Cao Cao
CAGiversary!
Bravely Default (Based on the Bravely Default: For the Sequel re-release)
US: February 7th, 2014
EU: December 6th, 2013
Amazon
Standard Edition - $39.99
Collector's Edition - $49.99
Launch Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnWbboMkA-g
US Collector's Edition
They've also announced the Collector's Edition releasing the same day, which contains an Art Book, Soundtrack CD, and 34 AR Cards.
The European CE is pretty much the same, except it also includes an statue/figure of Agnes.
What is Bravely Default: Flying Fairy and Bravely Default For the Sequel?
Bravely Default Flying Fairy is a turn-based RPG that was released in Japan on October 11th, 2012, published by Square-Enix and developed by Silicon Studios (3D Dot Game Heroes). Its localization was confirmed back in March, with a 2014 release window and Nintendo publishing I believe. Import impressions are tough to find but mostly positive, as Japanator's Elliot Gay posted a detailed glowing review of it (much of the info in this OP comes from this review).
A few months ago, Square-Enix announced an enhanced re-release titled "Bravely Default For the Sequel," releasing in Japan on December 5th, 2013. The close proximity to the Western release led some to theorize that this re-release would be the basis for the Western release, a point that was strongly bolstered when it was revealed that two of the enhancements were dual-audio (En/Jp) and a multi-language (Jp/En/Fr/It/De/Sp) script. It was finally confirmed on Twitter that the West would indeed be receiving the improved "For the Sequel" version instead of the original, and that the Dual-audio option would still be there. The US release date was finally confirmed at the 11/13 Nintendo Direct.
The beginning of the story in Bravely Default sounds like a visit to a TVTropes page. The land is in danger, and you start off as Agnes, a Crystal Priestess who is journeying to figure out why the wind and ocean are messed up, accompanied by the fairy Airy. Along the way, Agnes and Airy run into Tiz (a young man whose hometown was recently destroyed), Ringabel (an amnesiac with a mysterious journal), and Edea (an Ex-Soldier from the invading Eternian Empire). Although it seems like a generic setting in the beginning, the story apparently goes into some interesting and unexpected directions, according to the import impressions.
Bravely Default has a few major systems to help differentiate itself from other RPGs: the Brave/Default System, a Job system, and some wireless features.
Brave/Default System
Yes, the silly title of this game is actually based on its core system. As I said earlier, the combat is turn-based, and this system pertains to those turns. During battle, you have the Brave command, which allows you to add up to three extra turns to your current one. "Great," you're thinking, "with four turns in a row, I can charge through anything that stands in my way!" Wrong. You see, Brave uses up Brave Points (BP), of which you start the battle with 0. If you use the Brave option then, you'd have -1, -2, or -3 BP depending on how many times you used it. When you have negative BP, your character enters an exhausted state, unable to act until your BP recovers to 0. Braving yourself into exhaustion is something you only want to use when you deliver the final blow, or when you want to pull off a last-ditch effort.
So how do you raise your BP?
The answer lies in the Default command, which essentially lets you defend and change your current turn into a BP. Up to 3 BP can be stored at once, once again giving you four turns in a row when you Brave. Only this time, there's no penalty as long as you don't go into negatives. Here's a small text flow chart illustrating a 1v1 battle situation:
Default (1BP) -> Enemy Attacks -> Default (2BP) -> Enemy Attacks -> Brave x2: Heal, Attack, Firaga
Ah yes, one more thing: Be aware that enemies can Default and Brave too.
Job System
The Job system in this game is pretty much the Job system from Final Fantasy V. If you've played FFV before, then you'll know what to expect, as it still involves building up your skills in one Job to use in others.
Essentially, each character has a Primary Job and a Secondary Job, both of which you can freely change. There is a slight twist to this set-up: Support Abilities (Passive skills; e.g. auto-heal, MP Leech, Weapon Mastery, etc.), which are equipped in a separate menu. When you win a battle, you gain some Job Points for the Primary Job, allowing it to eventually level up and unlock new abilities. When you equip a Secondary Job, you gain access to that job's unlocked skills to use in tandem with your Primary Job, though the Secondary Job does not gain Job Points. If you want to know more, Gamers Geographic and Siliconera have good descriptions of the Job system and some of the jobs.
There are 24 Jobs available, ranging from the standard FF fare (Knight, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Thief) to somewhat newer jobs (Superstar, Swordmaster, Pirate, Vampire), with a bunch of them locked behind optional boss battles where you're fighting for the Job's Asterisk (mini-crystal).
Wireless/Other Features
The online functionality is fairly basic. If any of the people on your Friends List owns Bravely Default, you can call in their character during battle to perform one attack. Likewise, you can "Record" your one attack and submit it to the web so all your friends can use it.
The Streetpass functionality is more complex. As I mentioned earlier, a character's hometown is destroyed, and it's up to you to (optionally) rebuild it. The game gives you one villager to start off with, and you get more villagers through Streetpassing. You can build shops, upgrade said shops, and have them craft free items for you. These tasks take real time to complete, and more villagers means that less time is needed to finish tasks.
