected them to go since they were designed to take advantage of the 3DS' Street Pass function, which the Switch does not have. If you liked these features you might be disappointed by their exclusion. Speaking of things being removed, let's go back to weapons real quick. Every weapon returns except for the Katana, Great Swords, Firearms and Knuckles, though that last one might still be there since there's a hand to hand category for weapons. It could be the same with the other weapons too. Both the Rod and Staff weapons are now categorised as one weapon class so it's possible the other weapons have been treated similarly. So Katanas and Great Swords could just be categorised as Swords and Firearms could be linked with Bows as projectile weapons. Obviously we'll have to wait and see if that is the case but I don't mind this change if true. It simplifies the weapons systems without removing the uniqueness of each weapon type, Staffs are still better for healing and Rods better for offensive magic but now that they've been put under one category, mages have a choice in what they choose to wield. It opens up more options for player choice and that's a very good thing.

Now let's talk dual-wielding. In the original Bravely Default, it was possible to dual-wield any weapon, except for bows and knuckles, but at the cost of lowered attack for both weapons. The only way you could dual wield without losing attack was through an ability gained through the Ninja job. In Bravely Default 2 dual-wield certain weapons without decreasing attack power. Swords and daggers will increase attack power if dual-wielded while axes and presumably spears, I say presumably because I did not find any spears in the demo, will not. This makes a lot more sense, dual-wielding heavy axes would be cumbersome but small daggers would not, I'm glad they added more depth here. I should also mention that dual-wielding with either a rod or a staff does not lower attack but it does decrease their magic power, best not to dual wield if one is a mage class I guess.

When choosing my jobs I checked out the attributes screen and noticed they have been completely redone. Healing magic now has a separate stats for its effectiveness, there's now a stats for determining how often you get hit during battle and each character now has a set weight. Weight is determined by class, Vanguard being a more defensive class has a higher weight and can equip stronger, heavier armour whereas the monk, being a lightweight offence focused job, is only able to equip lighter armour. To be clear, any character can equip any kind of armour but if they go over their weight limit their stats will go down. And yes, each weapon also has its own weight, so you'll have to keep that in mind when managing all of your equipment. Weight may sound like a restriction but I feel like it's gonna force you to be more creative with your character builds.

Once I was done dicking around in the menu's and actually started playing the game I saw that the town I was in had more buildings to enter and a casino. I really hope this isn't just a backdrop and that there will be some casino minigames to play in the full release. I also saw that your party members can be seen around town and talked too, a minor addition but one I like. Speaking of which, the party chat feature makes a return here and they seem as entertaining as ever but, why aren't they voiced. I don't mind text only but couldn't they have had them be voiced since it's on better hardware. The Tales series does it why can't Bravely Default? While exploring I encountered two NPC's that gave me side-quests, basic fetch quests granted but this is a brand new addition. It looks like side-quests have been redone, maybe it's a replacement for the tutorial missions and town-building since you can get similar rewards by doing them.

Once I left town I started to explore the overworld and boy oh boy what an improvement this is. For starters, the whole thing is rendered in 3D and now has a controllable camera. Granted the camera is a little zoomed in for my liking but the minimap and objective markers make it so you will never get lost. I actually did get lost once or twice, not because it was had to navigate but because I wanted to explore the map. Bravely Defaults overworld had a variety of side areas and dungeons to find but the overworld itself was empty, merely a backdrop to get you from place to place, the sequels overworld has treasures to find and feels far more detailed making it far more enjoyable to run around in. You know what helps with this, no more random battles. Now you can see enemies in the overworld and if you don't want to battle you can just avoid them unless they make a beeline towards you. I noticed that enemies that are stronger than you will often rush at you like the flash, I really hate when games do this, the entire point of putting enemies in the overworld is to allow the player to choose what enemies they can engage with so why do you have some enemies bum rush you so quick it's almost impossible to avoid them. On the other hand, if you are stronger than an enemy they will run away like a little bitch so at least you don't have to worry about fodder any more. I'm actually torn on this decision. On the one hand, I hate random battles and I'm glad we're finally getting rid of them, on the other hand, the way the original Bravely Default handled random battles was a little better since you could change the frequency of them at any time or turn them off entirely. I'm not saying this change is bad, it isn't, but Bravely Default 2 actually makes it harder to avoid battles than the original. Hopefully they add in an ability to change the frequency of enemy appearances in the final release.

Well, I've talked about almost everything, there's only one more thing to discuss, let's talk about the battle system. If you've played the original Bravely Default then you should be right at home in the sequel. Battles are turn-based and the Brave and Default mechanic is back with the same amount of depth it had before. There really isn't much to talk about in regards to the battle system, it's more cinematic with more interesting camera angles but mechanically speaking it's the same, mostly. There are two differences I noticed in the demo. The menus have now been streamlined and have less sub-menus which is nice, makes it easier to use. There are fewer options though, summoning friends appears to have been axed, likely owing to the lack of a street pass feature, but this is a minor thing, I almost never used this in the original. The biggest change is in regards to how turns play out. In the original Bravely Default you had to give everyone in the party a command and only then they would all execute it, in the sequel you give a party member a command and they immediately execute it and it moves on to the next member, depending on the turn order that is. It's similar to more traditional JRPG's and I'm not sure I like it. In the original, it was easy to determine the turn order for everyone in battle but here it's confusing. Several times I noticed characters going twice in a row and I didn't know why. If they're keeping this new turn order system I would like to see some kind of Final Fantasy X turn table so I can tell who is gonna act next. Mind you I'm also hoping they bring back how it was before because the new system messes with the effectiveness of Defaulting. Before it made sense, I would make everyone Default and they would block any enemy attacks, but now there's no guarantee of that since an enemy can attack before I had a chance to Default. I'm guessing this is why the chance to get hit is an actual stats but I don't know why they made this change since it really didn't need it. That's not to say it's bad, battles feel much faster now and the Brave and Default system is still excellent but it'll take some time for me to adjust to the new changes.

The Bravely Default 2 demo is available for download on the Switch E-shop and if you're curious to try it I recommend you do. It's got quite a bit of content for a demo, even has a secret boss, so it's worth a look. I'm looking forward to the full game, there were things I didn't like but the creators have said they're using the demo to get feedback and make adjustments before release. So hopefully the things I complained about will get fixed or changed. Whatever happens, I'm certain the final game will be great.