![bravely default 2 bravely default 2](https://i1.wp.com/mag.shock2.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Bravely-Default-2-1.jpg)
Note that there are small spoilers throughout this guide, mostly dealing with the sources of any given Asterisk. Here’s what to look for on your way through the game, as well as some tips to make your trip through BD2 a little easier. Two more are found through optional challenges in Chapters 1 and 3, and a third is tied to incredibly spoiler-laden endgame activities. This is especially disappointing given the way Bravely Default played with conventions of JRPG structure I was left expecting a last minute twist that never came.Of the 24 jobs in the game, 21 are obtained over the course of a typical run. There are few mix-ups to the set progression, making the game feel something like a slow climb up an infinite, skyscraping flight of stairs, inevitably ending with a predictably cosmic climax. I’m not foolish enough to think every JRPG isn’t guilty of this to some degree, but Bravely Default 2 seems uncommitted to disguising the seams tenuously holding the game’s thin plot together. Once the problem of each individual country is solved, the group moves to the next and repeats the process.
BRAVELY DEFAULT 2 SERIES
It follows a basic formula where the party travels to a new country and proceeds to traipse through a series of four or so dungeons, each of which leads to an elaborately-dressed asterisk user. The game’s progression only exacerbates the problem. Each dungeon is truly lifeless, endcapped with a wooden smooth jazz score and copious surprise treasure chest ambushes. Viewed from an almost top-down angle, you’ll be stumbling through identical corridors, entering into long battles, and retreading your steps after the ensuing disorientation. Unfortunately, the game’s dungeons seem to all follow the exact same design principle: elaborate hedge mazes. This means no job is inherently redundant, and any job can be useful or even gamebreaking depending on the combined subjob and abilities (passive skills learned in job trees that can be equipped no matter what job you are using). 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.
![bravely default 2 bravely default 2](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bravelydefault/images/4/4b/Gloria_as_a_Swordmaster_from_BDII.jpg)
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.
![bravely default 2 bravely default 2](https://www.wog.ch/nas/cover_xl/sw/sw_bravelydefault2.jpg)
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.