Harpin on: Bravely Default Demo

I have to admit, I'm an RPG girl. Why else would you see me play MMOs and Final Fantasy all the time? I've been through all the horrible aspects of grinding, changing my job classes just so I can pass a certain boss, getting enough gold from sidequests to buy the best weapons available, and beatting them all in a week's  time and then some. I'm looking at you, Persona 4: Golden.

 So when I started playing the demo yesterday, I got hyped as hell. Bravely Default is essentially the lovechild between FF3 and FF5, where you can freely change your job classes, have multiple abilities, and hit multiple times without penalty. Of course, it comes with its own twists: Defending (or Defaulting on your turn) stockpiles Brave Points, which are essentially points you use to act. You can have up to 3 so you can attack 4 times. (You can no longer act when your BP is in the negatives, but you always recover 1 BP after a turn.) Defend when you can't do shit, hammer down on enemies by using Brave to attack more than once. There's a catch, though: Enemies can do the same thing.

I can't say there's a story to the demo, as all it has are quests from villagers. Fetch quests, enemy defeating quests, yadda yadda. Job Levels are also capped at lvl 4. Sucks, but its a demo, right? And there are a ton of classes to use, so you can mix and match whatever abilities and support abilities you want to make your party truly unique and fit your playstyle. Mine, right now, happens to be a Swordmaster, a Performer, a Ninja (DUAL WEILDIN SPEARS, DON'T ASK HOW), and a Red Mage.

Graphics are stunning, there's a fairy which reminds me of a certain fairy from Dragon Quest IX (STELLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA), there's enough to do to keep you on your toes, you can build up a town to get better items and equipment (and use streetpass to get more villagers to help build it up faster), etc. etc. The more you do, the more item packages you get, and who doesn't like free items? (If you say "no", I think you're in denial. I saw you take free ice cream samples at the store the other day!)

However, with all good things come a catch. As an JRPG, it suffers from the same problem all JRPGs do:  GRINDING. Grinding is essential for levels and money and JP. You will be doing a lot of it. To lessen the pain of it, you can fast forward through the action-y sections of them using the control pad. You can also pause them using the control pad, if you are desperate to get the perfect screenshot of a white mage taking out a flying demon.

Second, there are enemies that can and will multiply, given the chance. Those without a proper strategy will get promptly stuck in a neverending loop of scorpions and mushrooms, which can get really annoying, really fast. I tend to stockpile on BP on everybody, then go all out, but not everybody would like to do that.

Third...the demo is not a full representation of the full game. Not even close. Hell, the entire scenario, aside from building up a town in the meantime, is not going to be in the full game. Certain items, workers from your town, and friend summons(oh yeah forgot to mention that) will transfer into the full game. Levels, job levels, and other things will not, probably because what fun is a game when you're already overleveled  from the demo?

Now, Friend Summons. If you have a friend registered and you streetpass them, their characters can be summoned in game for one extra BP in battle. They'll be using the most powerful move they set and that means things will die. Hard. I can see how this will be abused (can you imagine? A measly lvl 1 Tir summoning a lvl 99 Agnes that uses the equivalent of Ultima? fucking OP ), but what can ya do? Internet options will be added into the full game, which means that I will promptly ask  Gooper to give me his Sarah powers so I can fucking heal everybody with Curaga without spending any MP kthx. (To those people who don't know of Gooper Blooper and read my blog, he's a good friend of mine who also has a fondness for Final Fantasy and has a happy white mage named Sarah in most of his stories. go look for his blog, he write good)

I highly recommend anyone with some spare time or enough sanity to bear with the flaws of a JRPG to pick up Bravely Default's demo from the eShop, and/or eagerly await the actual game, to be released on February 7th, 2014.

To end this, I must ask you call to go look up the Male Performers of the game and look at how much swagger they give off. Those shaaades.