Thanks to the terrible first impression the first demo left I had some pretty low expectations for this game, so at least I wasn’t too disappointed.
Bravely Default II makes a ton of gameplay changes from the previous two games, a lot of which were executed pretty poorly. I remember being turned off by the new turn order. In the previous games you set all of your party members’ actions at once, while here you set them all individually. It’s fine and works well for the most part, but it also makes the speed stat way more important than I wish it was. I wanted to make some of my characters into specific classes but they just became too slow to be as effective. Not to mention I literally softlocked a battle at one point using an ability that prevents all characters from taking damage until the character who used the ability gets another turn, and the character I had use it was unbelievably slow and kept getting her turn delayed by the boss I was fighting. This went on for 10 minutes until I just closed the game.
The jobs feel more limited and underwhelming than usual. Black Mage learns spells individually instead of in pairs, like the developers were too lazy to come up with unique abilities and attacks for every level up for that job. Imagine how exciting it is getting Thundaga as the final attack for the class when in previous games you unlocked it alongside other spells and BEFORE the max level of that job. Hellblade also suffers from this, half of that job’s level ups just get you the same attack but with a different element, which is boring and makes grinding not as fun as it used to be.
The game in general feels restrictive. There are still cool things you can do with the job system, but it gets bogged down by the sheer amount of counters that enemies and bosses have. They can counter you for attacking, using healing magic, defaulting etc. Not to mention bosses typically have multiple of these, it gets ridiculous. One boss even has “Counter Any Ability” where he does a party wide attack when you do......well, anything. Why would I ever wanna use that boss’s elemental weakness against them if they counter that weakness? There’s also the terrible and worthless weight system which limits how much equipment your characters can carry. It adds literally nothing to the game, all it does is make you feel more limited than you already are.
I know people will say “oh but they have to put restrictions on you to make the game harder!”. You could make broken strategies in the previous games if you tried hard, but that was part of the fun. In my previous playthrough of Bravely Second I literally just grinded at the end to unlock cool abilities to make my characters stronger even though it was completely unnecessary to do so. Sure, it made the final boss a cakewalk, but that’s what was so rewarding about it. And plus I still had to play carefully around the super boss. In this game however bosses really like throwing a wrench into my plans with their cheap counters. Yes, I still came up with some cool strategies, but I had to take them in a much slower pace to ensure that the boss doesn’t have like 3 BP by time I’m done unloading on them, or kill all of my party members through counterattacks. It’s boring and not fun.
Also yeah the story kinda blows too. The main cast is good, aside from Seth who’s the most bland protagonist to ever exist, but there are a lot of problems with the story. Some things go unexplained, one major character is completely forgotten about with no resolution whatsoever, and the climax is a bit unsatisfying. Also the game goes on for longer than it should, not as bad as the first game in that regard, but still.
I kinda hate to see a series I love so much reduced to this. It’s simply not as fun and there are so many downgrades here that I don’t understand how the developers thought it was okay. It doesn’t serve as a very good sequel and especially not as a replacement for Bravely Second. Definitely the worst sequel I’ve ever played, and one of the worst games I've ever played in general. You have to actively try to make a game this bad.
Bravely Default II makes a ton of gameplay changes from the previous two games, a lot of which were executed pretty poorly. I remember being turned off by the new turn order. In the previous games you set all of your party members’ actions at once, while here you set them all individually. It’s fine and works well for the most part, but it also makes the speed stat way more important than I wish it was. I wanted to make some of my characters into specific classes but they just became too slow to be as effective. Not to mention I literally softlocked a battle at one point using an ability that prevents all characters from taking damage until the character who used the ability gets another turn, and the character I had use it was unbelievably slow and kept getting her turn delayed by the boss I was fighting. This went on for 10 minutes until I just closed the game.
The jobs feel more limited and underwhelming than usual. Black Mage learns spells individually instead of in pairs, like the developers were too lazy to come up with unique abilities and attacks for every level up for that job. Imagine how exciting it is getting Thundaga as the final attack for the class when in previous games you unlocked it alongside other spells and BEFORE the max level of that job. Hellblade also suffers from this, half of that job’s level ups just get you the same attack but with a different element, which is boring and makes grinding not as fun as it used to be.
The game in general feels restrictive. There are still cool things you can do with the job system, but it gets bogged down by the sheer amount of counters that enemies and bosses have. They can counter you for attacking, using healing magic, defaulting etc. Not to mention bosses typically have multiple of these, it gets ridiculous. One boss even has “Counter Any Ability” where he does a party wide attack when you do......well, anything. Why would I ever wanna use that boss’s elemental weakness against them if they counter that weakness? There’s also the terrible and worthless weight system which limits how much equipment your characters can carry. It adds literally nothing to the game, all it does is make you feel more limited than you already are.
I know people will say “oh but they have to put restrictions on you to make the game harder!”. You could make broken strategies in the previous games if you tried hard, but that was part of the fun. In my previous playthrough of Bravely Second I literally just grinded at the end to unlock cool abilities to make my characters stronger even though it was completely unnecessary to do so. Sure, it made the final boss a cakewalk, but that’s what was so rewarding about it. And plus I still had to play carefully around the super boss. In this game however bosses really like throwing a wrench into my plans with their cheap counters. Yes, I still came up with some cool strategies, but I had to take them in a much slower pace to ensure that the boss doesn’t have like 3 BP by time I’m done unloading on them, or kill all of my party members through counterattacks. It’s boring and not fun.
Also yeah the story kinda blows too. The main cast is good, aside from Seth who’s the most bland protagonist to ever exist, but there are a lot of problems with the story. Some things go unexplained, one major character is completely forgotten about with no resolution whatsoever, and the climax is a bit unsatisfying. Also the game goes on for longer than it should, not as bad as the first game in that regard, but still.
I kinda hate to see a series I love so much reduced to this. It’s simply not as fun and there are so many downgrades here that I don’t understand how the developers thought it was okay. It doesn’t serve as a very good sequel and especially not as a replacement for Bravely Second. Definitely the worst sequel I’ve ever played, and one of the worst games I've ever played in general. You have to actively try to make a game this bad.