Let’s Talk About Bravely Default 2

The traditional JRPG is a dying artform. Sure, the Indie scene has its fair share of them, those hipsters will bring anything back if it’s retro enough, but when it comes to big budget AAA JRPG’s, there aren’t that many left. The old stalwarts of the genre have either died or changed so completely they’re barely recognizable anymore, looking at you Final Fantasy. Aside from Dragon Quest there aren’t many big budget classic JRPG’s.

Which is why the first Bravely Default game felt like such a breath of fresh air in 2013. It was a game that revelled in all of the tropes, clichés and classic mechanics of the JRPG’s of yore. You could argue it was outdated given how old school an approach it took, but to many people it scratched that itch for a classic JRPG they had missed all this time.

It also helped that the game was really damn good. It didn’t just pay homage to the classic JRPG formula, it updated it with fresh ideas of its own. Resulting in a bestselling 3DS title and a contender for my personal favourite game on the system. And this is coming from a guy who’s only a casual fan of JRPG’s. I loved it, I did an entire review of it back on my old blog, and it made me interested in checking out more classic RPG’s.

With the game being a critical and financial success, it was inevitable that we would get a follow up. Which we got in 2016 under the title Bravely Second. Sadly, it wasn’t as good as the first one. It was still ok, but it lacked a lot of the charm of the original. It still got good reviews and sold decently well, though not as good as the original.

It wasn’t the sequel Bravely Default deserved. And I guess the creators of it agreed, since we know have another sequel, Bravely Default 2. Yeah, that’s not confusing at all. Ok before I should clear up why there are two sequels.

Bravely Second was a direct sequel to first game, meaning it had the same characters, world and followed on from the events from the first game. Bravely Default 2 is an entirely original story completely separate from the previous two games. It has similar themes to those games, but it’s world and characters are entirely different. I’m of the opinion this was the best decision since direct sequels to RPG’s almost never work.

This makes this one easier to get into. Because it doesn’t follow on from the first game you don’t need to have played it to understand the plot. You can just jump right into it and have fun. Although, this is going to be entirely dependent on how much you like classic JRPG’s.

On the continent of Excillant, the world is maintained by the power of the four crystals of the elements. But when an evil force steals the crystals for their own evil ends, it’s up to four Heroes of Light to retrieve the crystals before their power fades and a great evil is unleashed.

This is as traditional a set-up as you could possibly get and that’s the entire point. This game isn’t trying to break the mould when it comes to JRPG storytelling, it wants to be like those classic Final Fantasy games of the 8- and 16-bit eras after all. And just because the setup is standard doesn't mean the story can’t be entertaining, and for the most part it is.

A lot of it comes down to the characters. The four main leads are all very likable and their different personalities work off one another quite well. However, I couldn’t help but notice that the four main leads in this game feel very similar to the ones from the first game. Seth is the everyman like Tiz, Gloria is the dutiful one bound to the crystals like Anges, Elvis is a laid back, fun loving man trying to uncover the secrets of a strange book like Ringabel, and Adelle is the abrasive warrior bitch like Edea.

That isn’t to say the characters are carbon copies of the original cast. While there are more than enough similarities to be noticeable, there are just enough differences to give them their own identity. As for whether I like them more than the original cast, eh I like them about the same. I like Elvis a little more than Ringabel, I don’t like Adelle as much as Edea, and I like Gloria way more than Agnes because she isn’t a shrieking wallflower whose voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard. God I hated Agnes’ voice. As for Seth, eh I could take him or leave him.

Each of the characters have their own arcs and their relationships with each other are well developed, especially if you do some of the special side quests that show more of their interactions. The story is structured like most JRPG’s. It's episodic as you visit the various towns that each contain their own little story arcs. The individual arcs are fun and I liked learning more about the various towns.

One interesting change up to the storytelling in this is how the Asterisk Bearers are integrated. In the original, most of the story quests surrounding the Asterisk Bearers were kept to side quests. You didn’t have to do them as the main quest focused entirely on the crystals, the stuff with the towns was all optional. Though you were still encouraged to do them since you wouldn’t get any new jobs if you didn’t.

Bravely Default 2 has decided to cut out the middleman and just make the Asterisk Bearers part of the main story. Given them a greater presence in the story and giving a fair few of them character arcs of their own. I found the Asterisk Bearers a lot more interesting this time around as a lot of them have far more complex motivations and some of the directions they took with them caught me a bit off guard.

