#anihal bravely default 2 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crystalelemental · 2 years

Text

With the end of Bravely Default 2, it's time for me to talk opinions about the game.

I'll be going for a while, so I'll break this into segments: story/characters, classes, gameplay.

STORY/CHARACTERS It's been years since I played BD1, but from just what I remember? This is such a massive improvement it's almost comical.

I promise I won't be blasting BD1 for too long, but I feel you need to understand how bad it was to really appreciate this game's improvement. The story of BD1 sucks. It's terrible. There's contrivance born of characters refusing to speak, and then there's whatever this was. Everyone dies. Despite how many are sympathetic or compelling, or caught up in this stuff solely due to unfortunate circumstance, everyone dies, and it's largely your party responsible for the killing. It's completely unsatisfying, and happens entirely because of the big emperor guy, who is Edea's father, wanted to stop this secret evil thing happening for Very Good Reasons, except that his conquest of the planet involves putting the most horrible people in charge of locations and causing untold problems to solve for one (1) problem that is super unclear that he could've just explained to Edea at minimum to get her to understand, but refuses to do so because if he did we wouldn't have a plot. It's an unsatisfying disaster of a game.

Thankfully, while BD2 is far from show-stopping with its story, it's a night and day improvement. Your protagonists feel like actually decent people, instead of black-and-white morality lunatics given the mantle of "chosen hero." Your antagonists maintain complexity, but a good chunk survive, with most that don't being killed either by other antagonists, or the consequences of their own actions. Your heroes actually feel decently developed, with Elvis being The Man, and Gloria having some nice bits, like helping Rimedhal cover up the truth about the Archbishop to avoid panic while they're being invaded. Historical revision isn't great, but she at least came up with a solution that kept the peace as needed, and felt like a response that a serious-minded royal would take. Everyone felt pretty solid. I mean except for Seth. He's kinda just there. I think it's in any Final Fantasy-esque JRPG that the male lead has to be the single most boring person in the cast for teenage male fantasy projection reasons. I don't love it.

To go over each of the areas: Halcyonia is boring, nothing much happens aside from establishment stuff. I did really wind up loving Selene and Dag, thanks to the sidequests that open up as a result of their survival. It's super cute and I love them. I want to like Lonsdale, but he's a Camus archetype. "I am good guy, but oooh, too loyal to not aid in the complete genocide of Musa." Okay buddy. Sure you are.

Savalon is my favorite region. Prince Castor was super interesting, and I love that a much latter quest has Pollux recognizing that Castor had a really good point about the obligations of a ruler, even if his methods were extreme. Anihal is precious, and despite being a piece of shit, even Bernard had some really interesting complexity to him that made the place feel engaging. And doubling back to this region in chapter 4, having the hidden politics still going on, and how the previous events here are leading to the conflicts in the present felt really organic. They're just really strong. You know. Except Orpheus. And what's her name. The Gambler class lady.

Wiswald is...I like Wiswald a lot in spite of myself. I think it has a really weak intro, being mostly a possession plot, where everyone is good just being controlled. And the final twist is that every bad thing has been Folie's fault, and she's doing all this just because she's a psychotic child who gives literal life to art. But I really like Roddy, Lily, and Galahad, and while she's boring as sin, I did kind of appreciate Folie for being a weirdo but in a way that checked out. Like okay, a mostly rejected child seeking attention, finding something she's incredible at but still gaining nothing from others, and turning bitter and actively malicious toward others is neat. Then there's the return phase with Vigintio. The intro to that is great on its own, but the memory from Vigintio is what sold me on the guy. He mastered turning into an undead, meaning that after he's killed by Emma he technically survives, and he actively stabs himself in would-be fatal ways just to prove he's unkillable and therefore won. I just think he's a cool approach to that kind of character, seeing a form of immortality and wanting to be the best mage ever through any means possible. Though also, special mention has to go to Elvis, whose crystal is the most interesting. He's chosen by the Earth crystal, and despite being all over the place and inconsistent, he's selected as the unchanging foundation of the team because, despite his transient nature, his one constant is that he'd do literally anything for the people he cares about. And that's a really cool approach for a character.

