My (Spoiler Filled) Review of Bravely Default 2

Alright, so I just finished Bravely Default 2, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the game. There will be big spoilers. This will likely be very long, so here are my general rankings.

Story: 5/10

Characters: 3/10

Combat: 7/10

Polish: 2/10

Overall: 5/10

Alright, with that being said, let’s get into the opinions.

The positives:

The world is beautiful. The towns are super memorable, and the major locations of the game all look pretty cool. Wiswald is my favorite, although Savalon is also very nice.

The Music is excellent. Admittedly, I played most of the game without headphones, but the music I did listen to is pretty incredible. The asterisk themes are pretty solid, and the changing aspects of it make it much more interesting than He of the Name or whatever Bravely Second’s theme is called. As of right now, I think I like the original BD soundtrack best, but I’m sure that this one will certainly grow on me more.

Class passive abilities were a great idea, and it really makes you think through your decision of primary/secondary classes more than BD or BS.

Elvis is great. I’ll talk more about the characters later, but his voice performance is easily the best in the game. His big moments are in general the most impactful, and his relationships with Adele and the Wiswaldians are well written.

The Prologue is really well designed from a gameplay perspective. I like that Elvis joins with an asterisk, and Sloan is the perfect Jagen type character (a character archetype in Fire Emblem for very good early game characters that fall off/leave as the party outpaces them). The core of White Mage/Black Mage/Vanguard/Monk is solid, and I like it better than the BS core of Charioteer/Wizard/Whatever else is in chapter 1 of BS

The story:

Wow, this plot is not very good. I originally had a large writeup of my thoughts on the story, but I realized it was almost entirely unnecessary. The story is bland, doesn’t do anything better than Bravely Default or Bravely Second, and is filled with lazy writing moments and nonsensical motivations. This is clearly not a character focused story, which leads to a plot that any four neutral/good characters could have. I think the best example of this is chapter 3, which is set up like The Crucible. The main problem with this is that nothing was ever done with this setup. Yeah, Adele was a fairy. Wouldn’t it be cool if the story acknowledged it in any way? The twist was interesting in concept, but the story talked about it for 30 seconds, and then ignored it until Adele was needed to open Mag Mel. The multiple endings are completely unnecessary, and the cryptic way to unlock the final boss fight should have just been done for you (ie: make Bravebearer a story asterisk). Overall, there isn’t much to say about a story this generic.

Characters (The Main Four):

Seth is a sailor, and that is all I can tell you about his backstory. He joined Gloria because Sloan told him to, and the wind crystal saved his life from the big bad that one time. Aside from this, Seth doesn’t have a character. Personality wise, he’s sorta like Agnes, but his moments in the story do a terrible job of establishing his personality. Despite being a talking protagonist, I think Seth has less of a personality than Byleth from Fire Emblem.

Gloria is equally uninteresting and equally ignored by the plot. For the character that drives most of the plot forward with their need to find the crystals, you’d think they would get development, but nope. The closest Gloria gets to development is Castor, who is meant to act as a foil, but is not morally grey enough to make his criticism valid.

Adele is better, but certainly not good. Her being a fairy is cool and all, but it has absolutely no bearing on the plot other than her getting a free pass into Mag Mell. Adele is an interesting character in concept (and she’s one of two characters with a personality) but the plot rarely asks of her things that any stand-in couldn’t do. She would be much better if Edna was more well developed. Her relationships with Martha and Gwydion are cool, just wished they were explained more (or if they weren’t static)

Elvis is the closest BD2 gets to BS quality, and even so, he is underdeveloped. Elvis is unique in that he has the most unique relationships throughout the game (Roddy, Lily, Galahad, Adele, Vignitio, Emma) and all of them are somewhat interesting, even if he only has a dynamic relationship with Adele (and even that is shaky, with their romance seeming to come out of nowhere). His voice acting also stands out from the pack, making him easily the best BD2 character (although I think he only surpasses BS Edea to me in terms of character development)

Characters (The Villains/Asterisk holders):

This is easily my biggest critique of the game. The villain cast is underdeveloped, nonsensical, and they rarely contribute to the themes of the game.

Some standouts in terms of lack of quality are Horten, Folie, Castor, the possessed trio in Wiswald (which are conceptually interesting, but nothing is ever done with them), Bernard, Dominic, Adam, and Edna.

And of the ones that remain, some are notably pretty lazy, even if they are nuanced. The best example of this is Anihal, whose personality can be boiled down to “I’m a nice person with animals”. Her situation is somewhat interesting, sure, but the character itself leans on the Camus archetype way too hard.

I legitimately cannot think of a single BD2 villain that surpasses their counterpart in BD or BS. Heck, if I was rating the villains of the series, I wouldn’t rank a single BD2 villain above Profiteur. The cast left a lot to be desired.

The Combat:

I’m not really going to review the bravely combat here, just what’s changed from BS. The combat is always exceptional, so I’m going to skip a lot of the shared good points.

The ATB system was one of my major concerns going into the game, but it definitely grew on me. It has some flaws, such as speed being the default best stat due to how initiative is decided, but aside from that, I have no complaints.

The counter system is very weird to talk about. In general, I think that the counter system was used very well in narrow situations (such as “when savagery is used” counters) and was not used well in scenarios where the counter was incredibly broad. I don’t think this is a problem with counters, but more the way they are framed. It really sucks when you attack an enemy and they gain a bp, but I feel like most people would be fine with a boss gaining an extra bp each turn. The randomness hurts, and there should have been more scaffolds in place (like the ranger passive) to allow you to affect their counters. Overall, the system has its faults, but I wouldn’t mind them experimenting more with it in the future.

The asterisk balance in this game really bothers me, especially for mages. Namely, asterisks are expected to be mastered very quickly, and each individual job level does less for a character. The first really bothers me as far as grinding is concerned. Freelancer grinding for JP up is virtually required to speed up the midgame, and it only serves to shift the grinding/interesting fights balance more towards the grinding side. The second complaint really is just because I think the magic tiers are more interesting than learning one spell at a time.

The overworld encounters system is not good. BD was unique in allowing you to adjust the encounter rate to a level you considered fun, and removing that option is a bit scummy.

Finally, boss battles. In general, the bosses are quite well designed (outside of chapter 1) although they are notably built different than BD fights. BD2 fights seem to be built deductively, as in, the developers create several strategies, then build bosses that are weak to some strategies and strong against others, rather than making fights that are generally good against most comps, and let the cheese arise naturally. This is especially clear with all the bosses weak to paralysis, as one skill can easily shut a boss down for the entire fight. Harder fights should not be able to cheesed as easily as early fights, and debilitating statuses should not work on bosses.

Polish:

This is a sort of miscellaneous section, but the point is that this game generally seems rushed. The game suffers from long load times and performance issues, and in general seems unoptimized for the switch.

Gameplay wise, this also extends to the lack of a quest log, the fact that spoiler characters can appear in BnD, the lack of an auto battle setting, and many other issues.

Conclusion:

Bravely Default 2 is a game with quite good gameplay, but suffers from terribly generic writing and underdeveloped characters. Bravely Default 2 is not as good as the original duology, although it could (depending on your tastes) be a solid game in its own right.

Again, this is just my opinion. If you made it to the end, thank you, and I look forward to reading your takes in the comments,