Other features:
- AR card support
- Music orchestrated by Revo
- Multiple Endings
So what are the differences between the original and For the Sequel?
According to the FTS website, there were a total of 100 improvements made to Bravely Default (Siliconera has more details):
- Dual-audio voice tracks (Japanese/English)
- Multiple text languages (Japanese/English/French/Italian/German/Spanish)
- 3 save slots (The original only had 1)
- Improved UI
- Battle Speed (Faster fast-forward and Auto-Battle option)
- Battle enhancements from the currently-in-development sequel.
- Event Viewer
- Japanese players will be able to transfer save data from the original to For the Sequel.
- Difficulty settings (Easy, Medium, Hard)
- A slider that allows you to change the Encounter rate
- Updated town artwork; towns are more colorful and detailed (Original Upper-right, FTS Lower-left).
- The Party Chat function was improved, with more conversations between party members.
- Chapters 7 and 8 have been reworked.
- Bonus mega bosses, three monsters from Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light: Lucifer, Mammon, and Beelzebub. To fight them, just keep tapping the ominous Black Dragon that randomly appears on the map screen after some sort of wireless communication (Not sure if its affected by both Wi-Fi and Streetpass, or just Streetpass). Fourth "nemesis" revealed: Asmodeus.
- Bravely Second allows players to stop time during battle to squeeze in more attacks. It's being described as a "trump card" that uses a form of SP collected by putting the 3DS into Sleep Mode for a period of time. There is a microtransaction, an "SP Drink" DLC item that instantly replinishes Bravely Second's SP, but like I said, this is more of a trump card, to make the game easier, rather than a necessary system.
And many more (for now)... At the Famitsu TGS event, they revealed the list of fan feedback that they used to develop FTS. Here's a translation, with the things that they didn't use crossed out.
Media
The first footage of For the Sequel was revealed at the Famitsu TGS event, a 33 minute playthrough, starting off with comparisons between the Original and FTS (Battle Scene: Left-Original Right-FTS, Town/Menu Scene: Left-FTS Right-Original), and ending with footage of the other languages.
The first trailer from Europe, with Japanese voices and English subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TfwL79euvg
The first trailer with English voices, but the audio mixing seems off compared to the others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MiF1IMAsEc
Keep in mind that since BDFTS was announced more recently, most of this media is related to the original Bravely Default.
Zedamex has a 30 minute gameplay video up which shows many of the systems in action without being too spoilery, check it out:
Japanator Import Review
1UP Import Preview
GameSpot Import Preview
US: February 7th, 2014
EU: December 6th, 2013
Amazon
Standard Edition - $39.99
Collector's Edition - $49.99
Launch Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnWbboMkA-g
US Collector's Edition
They've also announced the Collector's Edition releasing the same day, which contains an Art Book, Soundtrack CD, and 34 AR Cards.
The European CE is pretty much the same, except it also includes an statue/figure of Agnes.
What is Bravely Default: Flying Fairy and Bravely Default For the Sequel?
Bravely Default Flying Fairy is a turn-based RPG that was released in Japan on October 11th, 2012, published by Square-Enix and developed by Silicon Studios (3D Dot Game Heroes). Its localization was confirmed back in March, with a 2014 release window and Nintendo publishing I believe. Import impressions are tough to find but mostly positive, as Japanator's Elliot Gay posted a detailed glowing review of it (much of the info in this OP comes from this review).
A few months ago, Square-Enix announced an enhanced re-release titled "Bravely Default For the Sequel," releasing in Japan on December 5th, 2013. The close proximity to the Western release led some to theorize that this re-release would be the basis for the Western release, a point that was strongly bolstered when it was revealed that two of the enhancements were dual-audio (En/Jp) and a multi-language (Jp/En/Fr/It/De/Sp) script. It was finally confirmed on Twitter that the West would indeed be receiving the improved "For the Sequel" version instead of the original, and that the Dual-audio option would still be there. The US release date was finally confirmed at the 11/13 Nintendo Direct.
The beginning of the story in Bravely Default sounds like a visit to a TVTropes page. The land is in danger, and you start off as Agnes, a Crystal Priestess who is journeying to figure out why the wind and ocean are messed up, accompanied by the fairy Airy. Along the way, Agnes and Airy run into Tiz (a young man whose hometown was recently destroyed), Ringabel (an amnesiac with a mysterious journal), and Edea (an Ex-Soldier from the invading Eternian Empire). Although it seems like a generic setting in the beginning, the story apparently goes into some interesting and unexpected directions, according to the import impressions.
Bravely Default has a few major systems to help differentiate itself from other RPGs: the Brave/Default System, a Job system, and some wireless features.
Brave/Default System
Yes, the silly title of this game is actually based on its core system. As I said earlier, the combat is turn-based, and this system pertains to those turns. During battle, you have the Brave command, which allows you to add up to three extra turns to your current one. "Great," you're thinking, "with four turns in a row, I can charge through anything that stands in my way!" Wrong. You see, Brave uses up Brave Points (BP), of which you start the battle with 0. If you use the Brave option then, you'd have -1, -2, or -3 BP depending on how many times you used it. When you have negative BP, your character enters an exhausted state, unable to act until your BP recovers to 0. Braving yourself into exhaustion is something you only want to use when you deliver the final blow, or when you want to pull off a last-ditch effort.