Rimedhal I wound up coming around on slightly, but still have as my least favorite. I kinda had that vibe the instant we walked into "This is going to be about religious zealotry!" That never goes well. But it did grow on me. Martha's probably my favorite. I don't know why, I just appreciate the flirting being a fakeout for wanting to brawl, and she's got that very direct, not taking anyone's shit attitude, so she's great. Dominic is slightly interesting, but only in the sense of his frustration at being passed over by the Fire Crystal as a chosen one, and specifically being passed over for the previous Fairy Queen potentially being the reason Fairies are the focus of the witch hunts. Helio's boring as sin, and Gladys I have mixed feelings on. On the one hand, I like the idea of a redemption arc where possible, and fully approve of her getting one in concept. On the other, she doesn't get one, and I'm not upset. Gladys is all about carrying out Helio's orders to have people jump to their deaths, in order to "weed out fairies," who she believes killed her parents. As a result, she's incredibly hostile, and is pretty directly responsible for the presumed hundreds to thousands of people who are dead in a pit. My problem is how she died. One of the townsfolk stabs her, after she saved their life, because she was responsible for the death of his sister when you first arrived. And it's like...okay, yeah, karmic justice in a sense, but by this point, she literally saved your life, dude. And to be honest? Every single person in that town is as guilty as Gladys. Literally all of you. We got to see everyone pressure the jumps, and actively falsify testimony to cast suspicion. Even under slight duress, you all participated gleefully in this ritual murder shit, and it feels distinctly unfair to have only Gladys suffer consequences for that. Either have Holograd burn the town to the ground or let her live, is what I'm saying. Though the bonus quest focused on how some remember her positive traits and others remember her as a brute terrorizing the city is fairly poigniant.

Holograd is boring. "We used to be poor, then we found the mines, now we're militarized." Adam is the most stock standard antagonist, trying to end all war by subjugating everything under his heel, only the strong should rule, etc etc. Edna's also boring as sin. Like okay, she wants to awaken the Night's Nexus, but it's never really clear why, so she kinda sucks.

This leads into the finale. Honestly? I like how it's handled. Your first ending is fighting Edna, destroying her, then having Gloria pray to seal the Night's Nexus again. Naturally, she dies in the process, for reasons. You get a sad ending and the credits roll, and when you boot the game...you see that scene play out from the book's memories. And this is where it gets cool. The book has only shown past events, through many characters' eyes, but now it shows the future somehow. You enter chapter 6 with that mystery.

You seek out the fairies, who explain the Night's Nexus, and turn an otherwise boring eldritch evil into a fairly interesting character. Night's Nexus is the remains of a human woman who entered the kingdom of fairies ages ago, and betrayed their trust by trying to consume the fountain of all knowledge. Her goal was to subsume everything, and coalesce all information to a singular point, to obtain perfect understanding. Past, present, and future are brought together to fully understand the deterministic universe, and that's...actually cool as hell. But she's sealed away forever, because god forbid women do anything, and that's where we get the angry, bitter sense of hate for the world. Sure, her lust for knowledge and control may have resulted in consuming everyone in addition to everything to create a perfect unchanging record, but sometimes you gotta do what it takes. Chapter 6 ends with you attempting to confront the Night's Nexus, but realizing that it is, in fact, completely immortal. You cannot kill it, and the fairies decide to seal off time within their realm, keeping it, and them, trapped in stasis for eternity. Adelle stays behind and it's super sad but oh no another fakeout!

The book shows you the battle of the previous heroes, and an asterisk you missed. You track it down, and you can finally read the book. Turns out, the book has its own asterisk, for the Librarian class, which I would kill to play as, because it sounds like magic. But it also turns out to be the soul jar for the Night's Nexus. If the book is in tact, the body will revive. This is...actually really interesting, and it checks out, because those visions of the future can only come from an entity with that potential foresight, and only the Night's Nexus has gained that level of ability. So it's actually pretty well done. Unfortunately, the climax is fairly sub-standard. You go to a new dungeon, you face off against it, the fight isn't that scary and its true form is less interesting than the mummy thing with shadow hands, and then you get your standard ending. But it's satisfying. Like, if nothing else, the story is satisfying, and I enjoyed experiencing it. The characters have a few duds, but mostly wind up being pretty engaging. I liked it a lot.

