Squeenix Bravely Default

[Malpercio]

I did and it's fucking mediocre. Retarded auto-target in battle and fucking backtracking in the second half (BD looks tame compared to it, at least you can skip random encounters there)

 

[Crooked Bee]

On the contrary, it's pretty great

Different strokes though, I guess. I actually loved revisiting the same places in part two, because the world was really atmospheric and to see how the towns changed was a big part of what I liked about the game. As for the auto-target, it actually made me think a bit about party building/composition, which is already an achievement in a Final Fantasy game.

And as for random encounters - I dunno, I thought they were really tame in 4HoL.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

This Codex DS top ten shows that the Codex has bad taste even if it tries to do good. Dark Spire is a so-so dungeon crawler, the Wizardries are better. The DS is great for its ultra-refined jrpgs or trpgs not for its western old-school rpg wanabees (though SMT Strange Journey is quite good, but then it's no World of Xeen). Zed, go instead for the Dragon Quests: surrender to the japanese side of the popamole and revel in its refinement on DS: fun! great design! stupid children heroes wearing moronic short pants! Embrace it all!

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

Dragon Quest IX or even SaGa 2 are better than the Dark Spire. People who say otherwise try too much (except for Crooked Bee who really misses the blob dungeon crawlers with spinners or anti-magic dark spaces, she's a wine-drinking masochist).

EDIT: And don't fall for Radiant Historia which tries hard to be a "serious" jrpg though it's just abysmal and ultra-boring. Jrpgs are supposed to be stupid and funny, not some 17 years old prose trying to pass for "deep" genre litterature.

Try Infinite Space, it's quite good and atmospheric. Though it's structured like a jrpg, its mood is a lot more closer to western 90s rpgs than the blobbers, it made me think of Hard Nova or Space Rogue.

 

[Crooked Bee]

she's a wine-drinking masochist

You say that like it's a bad thing


To be honest, I found DQIX to be pretty boring. I think I gave up on it about ten hours in.

Also Strange Journey isn't World of Xeen, of course. It's better than WoX.


(Seriously though, you can't even compare the two - they have completely different design. Mechanics-wise, SJ is miles above Xeen; if you're looking for an open world crawler, however, Xeen is definitely the way to go.)

I do agree with you w/r/t Radiant Historia and Infinite Space, though. And even SaGa 2, to an extent, but again, apples and oranges.

 

[felipepepe]

DQ IX is a good game, but the class & combat are lacking that special something to make it a great game. If you compare it to DQ VIII, it's very lacking.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I could never get into any of DQ games myself. I just don't see the appeal. It's pretty much the most boring RPG series of all time for me, personally.

 

[Crane]

Is this a game about not being able to pay your debts?

 

[felipepepe]

I could never get into any of DQ games myself. I just don't see the appeal. It's pretty much the most boring RPG series of all time for me, personally.

They're the opposite of the Codex's passions, extremely polished games that do everything well, but nothing spectacularly.

Great time-wasters, but luckily we ARE in times when there are various interesting games to try out, so they indeed lose their part of their appeal...

 

[Abu Antar]

Is this a game about not being able to pay your debts?

Not really. It's all about the brave/default system, job system and fun boss battles.

 

[TigerKnee]

Why did someone put a post about the Top 10 DS RPGs list over in this BD thread?

Anyway, I've been playing SaGa 2 and 3 recently. In retrospect, I would probably put them in my list of votes if I had played them earlier.

Or maybe I should have typed this in that other thread also, whoops.

 

[Crane]

Is this a game about not being able to pay your debts?

Not really. It's all about the brave/default system, job system and fun boss battles.

Oh, it's the name of an in-game system. Why is it called brave and default? That seems like the most contrived thing ever.

I still like to think square enix told the developers, "name the game after what we're going to do when FFXII-3 tanks."

 

[Avellion]

Brave is understandable, because the whole brave system is a risk vs reward thing. Misusing Brave Points can lead to an early wipe as characters with negative brave will not be able to act until their Brave points get neutral (or positive) and having a key member or healer for a certain encounter have negative brave can lead to a boss destroying your party in the same turn. The 6 minibosses required to enter a certain optional building are a good example of this, every third turn the boss will cast an party targeting spell that makes you vulnerable to their element of choice. Anyone who you havent removed the vulnerability from will take more than enough damage to kill them (my performer got hit for 9999 damage), if you mismanage the brave system, you wont have time to remove anyone's vulnerabilities before it is too late.

As for default, I suppose it has to do with the fact that it shares the first 3 letters with Defend.

 

[Abu Antar]

Is this a game about not being able to pay your debts?

Not really. It's all about the brave/default system, job system and fun boss battles.

Oh, it's the name of an in-game system. Why is it called brave and default? That seems like the most contrived thing ever.

I still like to think square enix told the developers, "name the game after what we're going to do when FFXII-3 tanks."

This is square Enix we are talking about. They have games called Infinite Undiscovery, Kingdom hearts: Dream Drop Distance, and so on. I never try to make any sense of it. I just play the games that I think are good.

 

[Snozgobler]

I played the demo of Bravely Default and will probably get the game at some point, it was good mindless fun, to pass some time, though I've heard rough things about the latter part of the game. In the demo at least the job system kind of breaks the game though, ninja and swordmaster with one of the support skills from Red Mage and you walk all over anything. With that said however, in the demo at least only one boss actually made use of the Brave system when I fought them, and it was one in the middle of the demo. The final bosses were pitifully easy, but I was a max level (20) with all available jobs at max level (4).

