overdrive's Bravely Default review

I couldn't agree more with this review, especially the bit about RPGs being needless long these days. 20-30 hours is plenty for an RPG. If they want more content, throw in a bunch of post game stuff.

I really liked Bravely Default until I hated it. I don't think any game has ever flipped my opinion so hard. I really enjoy FFF3 and FF5 style job systems, and the system in in BD is phenomenal. I just wish it was in a different game.

One of the things that this game seems to get praise for but I disliked was the ability to turn off random encounters. I did this around the third time going through the bosses, and that was the point where I stopped having fun. Without battles, you're just walking from waypoint to waypoint, skipping the story scenes (because they were terrible), fighting yet another boss. I gave up and subsequently sold the game without any regrets.

Also, it might have just been me, but I found the game had a lot of overtly sexist dialogue for basically no reason. It was enough that the writing felt immature to me.

Or, if you wanted to make the game a bit longer than the prologue and four chapters making up the first run through the world, flesh out those chapters a bit. Add a dungeon or two of each area, add some extra characterization to the job holders (ie: add in some of their traits from those later chapters to their original version), give a couple of them notable subordinates with their own mini-arc. Stuff like that.

I'm still mind-boggled that the best "extend the game" idea they could come up with was "go through the world and fight everyone again...but this time, the job holders are optional and placed in groups...and then do it again and again and again!". I think it only took the fifth chapter before I decided it was time to just rush through the mandatory boss fights and finish things off. And I'm pretty sure I lowered the difficulty to easy, as well, because I just wanted to finish it and needing to devise good strategies wasn't gonna help me do that quickly.

Like you, I enjoyed the FF games with job classes, so for me to turn on this one like I did really surprised me. I figured the combination of job system and classic FF vibe would make this a definite winner for me and that wasn't the case.