CLASSES The classes of this game are unbalanced as hell, but at least everything feels broadly useable. Throughout main game, everything felt viable on normal mode, and many of the classes I didn't use wound up having use as a sub-class, or having utility I didn't pin down instantly. Thief had Godspeed Strike, which is apparently the best midgame damage out there and a boss annihilator. Beastmaster had tricks for every boss, apparently, if you have the right monster. Salvemaker has a great combo with Phantom that, to my understanding, is infinite resources and sure-fire status application. Oracle's Reflect spell can be the best source of magic damage if you cast it on your entire party. There's a lot of stuff.

The only class I could not find any use for was Bastion. Shieldbearer is just an overall better tank class for the team, with Sub-White Mage being an unkillable god for the story. Though even post-game, with AoE stuff suggesting Bastion is an improvement, you often want that single-target coverage, and foes can just Brave past your one-use party shield and kill you anyway. So Bastion felt really weak in my hands, despite being obscene on the enemy team.

If I had to pick an outright winner, it's probably Phantom. The passives are insane. 50% chance to crit when hitting a vulnerability is tremendous, just about anything can make use of that. And guarantees of probability-based skills at the cost of 40MP is unreal. Status is guaranteed, it's the solution to Steal farming with the Thief's skill, and I'm pretty sure it counts Salvemaker's passive to regain used materials as well. And that's just its general utility. Offensively, Phantom/Ranger is unstoppable. You can guarantee hitting a vulnerability with powerful skills, and Ranger's second passive means you regain a BP if you crit, which is most of the time. You can toss out insane damage while maintaining max BP, it's insane. And it's a pure upgrade on Godspeed Strike strats as well. I imagine this is the best application for Hellblade too, since hitting a vulnerability with perfect elemental coverage is a great way to get constant crits. It's just such a powerful class.

My other preferred classes were Spiritmaster, Shieldmaster, Red Mage, Ranger, and Oracle. Shieldmaster was fantastic team defense with infinite healing as a sub-White Mage. Red Mage got Double Cast, which was fantastic after Wiswald. Prior, Black Mage bypassing immunities and absorb effects was better. Ranger is the other half of Phantom, and I just like running bows. Oracle had a lot of problems but I love it in spite of everything. Spiritmaster is the hard one, because its second passive is legitimately insane for supportive effects, allowing constant regen of HP, MP, curing status, negating debuffs, reviving the party, and giving +1BP. Its problem is it also clears buffs, and has horrific anti-synergy with classes like Bard and Oracle, which...kinda leads into my big problem with the classes.

Magic sucks post-game. Prior, it's great, just hit an enemy weakness and you're dealing good damage. But eventually, you reach end- and post-game, and your physical classes just dominate. Red Mage doublecasting into an enemy weakness might deal around 6-10k, depending on how strong the magic is and your crit rate. A single crit off that Phantom/Ranger build would deal 14-17k. It's unreal how much stronger your physical classes get. And this in spite of magic's built-in limitations. No magic class combination affords you perfect elemental coverage. You can get 5 at most with Black Mage and either Red Mage, Oracle, or Pictomancer. The only class with perfect coverage is Hellblade, but frankly? Hellblade's best utility is dying. Use it as the sub-class, with the Red Mage skill HP/MP Conversion to cast magic from HP instead, and use Ultima Blade. It uses all your MP (HP now) to deal damage, and with max HP, you deal 99,999 damage in one swing. That's way stronger than anything magic can do!