 

[Perkel]

started to play this chapter 2 currently.

Positively surprised by combat. I thought this will another one standard jrpg battle sytem but it feels really tactical and unlike rest of jrpgs enemies love status effects. Stealing stuff from FF9 is back which is great. Job system is itneresting and remind me more FFT than your retarder jrpg standard combat system. 3D is done well.

Only minus so far is that unline FF9 all dungeons i found were basically mazes with chests and hidden parts and that's all. No stuff like FF9 backgrounds and design.

Either way someone said in this thread that this feels like FF9. Imo it is right assumption. It feels like that with better combat traded for worse journey and exploration.
Though i am yet to finish game naturally so things may change.
Love how they added speed up system to combat as well as encounter rate adjustement.

Playing on normal and i still find combat pretty challenging.

 

[Mrowak]

The only downside of this game is that you have to revisit locations so much. I wish they went FF5 or FF6 route where consecutive worlds were substantially different with different quests and secrets. Alas...

And yeah it does have FF9 vibe to it.

 

[Abu Antar]

started to play this chapter 2 currently.

Positively surprised by combat. I thought this will another one standard jrpg battle sytem but it feels really tactical and unlike rest of jrpgs enemies love status effects. Stealing stuff from FF9 is back which is great. Job system is itneresting and remind me more FFT than your retarder jrpg standard combat system. 3D is done well.

Only minus so far is that unline FF9 all dungeons i found were basically mazes with chests and hidden parts and that's all. No stuff like FF9 backgrounds and design.

Either way someone said in this thread that this feels like FF9. Imo it is right assumption. It feels like that with better combat traded for worse journey and exploration.
Though i am yet to finish game naturally so things may change.
Love how they added speed up system to combat as well as encounter rate adjustement.

Playing on normal and i still find combat pretty challenging.

When you hit chapter 5 and onwards, no matter how upset you get, stick with the game. The best optional fights are in chapter 7 and 8. Some of the most intense fights in many years that I have faced in a turn-based jrpg.

 

[Perkel]

Hot damn. This game.

Reached Florasomemethigncallledthatnamecity aka chapter 2 and...

Yes battle system is interesting but the fucking grind is almost unberable.
Yes battle system is interesting but the fucking dungeons are absolute garbage.
.... but the main cast are just whiny bitches.

I mean it feels like someone designed game before they made it and they stick to the plan completely not looking at problems emerging during developement. I mean how retarded you need to be to design dungeon without absolutely any design behind aside from follow the path to reach destination. I mean let's compare it to FF9 where each "dungeon" was somewhat tied to story and most of the time you had to figure out certain things before you can progress.

Tiz is your angst teenager
Angnes is whiniest bitch i have every seen in jrpg which is like impossible to achieve
that "Try hard dude" is actually annoying instead of being funny
Only that "tsundere" girl is only somewhat likable

4 crystals story premise seems like literally trope from jrpg designer book.
I mean generally don't like DQ games but DQ9 which is like trope of tropes of jrpg design gave me more fun than this so far.

Hope this changes in next chapter because i won't for shit stay if this will be for rest of the game. I don't know maybe try it one chapter a day or two will be better approach here.

This game feels like Lunar series in therms of dungeon design. Aka find the path way out and here are the random battles to slow you down. Wait you don't want to fight those battles ?! hey let's make you grind battles ! This will be fun !.... ....


I don't know maybe i should download undub version. Maybe characters are translation problem here.

 

[TigerKnee]

I don't know maybe i should download undub version.

Dude, the game has inherent Dual VA language switch

 

[Abu Antar]

I don't know maybe i should download undub version.

Dude, the game has inherent Dual VA language switch

This.

I only like one of the main cast members. Mgrgrgr.

 

[Siveon]

It's only possible to like one of the main cast members. The other 3 are so bland it makes a chain restaurant look exquisite. The writing is the worst part. Next to level design and those social/mobile features.

Spoiler

Another complaint I had was that bosses tended to be very insta-kill happy. I'm not much of a regular JRPG guy, so usually when I'm getting kill left and right I usually think I'm doing something wrong. Really, that one fight where you battle 5 or so bosses at once threw me over the edge and I flat-out quit the game altogether.

I do really like the Job System, though. As well as the combat. I just wish it was implemented in such a way where experimentation =/= grinding.

 

[Perkel]

I don't know maybe i should download undub version.

Dude, the game has inherent Dual VA language switch

Thanks didn't notice it. Agnes VA is simply unbearable. I know she is protected flower but holy hell her tone of voice is fucking driving me mad.

Switched to Easy. Seriously fuck that grinding.

 

[Celerity]

I got this game a while back. It seemed fun and interesting until I figured it out. Then every fight was literally use specific combo of abilities > break damage limit with a sleep point from leaving the game idle > hit everything on the screen (including self) for 999,999 damage > win.

And then I would host that attack on their server because I'm sure someone would summon me for that absurd damage number without understanding that they NEED Dark absorpion or they will instantly Game Over themselves.

Alternately I could use a different specific combination that grants invincibility, or there was another one that just completely broke everything. No wonder all those post game street pass bosses were so gimmicky.

 

[Perkel]

Ok switched to japanese voices, easy and i can say definitely my rage-o-meter went several levels down.
No more grinding and no more annoying voices.
That leaves only crappy dungeons and mediacore plot.