I've put around 8 hours into Bravely Default but unfortunately I don't feel like I've accomplished much of anything yet! I can already tell this game is going to take me some time, especially since I'm going to be attempting to play through all of the sidequests (gotta unlock all the jobs!) and also because I'm playing Hard mode. Why would I do this on my first playthrough of a game? Well, there's a good chance I won't play it again (at least not for a very long time) so I might as well experience what difficulty the game has to offer. I did the same thing on my first playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening and I think I enjoyed the experience more because of it.
My initial impression of the game is a little mixed. I love the music and the presentation. It has a simplistic art style similar to The 4 Heroes of Light but has better execution. Maybe it's just because the 3DS is a more powerful handheld--I don't know. Suffice to say, backdrops, enemies, character models--they all look a lot better and make me feel like I'm more a part of a breathing world. I also really dig the music, which is memorable and adventurous. The chirpy noises that composed the 4 Heroes of Light soundtrack just can't compare. One thing that I wasn't exactly expecting was the voice acting. Bravely Default has a lot of it. Every important scene features full voice acting and while some of it is excellent, it can be inconsistent.
I'm torn between disabling English voice acting or just powering all the way through. I watched a streamer on Twitch play Persona 4 with Japanese voices turned on and I balked. I'd really gotten to know those characters and their voices and it just felt wrong to me. It helped that for the most part the voice acting in that game was very good--with a few exceptions. I couldn't imagine not hearing Yukiko and Chie's voices, but I must admit I could have done without Rise--although Laura Bailey does a better job as Serah in Final Fantasy XIII-2. It's completely possible the voices in Bravely Default will grow on me. They're not that bad. The only game in which I've disabled English voice acting is Odin Sphere--because it was atrocious. Helpfully, Muramasa: The Demon Blade by the same developer featured only Japanese voice acting.
Bravely Default inherits a lot of mechanics from The 4 Heroes of Light but I believe it seeks to expand on them, to flesh them out. Jobs will possess a great deal more than four abilities and will take significantly more time to master. Like Final Fantasy V, job skills can be mixed and matched. You might have Chivalry from Knight as your primary job but run White Magic as a secondary command. I'm not sure why The 4 Heroes of Light didn't have this system in the first place. The game is, however, pretty slow-paced. As I said I've spent a number of hours on the game but I've spent a lot of time just running around fighting through countless random encounters, leveling up so that I might conquer my next foe.
I can't fault the game for this because I chose to try hard mode. So far, bosses have massive HP pools. The boss fight I just went through featured two enemies with about 5000 HP--when my characters are dealing anywhere from 50-200 damage per attack, depending on number of hits and whether or not they critically strike. This is fine, because I was seeking a challenge. What I find more important is strategic depth. I've already discovered that bosses are more or less immune to status effects, a penalty against it in my book. Why even give me these spells if I'll never have a reason to use them?
Positive stat buffs seem to be a lot more useful. Monks possess an ability called Invigorate that allows them to raise their attack for two turns. This seems like a really short period of time, but since Bravely Default allows you to attack 4 times in one turn (at the expense of 4 Brave Points, which can be built up by Defaulting or simply by going into deficit and being unable to act for several turns), you can use it strategically. If you use Invigorate twice to boost your Physical Attack to 150%, you can now make sure that you get the full possible benefit of that buff and unload all of your attacks at once.
Braving and Defaulting do tend to provide a fair amount of strategic depth. In that particular boss fight I had my Black Mage (with White Magic secondary) frequently take multiple actions in a single turn. In this way she was able to attack with spells and heal the team simultaneously. Meanwhile, my Knight/White Mage was able to cast Protect on frailer members of the party while also attacking. So far I really like the system, but I feel I will be spending a pretty significant amount of time grinding.
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