I'll start this off by saying "regression" is the one word I would use to describe this game.

If this game were not Bravely Default "II", it would stand much better. Still not great, mind you, but a well-polished throwback to JRPG's of yore, when characters, motivations, settings, and stories were all simpler.

But we don't live in that world. We live in a world where this is the continuation of the Bravely series, and thus cannot exist without comparisons to the games that came before. Particularly the original Bravely Default.

With that out of the way, Bravely Default II is everything the original Bravely Default was and less.

Where the original had full-model CG cutscenes opening the game and exploring the characters, Bravely Default II... doesn't. Instead the only cutscenes use the strange semi-chibi in-engine models that cannot emote well at all. Granted, the original also made use of these, but it knew how to use them better.

The original's cast of villains interacted with each other very well, you had to fight some of them multiple times, you knew how they all related to each other, and you got to meet and learn more about them over the (often rightly maligned) chapter repeats. BDII's cast of villains are cardboard cutouts, most of which you meet once, kill, then see maybe once again with no real resolution to their arc. Where BD's Braev Lee had a true and understandable reason for his actions, Adam is just... evil. He wants power because he wants it.

Our four heroes are completely forgettable. Gloria is just Agnes but we don't see any of her driving action happen, instead taking place years before the story starts. Seth is one step away from being a silent protagonist, with absolutely no motivation or reasoning for doing anything. Compare him with Tiz, who's trauma and driving action we see firsthand, the ghost of which haunts him throughout his adventure. Adelle, like Edea Lee, has relations to one of the main antagonists. But unlike Edea, this revelation serves no purpose. It's learned near the middle-end of the game, and the other heroes could care less. When Edea revealed Braev was her father, it tore the party apart and they had to reconcile. Elvis is Ringabel's stand-in, just way less interesting. He, too, has a magic book, but the book's true nature is not revealed until the last 5% of the game, comes out of nowhere, and makes absolutely no sense on any level of scrutiny. Elvis is mainly there to talk with a funny accent and not much else. There is his relationship with Adelle that's directly mentioned once in the game's second ending and never again, and that's the closest this game gets to character depth.

On a side note, none of the four heroes (save Elvis) have a stated last name. (Elvis's is mentioned offhand in one side quest. It's Lesley. Elvis Lesley. Get it?) Just a weird choice that further reflects how flat the characters are.

The overall story, too, is forgettable. A bog standard save-the-crystals plot that if it came out in 1995 would be considered a cult classic. But it isn't 1995, it's 2021, and we've seen this story countless times. Even the multiple endings and "twists" at the end are boring. They feel tacked on, simply because "this is a Bravely game and they have weird twists". But the twists here are contained to the game itself, instead of the meta real-world and mechanical connections Bravely Default and Bravely Second had. Remember the end-boss of of Bravely Default turning your DS camera on and saying that you are one of the gods? Or in Bravely Second, when the end-boss talks to you directly and throws you back to the main menu, corrupting your save? And those twists paid off, despite the effort to get there, because you cared about the characters and world. Absolutely nothing of that caliber exists in Bravely Default II. Just average experience after average experience.

The gameplay is almost identical to its predecessors, save for the speed stat affecting turns. QOL effects such as auto battle and turning off/on random encounters is gone, making grinding far more of a chore than it needs to be. The jobs have interesting designs and mixing/matching subjobs and abilities is fun as always. There are a wealth of post-game superbosses to tackle as well, if you're still somehow chomping at the bit for more after beating the game.

To wrap up one disappointed fan's essay, I feel like they took the backlash from the aspects of the previous two games too harshly. They got rid of the meta elements, the confusing story progression to get the true endings, and tried to simplify things too much. In so doing, they made something that old fans who WANTED that kind of of experience won't fully enjoy, while also not doing enough to pull in new people who just know the Bravely series as "that JRPG series that gets weird at the end".

The chances of them following up on the hook left at the end of Bravely Second seem slim now, as that would only further muddy the waters of the series chronology. Knowing triple-A developers now, they'll simply see the average scores this game is receiving and drop the series entirely, rather than returning to what it's known for. I could be wrong though, and BDII will simply go down as the black sheep of the series, a-la Final Fantasy 2, but I doubt it.