Topic: Bravely Default II (Nintendo Switch)

There's actually only one character who has.. a really not so great voice so far. The main antagonist guy. His voice just doesn't fit, and really sounds.. bad.. other than that though, I really like how the voice acting sounds so far.

I'm not really feeling the voice acting. I'm about 4 hours or so in and I'll give it a bit more time, but I can see myself switching to Japanese sooner rather than later.

Hmm, I might buy it someday but I am not that hot on it. I am not a big rpg person and I am not that fond of the chibi look they are using. Besides, the second demo looked worse to me (while the first demo looked pretty nice, I found the second demo to look fuzzy in handheld. Maybe that's just me?). I usually buy those games and play for 20 hours. It happened with bravely default. It happened with bravely second, octopath (that one looks amazing by the way). And it might happen with triangle strategy too, although that's more of a different genre. I have the triangle demo though, might try it soon.

The only thing I hate about the game is how glitchy it is. Certain sidequests cause the game to freeze before a cutscene plays, abd some cutscenes freeze entirely for a few seconds before resuming. There’s also the glitch where the game freezes for a brief amount of time after you hit the party chat button, or try to open menus.

Got to finally start really digging in today, and wow... I'm loving it.

The game has such a charming style and great characters. I love the slick menus and dialog. I just really love Bravely Default. And this new entry does not disappoint.

That's a big plus. Even with the obnoxious looping structure, I loved how subversive the main thrust of the original's plot ended up being with regard to traditional Final Fantasy tropes.

@Ralizah
I was getting some different opinions from people playing Bravely Default II, and several said they actually really loved the loop of the first game. Not that they wanted it in every entry moving forward but that it fit in the context of that one game. Most opinions I've heard have been "it sucked, killed the game, made me stop playing" so it was interesting hearing a different take. They said it was really only 4 bosses you had to fight again. The rest was changed enough it was worth experiencing to see what had changed, and said something about being able to skip ahead or fast travel or something, if you wanted.

In any case, this game seems like a much more refined entry, and I'm so in love. I love the art style so much, the characters (they're such a mishmash but they also fit together perfectly, as if it's a world where people travel to and fro, far and wide, from all different lands and cultures and accents). I love the battle system, the jobs, the enemy designs, and the fact its not afraid to give a decent challenge. Like Final Fantasy X- that game was no pushover. Not that it was insanely hard, but it engaged the player. It was just right. And at least so far, BD2 also feels just right.

I'm so glad to see this game doing so well. It's still top 20 on Amazon and rocketed up to top 10 on the eShop. I'm so glad. I was afraid people had maybe lost their love for the series in this HD portable era. I sooooo want the series to continue, with ever larger budgets and production values. I love BD so much. I'm also glad to see the HD2D series is being continued. The combination of Bravely Default and various spiritual successor of different rpg genres in the Octopath style is more than I could have ever hoped for.

I feel like we won the RPG lottery on Switch.

@JaxonH It's four bosses within each loop. So, I forget if it was three or four loops, but imagine just killing the same difficult bosses over and over, for hours and hours on end, with little variation. There's variation in the side-content, but I hardly even engaged with it after the loop began because it was maddening doing the same damned thing over and over and I just wanted out. It makes sense within the context of the narrative, but it still just flat out sucks to experience. In addition to being monotonous, it destroys the pacing.

And you can't skip it. You can opt out early if you want to bypass the last hours of the game (which are actually really good, and the only reason to even bother persisting through the loop chapters) and get a crappy ending, but otherwise, you HAVE to do the loops.

Anyway, hopefully BD2 balances the difficulty better than the original. The first game has a very approachable hard mode until halfway through the game, and then the difficulty spikes to an insane degree. I went from rocking it on the hardest difficulty to struggling on normal difficulty after the spike happens.

Really, it's amazing the original has so many fans, considering how utterly flawed it is.

Does BD2 look any better than the demo did? It was kind of ugly on the TV, IMO. I'll probably just stick to the Switch Lite for this game when I get around to it.

I'm definitely getting it. I was a little jarred by the art style for the characters at first when I played the demo, but I'm sure I'll get over it and I think the environments are gorgeous (I could get over the stump legs in Fire Emblem on 3DS, I can get over anything lol).

Quick question for those who bought physical: I assume the whole game is on the cart?

