MileHighGaymer Reviews

Bravely Default

Where the Fairy Flies
For 3DS - Developed by SquareEnix and Silicon Studio

By Jason Anderson

Edited by Greg Dinkelman

Meet the Cast (From Left to Right)
Agnes, Tiz, Edea, Ringabell

So have you been missing your classic RPGs? Have you been searching for the classic Turn Base game that you became familiar with in the early 90s? Well do we have a game for you!

Welcome to this weeks Mile High Gaymer review, where we bring you games that you should and shouldn’t be playing. This week we’re bringing you Bravely Default, while an interesting choice for a name, you’ll fully understand once ya jump in.

Story

Bravely Default takes place in the land of Luxendarc. The elements of the land are controlled by the controlled by the crystals of Fire, Water, Earth and Wind. Each crystal in turn is protected by it’s priesthood that provide prayers to the crystals to keep them shining bright.

Yes all High Priestesses look sweet and innocent

The story starts as one of the protagonists, Tiz recovers from watching his hometown of Norende, destroyed by an event known as the Great Chasm. Going back he soons find Agnes, the vestal of the wind crystal, and Airy, a cryst-fairy, looking on in dismay at the destruction. Their chance meeting leads to events where the two travel the land of Luxendarc, recruiting Ringabell, an amnesiatic suave rogue, and Edea, a young soldier and daughter of the leader of Eternia, return the darkened crystals to their original state.

Gameplay

If you were a fan of the classic Final Fantasy games, then Bravely Default will seem very familar to you. Combat is done in the classic turn base style with your characters using special abilities dependant upon a particular job or weapon they have.

What’s a job you say? Why jobs are the roles that you can assign your characters. Each job has a specialized role and they can even be paired with another job to make a primary/secondary class combo.

For healing there are White Mages.

For Devastating magical attacks there are Black Mages

Heck there are even Ninjas

With all the jobs out there, players can make an almost unlimited number of character combinations.

One of the new features that players will get to interact with in battle is the Brave Default system. Characters can default on a turn to store up battle points for later use, or select "brave" to execute multiple actions in a single turn. By stockpiling up battle points, characters can gamble them away to use more or less actions in combat. A good example is to have a white mage or healer character stockpile battle points to use them later to heal the party in case of an emergency.  

Now being an almost nostalgic return to classic Turn Based Rpgs, Bravely Default does have a grind phase in the game. Happily the developers noted this and gave a few tools to help players cope with this mechanism.

The first is a variable encounter, players can change the frequency that they will encounter monsters in the game.  Have a dungeon that you’re trying to find all the loot in? Turn off encounters and explore to your hearts content. Can’t beat a boss? Boost the encounter rate so that you can get more experience and level up.

The second is auto battle. If you’re in an area that you are taking down enemies in one turn, turn on auto battle. Auto battle will use the last actions the players used in the previous turn and repeat them if it can be done. For random battles it works really well since the use of Brave actions doesn’t carry to new battles. Players can sweep the enemy away and then start on the next fight.

For players who are after rare achievements such as level 1 completion (Beating the game without gaining any levels). Players have options such as turning off experience and loot, as well as changing the difficulty.

Finally on gameplay is the rebuilding of Norende mini-game. Players can invite friends to help restore Tiz’s hometown and in the process receive more powerful gear, abilities, and accessories. Friends can be assigned to different shops to level them up, or to enviromental hazards to expand the town. If you don’t have many friends on your 3DS, every 24 hours you will be able to randomly invite 3 to 4 players to your game.

Art

The art of Bravely Default can be easily described as reminiscent of an impressionist oil painting or an inked watercolor. The artists of the game certainly used old school games as a reference for the style they wished to convey to the game. Compared to older Final Fantasy games, it’s style is very similar to Final Fantasy 9. The in-game models for characters and NPC are well rendered even though they are in the Chibi Format.

Replayability

Replayability for Bravely Default is really subjective on this one folks. For me the story was all I needed and post game like most RPGs in this format is really not existent. Players can still replay for challenges and such, but for anything new? not really.

Final Verdict

Let’s be honest here… I’m a big fan of the classic rpgs like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, so of course this one is great touch at my nostalgia button. It gives a lot of the classic gameplay as well as an epic story that I haven’t seen in many games these days. For players who loves those classic games, this is one to get. The story and the musical score are outstanding and that will bring me back to the game, over and over.

But for folks who aren’t into the JRPG genre or feel as though they can’t dedicate the time to a game such as this, it’s probably a pass.