Originally, I had this game on the Switch, until my copy stopped working because of...reasons, and so here we are now. This game, in my opinion, is one of those "it's pretty meh but gets better plotwise in the second half" kind of RPGs. The first few chapters honestly don't feel very interesting and I didn't get too invested until the sequence at the end of Chapter 3. I'll be honest, I wasn't too big on the characters in this game and still heavily prefer the Bravely Default 1 cast, and in some cases, the Bravely Second cast, but maybe that's because Tiz and Edea are returning characters.

The main antagonist (before the real one we get no real info on until over halfway through the game), honestly was really weak. He clearly went to the Walhart School of "solve conflict with even more conflict" and failed his class. Backstory on this guy was hidden behind a sidequest and told to us by another character instead of getting the information organically. I feel like Gloria specifically suffers the same fate, having most of her main development locked behind sidequests. Speaking of sidequests, why was there no quest log in this game? On top of that, you can only set markers for 3 sidequests at a time? Why? These were honestly some pretty dumb design choices.

This game having zero relation to the past two games I think hurts it a bit. Making the Asterisks more important to the overall story instead of just being an excuse for the job system was nice, but what baffles me is why only two are optional when almost all the others are given via the story. The story was passable. None of that "fight 4 bosses 4 additional times for the true ending" nonsense from Default or "press Start in the first fight unprompted" from Second, but it's way of guiding you to the true ending was a step in a better direction, even if I was a bit iffy about it.

But one of the main draws of games like this and Final Fantasy V or X-2 is the job system. Part of the fun is finding ways to shatter the kneecaps of your various foes by abusing the system to your advantage, and in a way, this game does allow that sort of freedom. Some of the earlygame classes have things in them that can help smash the difficulty, like Thief's Godspeed Strike or Beastmaster's second specialty, which can lead to insane stat boosting if you're proactive on capturing monsters. I feel like White Mage did get a bit of a nerf, especially with the massive nerfing Spiritmaster got compared to Default where it served to amplify White Mage's abilities. Black Mage is still bleh and there's no Spell Fencer equivalent this time to use. I also wasn't too big on how certain useful passives, like Pierce Default or Angelic Ward are locked to being specialties instead of just being passives you can equip like in the old games.

That brings me to the one thing that grinded my gears the most about this game, and that's counters. This system is objectively the single worst part of the game. First, only enemies can do it. Second, you won't know what they counter until it's too late and you're already getting smacked for performing certain actions, or the enemy gets free BP to set up their moves. Worse, every Asterisk holder starting from the second boss on and regular enemies included, have counters. Don't equip Counter-Savvy and waste one of your precious passive slots? Too bad, time to taste constant pain. The final boss was a major offender of "counter borderline any action" and it was awful.

Rematches with the Asterisk holders literally allowed them to get free BP as a counter to ANY action sometimes, which could lead to a certain Arcanist blowing your party to hell with high powered magic that not even two heavily boosted Beastmasters could endure.

Now, I don't want to say this is a bad game. It's...alright, but earlygame can be pretty grindy if you want those JP Up passives to make life easier in the future, and there's the matter of raising up jobs. I would honestly say play it if you really, really like games with a job system or are a fan of Default and Second.

I had set the bar for this game pretty low, considering it's a game based off an episode of a TV show, but wow, maybe I should've set the bar lower. This game is basically discount Luigi's Mansion without any of the good parts of Luigi's Mansion. The game feels very frontloaded, as the latter half of the game barely has any levels at all and feels like "do one stage, then the resident bad boss fight."

Speaking of the boss fights, all of them are pretty awful, but I'd say the Frozen Lake Boss is the worst of the bunch. At least with the Playground Boss and Rollercoaster Boss, they're easy once you figure out their gimmicks. but with the Frozen Lake, you're fighting against ice physics. I also learned that if you die, you have to do the fight over again. Very much a 2004 thing, but not any less annoying to deal with ice physics. The final boss is just a combo of the previous three bosses and their skills, but with the same ice physics in the Frozen Lake Boss.

Most of the gizmos you can make are gimmick items that serve no use while others are more usable, like the Speed Sneakers for general speed and the Sticky Sneakers to handle those pesky ice physics. The Health Recharge is useful too when you need health and you're waiting for health pickups to respawn. Most of the inventions and super inventions felt like they barely had time in the sun beyond the VDR and the Sheenograph, as they're both mandatory for capturing the Twonkies Luigi's Mansion vacuum style. Goddard also felt very underused as well, only being used in a couple of levels and totally ditched after that for the rest of the game.

The only level I liked a bit is actually the one that gatekept me from beating it as a kid, the Retroland level, where you need to play the arcade games to get tokens to reach the rollercoaster, which goes directly to a boss fight after a cutscene level. The arcade games were a fun distraction, but I know why I never beat this game as a kid, and it's that you're required to get the high score on all the games to progress. It's not hard, but it may require a bit of patience, something child me didn't have much of.

All in all, it's a game based on a TV show, and these kinds of things generally aren't very good to begin with. This game is one example of that.

They say it's not about the destination, but the journey to reach said destination. When it comes to this particular journey, it was...alright. Having a party this time around was nice, even though I primarily stuck to using Adol or Karna. The story was alright, at least until the villains came into the picture, because they were probably one of the weakest parts of the game. Even the final boss wasn't all that interesting, with the boss before it being a lot more interesting to fight.

The big thing about this game was mapping out the forest, and it's pretty particular about how you get your percentage points, so I ended up spending time before the final dungeon rubbing Karna's face up against any surface I could throw her at to get 100% (and a Steam guide for figuring out potential spots I missed.)

One other thing that sort of disappointed me was the ending. You don't really find out what happened to Eldeel or your party members after the ending, or really anything at all. The game just sort of...ends. Ys II at least had a satisfactory conclusion, and sure, you stop the big bad, but some closure would've been nice.

I'm not saying I don't like this game. It's perfectly servicible, but a few things about it, like a lack of camera control, the fairly weak story, and eh ending, puts it directly in the 3 range, at least in my opinion.

Game has some solid music, though.