The only exception I've seen is Reflect strats. If you get your entire party with Reflect, and cast a party-wide spell that targets all your allies, it will reflect four times. Meaning that a single cast now hits all enemies four times. If you use all your brave points, that's now 16 casts in one round. 32 with Red Mage's doublecast. If the foe even takes neutral damage, you're looking at a ton of damage in one move. But the problems now should be obvious. Multi-target boss battles have varied, non-overlapping weaknesses and resistances, so you're rarely getting that full effect. But moreover, Reflect is removed by Spiritmaster. And every one of the trial fights has "Counter any skill: BP +1," so casting healing magic is a bad idea. Meaning you use healing items instead, and nothing else. Your best healer isn't even a healer, it's a random support with "Healing Item Amp" throwing X-Potions around. You basically give up everything heal-wise for a high-risk strategy to explode the foe in one round, focused on one caster and two Bards to boost magic and crit rate and get them a guaranteed action afterward. Which is a lot worse off than the physical classes being so self-sufficient and dealing better numbers otherwise.

GAMEPLAY With that introduction to classes out of the way, the last factor is just the gameplay itself. I'm going to say overall great with caveats.

The main game is fantastic. It wasn't until Chapter 4 that I started to feel bogged down. Everything prior is great. Dungeons are reasonable length, have some interesting challenges, and boss fights were super engaging with a lot of unique strats. Dragoon is probably the only time I felt like a specific class was necessary (Shieldbearer), but given that this game is direct about "You must always have a tank," it's not too unreasonable to expect it to be there. Vanguard only does so much at that point. Thief and Berserker are other close options, but Beastmaster prevents it from being a one-option affair. Thief has Vanguard beating its ass with Earth damage, but Beastmaster can summon the big enemies just before that fight for the same, and doing four actions with all of them is apparently a one-round clear. Berserker needs Bard to help with buffing defenses to avoid just dropping, but apparently the Fire Spirits that Beastmaster summons can inflict Stop. So that's neat. Basically, it's all great.

The only questionable system in a basic sense is weight. I get the idea. Anyone can equip anything for variety, but some classes are lightweight and can't handle much, while others are tanks that can pack all the heavy equipment. You can get heavier stuff on lightweight allies by using accessories that reduce weight, but often those have limited other effects, so it's a tradeoff. By and large, it's a fine system, but sometimes it feels needlessly limiting. By the end of the game, I have all the really good armor and weapons for Shieldbearer. I couldn't equip all of it because of equip load. I am level 75, and the only solution is to add more levels to equip everything. To me, that feels like a problem, and it's one that's easily solved by having equipment be specific to certain classes. But that does lead to situations where it's like "Why can't Red Mage equip this particular heavy armor, they're supposed to be the all-around caster," so there's tradeoffs.

Starting at the last dungeon of Chapter 4, it starts to suffer from JRPG Syndrome, where it's just gone on far too long. Dungeons are overstaying their welcome, fights are a bit more tedious than you'd like for having to do dozens of them, etc. Nothing is new about it, it's just frustrating. At least chapters 6 and 7 do away with that, by having incredibly short dungeons that just lead straight to a boss. But not before Chapter 5 can give you the Crystal's Resting Place as the ultimate test of your patience.

The other issue I take is the trials. Until now, there Brave/Default system had a particular give and take relationship between your actions and the enemy's. You can do a thing, or you can not do a thing and stockpile actions. If you do a thing, your opponent can respond, or they can gain advantage by not doing a thing. If you don't do a thing, you may gain a bit of turn advantage, or your opponent gets to set up something of theirs that may be detrimental. Maybe you're trying to stockpile turns for your mage to get casting, but oops, Oracle set Reflect, or Bastion set up Vallation. Trying to build up to something now wasted your time. The major problem was that Defaulting was, well, the default action. Unless you knew your foe could punish a Default, there was no harm in it. The solution was punishing taking multiple actions via counter skills. The Ranger is the first good example I can think of, where attacking could result in her unleashing Quickfire Barrage, hitting your entire party multiple times, and potentially causing a party-wipe if you were over-zealous and unlucky. While they're annoying, counterattacks felt like a sensible way to avoid making Default the obvious solution to everything.