Not every Asterisk Bearer is part of the main story. There are 3 that you only meet via side quests though you do need to get them to get the true ending, I’ll get more into that later. Overall, I found the story to be an entertaining tale. The set-up may be basic, almost painfully so, but it is a fun story with some genuine surprises and twists. It doesn’t break the mould when it comes to JRPG storytelling, but it is an enjoyable ride.

I only have two major complaints with the story and the writing. Firstly, the opening is unbearably slow. The opening chapter in this game is an utter slog to get through. The original games opening was only an hour long but this one is nearly double that length and it drags. It's not quite Kingdom Hearts 2 levels, but it’s not great.

My second issue is with the main villain. While the Asterisk Bearers are all perfectly fine villains in their own right, the main villain is just boring. It's like every other big bad in every other JRPG, it’s a giant eldritch abomination who wants to absorb everything. I wouldn’t mind it much if they did something interesting or made the character entertaining, but they don’t. They do attempt to give it a more interesting backstory, that they don’t go into that much detail about. Honestly it felt like the backstory was an afterthought, don't know why they even bothered.

I do have one other complaint, but this isn’t really a problem it’s just a personal beef with me. One of the things I liked about the first game was how it subverted my expectations. I am aware that “subverting expectations” has become a topic of contention with some people, and not for entirely unjust reasons, but Bravely Default is one of those rare instances where they did it right.

Throughout the game you were led to believe the big evil army you were fighting was pure evil. A simple power mad empire fighting to attain more power and control. However, at the end of the game it was revealed that they had a good reason to do what they did, and the system they were fighting, and you were protecting, was rife with corruption. They weren’t entirely innocent, and some were total assholes, but it was an interesting concept. It showed that things aren’t always so black and white.

Bravely Default 2 doesn’t have anything as interesting. The big evil army is just that, a big evil army that wants to conquer the world. I did like the main leader of the evil army as he had enough charisma and presence to come off as a major threat, but he’s just a tyrant at the end of the day and not much else. I found the story in the original to be more interesting, but the story in Bravely Default 2 isn’t bad for what it is.

That’s all down to the writing. When you get into how the story is presented, that’s where things go sour. Mind you the music is great. Revo once returns to do the soundtrack and, while not quite as good as the originals legendary OST, it’s still excellent. The battle and boss themes in particular are great and each boss has its own unique theme that perfectly fits their personality.

Even the main character themes that play when you use a special move encapsulate what that character is all about with only a short musical piece. I also like that they remix the overworld theme to fit the location you’re in, rather than have one that plays wherever you are. My only issue is that there aren’t that many tracks. They re-use a lot of the same music pieces, so the music does get a little repetitive. Other than that, great soundtrack.

As for the voice acting, it’s ok. Some voices though a bit irritating, but these are the exception and not the rule. Most of the voice actors do a decent job and at least there wasn’t a voice as irritating as Agnes’ from the first game. I know I already said this but I’ll say it again, God I hated Agnes’ voice.

I will say that the voice direction is a lot better this time around. One of the peculiarities of the first game was that the actors would often read sound effects as they were written. I loved it but it was an odd choice that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The sequel does away with this which makes dialogue sound a lot more natural.

One interesting aspect of the voice acting is the use of accents. This game takes a page from the book of Dragon Quest in that the various towns residents speak in a different accent. So the people of Wizwald speak in a Scottish accent and the people of Rimedhal in a Welsh one for example. I don’t think it’s done as well as Dragon Quest because that game often based its locations on ones from the real world to make the accents fit a little more, but it is a nice addition that gives each town a bit more personality.

Mind you this only applies to the English voice track. There is a Japanese voice track that you can swap between the two in the options if you wish. I personally thought the English voices were fine, but having the option is nice.

The sound part of the presentation is fine, better than fine in regard to the music, it’s when we get into the visual presentation where things fall apart. The backdrops and environments all look great. The towns are all done in a hand painted style, and they look quite beautiful. Each town also has a unique design that makes them have a unique look and feel.

But it’s not the environments that are the problem, it’s the characters and animations. Bravely Default 2 keeps the same art direction as the original with characters done is a pseudo deformed style. This style did work in the original, because it was on a handheld. The sequel is on a much more powerful home console, kind of, and I'm sorry but this style doesn’t really work there. Not unless they’re stylized in some way, but this game doesn’t do that.

