A great game to pick up for anyone nostalgic for old-school RPGs. The story is pretty formulaic, but the writing has some nice moments and the characters are pretty memorable, even as little as they get to say sometimes. The gameplay takes some getting used to, even coming from Bravely or other FF job systems, but its unique systems are really fun to play around with once you get used to them. Overall, definitely a really cool homage to SNES-era Final Fantasy, and the aesthetics and soundtrack help it feel a lot more low-key than a lot of other RPGs out there, making it good as a "cozy" game. Loses a point for the story not being as built out as it probably should be, but definitely a must-play for its target audience!
one of the cutest sheep models in a video game. the aesthetic is insanely on-point but i realllllyyy did not like the combat at all sadly. it's also a spiritual predecessor to bravely default which is cool and nice imo.
Es un juego que está bien, sin más. Funciona, es divertido... Pero le tengo que dar una valoración un poco mayor de lo que debería porque gracias a él existe Bravely Default. Entonces... Gracias, 4 Heroes of Light
Loved how you could equip your party and it would show in the game's graphics.
This game looks fantastic, the music is charming and catchy, and it comes with an overall laid-back vibe that I found comforting and adorable.
The combat involves auto-targeting (i.e. you don't get any say in who your characters attack), and that is going to turn a lot of people off right away. There also is no MP in this game; instead, you operate with five "Action Points" that determine what type of attack/ability/spell you can use, and each action takes a specific amount of action points depending on the strength of the attack. Spells are determined by tomes that are kept in your frustratingly tiny inventory, along with your equipment and accessories. These two things greatly simplify the strategy, until you start messing around with crowns. Crowns are this games version of job classes, and they're very important for boss battles. Buffing and debuffing are extremely important in this game, as are equipping your characters with armor that has specific element resistances. You can easily get wiped by common scrub enemies at the beginning of the game if you're not careful, and some of the bosses can be downright nasty for the same reason.
There is a ton of backtracking in this game (basically every dungeon), and while the story beats at least attempted to try and mix things up when you revisited towns, it did nothing for having to traipse through full dungeons again. This, along with a certain boss sequence at the end of the game, left it feeling very repetitive. There's a lot of fun character interactions and party dropping/swapping/moving, but as someone else mentioned your party basically becomes mute halfway through the game and all of those fun interactions just vanish. It takes a lot of the life out of what was already a mediocre story, and I wish they'd kept those interactions going.
I don't regret my playthrough of this game, but a middling story and tedious re-treading of areas ultimately kept it from being anything memorable.
The combat involves auto-targeting (i.e. you don't get any say in who your characters attack), and that is going to turn a lot of people off right away. There also is no MP in this game; instead, you operate with five "Action Points" that determine what type of attack/ability/spell you can use, and each action takes a specific amount of action points depending on the strength of the attack. Spells are determined by tomes that are kept in your frustratingly tiny inventory, along with your equipment and accessories. These two things greatly simplify the strategy, until you start messing around with crowns. Crowns are this games version of job classes, and they're very important for boss battles. Buffing and debuffing are extremely important in this game, as are equipping your characters with armor that has specific element resistances. You can easily get wiped by common scrub enemies at the beginning of the game if you're not careful, and some of the bosses can be downright nasty for the same reason.
There is a ton of backtracking in this game (basically every dungeon), and while the story beats at least attempted to try and mix things up when you revisited towns, it did nothing for having to traipse through full dungeons again. This, along with a certain boss sequence at the end of the game, left it feeling very repetitive. There's a lot of fun character interactions and party dropping/swapping/moving, but as someone else mentioned your party basically becomes mute halfway through the game and all of those fun interactions just vanish. It takes a lot of the life out of what was already a mediocre story, and I wish they'd kept those interactions going.
I don't regret my playthrough of this game, but a middling story and tedious re-treading of areas ultimately kept it from being anything memorable.
this game is an arguable contender with ff3 for worst game ive ever played. Enemies and your characters cannot be targeted. The enemies scale to you which sucks in most of the games its actually implemented in. I died in the tutorial area like 3 times because theres a big dude who just one shots you, so that was fun. The music sucks ass, for being a ff game, they couldnt even let them use the standard theme for when you win a battle? This is a game that wants to be ff3 made by the people who did the remake. There is a reason for why people dont enjoy the shitty nes ff game, and its because it has a lot of issues that only become more exaggerated in this game. It plays exactly like the ff3 remake but the art is nice so i can give it that. I'd rather play ff1 and 2 over this game any day of the week.
Another generic final fantasy spin-off.
Not bad, but there are many better JRPGS.
Not bad, but there are many better JRPGS.
Proto Bravely does show its age and concepts still being half baked. Combat is a bit clunky and feels sort of one note and rough around the edges. Most of the classes felt very fine on a first run through. Music was wonderful, with the battle theme is a mainstay in the rotation. Visually, I would kill to have another game with the same style. The DS is the perfect home to such a cute, cozy game.
