Introduction
Bravely Default is on my personal list of the most refreshing JRPG games on the 3DS. On the outside it's just another Final Fantasy game with a different title. Sure, while that may be true the game is full of different systems that I've never personally seen before. Among those different systems we see the Brave and Default combat system which provides a new refreshing look to the normal turn based combat system we see in the earlier final fantasy games. Along with all that fun and innovative stuff we have the beautiful land of Luxendarc (which basically means light and dark). Luxendarc has many countries in it's vicinity from deserts to snowy mountainsides. While you have the beautiful scenery to look at as expected by a game greatly influenced by Final Fantasy it has it's fair share of amazing music. Overall it's just a well made game that took two years to be localized but hell, it was definitely worth the wait.
History
The game was first released in Japan in 2012, developed by Silicon Studio. If that name sounds familiar to you it's the same studio that created 3D Dot Game Heroes.The game was seen as a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light which was released on the DS in 2010. While many people thought that, that wasn't actually the case. Bravely Default was created as a new IP inspired by both the Final Fantasy series and the Dragon Quest series. The name of the game is derived of the game's core combat system, the "Brave" and "Default" feature. So while this was seen as a game very alike Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V, the game's designer Kensuke Nakahara believed that the core system of the game would be able to turn around the stale turn based combat that the world has been used to after all of these years. The scenario writer for the game, Naotaka Hayashi who worked on such things such as Steins;Gate, wrote the plot and the characters for the game.
The game was initially an action RPG, but during development the game was changed to the the normal RPG formula. The game was to cater to the core Japanese RPG lovers because Nakahara believed that the game wouldn't be successful in the western countries. However in 2013 Nakahara wanted to release an improved version of the game with modified gameplay changes, and along with many other features such as extra save slots, the ability to change the difficulty, dual english and japanese audio, and altered changes to the story in the later chapters. With this announcement we had many sites calling for the localization of the game. With reasons such as "relative lack of English translated role-playing video games for the 3DS". After pushing and pushing Nakahara finally announced the localization of the game with minor changes to the game. Changes such as censorship, and the age of the character were changed from 15 year olds to 18 year olds, because you know...Japan.
The Actual Review
I heard about this game on Friday, the day of it's release. I was looking at some videos and I was instantly grabbed by the thought of just being able to level up job classes again while having a different twist on the standard Japanese turn based combat. I picked it up the next day and started playing the game. Right away I noticed two things. One being the English voices and how that is probably some of the worst voice acting I've heard and two the title and the name of the combat devices. Many people wonder why it's called "Bravely Default" but here's what I think, and i'm sure that the developer has said this once or twice but since you're using your turns in advanced that explains why it's called "Brave". You're brave enough to use your turns ahead of time while losing your turns in the future. Default, is the act of storing points and I can't come up with anything clever to explain that one (whoops).
In the first hour or two you're introduced to our four heroes, whom I've caught myself getting somewhat attached to. Tiz, the farm boy who lost everything he knew to a great chasm that appeared. Agnès, the vestal of wind who has a crystal fairy named Airy who is tasked to reawaken all the crystals. Ringabel, a mysterious man who has amnesia, and the last character is Edea, the daughter of the Eternian Grand Marshall. These characters are your standard JRPG characters but I still found myself attached to them by the end of it. We follow the heroes as they are tasked to awaken all of the great crystals, Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth. That's a story that has been said many times, but we find that the story actually has a lot of different elements. Elements that explain the "friend" feature of summoning and sending your special moves to your friends.
As expected of a JRPG I had to grind quite a bit but by the end of it I was pretty much really strong. I finished the game at 57 hours, and probably spent like 15 of those hours grinding my ass off trying to get my character classes to max but in the end I probably only got like 3-4 classes max for each character. In the game you have one basic class you can have your character play which gives you a job passive and all of the skills, and then you have job command which is basically another job who's skills you can use but you don't have the master passive the class usually has. On top of that you have job skills, which are basically passives you get from each class you level up. By the end of the game you have 5 slots for that. This basically leads to a lot of customization for your characters, and I haven't even gotten to one of the "social" experiments the game has.
In the game Tiz's hometown of Norende gets destroyed and he is tasked with rebuilding it. This is the part of the game that is very social experiment-ish. Every 24 hours in real time you get four friends, and these four friends will help you rebuild the town. In the town you can select what you want to rebuild, such as a special move shop which gives you specific special moves for your weapons, or an accessory shop which allows your adventurer pal to sell you the accessories you gain from leveling that up. Depending on how many friends you put on one shop the time of completion decreases. I found myself putting all of my available workers on one things to level it up quick. Norende also isn't only one of the weird experiments they do with this game. They also have a micro transaction thing of sort. You pay a dollar for one SP drink which basically allows you to stop time and take extra turns while fighting. Another way to gain this SP is that you leave your 3DS on sleep mode while playing the game which allows you to get one SP per 8 hours of sleep. I didn't really buy any of that stuff but the SP does come in handy in those tough boss fights.
The game is full of really weird stuff like that, which self references and as well as the ability to decrease or increase your random encounter rate. I found myself getting one of the accessories from the accessories shop you level up from Norende and equipping that to allow me to get double the Job points and EXP with the cost of losing pg(the currency). In the game you get bonuses for finishing a battle with certain conditions. For instance if you finish it in one turn you get extra EXP, if you finish it without getting hit you get extra JP, and if you finish the fight with one skill you get extra pg. So what I'd do is I'd go to an area of the map with stronger monsters who are weak to a certain skill and I'd jam up my encounter rate to 100%+ so every step I took was basically encounter and I'd kill them without getting hit which allows me to get a huge JP boost.
Conclusion
Bravely Default is one of my favorite games of the year so far, and I definitely think that people need to try it out. Sure the game might have some minor issues such as the American voice acting but you can change to the Japanese voice acting. In video games I usually stick to the American voice cast but in this game I just couldn't do that. I really hope the game sells well in America because I want Silicon Studio to know that the games they develop such as 3D Dot Game Heroes and this are just fantastic and that they need to localize whatever they can whenever they can. They already announced Bravely Second which is the sequel to this game and he hopes for the ability to release a new Bravely game every year. I just hope that he's able to put out great games. So if you're looking for a great game to play on your 3DS I'd highly recommend Bravely Default for it's great music, gameplay, and story.