Monday, January 6, 2014

Bravely Default Demo Impressions

Hello guys.
So Square Enix released a game called Bravely Default: Flying Fairy some time ago and the U.S. finally got it as a demo a few days back. (Jan. 2 to be exact).

I was purely a skeptic when the game came out. Most RPGs have lost their shine for me and I've recently sold a dozen or so of them back to GameStop.
Now I've watched a bunch of walkthroughs and trailers with this game and the more I watched, the more skeptical I got. It seemed too typical of an RPG. Same old save the world hosh posh with a team of four who just happens to be able to do it. Don't get me wrong, I used to love those type of scenarios when I was in high school, but as I got older, my tastes seemed to have become more defined and constricted to certain genres. Now the most RPG I can seem to get is Pokemon and Fire Emblem(Fire Emblem Awakening was a beautiful game that was a crowning achievement in RPG for me), and the rest of my gaming library is sadly/proudly, Harvest Moon (with a couple oddballs here and there like Luminous Arc, Animal Crossing, Persona and Golden Sun/Final Fantasy X for nostalgia sake).
But I'm curious, and I'm greedy and I wanted my nitty gritty hands on a new game since I'm too poor to afford a Wii U or a PS3/4 right now. So I downloaded the demo and took it for a whirl.

The game was not amazing. I'll say it. It's still the same old hosh posh that I had feared it would be. The demo itself had absolutely nothing to do with the actual game storyline and plot and it was just an experimentation with the game's various mechanics and gameplay for future or prospective buyers. But it did it's job and I'm 100% sure I want to buy it. So sure that the next day, I hopped onto my white Honda Civic named Missy and drove her to Gamestop to order not just the game but the collector's edition with the art book (the art is amazing for this game even though the graphics in-game is meh).

Why?

Simple. The game was fun. It had what I liked about RPG that is evident in the games I like, namely Harvest Moon and Persona. I'll admit, at first the game was really confusing and after the first ten minutes, I wanted to chuck my system out the window in frustration and boredom. Why does my avatar run so slow, why is the game's graphic so smudgy for 3DS? Why why why why why?!?!?

Here are the four main heroes of this story. 

In game graphics. 

But I was stubborn and kept at it. It was a good thing too because now I'm 50 some dollars poorer and a new game (that's coming) richer. For a gamer, that's a good thing!
At first, when I stepped out of the town to do the first random meaningless quest that the villager gives you, I died. I went too far, up to the cave up in the north-west, and the monsters there killed me in one go. I watched my little big hipped heroes get beaten up and sadly pile into unconsciousness on top of one another.

But after finding out the games invisible "Don't go here, you'll die" boundaries the hard way, I started training up my little guys and that was when I realized the game was fun. At first, I had no idea what to do with the Brave and Default options. It took me about 5 minutes to tinker around with it and figure out what was going on. Once I mastered the basics, I realized that this game made one of the most tedious things about RPGs (grinding, or leveling up) easy to do. You just select your actions, brave or default it, and then let it rip. You can just run around and watch your characters do all the previously set fighting techniques set up by you (in auto mode. I used auto mode a lot). It was so easy. No more repeatedly pushing attack. They did that for you. If you want to change the strategy, just opt out of auto mode with a push of a button.

On top of the that, getting the jobs new skills and playing around with them was incredibly fulfilling as well. I'll admit, I'm the kind of gamer that likes organizing, planning, and collecting, I mean you can tell from the games that I like! This game had that. You could collect spells, level up your characters, level up their jobs, and switch around to level up some more all the while collecting new skills and items to equip. It was absolutely amazing! The demo only had a select handful of jobs offered, but the the actual game has so much more. That made it an absolute necessity for me to get the game. Before I knew it, I had spent nearly two hours with the demo alone and that was when I decided I should be saving my precious game-hours for the actual game and not a 30 tries demo.

^^^ The different outfits with different jobs.

I really hope the game works. I'm personally very excited for the easy way to level and the nifty jobs that are available for this game. What did you guys think when playing the demo? Did it inspire you to buy the game?

Always Guree

P.S. Here is why I think the art is amazing for this game.












1 comment:

  1. Bravely Default is a best game which is released on 7th February. I gave the pre-ordered of this game and when i have played this. I am addicted to this game. This is the best game for me.

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