The problem with the trials is that counters aren't attacks all the time anymore. Instead, you get "Counter any action: BP +1." Which is bullshit. It completely removes the give and take process, and instead makes it so your opponent is effectively always operating at max BP, because they'll counter everything you do. It absolutely annihilated healers, who just give the opponent BP and trap them in healing loops, leading the aforementioned statement that the best healer is "Healing Item Amp." And if you go on the offensive, now you not only need to worry about counterattacks, but giving them max BP again. It's like they realized the game's system was solved at this point, and a well-crafted team didn't necessarily need to change what it was doing, and said "Absolutely not" and decided the enemies should all cheat to maintain the illusion that this is difficult rather than just frustrating. And it is just frustration, because the same strategy I always used worked, I just didn't have enough levels to survive the constant attacks or to deal the necessary damage to offset their shit. It's just a badly designed cheat skill.

This comes to a head with the Bravebearer trial, which is just blatant in its cheating. Until now, foes use skills based on what's actually available through the class they inhabit. Sure, there are some upgrades, like Thief countering your Default with the BP steal skill, but by and large anything they do you can too. But not this fight. Lonsdale gets to set DOUBLE Rampart, which does nothing but waste your actions against a foe who can already shred your BP values. Of course, they all have the +1 BP counterskill, and the Bravebearer can one-shot literally anyone for damage cap for free whenever he wants, leading to situations where he can one-round your entire party for free. But that's not the peak bullshit. No, the peak bullshit is that, if you KO Bravebearer, and one of the others is still up? For absolutely no reason, through no skill other than "Fuck you I win," he gets back up two turns later with like 40% HP. And he will do this infinitely. So the carefully planned solution to take out the mage, then take down Bravebearer, leaving on the tank to whittle down through his double damage negation cheat skills, doesn't work, for literally no reason. This is the kind of boss fight design that I feel should be punishable by death.

This leads to the other big issue: I feel like status is kinda just something to bother the player. Very rarely did status ever seem to work, and most enemies seemed immune to anything that mattered. Every mage is immune to Silence, no one was ever hit by Stop or Slow, I think I got Blind on a foe exactly one time ever. The worst part is, it's not supposed to be this way. The story battle against Bravebearer, which is an incredibly tough fight, is weak to Paralysis. You can lock him down infinitely with Paralysis...if you knew it was going to work. Which, based on past experience, you wouldn't. That's really the issue. Prior experience dictates what's going to be viewed as worth trying, and status consistently doesn't work, until the one random fight where it's a solution you're just supposed to pick up on. I think the better solution is just making status a more viable approach throughout. "But we made like five different status effects that just completely shut the opponent down, we can't let you do that to everything." Then maybe your status effects were poorly balanced. But it's Final Fantasy style, so we knew that already.

FINAL THOUGHTS I really enjoyed the game. I wasn't sure I would, but I took a chance, and I'm happy with it. I will admit to intense frustration around the Bravebearer trial, but even that can be seen as me making my own life harder for no reason, as I still had 24 level ups to go before this became unsalvageable. Though given the structure of the fight, I'm certain it would've been anyway.

Basically, it's solid, but I think it suffers from the same curse that many JRPGs I've played have if I seriously considered them: fantastic, well-designed experience through the main story, that absolute falls to shit the instant you step into post-game challenge content.

#bravely default 2

6 notes · View notes

auncyen · 3 years

Text

So, my thoughts on bd2 so far (still not done) are both spoilery and...a little salty, so under a cut they go. I’ll get the good out of the way first.

BDII is pretty nice as a return to the brave/default battle system and asterisk system. The controls are pretty fluid (once I realized I could press zr to unbrave in the middle of commands lol). Music and visuals are both nice. THE CHARACTER THEMES ARE DISTINCTIVE AGAIN (I still like BD1′s set the most, but in BD2 I can tell you which theme is which character’s and uh. I wouldn’t be able to do that with b2nd’s). “A Hectic Moment” is very fun.