@Ralizah
I think the flaws didn't detract from the fact that it's a great game. Like, if people hated that one aspect and believed it would be a permanent pillar of every game going forward, I imagine it wouldn't have as many fans. But when it's something where, OK the game is excellent but I just wish they didn't do this one thing, which won't be done in any future entries because it's plot specific to this game, it doesn't really stop people from loving the series.

Plus there's plenty of people like me who played a good chunk of the game but never got that far, and thus never even encountered any major issue. And then the 2nd game brought in fans too I'm sure.

As for BD2, I think it looks incredible. But, I thought the demo looked incredible too. I don't recall any issues on the TV with the demo. I only barely played the full release on the TV, and have played the rest in handheld. But from what I remember, it seemed fine. Nothing jumped out at me screaming "this looks bad". In fact, I distinctly remember taking quite a few screenshots in admiration of how good it looked. Of course, it's no Monster Hunter Rise. But for the style of game it is, it looked great to me.

But I'd take that with a grain of salt because again, I thought the demo was fine on the TV. I didn't know people thought otherwise, tbh.

It looks good in handheld though. Not perfect. There's a few pixelations and jaggies, but nothing to get up in arms about. Here, I'll share a snapped screenshot...

@Ralizah It looks a bit rough compared to the demo, but I wouldn't say it's unplayable. Cutscenes and special attacks look really really great honestly.

Yep, it didn't want to download anything for it, @rallydefault .... I like the graphics a lot! Since I only have a Lite now, that is all handheld, so I dunno about the TV mode So far, at least, I'm not having any major difficulty spikes, since I'm doing side-quests & exploring well

I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. I read some tips for starting out (eg level up Freelancer for the JP bonus) that I think have helped me from getting too frustrated. Visually it is a bit of a mixed bag. Turning off the blur helped a little but I was getting a little nauseous panning the camera in docked mode in the desert zone with that rippled effect over the top of everything.

Personally I don’t have an issue with the graphics. The blur doesn’t look great but everything else I’m pretty happy with. The character designs I really like. I’ve seen people say it looks like a mobile game but personally I can’t see that. Besides, there’s some pretty mobile games in amongst the dross! Yeah, the aliasing is noticeable in handheld but it’s nothing compared to Xenoblade 2.

That said, I’ve only just reached the desert part of the world map so still quite early. The brave/default system is still satisfying. It took some adjusting but I think I prefer how they’ve handled turn order in this game. The weight mechanic feels completely tacked on though, I like how its apparently factored into the turn order but becoming “overloaded” feels like an extra arbitrary barrier on top of the pg cost of the equipment and efficacy with your chosen job.

I would like to know though, what accent does Adelle have, if any? It sounds like she has one but I can’t place it and I’m not sure if it’s my ignorance or weird voice acting. If I had to guess I’d say Welsh but I wouldn’t bet money on that.

Edit: just added a bit I missed in a sentence.

For spoilers sake, I will cover my question.

@LzWinky Haven't played all the way through yet, but I highly doubt it will be, especially since I don't see them reusing that same twist again. They didn't for Bravely Second either.

Have played about 20 hours already, which is a good sign. The game doesn't impress, but it also doesn't seek to impress; it's just good old-school jrpg fun. The grinding is a bit much though, I feel, thankfully the battle system is so great. Strangely enough, the only thing where the game lets me down is with it's main 4 characters, they are utterly forgettable ... Both design wise as their personality. The other characters are much better.

@Suicune I spent like 7 hours in game already, and I think about 2 of those were grinding. However, yeah I agree that this game is pretty good honestly. I really do like the main characters, their designs and personality both.

I love it. It's exactly what I was wanting.

It's just old school JRPG but it does it so well. The combat is super fun, can crank it on 4X speed and fly. Monster designs are amazing, bosses are good, and I love the 4 main characters. They're really endearing.

I wish they released amiibo for the 4 main characters. Instead we'll just get our 35th Mario amiibo, 71st Zelda amiibo and 27th Splatoon amiibo. The idea of amiibo used to be interesting because it meant figures of fave characters, but they never use it for anything beyond their biggest franchises now. Not even Fire Emblem got amiibo. This game never stood a chance.

@JaxonH An old school JRPG, but I expect at least something more modern for it's story, since the Bravely games, at least from what I've heard, have some pretty interesting twists.