Bravely Default is the perfect example of classic japanese role-playing game (JRPG) tropes mixed with a modern-day mentality. It’s also a fantastic example of thirty hours of great gameplay with the worst second half I’ve ever seen in a video game. Despite this horrible latter portion you are still getting a ton of content in this sixty hour JRPG. The battle system is incredibly fresh and allows for some real strategy to work its way into the standard turn based system. The story may be as cliche as ever with some terrible voice acting, but the number of fun and unique elements that Bravely Default brings forward makes this game a very fun time.

The story in Bravely Default is practically useless in how cookie-cutter and clicked filled it is. You’re the chosen one in a group of other chosen individuals as you have to stop the world from ending. Your team consists of the down to earth protagonist who isn’t too sure of himself, a girl with magical powers that only wants to save all of humanity, and a hot-headed female who is always angry towards the lecherous, woman obsessed man in your group. Every character is a huge JRPG cliche and the story only helps drive home these annoyingly familiar tropes.

The battle system is easily the best part of this game and really what sets it apart. The name Bravely Default comes from this system where you can choose to take future turns early (Brave) or do a blocking action in order to build up additional moves (Default). You can choose to Brave up to three times in order to take four moves in one turn. Doing this however will make that character have to wait an additional three turns before being able to go again. It acts as a way to do a ton of damage at one specific point - usually good for finishing off an enemy real quick for example. Defaulting allows you to not have to wait the extra turns after acting since you waited by blocking before hand. Each time you Default you get an additional turn to use when you want.

The battle system is a little complicated but it ends up being quite interesting when paired with how the job system works in the game. Each character can take on different job classes that greatly impact the abilities they will learn and use. These are your typical White/Black Mage, Ninja, Pirate and so on. Each one will differ significantly from the last and can be leveled up to learn more and more moves. It gets interesting when you can start pairing classes together, for example a Ninja can use Time Magic or a Black Mage can use Summoner abilities, etc. A lot of these will also factor into how many turns you can make and will greatly impact how the Brave/Default system should be used. Some abilities will cost more than one turn to use, others may grant additional turns, there are abilities that only work when going immediately after certain other skills have been used, etc. The job system paired with the Brave/Default system make for some incredible strategy and bring a great deal of life to the standard JRPG turn-based battles.

There are also microtransactions in Bravely Default but they’re very easy to ignore. You earn a currency called Sleep Points (SP) when the 3DS is shut with the game still running. For every eight hours you have the 3DS in sleep mode you will get one SP that you can use in combat (to a max of three). By pressing Start you can have any character make one free move out of turn for the cost of one SP. If you don’t feel like waiting eight hours for these then you can pay a couple real world dollars and buy some. The game’s characters will even remind you of this when using a Special Attack which can be annoying. It’s not such a bad thing though since you earn this currency by literally doing nothing - so it’s largely unobtrusive.

The audio is also very noteworthy in this game. Personally I found all the voice acting to be terrible and really hated hearing any of the dialogue. Actors sounded uninterested or just way too over the top while other characters just sounded like they were always confused. The music in Bravely Default though is fantastic. The battle music is great and each character even has a special song that plays when they do a Special Attack that I always looked forward to hearing. As a JRPG you will also spend a good deal of time on the overworld travelling around and I even found that music to be quite catchy as well. The soundtrack is a real treat and you have the option of turning of any other audio - such as dialogue.

The story starts out real boring but it gets a lot more interesting during the second half of the game. Surprisingly though, the second half of the game is absolutely terrible to play through. At the risk of spoiling anything I’ll just say that you end up having to repeat a lot of tasks over and over and over and over….It’s incredible how tedious and tiresome the back half of this game gets. I was extremely shocked at how bad I found it. It’s worth remembering though that you easily have a thirty hour chunk of game to play through before getting to this dump. That’s a lot of game. The ending is also quite good as well and the final boss has an incredibly interesting story significance that not only helps alleviate the annoyance you just went through but utilizes some of the 3DS system’s features in very interesting ways. I feel like the length of time you will have fun is easily worth the price for this game despite having such a major, major drop in quality halfway through.

Along with this I didn’t find the 3D feature to be very good in Bravely Default but the StreetPass function was nice. At the beginning of the game your home town gets destroyed and you decide to rebuild it throughout your adventure. Players you StreetPass with will join your town and can be put to work repairing shops. One repair might take a single player ten hours (of real world time in or out of sleep mode) to complete but two players can do it in five. The more people you StreetPass with, the faster you can rebuild your town and unlock better items and equipment for use in the main campaign. However, players can also send unique enemies into your town that you can choose to battle or ignore. These enemies will have special traits and can unlock specific items for you. The StreetPass options are short and fun ways to unlock better equipment for the main game.

Along with that, players you StreetPass with can send strong attacks to your party for use in combat. Much like how a summoner brings forth a strong beast to attack for you. These moves can only be used once but if the players on your friend’s list update their data often you can get their attacks more frequently. You can also Net Invite random players from the internet to gain even more attacks to use during combat. A great idea in case your friend’s list is small or not playing through Bravely Default while you are. You can also connect your team with specific friends through Abilink which allows that specific character to use any of the abilities your friend has unlock. This is a great addition since it allows you to use some cool moves without having to do more grinding than you might like. It’s a nice addition that can really help you get out of tough battles.

Bravely Default is a weird game with hard swings between really great and completely unbearable. I have never seen a more tedious and annoying second half to a game before that delivered such a fun and engaging start. Apart from that though you are still going to get a good length of engaging content. The battle system sounds and starts off confusing but with enough dedication you will find it to be incredibly engaging and very deep. The amount of strategy you can put into how your team works in fantastic. Bravely Default is a fun game with a lot to do in it, it’s definitely worth the time of any JRPG fan.