Bravely Default 2 takes the premise of the franchise and really hammers it home. This game is bravely emblematic of the classic era of turn-based RPGs, a firm throwback to the heyday of Final Fantasy before modern technology was introduced. The world is filled with magic, people living inexplicably close to powerful monsters just outside of their city walls, and every town houses a bloke that sells an absolutely criminal amount of weapons, despite all the locals being farmers or something. As a classic JRPG fan this speaks to me, but it doesn’t help me overlook the dozens of tiny problems that Bravely Default 2 introduces.
Everything kicks off with your destined hero getting caught in a shipwreck, being washed up on a mysterious beach, and then being saved by two complete strangers, as these things usually do. The reasons for you sailing the sea in the first place are quickly forgotten, and you’re off on a whirlwind adventure with a princess, an audacious young girl, and a wise-cracking older Scotsman. Together the team sets out in search of elemental crystals, in addition to magical gems and asterisks, which gift their users special abilities.
This is about as typical as you can expect a JRPG to be. The constant fraternizing with royals despite being an entirely random commoner, the magical abilities, the very mild political intrigue, all of the antagonistic characters being of high-status and very obviously evil, yet not getting taken to task for it until our hero rolls up with an axe - it’s all present and accounted for. The older Bravely Default games were much the same, boasting a very classic-feeling narrative while simultaneously being very contemporary in other regards. Again, this is much the same here - but somehow it feels less modern.
It might just be that I expected less from a JRPG on the 3DS and that the original Bravely Default and Bravely Second managed to exceed those low expectations, but Bravely Default 2 has taken a few minor steps back. Despite how small those steps are, they do a lot to make the experience feel more classic, in a bad way. Take, for example, the ability to freely change the battle encounter rate. This was something that set Bravely Default out from other turn-based RPGs, giving the player the flexibility to decide how much or how little they wanted to fight. One could decide to waltz through an entire dungeon and then grind solidly before a boss, if they wished. Now there are items that will increase the encounter rate, but these are limited. You can’t just turn off enemy encounters either, since they are no longer random, your foes are now wandering around in dungeons and the overworld. For most RPGs this would be a good move, but it goes against the modernisations that Bravely Default so bravely implemented.
Much the same can be said for the innovative battle system. Bravely Default allowed you to skip turns in battle in order to stack extra turns for a four-move combo later in the fight. Alternatively, you could go into a move deficit, leaving you immobile, but allowing you to deal massive damage immediately. This is all still in place as it was before, but feels far more punishing. The difficulty here has been cranked up a notch and leaves far less room for you to make mistakes. While being able to slap out four moves in a single turn sounds enticing, the chances that you’ll regret it are higher than ever before.
It’s not all negative, mind. The higher difficulty level does mean that you’ll be forced to think about job classes and character skills more, which is another solid staple of turn-based JRPG game design. Job classes are earned from the aforementioned asterisk MacGuffins, which boss characters usually hold. This allows you to take their unique set of abilities for yourself - once you level them up. You start off with the Freelancer job available and you’ll quickly earn the typical Black Mage and White Mage setup - from there you’re free to experiment with whatever you feel works. Finding a good team and a complementary battle strategy is one of the joys that a game like this offers, although I wish there was more room for error so I could feel free to experiment more. Sadly, that increased difficulty means you will likely find a team that works, and never stray.
This is part of the problem I can’t reconcile with. Everything about this game, individually, makes me feel like I should adore it - I am, after all, a classic JRPG fan. But then, why wouldn’t I just play either a classic, or a truly modern JRPG like Dragon Quest XI? Bravely Default 2 is currently sitting between the two, trying its best to carve out a distinct niche, but with too many pitfalls of its own to stand up next to its peers.
This stretches over to the visuals too. I already briefly complained about the visual style of the game in my preview, but to summarise: these 2D towns looked stunning and unlike anything else you can find when viewed on a 3DS, but on the Nintendo Switch, where we’ve already had a wealth of deep and gorgeous JRPGs available on the system for years, Bravely Default 2 is struggling to find an identity of its own. For every beautiful, stylised town you visit, there will also be a cave where you explore winding paths from left to right - these are actually fairly nice, if a little uninspired - and dungeon ruins or a mansion where the camera flips to a top-down isometric view and everything is tightly packed into a grid format. It doesn’t help that the chibi doll-like character designs are also considerably less charming and impressive when playing the game docked on a large TV. Throw into that mix a stuttering framerate and you’ve got yourself something that never feels as polished or premium as you’d wished for.
But none of this is to say I hate Bravely Default 2. On the contrary, I’ve grown to enjoy it more and more as I’ve played. But despite how much I can enjoy it, I can’t get away from those minor frustrations, as much as I’d like to. Bravely Default 2 makes a compelling case for itself as a modern JRPG that evokes the classic era, but it doesn’t do as much with the concept as modern contemporaries, and it never quite reaches the soaring highs of those classics, either. This is a game in between a rock and a hard place, and while it will definitely find its audience, it won’t make it onto any list of essential RPGs as its predecessor did.
Score: 3/5
A Switch copy of Bravely Default 2 was provided to TheGamer for this review. Bravely Default 2 will be available on Nintendo Switch on February 26.
Bravely Default 2
Bravely Default 2 is an RPG from Clayworks, initially published by Square Enix for the Nintendo Switch in 2021. Despite the name it is not a sequel, instead featuring a new story that sees you follow four characters on a mission to retrieve elemental crystals.