Bravely Default Review - It’s good to be brave!

Square Enix was once known as the RPG juggernaut, with legendary series such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts being some of the biggest gaming franchises in existence. But Square Enix has found some of it’s titles declining in quality lately, with many gamers unimpressed with the likes of Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIV, pre-A Realm Reborn. Bravely Default is Square’s latest RPG, releasing exclusively for 3DS, and it promises to be yet another great title to add to the 3DS exclusive library, but does it deliver?

In short: Yes.

 

Straight away Bravely Default gives a very nostalgic feel about it, one I can most liken to Final Fantasy III. You begin the game as a young lad named Tiz, and, predictably, tragedy befalls him, changing him from a humble boy living in the countryside to a world-traveling warrior. He meets up with Agnes, whom is the Vestal of Wind, and they set out to save a world that is slowly destroying itself, whilst picking up a few extra pals along the way.
The story here starts out very cliché, but happily, slowly moves towards something more unique and interesting.

You travel across a large overworld, with several towns and dungeons, and plenty to explore. The towns themselves appear to be static backgrounds with the odd animated piece to bring them to life, but when in stereoscopic 3D, the towns are given a significant amount of depth. If you leave your character standing still in a town, the camera pans very far out to give you a good view of the town. The views are beautiful, but even on a 3DS XL I sometimes felt my on-screen character was too small to see properly, I couldn’t imagine having to play on a smaller screened 2DS or original 3DS. Towns are usually simple to navigate, with the game not giving you anywhere to move away from a set path which is quite linear, but includes all the necessary locations, such as shops and points of interest. It may make towns feel unusually small, but also rids itself of the fear of getting lost in a large town which is more cosmetic than substantial.

 

 

Dungeons are essentially small 3D mazes, and as you explore you will fill a map on the bottom screen. As one would expect from an RPG such as this, dungeons are also littered with treasure chests with weapons or restorative items. Your main goal in dungeons is usually to find a staircase going either up or down, and slowly heading towards your goal, which is usually a boss of some kind. Which brings me to one of Bravely Default’s best features: The battle system.

 

 

Bravely Default’s battle system is all in the name, it feels much like most turn-based RPGs aside from the Brave and Default options, which revolves around the BP system. BP is simple enough, each turn that goes by you receive one BP, and each attack you make requires one BP. Ignore the Brave and Default side of the battle system, and this is just a normal turn-based battle system seen hundreds of times before, but to do so would be folly.

BP is flexible, you can go into minus BP, or even stock it. Using your Brave ability, you may attack up to four times in a single move, but this also uses four BP, and your character may not act again until it has BP to use once again. Default is the opposite, and by selecting it your character takes a defensive stance and stacks extra BP for each turn it is used. It may sound complicated at first, and does take some adjusting to, but eventually becomes very normal and intuitive, and you’ll likely find yourself using either Brave or Default almost every turn.
BP resets after each battle too, meaning you can quickly tackle weaker enemies by abusing your Brave ability in the first move. If this doesn’t defeat the enemy, you will be left a sitting duck until your BP reaccumulates. It’s risky and requires experimenting, but soon becomes second nature.

 

Other elements of battle include Special abilities, which will depend on your character’s Job class, but usually are high-powered attacks mixed with a temporary status change. Items are of course included, and items such as Phoenix Downs will of course be familiar to Final Fantasy fans.

A nice note that many RPG fans will be happy with is that battle animations can be sped up or paused at any time with the D-Pad, making frequent random encounters more bearable.

Finally, a not-so-positive change to the classic turn-based battles is SP. SP sounds great, using it allows you to attack at any point in a battle simply by pressing the Start button. The problem with SP, is that it is only accumulated one of two ways; either you leave Bravely Default on Sleep Mode for eight real-time hours, or you can purchase SP drinks from Nintendo eShop. A maximum of three SP can be held at once. If you’re the type to leave your 3DS in Sleep Mode anyway, this may be a boon to you, but the price of SP Drinks on the eShop is far too high for such a minor change to the game.

 

 

As I mentioned, the characters have Jobs, which are basically character classes. Again, Final Fantasy style elements return, with familiar classes such as Black Mage, White Mage, Knight, Thief and more returning. You start only with the Freelancer Job class, but through playing the game and defeating the surprisingly robust side-quests you earn more Jobs, each with their own Support Abilities, Special Attacks and Equipment Specializations. You are free to adjust Jobs at almost any time.

Another small feature included in Bravely Default is Norende, a village you help to build throughout the game. Those that played the Bravely Default demo will already understand this: You acquire villagers by StreetPassing other Bravely Default players, and the villagers work towards building the town’s shops and pathways. This process will seem near impossible with the single villager the game provides you with, but soon becomes entirely possible with StreetPass, thanks to the game also communicating with the demo version of Bravely Default. If you live in an area where you seldom get StreetPasses, this feature may seem near impossible to you, unfortunately.

 

 

Graphically, Bravely Default’s character design is cute and simple, reminding me of the DS title Four Heroes of Light. Towns, despite having a very limited space you can explore, look really impressive and pretty. The overworld is acceptable, despite not being impressive, and the battles are nicely animated, with all your attacks having their own animations, and they look nice in 3D, despite 3D at times causing slight framerate drops.

The audio in Bravely Default is of high quality almost constantly, aside from one area; the English voices included in many cutscenes sound atrocious. Not only do English voices sound compressed and fuzzy, but the acting is often laughable. Luckily a Japanese voice option has been left in, and for some reason, Japanese voices are nowhere near as compressed in comparison, sounding more pleasing to audiophiles, and makes it easier to take the game more seriously. The music in towns, dungeons and on the overworld constantly sounds lovely, with some songs being genuinely pleasing to the ears.