Bravely Second: End Layer (3DS): Grinding down.

When this first one came out, I quite literally dove into buying a new handheld to try it because I knew I had some long flights and a convention to spend time with it. In my review I had more than my share of nitpicks but ultimately I left it saying that I hoped that this would be come a franchise and hoped that this would have a nice linage behind it.

Well sure enough this series did get a sequel in April of 2016. And while I was enjoying it, I eventually set it down and moved on to other games. But after working through my pile I did go back to grind out and finish. So while the game has been out for a while, I got my thoughts on it now. 

BRAVELY SECOND: END LAYER (3DS)

Bravely Second picks up two and half years after the events of the first game. Agnes for her work as a crystal vestal has become a Pope in the crystal orthodoxy and is currently brokering a peace treaty with Braev Lee, the duke of Eternia. Just as they are about to sign the accords, they are interrupted by Kaiser Oblivion.

The attack is devastating and Agnes is taken hostage and brought to the Kaiser's floating sky fortress. Yew Geneolgia is the leader of Agnes personal security detail, the Crystalgard (and our primary protagonist for this game), and looks to rally his allies and the remaining orthodoxy forces to try to take the fight to the skyhold and bring Agnes back.

The game starts pretty much in battle, which is a great way to get JRPGs going

Obviously, the story of Bravely Second is more complex than that but after we pass where I've mentioned we get into spoiler territory very quickly. I will say that this time around the story is a bit more involved and fleshed out and the previous iteration. Bravely Default was by no means a simple story line but its basis was you need to restore the 4 crystals, and if you played the previous title then you know you did that a lot.

Bravely Second follows a more traditional damsel in distress trope where Yew rallies heroes to give pursuit to a new threat. And along that path there are twists and turns, old faces and new appear along the way. It does make you replay certain segments like the last one did which is something I still found annoying, but not the same amount of times so I won't ding it too hard for that.

This is probably going to end up being a shorter review than my usual shtick because this game is a pretty stone for stone copy of the original Bravely Default, so I would basically be repeating a lot of what I said in my previous review. Much like I said before, the Bravely series is basically a classic Final Fantasy JRPG in all but name: A 60+ hour fantasy adventure with turn based combat, random encounters and exceptional music. Since this is a direct sequel, many of the characters, enemies, and bosses return to reprise their roles.

Agnes is not a primary party member this time, but she is a relevant part of the story.

But it wouldn't be a sequel if they didn't add something new to switch up the palette, so with a new set of characters naturally we get a new set of bosses. And with new bosses we get a new set of job classes to use (called Asterisks in game). Twelve new jobs in all which gives you a pretty mind bending amount of variety to what your party can do. Some of them are pretty straight forward which just allow you to plow with damaging abilities, some of them are a bit more bizarre like the Patissier which requires using items to use the special abilities. Then you get some that make old ones irrelevant like the Bishop, which basically can do everything the White Mage does but to the whole party making it vastly superior.

What I always loved about how they implement the job system in this one is you have the ability to really play around with what skills you have to min/max your characters abilities. In the late game I was basically combo the right sets of jobs and abilities to make a very damaging spell attack all the enemies up to 4 times in a row and sometimes cast twice in a single turn, basically allowing me to just rain down offense in the returning Brave/Default system. Or you could go the classic route like I did in the first game and equip a ninja with as many weapons as they can hold and charge 4 attacks in a row. There are lots of viable ways to play.

Generally the combat system hasn't changed from the previous game, but the Brave Points from the old game are now Sleep Points which are used to trigger the Bravely Second ability. What this does is expends one of these point to allow one of your characters to have a free turn to use up to 4 abilities. You have to have the available turns to spend to do them still, but the benefit is that the damage limiters are removed, so if properly set up, you can unload with an attack that can reach the millions in damage. SP however can only be charged up when you 3DS is in sleep mode, so use them sparingly or you have to spend real money to buy SP drinks. Honestly I almost never needed to use this sans one story moment.

