Bravely Default, which is a video game developed by the creators of the Final Fantasy series, is a tribute to old school role-playing games, but it has a modern feel.
Bravely Default manages to mix the nostalgia of retro role-playing games, while also being fresh through new gameplay mechanics, a vibrant art style and an engaging story with fun characters.
Bravely Default’s story revolves around a boy named Tiz who wakes up to find his village destroyed. When he goes to see what happened to his village, he meets a girl named Agnès, who is being chased by enemies threatening the main kingdom in the land. The duo meets two more characters and begins a grand adventure to bring order to the world.
Though the first four chapters of Bravely Default’s story are fun and engaging, the final chapter is a chore. The final chapter quickly becomes repetitive and wearing. However, the game gives players many options to help reduce this repetition and the parts leading up to it more than make up for the end.
The difficulty of the game is fully customizable, including the rate at which the player encounters battles, the ability to stop earning experience (used to level up) if the player has gotten too strong and the ability to call in other players from the internet to help in a battle.
Bravely Default takes traditional turn-based combat and adds two major aspects to battles alongside the internet (or local play) options.
The first new ability is to “brave” which allows the player to do extra actions during a turn at the cost of future turns. For example, the player can have a character attack four times in one turn, but that character will not be able to act again for three extra turns.
The second new ability is to “default” which allows the player to defend for a turn and save that turn for later. If the player defaults one turn, they will defend and then on the next turn they are able to attack twice with no penalty.
These systems require the player to plan and use the abilities together, making the combat experience generally feel more fun. Though for some battles the idea of all four characters attacking four times in one turn for 16 attacks total seems enticing, the player is forced to remember that if the battle is not over all four characters must wait extra turns before they can do anything at all.
Bravely Default’s features a fun job system. Each character can have a job such as knight, monk, mage, ninja and many others. The character’s job affects their main abilities and equipment and a character can be further customized by giving them the abilities of a second job alongside the first.
Also the player has the ability to rebuild Tiz’s village in an ongoing side game to be able to use new weapons, items and abilities in the main game. By using the 3DS’s streetpass feature or the internet, the player can repopulate Tiz’s village and build new shops. The more villagers that build something the faster it will be built.
The village is a fun addition that is always going on in the background of the game. Bravely Default does not make the village feel like a chore and all the options related to it are optional.
The art style in the game is incredibly well done. Characters walk on backgrounds that look like they were hand-painted. The graphics are well done for the 3DS, and the characters themselves are stylized in a neat way.
The music in the game is another huge plus. Each score sounds wonderful and is very catchy, especially the world map theme. Using headphones for this game is almost a must because the 3DS’s speakers are not the best.
Bravely Default brings back the feeling of older role-playing games and improves upon the older systems of combat. Along with a beautiful game world, great music and a wonderful story, Bravely Default positions itself as one of the best role-playing games in years.