And then like. Both the story and parts of the game design are baffling to me. I was not surprised by the prologue feeling dry because. BD game. Partially because it was a BD game I half-expected Sloan to defy his death flag parade and simply be forced to retire due to a wound or something similar but ok, he died. And first chapter made me hopeful! I don’t care at all for Orpheus (even as “love to hate” he just ends up kind of “meh”) and Anihal and Bernard felt a bit one note at first, but the twist with Castor where it seemed like his flaw was prejudice and then it was oh no backstabber was good.

The maniacal laughter kind of ruined it a bit, but still, good. (On this note, Castor and ...pretty much every ch. 2 asterisk holder had me thinking for a while that the asterisks handed out by the woman might have been tampered with and were driving people nuts, but at this point, seems firmly not to be a case, Castor was ax-crazy on his own. Okay.) And a later flashback about Anihal and Bernard made me regret a bit that the latter had died.

But like also at this point I’m kind of concerned that there hasn’t been any inner party conflict. Or like.........internal doubts. Or anything.

Ch. 2 was initially a bit funny for everyone having The Accent but eventually I got properly into it and, yes, all three people grieving a lost child was pretty touching.

Screw those woods though and why is the institute set up like that??? I know this is an RPG but guys. Guys. they’re supposed to be brilliant at that institute, at least one person would have set up the bare minimum of a rope ladder so they didn’t have to deal with the nonsense in between floors.

And then there was Folie. Folie’s dungeon is AMAZING. Her job is good.

Her boss fight is utter bs when you’re punished for using two different mage jobs and the character in general is just.............idk. I kind of preferred Mona’s death being accidental because it seems rather odd for someone like Folie who does not seem particularly attuned to others’ emotions to be like “ah yes, let me kill zis little girl and zen all of these people will be emotionally vulnerable for me to give zem my paintings” --yes, I also hated the accent.

I am of the opinion that there is no bad VA in this game (thus far) but goodness, the direction some of them were given.

Ch. 3 was interesting intrigue wise and the reveal with Adelle was GREAT but it also hinged very heavily on this being a BD game, since they made it obvious from the start of the chapter that, hmm, there’s something funny about her. (Honestly my guess had been shapeshifting dragon, so I wasn’t quite surprised by her saving Martha, though I WAS a little surprised by Martha not SAVING HERSELF BY JUMPING AWAY BECAUSE SHE WAS A FREAKING DRAGOON.) The party’s surprise at this is dealt with very quickly. Elvis’ reaction is kind of cute but it also just...........seems to cement that there’s never going to be any inner-party conflict, and there doesn’t seem to be any internal character conflict either, so it’s kind of just. Guys. Pls. Something interesting.

Coming back to world design: this religion feels so dumb and poorly-designed (Martha is in DIRECT CONTACT WITH THE LORD OF DRAGONS BUT ISN’T TRUSTED TO KNOW HIS WISHES??? THE FAIRY TRIALS ARE A ‘TRADITION’ BUT ALL THE DRAGONS ARE COOL WITH ADELLE???) and why is their holy hall full of crumbling walls and is, in fact, the only place I’ve found so far to “smash rock”? Yes, it has been bugging me.

the highlight of ch. 4 was Lonsdale, because he might not be the most original character concept, but it was interesting to have an antagonist with morals who has a friendly drink with Seth and warning for him at the tavern. (Also Seth’s piss-poor job at pretending to be just recovered from a cough for all of one sentence. And, in my game, while wearing heavy armor.) The low point was finding out how absolutely pointless Adam is.

It’s just....been very mixed and somewhat mediocre with the story, and lbr bd and b2nd both had issues with story too, but bd had an endearing cast that b2nd heavily borrowed from. The BD2 warriors of light seem very obviously inspired by bd crew but Seth never grieves his lost crew or misses his hometown or shows any uncertainty about the question of him living again. Gloria welcomes Elvis and Adelle easily even though they’re both clear about working in self-interest and there are never any trust issues even when Adelle’s concealed identity is revealed.

I’m not saying they should have had the exact same issues (esp since Gloria didn’t have any set up for mistrusting fairies) but they don’t have ANY issues.

