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.
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.