Was Bravely Default 2 Worth It?

There are a lot of games out there vying for your attention. Which of them are worth playing? Which ones are a good value for your money? Default for a few turns while we answer today’s question “Was Bravely Default 2 Worth It?”

Bravely imbalanced

I haven’t played the previous two games in the series, so I can’t speak to any changes that have occurred in the transition to Bravely becoming a console title. However, this game was developed by a different studio than the first two games. I assume their directive from Square-Enix was “play it extremely safe”.

There are games where the developers have taken care to balance encounters and gameplay. Bravely Default 2 is not that. I’m a big fan of games where you win through system mastery or strategy, but In Bravely Default 2, you beat the game by grinding.

There is no challenge that can’t be simply surpassed by spending another hour grinding levels or jobs, as long you’re grinding the correct classes!

For example, at least one class is so poorly designed that you’ll literally only want to level it for the bonus to rare item drops, because another “feature” of the class is the chance to not receive any gold, job points, or experience from a battle.

My tips? Wait until you get the 4th party member during the prologue chapter, and then go grind the Leanan Sidhe while you still have an overpowered guest. Level Freelancer to 12 so that you get both JP up abilities. When you get the Beastmaster job later, close your eyes and let the game play itself.

What does it do well?

The music is good, and I swear at least a couple tracks sample some older Squaresoft titles. I assume that homage is deliberate, since this game wants to ape the classic turn based JRPG so incredibly bad. Sadly, the music is probably the best facet of this title.

The battle system is fine, though admittedly over 90% of your encounters will be swiftly dealt with by Braving 3x and wiping the enemies with Godspeed Strike or something similar.

There is a card-based minigame that is interesting. I didn’t bother collecting all the cards because that got excessively grindy, but the premise wasn’t bad. It was varied enough to where I felt like I got competent at it (enough to earn the job) but it wasn’t frustrating. Overall, not a huge feature, but still a neat diversion.

What could it do better?

Besides the aforementioned balance and grinding issues, the game doesn’t run well on the Switch. This is crazy, because it’s not a visual masterpiece by any stretch. There are pretty Switch games and then there’s Bravely Default 2, which looks like an app store shovelware title. The environments are great, and the enemy designs that aren’t palette swaps are pretty good, but the abysmal sock puppet characters detract from the experience. There’s also nothing special about this game’s story. I refrained from skipping the cutscenes but the banal dialogue made me wish I had.

The weight system isn’t well implemented. You start off with a small weight limit (10-15) and each item has a commensurate weight. Higher powered items weigh more. For example, a mythril dagger that you can find outside the starting town (I found 3 in the grass) might weigh 5 but a better one will weigh 12. There’s a bit of nuance as to what you can equip because you get stat penalties for going over the weight limit. While this sounds interesting in theory, it can largely be ignored because you’re going to be grinding frequently.

If you casually play the game, boss battles will throw you for a loop, especially early, Prepare to put the plot on hold to go grind out some more levels and come back.

Switching between classes is encouraged, but I would have liked a way to save loadouts to make it more convenient. This would also be useful as bosses tend to require a different party spec than what you’re using for trash mobs.

Is it fun?

If you have fun grinding consecutive battles, then go wild. If you’re in it for the story, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

I didn’t have a bad time per se until I had to stop my progression and go grind. Don’t get it twisted, I wasn’t have a good time either, I just felt like I was killing time.

I kept playing because I was hoping something would draw me in. Sunk cost fallacy made me incredibly tenacious, even as I was chaining 6+ battles to try and grind jobs faster.

Value?

HowLongToBeat gives this game less playtime than the previous titles. This is especially egregious since they were on the 3DS and didn’t cost $60.

Was Bravely Default 2 Worth It?

If you’re a Bravely fan you might want to stick to the previous titles. Square-Enix titles rarely go on good sales and stay at near to full price. My experience with this game felt like I was treading water. I kept hoping to get to something that would justify my purchase. Incidentally the preorder bonus (coasters) sure wasn’t making me feel great about the price tag.

To be clear, Bravely Default 2 isn’t a bad game per se. However, Square Enix has been publishing a steady stream of overpriced and unimpressive retro JRPGs for a while now. I can’t help but feel like this is the natural escalation of that trend.

TL;DR Pick up this game if you like to grind. If you don’t, then I suggest you bravely default to any of the numerous better JRPGs on the Switch.

Personally, I do not think that Bravely Default 2 was worth it. I’ll likely finish the game since I certainly paid enough for it. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’m satisfied with my purchase. If this was a $40 game on the 3DS then I would feel differently but this title screams “extremely low effort” for $60.

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