Bravely Default 2 is odd to talk about without spoilers, because by and large I will be praising this game for being good, but there is no getting around the last stretch of the game quickly drops in quality in terms of both the story and gameplay, but I can't discuss why without getting fairly detailed on the spoilers. So at one point of the review, what I will do is wrap up the spoiler-free portion and then give my general summary of the game, and I will probably do a separate post going into the specifics of why the ending became a drag. I'll talk about it as generally as I can here though.
That said, after washing up on shore after a shipwreck, a Sailor (Who I named Kenzo) becomes chosen by the wind crystal and is saved by the princess of a fallen kingdom. Lending her a hand in her quest, they begin their search to recover the elemental crystals and prevent The Night Nexus from returning and destroying the world. The fairly basic premise for an RPG, but much like the first Bravely Default this game knows how to utilize its archetypes and cliches well enough to not feel derivative, despite on the surface not doing anything new.
Where the game shines in terms of story is the individual chapter stories, the game not being afraid to have some dark themes and tones, and just how likable the characters are. Sure, Elvis may be a pretty standard archetype of a smart but carefree kind of guy, but he has great chemistry with the group and regularly keeps you chuckling. The game also doesn't try to make his faults seem like a non-issue, you get the impression Elvis wouldn't be able to make it nearly this far if he didn't have these other characters to help cover his slack. Pretty much everyone feels like they belong in this little group and they are all pretty likable. A fun group dynamic can do a lot to help carry a narrative even if the actual story is a bit lacking.
On a whole though, Bravely Default 2 does keep a good narrative going. Each area you visit is in some way corrupted by someone misusing the power of the crystal, and assuming power by making use of an Asterik that has been given to them by a mysterious woman. Asterisks grant people powerful job classes and serve as a core mechanic for the game. It's a simple formula, but each area has a fantastic story to follow and some pretty dark themes. The early couple of arcs are a bit more simple, like a corrupt politician trying to assume more power among the chaos. But then you start getting into stories of parents trying to cope with the loss of their child and the ways the villain will manipulate their emotions to their end, or a rendition of the Salem Witch Trials in a later chapter that is genuinely chilling. The game deals with a lot of themes of how easy it can be to pray on the emotions of good people, and it's handled well for most of the game.
I'll keep the rest of this vaguer, but this all grinds to a halt once you hit chapter five. The game just stops feeling dark and seems like it just ran out of interesting things to say. The reveals of the villains and their motives are extremely underwhelming and basic and it just starts feeling like a cliche plot with a lot of really stupid narrative elements that make the cliches start to stand out a lot more at that point in the game.
My discussion of the gameplay is going to follow a similar path. Playing on Hard, I had a lot of fun most of the game playing around with all the different jobs and combinations. You can select your main job and a sub job. You get the main jobs stat base and class skills, then you get also get the sub-jobs action selection, at least all the ones you unlocked by leveling up. Then you have five slots for putting in passive abilities. This gives you a lot of room to play around, which is exactly what you want out of a job class system.
The actual commands in battle are pretty commonplace for RPG's, but what set's the game apart is its use of the original game's system of Brave and Default. Default lets you defend and build up Brave points (As well as other benefits if you have the right abilities, like the Black Mage recovering MP when they default). Brave points, which can be built to 3, have a few different uses. Expend them for extra turns (Up to four), or if you are afraid of enemy counters some abilities cost BP that are generally pretty powerful, and even some passive abilities grant you bonus's for just keeping it stored up. It makes you think about your builds and how it is you want to utilize the BP you stockpile.
While I will say the difficulty of this game is over-exaggerated by some (I saw one review calling one of the chapter 5 bosses one of the hardest bosses in video game history, and that isn't even close to true) the game can offer a good challenge, at least for most parts of the game. There is no getting around once you have a good variety of jobs available to play with, if you have a good amount of experience in RPG's the challenge does plummet. I believe it's around the time I got the Berserker class things started to tend on the easy side, with a few exceptions here and there. And then you get the final Asterik and then things almost start to become laughable. A few optional battles will still require some pretty big brain thinking, but everything else is just trivial because it's such a powerful class.
This makes the battle system do the same as it did with the story. It started great, but suddenly it just feels like a slog in a very short amount of time, and it happens around chapter five just like it does with the story. Mind you, it's still not bad going forward, but it does lose a lot of its oomph around this time.
One thing I do want to bring up is the voice acting in the game is, on a whole, really good. I don't think any performance is a stand-out masterpiece, but by and large, they do a great job. I bring this up because when there is an exception to this rule it's just terrible. Adam and the little painter girl are two of the most unbearable voices I have heard in a game in some time. Adam sounds like a discount Vlad the Impaler with absolutely no emotional range, and the little girl has the worst French accent I can think of in a video game, and it's bad enough to almost distract from a fantastic story arc going on at the time. (Yes, I do play with English Voices, I heard the Japanese clip and she doesn't sound nearly as cringe).
The actual world design is a bit odd the more you think about it, especially when you stop to think about the invasion of Gloria's Kingdom. But it's one of those things that takes a note from older RPGs where the developers decide to try to make the dungeons and world more interesting to play in rather than putting too much worry into how much sense it would make. And in that regard, they do a fine job. Levels are decent enough to traverse, you get to see a lot of really cool-looking scenery, and overall the experience of traversing the world is decent enough.
There is no getting around Bravely Default to being a game that loses a lot of steam in the later chapters, but it's also true that the rest of the game is a blast. Visuals and music are great, there are a lot of really fun stories and characters, and you get exactly what you want out of a Class-based system like this. It is a game with its share of faults, but regardless it's still a lot of fun and worth checking out. It's nice to see there are still a lot of studios out there putting in the effort to make great Turn-Based RPG's still.