I think the character designs look alright. Most of the monsters look good too and have some cool designs. But then you see the cutscenes. The cutscenes are awful, it’s just the character models talking to each other over a blurry background with some more animated sequences using in-game assets. The animations in the cutscene are stiff and the characters are not very expressive which results in very stilted and awkward looking scenes. This game did not have a high budget and it shows.

Sad thing is, the original wasn’t a high budget game either and yet they did a lot with what little they had. The first game even opened with a beautiful pre-rendered cutscene, something this game does not have. Now, to be fair, not every cutscene is bad. Some of the in game cutscenes look alright but these are very few and far between.

There is one other type of cutscene I've yet to mention. At certain points you can activate Party Chat, which are short little sequences where the characters talk about events that have just happened to provide more development and world building. Think the skits from the Tales series and you’ve got a basic idea of what they’re like.

The problem? None of these are voice acted. I don’t know why because most of the other scenes are voice acted. Did they not have the budget for it? It was like that in the original too, but again that was a 3DS game, we have higher expectations for the sequel since it’s on more powerful hardware.

The presentation overall is a bit of a mixed bag. I can’t call it awful; it just could have been so much better. I will say that it runs well even in handheld mode, I didn’t notice much slowdown or stuttering when playing in handheld mode though I spent most of my time playing in docked mode, so it’s possible it does dip in certain areas that I missed.

Alright, enough about the story and presentation. It's time we move on to the most important part of any game, the gameplay. Bravely Default 2 is as classic a JRPG as they come. You've got a big overworld to explore, towns to visit, turn based battles to partake in, all the stuff fans know and love.

However, the game does include modern day quality of life improvements to make things better for modern audiences. For one thing, random battles are now gone. Instead, you can see the enemy on the overworld and have the chance to avoid enemy encounters or ambush ones that don’t see you coming to get an advantage. The first Bravely Default kind of did this by allowing you to adjust the encounter rate, but this a lot easier to manage. At least I don’t have to keep opening menu’s if I want to avoid fights now.

As a sequel, I find Bravely Default 2 to be pretty safe. It doesn’t wildly change up the gameplay, if you liked the original, chances are you will like this one. That isn’t to say there are no changes at all, there have been a few changes that do give it its own identity. So already it has a leg up compared to Bravely Second.

Sadly, certain features have been given the axe. Most of the stuff that got removed was just due to change of hardware. The original Bravely Default was designed to take advantage of the unique functionalities of the 3DS, most notably it’s unique networking capabilities with street pass. Since the Switch doesn’t have anything like that, a lot of the features that used them got cut.

There is a new network feature in the form of boat exploration. You can send a boat out to explore for up to 12 real time hours to search for treasure. The treasure is stuff that can help level up your party, so you can leave the switch in sleep mode overnight and it acts like a free grinding session, if you get anything that is. Sometimes you get nothing.

But alright, it’s time to get into the real meat of the gameplay. As I have said in many previous reviews, the three core pillars of any good RPG are exploration, customization and combat. So those are the three aspects I will be analysing the most, starting with exploration.

If you played the original Bravely Default, one thing you should immediately recognize is how much more detailed the overworld is. Not only are there more interesting set pieces, but there’s a lot more to actually find in it. The original games overworld was little more than a way to travel between towns and dungeons. In the sequel there’s not only treasure chests to find but you can cut down the grass to find additional goodies like in The Legend of Zelda.

But, while the overworld is more interesting to explore, it comes at a cost. Instead of having one seamless overlord, instead it’s broken up into three smaller sections. These sections are interlinked by dungeons you need to get through to get to the other side.

The dungeons themselves are ok. They are a little less annoying to explore since there aren’t nearly as many traps, but they also don’t have maps which can make them harder to navigate. I got lost very easily in the dungeons because they lack recognizable iconography which makes a lot of the areas blend together.

I don’t know why they don’t have a map for the dungeons. The previous game had maps, so why not this one. Granted there aren’t two screens to take advantage of this time, but the overworld does have a little radar in the bottom corner, why not use that for the dungeons.

Luckily, there is a fast travel system to travel between the different towns to prevent backtracking from becoming too tedious. Despite this I still found back tracking to complete side quests to be annoying because of how slow the characters move. Even with a run button, movement speed is slower than I would have liked.

