I sat on the PAL release of Bravely Default for a month or so. In one regard this was just because I could, soaking in the rare occurrence of region locking somewhat working out for our neglected lands (It sure as hell wasn’t because I was playing SMT4 or Rune Factory!). But the other concern I had, was simply how long the game was supposed to be. Either I was going to love it and get sucked into 60 odd hours of JRPG goodness or it was going to be a massive letdown, leaving me yet again without a quality entry in a genre I once loved.
The excitement generated by the American release finally prompted me to get into it and I’m glad I did. Not so much because it is an amazing game (but it nearly is) but because there are so many interesting design aspects to discuss. Without further ado, ladies and gentleman I give you my Bravely Default review:
But first things first. I can see how it came about, you can brave and you can default as two options in battle. So “Bravely Default” works right? No it doesn’t really. This is especially true because Defaulting is actually the safe option, because it raises your defense and lets you act again on the very next turn (while also potentially unleashing stronger attacks). Using a brave action lets you attack more than once, but then makes you vulnerable straight after. As such, I now dub the game Bravely Brave (or BB for short) which is a heck of a lot catchier.
With that fixed, it is time to talk about the game itself. The setup is pretty straightforward. You have the wide-eyed farm boy torn from his peaceful life, check. The quiet and practical spiritual girl who just wants to do what is right, check. The sassy warrior girl Edea who used to be a member of the enemy, check. Finally you have the debonair playboy Ringbabel…with amnesia no less, who must have loved Final Fantasy 12 and probably dressed up as Balthier at Halloween every year.
Not off to a great start in the originality stakes then. While these are safe choices and work well enough, they also stretch the credibility of the story to breaking point at different stages. Basically the world is falling apart because of the corruption of four elemental crystals and our unlikely heroes have to save the day because… well everybody else has got something else on at the moment. In fact, nobody seems particularly concerned about the state of the world and are just happy to push on with their lives until you sort out what they really care about.
Of particular note in this strange world are the typical set of evil guys representing the empire. These guys and gals are not just evil, they are stupidly evil. Killing a hundred thousand soldiers with a toxin? Forcing children to work in mines? Handing out lolly bags with only those black twisty bits of licorice? They have done it all and over several years by the sounds of things. In fact the generals seem to locked in a game of “who can do the most blatantly evil thing” and basically they are all winning.
Which makes you wonder how Edea, a former high ranking officer is somehow oblivious to all this. “What!?! We are actually the evil side?” She constantly remarks. I mean holy shit you could have picked up on one or two hints earlier. Maybe around the time all the oceans started rotting and the wind stopped? But instead you are constantly hit over the head with how she is opening her eyes to what has been going on. This obvious characterization style holds just as true for the other cast members, leaving you to wonder when they’ll all just get over their one defining personality trait and get on with the mission (hint, it takes about half the game).
Odd things like this stand out through the experience because of how well done some aspects are. While there is a halfhearted attempt to tie it all together in the second half, it never really works as a fully realized piece. This has a lot to do with the writing, which is a mix of decent and absurdly delivered lines from the main cast. Any attempt at emotion is often destroyed by Agnes doing things like wishing with her “heart of hearts” or characters dramatically lamenting the death of a character they literally met just ten seconds before. This melodramatic approach just feels so out of touch with the polish found elsewhere and you have to wonder if much of it wasn’t an afterthought to help flesh out the battle systems. In particular the “party talk” events seem to be thrown in with little thought, given they rarely reference what is going on in the game and even when they do they never have anything interesting to say.
The quests themselves couldn’t be more basic. Find the marker, go to the marker, complete the three levels of a dungeon and kill the thing at the end of it. Rinse and repeat with a couple of short cut-scenes and maybe get a job at the end (which ok, is addictive enough). But beyond the first few quests, everything slows to a crawl. Of particular note is chapter 3 with its fashioned themed adventures (travel across the world to get a dress!) and the side-quest to get the performer job. Whoever designed that particular part of the game should be banned from any sequel…and most other game series as well.
The quests don’t get better after that low point either. After a few chapters you will find yourself returning to the same locations over and over just to be told you have to go back again. It gets very boring, very quickly and there is one particular stretch involving a young boy which is ridiculous. After backtracking about five times and moving his location three, you then have to return to him again… just to get an item.
So basically the story doesn’t reach any great heights and the characters are predictable at best and comical parodies of long overused jrpg stereotypes at worst. This might seem like a harsh criticism but this is not a short game and if you are expecting a long and interesting story to drive you through it, you are going to go home unhappy. So even though it starts out as Final Fantasy (the first few hours are amazing), it ends up like Crimson Gem Saga. I’m thinking maybe it should be “A better Crimson gem saga than Crimson gem saga”…. but that’d probably lead to legal troubles these days…
To put it another way, Final Fantasy 13 took 40 hours to get good. Bravely Brave takes 20 hours to get bad. But at least you still get that 20 hours.
