Five reasons to be HYPED for Bravely Default II

Bravely Default II is coming to the Nintendo Switch next week, so we thought we’d talk about five things that have got us HYPED to play through the epic RPG adventure.

– The unique ‘Brave’ and Default’ system!

What, you just though that the game had a weird name? Nope – the terms ‘Bravely’ and ‘Default’ tie to the game’s combat, with ‘Brave’ seeing players expend Brave Points in order to perform additional actions per turn and ‘Default’ allowing players to hold back a little to accumulate those Brave Points.

It sounds pretty simple there, and sure, it’s easy to get on board with when you’re playing. However, clever use of the system is required if you’re going to want to best Bravely Default II’s most deadly foes, with it adding an extra element of strategy to each encounter where you can spend your Brave Points in order to pick off weakened enemies or instead preserve them for when you find an opening in a boss battle.

Whilst it might seem like using your Brave Points early will give you an advantage in battle as you begin, you may wish you kept them if you find yourself weakened and in need of extra healing or support. Alternatively, you may try saving them up only to find your party vanquished by a foe that would’ve only needed ONE MORE hit to take down. It’s an intense system that plays heavily on ‘risk versus reward’, but it gives player a lot more strategic freedom and adds more excitement to what is otherwise a very traditional turn-based battle system.

– It has a deep and expansive job system!

I’m a sucker for a job system in an RPG, so I’ve got a love for its use in the Bravely Default series. There’s just something mighty satisfying about fine-tuning your party around a specific set of skills, with the player able to constantly change up each character’s role as they unlock new jobs by progressing through the game.

Bravely Default II allows players to equip their characters with both a main job and a sub job, meaning you can get the best of two different roles in order to add an extra degree of flexibility to each character’s skillset. These two jobs can often compliment each other if you want to make your character a specialist in a certain role (such as a magic user or a damage dealer), but they can also be completely different if you want to make a bit of a jack-of-all-trades to help get out of tricky situations in battle.

With roles such as a Freelancer, White Mage, Black Mage, Beastmaster, Monk, Thief and Bard on offer, there’s going to be plenty of ways to customise your heroes as you progress through Bravely Default II’s adventure. I can’t wait to see what skills each different job will bring – I can see myself putting a ton of hours into grinding each job for my party… bliss.

– It’s an all-new RPG to play on the Nintendo Switch!

The Nintendo Switch is slowly becoming one of my favourite platforms to play RPGs on, with its handheld nature making it perfect to plough through some massive adventures or simply grind for experience points when you’ve got a few moments spare here and there. It also brings with it a back catalogue of RPG classics, including the most popular entries in the Final Fantasy series, Xenoblade Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia, Ni No Kuni, and more.

A lot of those titles weren’t brand new RPGs when they hit the platform though, but rather re-releases that a lot of gamers might have already played before. Now I’m not complaining about this because I LOVE re-visiting some of my favourite RPGs, but sometimes it’s nice to have something fresh and new to play. Sure, the likes of Trials of Mana, Ikenfell, or even Paper Mario: The Origami King have scratched an itch, but they never felt like full-blown RPG experiences.

Bravely Default II brings a brand new and undoubtedly epic adventure to the Nintendo Switch for gamers to sink a ton of hours into, with the game coming exclusively to the console. This isn’t something that you’d have played before elsewhere or are enjoying for the second or third time – this is a unique experience that’s HOPEFULLY going to kickstart another year of RPG goodness for the Nintendo Switch.

– You don’t need to play the previous two games!

The Nintendo Switch has been a lot of gamers’ first foray into handheld gaming, so there’s a very good chance that you may have missed out on the first two titles in the Bravely Default series when they hit the 3DS. Worry not, because much like the Final Fantasy series, those Roman numerals don’t mean that you’re playing a direct continuation of the first game – instead, this is an all-new entry in the series with a fresh cast of characters that simply bears the gameplay hallmarks of the titles that came before it.

It makes Bravely Default II a whole lot more accessible to newbies to the series and means that you don’t have to spend potentially over a hundred hours trying to catch up on the previous games in order to ready yourself. You can go into the game fresh and with no experience at all.

If you don’t mind sinking some time into the old games though, I’d certainly recommend it. They’re fantastic RPGs… just not necessary to have played if you want to fully enjoy Bravely Default II.

– You can get a taste of the action RIGHT NOW in the free demo!

You can actually play through a good chunk of Bravely Default II right now, with a demo available on the Nintendo eShop that gives you five-hours of gameplay in the game’s opening chapter. This includes dungeons to battle through, bosses to vanquish, multiple jobs to try out, and a look at some of the impressive environments you’ll get to explore in the main game.

The demo is a lot of fun to get through, though surprisingly challenging – it seems that the full game will certainly test your battling mettle. Unfortunately, progress doesn’t carry over between the demo and the full game when it releases, but it’ll still give you a chance to see how the game plays and learn some of the ins-and-outs of its gameplay mechanics ahead of time.