I don’t think the movement speed would be so bad if there were any vehicles to play around with. Unlike the original where you had an airship and a boat, this game only lets you traverse the land on foot. I understand that the fast travel system renders the need of an airship moot, but I vastly prefer travelling in an airship over fast travel as it's just a lot more fun.

But now we move on to my favourite part of any RPG, the customization. And my love of RPG customization is in no small part due to the original Bravely Default. The job system and the various combinations you could create was endearing and rewarding to players who were willing to experiment.

I’m happy to report that Bravely Default 2 keeps everything I loved in the original, albeit a bit more streamlined. There are fewer weapons to pick from with the katanas, knuckle dusters and great sword being removed. Not a huge deal since it didn’t make sense to have three types of swords, and there is a way to have 2 handed weapons to act as a pseudo replacement to great swords anyway. There's also no way to customize special moves which, I don’t really miss. It was a pain having to keep customizing them whenever I got a new job.

But that’s enough about what isn’t here. What actually is here, and more to the point, what is a job system anyway? Well, here’s the basic gist. You have a party of 4 characters that are essentially empty slots. They have no unique characteristics to call their own aside from minor stat differences. Sounds lame right, well this is where the job system comes in.

Each character can have two jobs, a main job and a sub job. The main job is the one that changes how the character plays, affecting their stats, what moves they can use in combat, weapons they’re proficient in and allows you to use its unique specialties. The sub job gives you access to its abilities in combat, but it doesn’t affect your stats or how the character plays. The sub job acts more like a compliment to your main job.

There are 24 jobs total in Bravely Default 2. Most are returning from the first game like the various coloured mages, the Monk and the Thief. Some are reworkings from the previous game, like the Oracle being a reworked Time Mage and the Dragoon being a replacement for the Valkyrie. And some are entirely new, like the Pictomancer, Beast Master and Shield Master.

A lot of the jobs will be familiar to those who are huge fans of JRPG’s, especially the Final Fantasy series. Even so, these are probably the best these jobs have been. A lot of these were vast improvements over the one from the last game. Not every job was better, I personally prefer the Dark Knight over the Hell Blade, and there were some jobs that sadly didn’t make the cut. Sorry Summoner and Spell Fencer fans.

Every job can levelled up through JP gotten from defeated enemies. Each job has a maximum of 15 levels, though the last 3 have to be unlocked. Levelling up jobs not only makes them stronger, it also unlocks new moves for combat and special abilities.

I should mention that the way magic is learned has been changed. In the first game, mages would learn spell levels, but the individual spells had to be bought in a store. This is no longer the case, now they learn the spells simply by levelling up. This does mean that the mages aren’t as varied with their spell line ups but helps make the individual mage jobs more unique. Besides you can always combine mage jobs if you want more versatility anyway.

But about those abilities I hear you ask. Glad you asked. These are special augmentations that can affect how a character plays. Each character can equip up to five different abilities. Your main job also has two specialties, one available at the start and another gained when you master the job, that act as built-in abilities. Combine all this together and you can create some truly disgusting character builds.

The first game was also notorious for having insanely overpowered builds. This wasn’t a problem, that was part of the fun. Breaking RPG’s is one of the most appealing things about them. Which is why they’ve made a concerted effort to balance things in the sequels. Which feels like they’re missing the forest for the trees. You shouldn’t try to balance it, if anything you should have broken it even more. It worked for Disgaea.

One of the ways the game tries to balance itself is with the new weight system. Weight is a brand-new stat that each job has. Every piece of equipment, weapons, shields, armour etc, have varying weight values. If the combined weight value of your equipment goes over your jobs maximum weight limit, then your stats take a massive hit. The weight limit varies between jobs. Lighter jobs like Thief and Monk can only equip light weapons and armour. But then you’ve got jobs like Shield Master and Vanguard who can equip almost anything.

This sounds restrictive, and it very much is, but it forces you to get creative. You have to seriously think about what you want to prioritize and what you want your characters to focus on. It means you have to make sacrifices if you want to have certain equipment on. It’s almost like you’re giving each character a role that they must play. Actual role playing in a JRPG? Surely you jest.

As you can tell, there’s a lot to play around with here. It's really fun experimenting with various job combinations and finding what you can do with them. And while the game is a lot more balanced than the original, you can still make some builds that break the game like Bane breaks backs.

Which leads us into the games battle system. If you’ve played any classic turn-based RPG you should feel right at home here. It has a lot of the elements you know and love but has some unique ideas of its own. Chief among them being the Brave and Default mechanic. And now you know why this series is named Bravely Default.