I may now be at a point where Gloria does have an issue but it’s just kind of...1) there should have been at least a couple tell-tale hints about this sooner, it could have been as subtle as the king of Halcyonia gently suggesting she consider the marriages which would have painted him first as possibly evil, then as possibly just sexist or out-of-touch, and then finally you realize oh he knew and was hoping they could find other solution and trying to get her to consider a future that wasn’t dying (I think he knows. or at least I hope because if they gotta do this every 200 years then Gloria????? who knows to pass this down???? were you gonna teach your traumatized companions the secrets of being a vestal-lite as you were dying? because you didn’t.) 2) it’s just kinda. too late. A part of me is checked out. I know there is more and that the bd-style tweeest is finally starting, but this was the end of ch. 5 and both the main crew and story just haven’t been that interesting. If this wasn’t a bd game and I hadn’t gotten impatient enough about wanting to know about one detail that I spoiled myself for it being a fake ending, there is a high chance that I would have watched the credits, gone “well, okay. that was the game” and just set it aside.

And then maybe a few days later gone “wait they never explained the book was it buried in some request” because there is SO MUCH buried in requests and reloaded the game, but yeah. I still wanna fill in the gaps of what I’m missing, but I’m probably going to be slowing my pace and I really doubt I’m going to be active in the fandom because none of the characters have really grabbed my interest that hard.

#my thoughts on bd2 are also apparently a wall of text #so. that's a warning #bravely default ii spoilers #salt

7 notes · View notes

adelle-ein · 2 years

Photo

playing with csp watercolor brushes again

#anihal #bravely default 2 #bravely default #bd2 #myart #bdart #bravely default ii #martha lancer

27 notes · View notes

bill-beauxquais · 4 years

Text

Blogging my Bravely Default II Playthrough - Chapter 1

I’ve been working all week end, so I haven’t been as fast as others, but also I want to savour the game as much as possible, and do as much side content as I can. Also, taking my time means I don’t need to grind as much later, hopefully.

As usual, be warned that there will be spoilers for the game up to the end of Chapter 1 under the read more (nothing further, please refrain from even hinting an anything after that).

((Ps: I really want that new Gloria plushie Square Enix is releasing, please and thank you.))

Overall opinion: The game keeps on delivering good content. There isn’t anything too frustrating, irritating or plain boring for now, and the game is an upgrade from the previous ones in nearly every regard. I’m starting to feel bad about doubting the devs so hard until release. They have already redeemed themselves in one chapter and a prologue, congratulations. It’s still not the meat of the game, but it has laid interesting bases.

Gameplay: I feel like the strategy element is coming earlier than in past game, in that I’m already starting to build a team and specialise my characters. As of now, Elvis is my primary healer, and Gloria is my tank, but I’m using Berserker to make her a powerhouse as well, hopefully. (as a bonus I really like how she looks in cutscene with these bulky, armored outfits. Looks very regal). Seth and Adelle are a bit less certain, but I like her as black mage, and him as a damage dealer and emergency support.

The asterisks may look like the old ones, but they do actually feel fresh and mix things up, forcing you to think differently. I also like the greater variety in quirks, and what to spend for skills.

I am also using poison on every boss, and it almost feel like an oversight with how cheated it is. But it does feel nice, also has the bonus of wiping off these smug grins as they attack me, then immediately get poison damage. Feel like karma, man.

The difficulty is less than the demos, if anyone was worried, but I was more levelled than I was back them. It’s still plenty challenging, without being frustrating. I won first try against almost every asterisk holder, and the ones I lost to took me 2 tries. Need to mention I’m playing on normal difficulty.

Nothing much to say on the overworld since I already played both demo, but I like being able to explore and find places before the story lead me to it. I also love that there are apparently optional dungeons that do not play into the main story, it’s a nice treat, and the definition of going up and above the minimum. I respect that. For a desert, the overworld was nicely structured as well.

BnD is... okay. I’m stating to get the hang of it, and got all the cards from Halcyonia and Savalon. I also beat Shirley relatively easily at it. I’m just focusing on corners and making an L shape, I’m not sure if that’s a good strategy but it’s working fin for now. It’s a nice little mini game you can sink a lot of time into, but it doesn’t seem obligatory if you don’t like it (well, only if you don’t want Shirley’s asterisk). I don’t think I’ll ever be a pro at it, but as long as I can see it through the game and the difficulty doesn’t ramp up too hard it should be fine.

