The jobs have become entirely modular-as opposed to mages learning levels of spell competencies, each job level instead offers a unique spell that no other job may use. Where Bravely Default 2 manages to shine is in its battle system, which is a marked improvement on Bravely Default and its earlier sequel, End Layer. Nothing in the continent of Excillant goes unobserved by the party the world feels like a lifeless diorama, waiting to be beaten into flaccidity with clever job combinations. As we move from chapter to chapter, time seems frozen in place, waiting for the protagonists to arrive and solve their resident problems they have seemingly been toiling with for years. We don’t see Gloria’s fall from grace and crumble into submission. But unlike Yuna and Ashe, we see little of the needless destruction that led them to their resolve. Our entire investment in Gloria’s mission is dependent on her unwavering sense of duty, echoing familiar Final Fantasy heroines like X’s Yuna and XII’s Ashe. By the game’s start, Musa’s destruction is a distant memory.
Bravely Default served as ample proof that JRPGs can still be interesting in their own right-that their evolutionary arc need not pivot towards conventional forms of innovation, but instead could toy with the familiar tropes that we love them for and that still feel fresh and exciting.Ī level of pathos is lost in the mad dash to the first chapter. In its wake, games like Octopath Traveler and Dragon Quest XI, as well as Western-developed indie efforts like Cosmic Star Heroine and, of course, Undertale, would find great success remixing elements of RPG favorites from the ‘90s. With a shocking 11th hour twist, addictive and exploitable job-based gameplay, and a story that was just competent enough, the game attained a cult following and signalled the beginning of a revival for retro-style JRPGs. With a hefty amount of chibi charm, Bravely Default impishly played with our expectations going into a seemingly standard RPG. Conceived as a sequel to 4 Heroes, Bravely Default eventually warped into a mishmash of disparate JRPG conventions taking from Final Fantasy III and V with a splash of Dragon Quest, SaGa, and the less-known Brave Story. Handheld games of a similar vein-“love letters” to classic JRPGs like Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light and Nostalgia-had mostly fallen on deaf ears. Released in the early 2010s, the 3DS title came out during a time of relative silence for the JRPG genre.
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