On the face of it, Bravely Default looks like it will be just my sort of
thing. A Squeenix J-RPG with classic turn-based combat, a fantasy epic
storyline and cute adolescent characters. It was highly lauded when it came
out, with many saying how it felt like a nostalgic return to the kind of game
they used to play a decade ago. Perhaps this was my problem - for me, this
wasn't a return to something half-forgotten. I only recently finished Tales of the Abyss and not so long before that I was was
playing Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, which while based on the Tactics side of the franchise felt far more
classic and refreshingly old-fashioned than this. I play J-RPGs all the time,
including old-fashioned ones, and beside the best of them, Bravely Default really isn't one of the better iterations.
As has been widely reported, Bravely Default is in essence part of the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles,
having begun there conceptually before diverging, but retaining much of the
crystal lore as well as the familiar job classes. Rather than Ivalice, Bravely
Default takes place in the
world of 'Luxendarc'. If that name makes you cringe, be prepared for a whole
lot of similar awful names for characters and places. Good guys are called
'Goodman', characters who live to accompany others get names like Vincent
S. Court , and of course there's Airy the Fairy.
One character's name is a painful anagram of 'Magic Knight', and some names had
to be changed from the Japanese because a guy who looks like a rat called
'Ratz' was apparently too far...and, well, it sounds to me like they've totally
changed the name of conniving desert country monarch Khamer VIII because his
original name was a bit too uncomfortably close to 'Mohammad'.
The only thing I unreservedly
liked about Bravely Default was its music, which was consistently
brilliant and often had me nodding along during dungeon runs. Revo is amazing
and this is up there with his Attack on Titan intros, and if Linked
Horizon toured Europe with their concert I’d definitely
go, especially if Marty Friedman from Megadeth was there to reprise his little
bit as he did in the Japan
live. I only looked the soundtrack up after I saw his name on the credits – and
I totally adore the live version, orchestra, choirs and pop singers included! Other
than that - well, I have to say that it was a bust.
The story is not good. The
makers learned nothing from the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi I suppose: doing the same thing over and
over and over is not even remotely fun. From Pan's
Labyrinth to Bioshock, I have loved stories that
play with free will and make you stop to question why the impressionable good
guys go along with what they're told to do, but this one does it incredibly
awkwardly and the ways it contrives to have the heroes not find out what their
enemies are really trying to do really stretch credibility (especially over
repeated meetings with the same people), and it becomes ridiculous when the
game has made it incredibly obvious who the antagonist actually is - long
before it starts spelling it out on the goddamn title screen - yet tries to
have us believe our characters carry on their path. I’m only grateful that
in only concerning a limited, if large, number of worlds, it avoids infinite
world paradoxes – though presumably only one Lester of the many on the myriad
different worlds had to show up, so there are plenty of others still left.
The main characters don't appeal to me the way the best RPG characters do. I quite liked Agnes, with her
'Unacceptable!' catchphrase and utter lack of worldly guile, but she was
extremely bland. Edea's character was totally ruined by the way they had to
keep forcing her into battles before she actually stopped to talk to her former
allies. Ringabell was kind of meant to be an annoying bastard, but unlike, say,
Luke in Tales of the Abyss,
I didn't grow to like him more once the angst got heaped on. He carried on
being irritating all the time, and the way the game made it far too obvious who
his alter-ego is (they even have him conspicuously leave the scene at just the
right time, even though that's not necessary plot-wise, only a massive signpost
to the 'twist') even without the hilarious original name 'Anazelle', which for
most of the game I heard as 'Annabelle'.
Then there was Tiz. Ah, Tiz,
exactly the kind of character I usually totally fall for. Young, naive,
good-hearted Tiz, made to suffer such terrible losses, awkward around his more
knowing peers and diffident in matters of the heart, he ought to be adorable.
But I really, really cannot get over his scumbag behaviour over his brother. He
loses his brother in the intro, which ought to be incredibly harrowing. He then
doesn't even mention it for a good few hours of gameplay. Okay, he's in denial.
When he begins to finally open up about it, he fixes upon a surrogate of sorts,
a little boy called Egil forced to work in the mines. He develops a bond with
Egil because of how much he's reminded of his brother Til. He cares for Egil on
their adventure, finds him a new family, goes to check on him often and it
helps him deal with the loss of his brother.