The dungeons also feel more complex than everything we’ve had before, but not to the point they get boring. They’re still just labyrinths (for now), with chests here and there but they’ve taken off the “chest for later” gimmick. They definitely look more unique from each others than they did in the first Bravely Default (Second had improved on it).

I wasn’t expecting the sword to be improved on the overworld. It’s nice and satisfying to be able to cut down grass AND trees.

Writing: The story actually took me by surprise. For once, I didn’t see a bravely twist coming, and I’m not even mad. For me it worked as intended, I didn’t really see it coming but two seconds before it came through my brain just went “Wait but that was so OBVIOUS I’m an idiot I got played so hard.” I did notice a bunch of hint that I didn’t really look into because I guess I underestimated them (which is understandable, considering the previous games). Will definitely be paying more attention now. Good twist. Ruined my hope for a CastorxGloria, but ah well, I’m used to square ruining my ships by now (*cries in Altdea*).

The only thing I might say is that I felt the personality shift was way too hard, at least in the japanese voice. It looked a bit goofy with the cute baby face and the smoker voice.

However, I must commend them for making us play the start of Savalon as a demo. Because I feel it greatly helped the twist, as most of us where “ugh, I’ve already been there” and we didn’t really pay attention to the story or expected to be surprised in anyway. Good use of your demo, guys. I see they’ve also learnt their lesson not to show your twist vilains’ asterisk from the get go, or else you KNOW we’re going to expect to beat this guy’s ass. I like to think they also played on our expectations from Bravely Default, as asterisk holders usually came by 4 (except in Eisenberg, but all 5 of them were shown to us at the start), so Bernard felt like the obvious last boss/chief.

Anyway, the story was good and I’m glad Anihal is out of trouble now. Poor girl deserved it. I also like the main 4′s characters and interactions as well, and I’m glad I was right about Selene and Dag coming back and having some sort of redemption/moral greyness to them. I much prefer how the asterisk holders are handled this time around.

The sidequests are also still interesting and flesh out the universe quite well.

Writing - Theories: Not much more to mention.

For once, I kinda feel like accepting that a character who fell down off screen is actually dead, because it’s not like they mentioned not finding the body. I’m not sure if the sound he makes is a thud or a splash, I seemed to hear a splash but other heard a thud. In any case, Alternis can #relate.

Adelle definitely is hiding something, and I think she knows her sister is linked to asterisks and this is why she’s following Elvis. She knew what it was when he first mentioned them to her, and it seemed to get her interest. Also, it sounded as if she made the mercenary thing up on the go.

I still don’t trust the crystals and I don’t think their benediction is that easy. There appears to be something the crystals aren’t telling you. Hopefully the ‘Have the courage to disobey’ line will come back somehow. It’d be a nice nod, and a title explanation.

Graphics: Still good, still nothing to declare. I really like the asterisks outfit for now, it’s nice to see feminine bulky armor that isn’t skimpy. I’m fine with skimpy outfits (especially now that Square confirmed all the characters were adults) I just don’t want ALL OF THEM to be that way.

Related to the twist, I like how the NPCs are more detailed now, so there’s not as much of a quality/detailing leap between asterisk holders and NPCs. It makes it less obvious to see who’s going to be important or not. I really like seeing the freelancer outfits and I am irrationally ANGRY we weren’t shown Bernard’s.

Performance: (playing on a lite) It’s still not quite perfect, still struggles with party chats, still takes a while to load, and now I’ve been having lags in the shirley fight as well. At least it’s not crashing like BSel was mid boss, but it’s still jarring.

Music: Last boss theme was a banger. I also really liked the theme of Bernard’s mansion (and the abandonned mansion). Nice to see variety in the dungeons’ themes.

#Bravely Default II #Review #Video Game Blogging #Nintendo Switch #JRPG #bravely series

3 notes · View notes