Here's how this works. Bravely Default has this thing called BP, or Brave Points. Every time you Default the character goes into a defensive stance and will build up one BP, up to a maximum of 3. What do you do with BP? That’s where the Brave command comes in. By Braving, you can spend BP to perform multiple actions in one turn.

Say you want to cast a spell but don’t have enough MP, well just spend some BP to use an Ether beforehand and then you’ll be able to cast away. Thing is, you don’t have to Default in order to Brave. You can Brave even with 0 BP and go into the negatives, but this prevents you from moving until you BP is back to 0. You’re basically a sitting duck if you do this.

This can be a useful strategy. It's not always the best idea, in fact most of the time it’s suicide, so it’s best used as a desperation move. There were times where I had to go into the negatives just to save myself. That's not all, certain attacks also cost BP to use, so sometimes you want to build it up just to use that one attack. Certain abilities even require BP to be at a certain level.

There's a lot of strategy required to get the most out of the battle system which means battles, even against standard enemies, are consistently engaging. You can’t just mash the attack command all the time and expect to win. You have to strategize and think ahead in order to win.

Another unique element to the battles are Special Moves. These are powerful techniques that differ depending on what job you have, some deal damage, some heal you and others give you a stat buff. They're like the Limit Breaks from Final Fantasy but with one interesting twist. Whenever you use a Special Move the character that used it will have their theme play in the background. While that theme plays your team will get a boost in their stats, and if you activate another characters Special Move you can keep the boost going and chain them together.

All of this makes battles fast paced, strategic and exciting. The battle system is one of the best parts of the game and has most of the elements that made the first games battle system so engaging. But it has seen some significant changes. For one, the Bravely Second mechanic is gone, which I honestly didn’t miss all that much. I only just remembered it while writing this review actually.

But the biggest, and likely most divisive change, is how turn orders work. In the first game, you would give every party member a command first and then see the turn play out. In this game, during a characters turn, you give them a command and they immediately do it.

This makes the battles far more immediate. The way turn orders work now means you have to be constantly on your toes since things can go pear shaped at a moments notice. Plus, there are attacks that can delay enemy action, adding more strategic options to battles.

It also means that your speed stat is way more important than it was previously. If a character is slow, you feel it. I made Adelle the slow tank of the group but had to boost her speed up later in the game because she never got the chance to do anything. Don't neglect your speed, you will regret it if you don’t.

I won’t lie, I did not like this change at first. In fact, when I played the initial demo of this game about a year ago, I opined that they should have included a classic mode to make battles play like they did in the original. They didn’t do that, but they did improve it significantly.

You now have a meter that shows when your character is about to move, and you’re given an indication of when the enemy is about to move. So the turn orders are done way better in the finished game. I honestly don’t mind how they’re handled now even if I still prefer how it was handled in the original.

All in all, Bravely Default 2 does well in all the ways that matter to RPG’s. The world is more rewarding to explore, the battles are fun, and the customization has a lot to experiment with. As a standalone game it’s fantastic, but as a sequel it could have done a bit more. It’s certainly an improvement in certain aspects and yet it’s also a downgrade in others.

I will give it this, there are some nice quality of life improvements that make playing it a much smoother experience. Unlike the first game which kept what abilities a job would learn a secret until you unlocked them. Here they just tell you what you unlock at each job level, making it much easier to plan what you want each character to learn.

I didn’t even need to grind much either. I was maxing out jobs and gaining levels at a decent rate simply by playing the game. Contrary to what many other reviews are saying, you don’t ever need to grind to get far in this game. Not only do you get more JP and EXP from battles, but you can find special orbs that level you up much faster either from exploring or from that boat thing I mentioned earlier. Even if you get stuck and need to grind it out, doing multi-battles makes this process a breeze to do and they aren’t hard to activate.

I don’t know if this changes on hard mode, but on normal difficulty which is what I played it on, the only time I had to grind was near the end of the game to get the final few job levels. Compared to the first game where I was constantly grinding for job levels and money, this is a much more enjoyable experience. Until you get to the late game.

I like Bravely Default 2 but it has some problems that severely hold it back. The opening chapter of this game is a chore to get through. I already mentioned how slow it was from a story perspective but even from a gameplay perspective it doesn’t leave a good first impression. At certain points in the game, you get an uncontrollable AI companion to help you in battle. The entire opening chapter gives you one such character which makes it feel like it’s holding your hand through the entire opening.

