Topic: Bravely Default II (Nintendo Switch)

@BruceCM i greatly appreciate it! It was the first one I attempted, And I was struggling pretty hard with it, so I just stopped playing rather than continue taking a beat down lol. I've been playing BDII on and off for 3 months at this point, so it was time to move on. I may not play a jrpg for a good while honestly. But when I do, I think I'll continue my DQIIS playthrough. I got about 20 hours in.

Fair enough, @NintendoByNature .... Let me know how DQXI S goes, then

I'm the same. Only about 10 hours in, was enjoying it, but just kind of dropped it for Dread and now Pokemon. It's gonna be like Xenoblade for me... maybe someday lol

I'm 20 hours in, all my characters are at level 25. I hoped the game would get better but I'm at a point where I dread going back. (I'm fighting against the traitor emperor of the second city.)
Any redeeming qualities, any reasons why to keep playing?

It feels like I'm having fun for an hour, and then all I do for the next 5 hours is grinding so I can beat a boss. Rinse and repeat. The pacing is horrible.

In Xenoblade there is a wealth of sidequests, and once you do them the main quest is no problem.
In Bravely there are almost no sidequests to do. And when you find a few, half of them are easy but the rewards are forgettable, and the other half is just as brutal as the main bosses. And yeah, it's sprinkled with stupid fetch quests that do nothing but annoy.

The overworld is simplistic and not very fun to explore. The dungeons and cities are slightly better, but far from great. I'm getting all treasure chests but their rewards are often garbage items.

I looked for stuff I can do and found this card game, but it uselessly stretches the game even further and does nothing for me and my party. It could (and maybe should) have been an entirely separate game.

I made use of the boat to gain a few bonuses, but again the bonuses are tiny and don't really help. And I hate that I need to put my Switch in sleep mode for up to 12 hours without being able to play something else in-between.

I have changed the difficulty to easy now, my last straw, because the endless repetitive grind wore me out. However, there's almost no change. Bosses still tear me apart. Grinding is still a neccessity.

I'm almost concluding that this is the worst RPG Square Enix ever made and Nintendo published. At least of all the ones I have played.

I wanna beat that king badly to see how the game continues, but if it keeps going on like that I'm done.

@SKTTR Unless you want to see it through to the end, the final boss isn't really worth it. It doesn't really mesh well with the plot, or connect all that well to the plot. I can't remember where you are, but everything just goes downhill when the Empire stuff starts to ramp up.

Yea and it gets crazy hard in some spots where you least expect it. I was never able to finish it fully since the difficulty spikes got a little too hard for me.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever play this game. I just started playing the first game on 3DS to try it out. Not a big rpg player at all. Very seldom does a role player grab me. I really liked Lufia 2 back in the day and FF6.

I should have gotten Tales of Vesperia or DQXI S instead.

This is in no way on par with Lufia 2 or FF6 (and many other JRPGs for that matter.)

Graphically only the character designs look good, but villages are zoomed out too far, and everything else reminds me of early PS2/Gamecube topdown JRPG visuals. And for characters/plot, gameplay/pacing, puzzles/quests, and atmosphere/immersion I've seen tons of better RPGs, even back in the 16-bit era. The dungeon design may be the strongest part of the game and even that is just decent if you like classic 16-bit style areas.

That's just my opinion after nearly 25 hours. It's my first BD game but it's probably also my last. I have not entirely given up on it yet, but you need to have a lust for grinding to make this experience bearable.

@SKTTR All the BD games have annoyances to them, and in terms of Gameplay, I heard this was the best one, but in terms of story, I heard the original is way better, even if there's a huge annoying portion of the game.

@SKTTR I wouldn't really call this a grinding game. There were very few times when I had to grind during the entire playthrough. Sometimes it is about changing your jobs, abilities and equipment around.

I had to grind, but there are ways to grind, like going to specific areas and leading a ton of monsters close to you.

I just had some difficulty not knowing which jobs and abilities to utilize at all times. Never really had to grind that much, but I ultimately shelved it anyway.

last night i finally got back into playing Bravely Default II since 2021.

just beat the Bastion Boss and man that was a bit tough. used up my of my X potions and ethers to survive while i had to do what i could where Gloria was white mage to heal and do Holy Magic from time to time.

Seth he was Phantom or Monk and he did decent attacks and the other two characters had to act as backup.

Next time when i start a new game or whatever if i feel like it later down the road, there a better way to deal with that annoying tough Bastion boss?