Bravely Default 2 Review
Regular readers of my reviews will likely have noticed by now that I mostly review smaller games and very rarely feature AAA games. Only three of the 46 games I reviewed last year could reasonably be called AAA. I could say this is because of some loyalty to small creators or a a dislike of large corporations, but that would be lying. The honest truth is I favor indie games because I’m not getting paid to do this and spending $60 every week wouldn’t be sustainable. However, I want to make sure I show I’m capable of covering all sorts of games, so every so often I’ll pick up something with a higher development budget. This time, I’ve chosen to look at Bravely Default 2 for the Switch.
Bravely Default 2 is, oddly enough, the third game in the Bravely series, though the story of the first two games is unrelated to any of the events in the third. Bravely Default 2 tells the story of a quartet of adventurers trying to save the world by gathering four mystical crystals. Standing in their way is a sinister cabal of warriors, sorcerers, and heads of state who seek to use the crystals for their own agendas. And lurking in the background are deeper mysteries: What secrets does a wizard’s magically encrypted tome contain? What is the Night’s Nexus and why does it stand against the heroes? And why was an unassuming sailor important enough to be brought back from the dead?
Though it’s not unique to this game, the feature that drew me towards Bravely Default 2 was the Brave/Default system that serves as the series’ signature. On a player’s turn, they can choose to attack, use skills, cast spells, or use items as is the standard for the JRPG genre, but they can also elect to either Brave or Default. Defaulting causes the character to enter a defensive state in which they take significantly less damage and also banks one Brave Point. These Brave Points are used when a character uses the Brave function, which allows that character to take multiple consecutive turns, up to four in a row. If a character has three Brave Points stored, they can take four actions in a row and then act normally when their turn next occurs. However, players can also spend Brave Points they don’t have, borrowing turns from their future selves and accruing negative Brave Points. When this is done, the next time that character would take a turn, instead they do nothing and lose a negative Brave Point, acting normally again once they have no negatives. I enjoyed this system because it allowed me more freedom than other JRPG games. When it was my healer’s turn and no one was injured, I would default to save those turns for later when healing was needed. And when my enemies were on their last legs, I would Brave repeatedly, intentionally overextending myself to finish the fight more swiftly.
Unfortunately, aside from the Brave/Default system, nothing else about Bravely Default 2 is all that interesting and that’s because so much of it is stock standard. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve played a game, or even watched a TV show, where a band of four adventurers, each a connection to one of the four elements, sets off to find four magic rocks to save the world. And the main character having amnesia has been a tired trend of JRPGs for at least a decade. This game even does the evil vizier twist, which was last interesting to me when I watched Aladdin at four years old. Worst, the story’s lack of creativity is paired with a frustratingly slow pace. There were such sizeable gaps between plot developments that turned out to be underwhelming, I started listening to audiobooks as I played.
Sadly, the mechanics follow in the footsteps of the writing. The different classes, or “jobs,” the player’s party can equip are equally commonplace. Later in the game there are a few that experiment with some interesting ideas, but mostly it’s the standards of white mage, black mage, person with big shield, etc. I don’t know how Bravely Default 2’s development budget measures against Yakuza: Like A Dragon’s but the latter game was out of the gate with more interesting classes while still existing in the same format. Maybe Square Enix is too buttoned-up to have classes like dominatrix or homeless guy, but more variety would’ve gone a long way to help this game feel more creative. The game’s side quests are another rough patch. In spite of being voice acted, no side quest is all that fun or interesting and often sees players retracing their steps to old areas to recover an item or beat a specific kind of enemy. One that especially earned my ire was a quest from a woman to deliver a lunch box to her husband who was working. The husband was working in a ruins occupied by genuinely dangerous monster and I was forced to navigate the area three times because the husband kept discovering items the wife had left out of the lunch. Yes it’s true there’s plenty to do in Bravely Default 2 and persistent gamers could get more than 70 hours out of it, yet nothing here is noteworthy to me.
Maybe there’s value in being exactly what people think you’re going to be, in being reliable. But on the other hand, $60 is a hefty chunk of change, especially during a global pandemic. You can buy at least three of last year’s best games for $60 and I personally guarantee that you will have a better time with those games than with Bravely Default 2. But, if you need the comfort of something reliable and familiar right now, or if your favorite kind of restaurant is buffets, go ahead and pick up Bravely Default 2. Just promise me you’ll try to find a way to pay less than full price for it.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