With that side of the jrpg equation taken care of, it is on to the gameplay itself. Many people have remarked that it is similar to Final Fantasy 5 with the job system (and a somewhat bland story) and that is pretty close to the mark. There are lots of jobs and lots of abilities with a host of well designed sprites. However Bravely Default does a lot of other interesting things and this is where the game begins to shine.
Battles are fought with the before mentioned brave and default mechanics at the heart of everything. While this sounds unusual, what it basically comes down to is “can I kill the enemy using all my attacks” or “should I play it safe?”. In practice, you can use your four attacks in a row against 99% of enemies and only use some sort of strategy against bosses. Once you are forced to consider your actions (typically just keeping one person ready to heal) the battle system comes together and it all seems to work.
There are lots of other things that come into it, like custom special attacks, SP (with micro-transactions!), combining items and your usual range of abilities. But it isn’t often worthwhile using most of it for the majority of the game. Are you going to go through numerous menus to set up one attack for one character before doing the rest? Probably not and I didn’t either when you have plenty of similar options that work just as well. Of special note are the unnecessary SP attacks (basically let you cheat by acting again), fueled by either real world money or cool down times. Rest assured that you will never need to spend money, but it still is quite irksome that the option is there.
While that all works, none of it is particularly out there for a jrpg. You are still taking turns and selecting attacks and hopefully winning the day. Where Bravely Default gets interesting is the range of options it provides so you don’t have to actually play the game.
Grinding in … Bravely Brave … is a strange beast. You don’t necessarily need to grind, but the whole game is almost set up around it. Speeding up battles, automatically attacking and adjusting encounter rates are all options you will learn to make use of right from the start of the game. While these speed things up significantly, you have to wonder about why the game designers would be so pro-active in letting you avoid this part of the experience. If it isn’t something people want to play, why not get rid of the need all together? Why not just give us all a big shiny button to level up and save even more time? It is a strange path to walk down and I’m not sure the balance here is quite right.
Speaking of encounter rates, the ability to change them, at any time, is a strange, strange decision. If you set it to -100% you get no encounters so you can then clear a dungeon, save and then grind to beat the boss. While this is up to the player it is the optimal way to play and it gets boring fast. While some might disagree with this assessment strongly (options are great!) the problem is it forces you to choose against something that will make your life easier. Once you start thinking about those sorts of things, you also start thinking about if you want to play another 50 hours of this game at all. Sometimes these sort of thoughts can be dangerous in such a long grind filled adventure.
What I would like to see is at least a limitation to stop you changing the encounter rate until you reach the end save. That way you are encouraged to do less grinding and things like traps, hidden passages and wrong turns are actually meaningful. This is especially noticeable in some of the longer dungeons with confusing layouts and one-way switches. Make a mistake? Well you could suffer through random battles until you get it right… or you could just turn it all off and walk through with no hassle…. Then grind some more.
Speaking of the Dungeons and getting into presentation, they are generally bland and uninspired. Some of the settings are reused and you will never want to spend much time in the twisty passages. Most of them follow the exact same formula and there are few surprises to be had…save some environmental traps which you can render useless anyway (through no encounters or an early ability!).
On the very positive side, this is somewhat forgivable because the outside locations and towns are breathtaking. Sure they are ultimately empty with nothing to do, but towns especially are streamlined, cutting down on pointless wandering around and the graphics are amazing in 3d. You don’t just get some nice towns either. You can see moving clouds and a night and day cycle and other lovely effects. It shows some real care and attention to detail by the designers, the likes of which I haven’t seen for quite some time.
Outside of the graphics, the sound and music are suitably excellent, the menus are clear and well drawn and added details like the opening AR entry make the package shine. It isn’t quite perfect though, the interface is a little inconsistent, with the d-pad working on some menus, the stick on others and the touch screen being the third option! You will of course get used to it over the course of such a long trek, but having to switch around frequently on a hand-held device does get a little old (The game even supports a “one handed” mode…but again this doesn’t quite work out for everything).
To round things off, you get a basic and kind of annoying city building mechanic, which is based on the friends I don’t have and the spot pass features I can never, ever use. You can still make use of it all via the internet (on a one day cool down cycle) but I found it all more trouble than it is worth. Adding the ability to send and receive attacks from friends (or strangers) seems like a good bullet point on the box, but I wish they’d spent that money ironing out the story flaws instead (you’ll know when you get there…). However the ability for strong monsters to invade your town is fun and provides a solid opportunity to make use of all the abilities that the main game often doesn’t demand.
There are a lot of words above and it may be difficult to discern just exactly how I feel about the game. A lot of the above come down to minor quibbles or talking points, rather than straight out flaws. Let me make it clear, you should absolutely buy Bravely Default and play it, just know what you are getting into it. It certainly stretches things thin at certain times and later events may be a breaking point if you are not enjoying the game and battle systems. But the general polish and the brilliant first few hours are worth the price of admission alone. And lets face it, us JRPG fans are not exactly swimming in other options.
A better Final Fantasy? Not quite, but it is by far and away the best put together JRPG in… well maybe ever. If they can build on the base they have established here? Bravely Brave, might just become the best series around.
(From neogaf thread care of sixteen-bit)
The Toddhunter Report 