Someone point me in the direction of a good poster of the box art
Someone point me in the direction of a good poster of the box art
Auto-targeting is turbo ass
The good in this game is everything not involving gameplay. The bad is everything else. If you try to power grind levels, the final boss can kill you easier because its own power scales exponentially with your level. The auto-targeting on attacks is also bogus. I wish the exact aesthetic for this game was used for something else, but unfortunately it got strapped to this awkward mess.
Hey, remember Bravely Default? This is it's dad.
I was obsessed with this game as a kid. I think I've played through most of this at least 3 times. I have formative memories where this game was present. I think the character arcs for the characters are neat and tidy little things, with not a lot of depth exactly but they get the job done. There's a lot of jobs to try out, some of them better than others, although you can just break the game in half if you run certain party comps. It's sort of tough to try out all the jobs in this one though. You need gems to upgrade the jobs (called crowns in this game), so you never really get an idea of what a class can do until you dump some gems into it. Some of these gems are really hard to find because they generate randomly (with some areas spawning more of a certain kind than others, but I don't know how you're supposed to figure out that one without a guide). All of this leads up to it feeling unrewarding to experiment very much with higher-level strategies. I'd much rather have had a game where you have to grind and are assured that progression instead of screwing around with RNG and hoping you get what you need. The other thing that drags down this game for me is the fact that the story just kind of stops halfway through. The characters stop talking and become just like the FF1 party. You don't get to see what sort of people they're like after their character arcs conclude, and there isn't really enough happening around them to make up for that. It's a massive bummer.
The areas you visit are pretty cool to make up for that though. There's a bit of backtracking involved, like it's spiritual sequel although it's not nearly as mind-numbing. They do the whole "revisit past areas you're familiar with, but now they're different and alien" a lot better in regards to how intriguing the differences are, not with how the characters react (because they largely... don't). I won't talk much more about that to avoid spoilers, but it's pretty neat. With the little bit of leeway you have to experiment in this game, it is fun to see how the classes mesh together. The mechanics are actually pretty simple in this one. It's kinda a "baby's first jrpg" in a way. There's no MP, you only have 5 action points that you can either allocate to using normal attacks or to casting spells and abilities. All your spells are tomes that you must keep in your characters' limited inventories, along with their armor and any other items you'd like to have on-hand. To recover more than 1 action point per turn, you need to defend with the "boost" button. It's a simple to learn system, but still fun to tinker around with. Some of the bosses can be a bit tough too, if you don't learn how to use the systems correctly.
If you want to see what Bravely Default built off of to become what it is or play a newish old-school jrpg, I think this game is worth a shot. All in all, it's a fun little game.
I was obsessed with this game as a kid. I think I've played through most of this at least 3 times. I have formative memories where this game was present. I think the character arcs for the characters are neat and tidy little things, with not a lot of depth exactly but they get the job done. There's a lot of jobs to try out, some of them better than others, although you can just break the game in half if you run certain party comps. It's sort of tough to try out all the jobs in this one though. You need gems to upgrade the jobs (called crowns in this game), so you never really get an idea of what a class can do until you dump some gems into it. Some of these gems are really hard to find because they generate randomly (with some areas spawning more of a certain kind than others, but I don't know how you're supposed to figure out that one without a guide). All of this leads up to it feeling unrewarding to experiment very much with higher-level strategies. I'd much rather have had a game where you have to grind and are assured that progression instead of screwing around with RNG and hoping you get what you need. The other thing that drags down this game for me is the fact that the story just kind of stops halfway through. The characters stop talking and become just like the FF1 party. You don't get to see what sort of people they're like after their character arcs conclude, and there isn't really enough happening around them to make up for that. It's a massive bummer.
The areas you visit are pretty cool to make up for that though. There's a bit of backtracking involved, like it's spiritual sequel although it's not nearly as mind-numbing. They do the whole "revisit past areas you're familiar with, but now they're different and alien" a lot better in regards to how intriguing the differences are, not with how the characters react (because they largely... don't). I won't talk much more about that to avoid spoilers, but it's pretty neat. With the little bit of leeway you have to experiment in this game, it is fun to see how the classes mesh together. The mechanics are actually pretty simple in this one. It's kinda a "baby's first jrpg" in a way. There's no MP, you only have 5 action points that you can either allocate to using normal attacks or to casting spells and abilities. All your spells are tomes that you must keep in your characters' limited inventories, along with their armor and any other items you'd like to have on-hand. To recover more than 1 action point per turn, you need to defend with the "boost" button. It's a simple to learn system, but still fun to tinker around with. Some of the bosses can be a bit tough too, if you don't learn how to use the systems correctly.
If you want to see what Bravely Default built off of to become what it is or play a newish old-school jrpg, I think this game is worth a shot. All in all, it's a fun little game.
cute