Bravely Default

 

The widely acclaimed JRPG on the 3DS with fresh and interesting original features has a familiar problem and ultimate letdown I had with a previous JRPG, which is Terranigma for the SNES. The first half of BD is welcoming, but starting at Chapter 5, the repetitive nature of the game lurks and enters the gamers, and from that point, I was ultimately dissapointed by this.

Although it's an old school based JRPG very similar to Final Fantasy III and V with the implemented Job system, the story was a chore, the writing was shallow and I disliked the chibi art.

However, the Brave and Default options during battle add new interesting tactics, and the option to speed up battles and even tweakening random encounters makes general grinding much less tedious.

Japanese and English voice acting are available which is good, and the backgrounds are beautifully hand drawn. Although the difficulty is customizable, such as the encounter bar rate, gaining EXP and setting destination markers, the challenge itself can be very annoying when speaking of certain bosses, especially at the end.

The second half of Bravely Default is painful to traverse because of general backtracking, and it definitely did not have great pace. Bravely Default is a huge hit and miss for me, featuring new ideas, but otherwise very stupid design decisions elsewhere, and recycling bosses and events is not cool at all.

Not even a true final boss and ending could save this new IP.

Rating: 6.5