Outside of that, really there isn't a lot of change between the two games on a mechanical level. It uses the same world map, a lot of the same dungeons that appeared in the previous game, you fight a lot of the same bosses and monsters. The "build a town" with street pass mechanic returns more or less the same way (although you can fight optional bosses from other players this time around). You could say that this game basically is more of an extension or an epilogue to Bravely Default than it is a true sequel.

Bravely Second's soundtrack is pretty good as well on top of being fully voice acted. There are lots of little cutscenes and character interactions that help flesh out the story and almost all of them were fun to listen to. The only downfall to the music is that my favorite tracks that played in this one were just songs from the first game.

While all of the characters from the previous game make a return in some fashion in Bravely Second, many of them take a back seat to new protagonists Yew and Magnolia arch. The two major plots basically revolve around these two characters: Yew's mission to rescue Agnes, and Magnolia's mission to save the Moon and defeat the massive monsters (Baals) currently attacking the planet. Basically Ringabel is the only character we kinda lose between games and good riddance. I hate the amnesiac trope.

But whats nice is that even though the old characters return, it focuses on the new characters story with the returning characters as more of a supplement. I like this better because this is what allows the universe to expand and become more interesting. The Atelier games are excellent at this because when an old character drops in, They feel like a welcome Easter egg, and doesn't affect how I feel about them from the previous game.

I think there was another controversy about censoring the girls costumes again,
Honesty guys, if a little cleavage on 3DS pixels being taken away ruins your
experience of the game? You might be picking the wrong hill to die on.

What I didn't like is the flippin' tedium that the Bravely series has now become known for. If you are truly going to play this game in its full capacity, you are expected to grind all your characters up to the max level, and go through and max out all of their job classes if you want to have the right set of abilities to really go up against the tougher bosses in the game. And sorry, even with the fast forwarding mechanics grinding is still grinding. And grinding is boring. It's the problem I always have in the Disgaea games. If you are making a boss so overpowered that its going to take me 100+ hours of grind to stand a chance, I will sooner just not do it.

Which ultimately brings me to the biggest problem that I had in Bravely Second: the game was just too easy to put down and stop playing. As you can see from the date I listed in the intro, I basically played through this game over the course of two years. I would reach a point where I didn't want to waste time grinding so I could fight and had other games to play, so I would set the DS down and literally forget about the game for months on end. That says to me the story wasn't compelling enough to keep me bolted down with the game.

When raining down with 4 meteors on one turn rips baddies a sunder. But you really
need to use the right skills, or Magic can be some of the weakest attacks in the game.

I will say that the grinding aid features such as fast-forwarding the battles and being able to turn off all the random encounters makes a welcome return and honestly I don't know why every JRPG doesn't do this. I suppose it does make final dungeons that much easier, but it also takes out the path of attrition its supposed to be for the climatic final battle. Honestly, if I am grinded out to max level, I turn off random battles and never look back.

The other thing I could talk about is how the ending of the game played out. There really is no way to explain it without spoiling it to a degree, but it does the same kinda thing Undertale did when it played around with the medium and actually addresses the player and not the characters. Technically, if you go by release dates Bravely Second did it first, but only by a few months so they were in the same dev cycle, but I will say Undertale did it better. Both great though, I love how games are starting to mess with the medium to tell their story.

Edea Lee is still best girl. Love her to death.

I did ultimately like Bravely Second but the problem between the two iterations is that Bravely Default was a fresh breath of a new IP done to homage the classic style JRPG. Bravely Second is just more of Default. As said above, it's essentially a long epilogue. They are not going be caught in the Final Fantasy catch 22: Do you change things to try to make it feel new? Or do you stick with the formula and put out a samey release? They honestly can't win either way they go with it.

That being said. I'm not unhappy with my purchase of Bravely Second. It is what it is, more of this franchise. If they make a third one I'll be getting it. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the series end here. Who knows, maybe they'll make a fancy new one for the Switch?

Lol, Baal Buster. Best job class ever.