Even when you get past this, the game takes far too long to unlock certain elements. You don’t unlock a characters Special Move until you find one of the four crystals, and you don’t find all of those until chapter 4, about the halfway point of the game.

In general, I find the game to move at a much slower pace compared to its predecessor, and that game had way more grinding. I don’t know, it’s a bit too slow for my liking. It got boring in long sessions so I ended up playing it in small doses. It's not as addicting as the first game.

A lot of this is due to the games side quests. Because what’s an RPG without side quests. I’m going to be blunt with you folks, these side quests suck. Some are ok and actually provide more story and character development, but 90% of them are little more than tedious bitch work. You do get some useful items out of them, but they aren’t worth it. You could argue that complaining about these are pointless since they are entirely optional. But optional bad content is still bad content. Take my advice, don’t do the side quests unless there’s some story behind it.

The side quests aren’t the only side content the game offers. There's quite a number of different activities you can do outside of the main quests. There's an entirely separate card game called B n D you can play with some NPC’s. Normally I hate this card game minigames in RPG’s, but I thought this one was alright. I didn’t spend much time on it though, it’s a fun distraction but I did not want to grind out ranks or cards.

Then there are the rare monsters; super strong beasts that can reward you with powerful weapons and armour when beaten. They’re ok but some can be a real pain in the ass to beat. Same could be said for the Gates you need to beat to unlock the final job levels. The Gates are some of the most challenging fights in the game, and by challenging, I mean annoyingly cheap. How is punishing me by letting the opponent steamroll me by building up BP whenever I use a spell or ability supposed to be fair exactly. The Gates range in difficulty from annoying to “how is this fucking fair” levels of difficulty.

And the worst part is that half the time they aren’t even worth it. Some of the final job abilities are outright worthless. Why are the weapon lore abilities saved for the end? They're some of the lamest ones and by the time you get them you’re probably not going to use them.

But the worst part of the game is how the ending is handled. Anyone who has played the first game will tell you how bad the final act is. I love Bravely Default but that final stretch is objectively awful. Forcing the player to refight the same bosses they already beat four times in a row has got to be one of the stupidest decisions I have ever witnessed in a video game.

Bravely Default 2 doesn’t have anything on that level, thank God, but it does suffer from something similar. This is a bit of a spoiler though I won’t go into too much detail. Basically, the game has 3 endings, 2 bad and 1 good that acts as the games true ending. Having multiple endings isn’t a bad thing, it can add replay value to some games, but the way Bravely Default 2 handles it is, confusing.

Rather than have the bad endings be optional, you need to play through them to get the true ending. I’ll admit the first time is a great fake out but it loses all impact the second time around. The endings are supposed to be these big emotional scenes but they ring hollow because they’re obviously not the true ending. I'd rather not have the multiple endings at all since they don’t serve much of a purpose other than pad the game out.

Worse still, the game doesn’t give you much direction in how to get the best ending. This is odd because the game uses objective markers to point you in the right direction throughout the game, except for the true ending? Why do that?

So, after we’ve been through all of that bullshit, can I recommend Bravely Default 2? Yes, but only if you’re a fan of classic JRPG’s. If you’re not a huge JRPG fan, nothing here will change your mind. If you are a fan, then it’s worth picking up. It's not perfect, its visual presentation is lacking, its side content is weak and suffers from poor pacing at times, but it is a very enjoyable RPG that fans of the genre will enjoy.

And if you’re a newcomer to the genre looking for a good jumping on point to the genre, Bravely Default 2 is a decent choice, though it isn’t the best choice. I think I’d recommend Dragon Quest XI first as it is a much more polished and refined game. Bravely Default 2 is certainly not a bad choice though, and newcomers should find a lot to enjoy here.

And yet, I can’t help but be a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, Bravely Default 2 is a good game, it’s a great game in some respects, but it isn’t a great sequel. A good sequel in my eyes is something that improves on everything to the point that it makes going back to the original a chore. Bravely Default 2 doesn’t quite live up to that. Honestly, I think I still prefer the original. The sequel is better in some ways but I don’t think it has the same charm as the original.

Or maybe I hold that first game in such high regard that the sequel couldn’t match it. I loved the original and I expected the sequel to blow me away like the first game did. But it didn’t. Still, it is a good game and a vastly better sequel than Bravely Second. Here’s hoping to a Bravely Default 3.