So how do you raise your BP?
The answer lies in the Default command, which essentially lets you defend and change your current turn into a BP. Up to 3 BP can be stored at once, once again giving you four turns in a row when you Brave. Only this time, there's no penalty as long as you don't go into negatives. Here's a small text flow chart illustrating a 1v1 battle situation:
Default (1BP) -> Enemy Attacks -> Default (2BP) -> Enemy Attacks -> Brave x2: Heal, Attack, Firaga
Ah yes, one more thing: Be aware that enemies can Default and Brave too.
Job System
The Job system in this game is pretty much the Job system from Final Fantasy V. If you've played FFV before, then you'll know what to expect, as it still involves building up your skills in one Job to use in others.
Essentially, each character has a Primary Job and a Secondary Job, both of which you can freely change. There is a slight twist to this set-up: Support Abilities (Passive skills; e.g. auto-heal, MP Leech, Weapon Mastery, etc.), which are equipped in a separate menu. When you win a battle, you gain some Job Points for the Primary Job, allowing it to eventually level up and unlock new abilities. When you equip a Secondary Job, you gain access to that job's unlocked skills to use in tandem with your Primary Job, though the Secondary Job does not gain Job Points. If you want to know more, Gamers Geographic and Siliconera have good descriptions of the Job system and some of the jobs.
There are 24 Jobs available, ranging from the standard FF fare (Knight, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Thief) to somewhat newer jobs (Superstar, Swordmaster, Pirate, Vampire), with a bunch of them locked behind optional boss battles where you're fighting for the Job's Asterisk (mini-crystal).
Wireless/Other Features
The online functionality is fairly basic. If any of the people on your Friends List owns Bravely Default, you can call in their character during battle to perform one attack. Likewise, you can "Record" your one attack and submit it to the web so all your friends can use it.
The Streetpass functionality is more complex. As I mentioned earlier, a character's hometown is destroyed, and it's up to you to (optionally) rebuild it. The game gives you one villager to start off with, and you get more villagers through Streetpassing. You can build shops, upgrade said shops, and have them craft free items for you. These tasks take real time to complete, and more villagers means that less time is needed to finish tasks.
Other features:
- AR card support
- Music orchestrated by Revo
- Multiple Endings
So what are the differences between the original and For the Sequel?
According to the FTS website, there were a total of 100 improvements made to Bravely Default (Siliconera has more details):
- Dual-audio voice tracks (Japanese/English)
- Multiple text languages (Japanese/English/French/Italian/German/Spanish)
- 3 save slots (The original only had 1)
- Improved UI
- Battle Speed (Faster fast-forward and Auto-Battle option)
- Battle enhancements from the currently-in-development sequel.
- Event Viewer
- Japanese players will be able to transfer save data from the original to For the Sequel.
- Difficulty settings (Easy, Medium, Hard)
- A slider that allows you to change the Encounter rate
- Updated town artwork; towns are more colorful and detailed (Original Upper-right, FTS Lower-left).
- The Party Chat function was improved, with more conversations between party members.
- Chapters 7 and 8 have been reworked.
- Bonus mega bosses, three monsters from Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light: Lucifer, Mammon, and Beelzebub. To fight them, just keep tapping the ominous Black Dragon that randomly appears on the map screen after some sort of wireless communication (Not sure if its affected by both Wi-Fi and Streetpass, or just Streetpass). Fourth "nemesis" revealed: Asmodeus.
- Bravely Second allows players to stop time during battle to squeeze in more attacks. It's being described as a "trump card" that uses a form of SP collected by putting the 3DS into Sleep Mode for a period of time. There is a microtransaction, an "SP Drink" DLC item that instantly replinishes Bravely Second's SP, but like I said, this is more of a trump card, to make the game easier, rather than a necessary system.
And many more (for now)... At the Famitsu TGS event, they revealed the list of fan feedback that they used to develop FTS. Here's a translation, with the things that they didn't use crossed out.
Media
The first footage of For the Sequel was revealed at the Famitsu TGS event, a 33 minute playthrough, starting off with comparisons between the Original and FTS (Battle Scene: Left-Original Right-FTS, Town/Menu Scene: Left-FTS Right-Original), and ending with footage of the other languages.
The first trailer from Europe, with Japanese voices and English subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TfwL79euvg
The first trailer with English voices, but the audio mixing seems off compared to the others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MiF1IMAsEc
Keep in mind that since BDFTS was announced more recently, most of this media is related to the original Bravely Default.
Zedamex has a 30 minute gameplay video up which shows many of the systems in action without being too spoilery, check it out:
Japanator Import Review
1UP Import Preview
GameSpot Import Preview
Last edited by a moderator:
, my body is really ready now. Here I thought this was just a small intro not a decent sized intro to the game.