Then when he goes to what
seems like an alternate world, he doesn't
even think about or mention Egil once. There is no forced child labour in
this world's mines, and Tiz doesn't think 'Hmm, so where has poor Egil who had
nobody until we arrived ended up?' He doesn't mention him once - and nor does
the game, right up until the secret credits, in which we discover that what we thought
was Tiz was just screwing with the kid anyway and has done things that will
really mess with him. But mostly he’s just not even brought up. It's bizarre. And
then when another world that offers everything the main characters want comes
along and Til is alive, Tiz doesn't actually seem particularly bothered and
never raises the possibility of fulfilling the quest as he sees it and then
going back to Til, or taking this Til along, or any of the other myriad
possibilities to stay with his brother. This bond that's supposed to form the
core of the character is just completely unconvincing and underdeveloped, and
it destroys the character for me entirely – which isn’t even mentioning the
unforeseen twist at the very end which was clearly only thought of once Bravely
Second was in development and means effectively we know nothing about the
real Tiz at all.
Then there is the lauded
combat. I can say without hesitation that it is the worst combat system of any
RPG I have ever played, though possibly less annoying than the underwater
speeds of the first Wild ARMs thanks to the fast-forward mode. The
set-up is a conventional four-person turn-based RPG set-up...and then the
add-ons to make it unique totally break it. It's not a bad idea - you can
'Default' to defend but also save up turns, up to a maximum of four at once
that can be unleashed if you defended enough, or you can 'brave', spending
those turns early but then being unable to move until you have repaid your
debt. Good concept, right?
Except that the vast majority
of the game - on hard mode, mind - all I did against the very limited varieties
of baddies was have everyone brave and then attack. Sixteen attacks in the
first turn killed virtually everything I faced, especially once you start
getting powerful abilities like the monk's natural talent or the ranger's
precision/hawkeye combo. The times you can get problems with this are with
enemies that auto-counter physical attacks, but there are various measures to
get past that - rampart or utsusemi skills - before you even start thinking
about using MP.
Of course, to counter this
bosses get absurdly tough, and the way the designers tackle that is to make
some skills completely, utterly broken. The vast majority of enemies can be
destroyed without a single chance to hit you back, including most of the
optional 'Nemesis' baddies (most of them awesome in design terms, by the way),
just by having four fast characters constantly doing the high jump skill with
Hasten World ensuring they can do it without interruption. This even works on
the hidden boss, apparently, though it being single-target meant it would take
forever so I went for the similarly broken combo of a spiritmaster nullifying
all damage while a dark knight deals out ridiculous damage and also heals with
every dark nebula - a performer meanwhile topping up everyone's brave points.
There was no strategy to this game, no reward to beating its toughest bosses -
only broken combinations and hoping the semi-random approach to agility stats
didn't screw you over or a lapse in concentration make you input the wrong
thing and die. The Valkyrie trick also works on the final boss, which at
least means you don’t have to look at the game at all, and see the
bizarre image of your chin projected onto the sky of the multiverse. Please,
Squeenix, let’s leave the front-facing camera out of our serious games.
On the plus side, the voice
acting is pretty solid. I was dumb and didn't see the Japanese-language option
(because it's not in the sound menu, which I feel is silly), so was a good couple of hours in before making the switch, and felt the English performers
were strong. The enemies were a bit hammy, but that was also true of the
Japanese version, and if anything, I prefer the English Ringabel, who doesn't
sound like he's way too old for his model and differentiates between his two
roles better - even if that means putting on a really, really smug voice for
his primary reading. Though I prefer the more ingenuous performances of the
three others in the original, the English actors do good jobs, and the Airy in
both versions is the right balance of cute and annoying, and fun to hear
begging desperately for aid.
I gave a pretty hefty amount
of time to this game, seeing both endings, beating all optional bosses
including the full council battle and the amusing surprise boss at the end of
Dimension's Hasp, even when consecutive worlds had them doing exactly the same
thing. There are parts I will certainly remember fondly, mostly little things
like Edea's gluttony and how in one world, Victoria
chairs a silly but adorable girl-power group. But I will certainly never replay
the game, and much as I liked the ‘secret movie’ and its excellent use of the internal
gyro, I will approach the sequel with caution.
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