This is a review for the FIRST demo which features different gameplay and story from the main game. This is not the FINAL Demo which covers the first chapter of the game.

Last week or so, I played the first Demo of Bravely Default II. Tried to finish it, but it was a bit hard and at some point I decided it's not worth the effort.

I was planning to play the Final Demo as well but by then I was so burned out, so I postponed writing this First Impression/Review until I felt ready.

Bravely Default is a JRPG series by Square Enix that tries to capture the old school feel of the older Final Fantasy titles. The series main feature is the Brave/Default system which adds another layer of strategy on top of the traditional Turn-based Battle System. The series borrows the Job System featured in Final Fantasy III & V. It improves upon it and integrates it with the story.

I saw a Let's Play of the first Bravely Default game years ago. It felt like a different take on Final Fantasy V's story rather than being a new thing. Though the series unique aspects make up for the basic "Save-the-Crystals" story.

A Gorgeous Journey

Bravely Default II art is gorgeous. The characters look cute over the hand-drawn backgrounds. The enemies have just the right balance between realistic colors on stylistic design.

In my playthrough, the only city I encountered is Savalon, the half-submerged city. It has an eastern/middle eastern feel to it. Even with a glance you'll know that the city is supposed to be on a desert and that the water flooding it is unnatural.

I loved the hand-drawn backgrounds and the music there. It has that Asian feel to it, like the music of Aladdin.

The Brave/Default System

The Brave/Default system encourages alternating between Defensive & Offensive strategies. Brave command uses BP for extra actions per turn. Up to four actions could be used in one turn. Default command makes your character skip the turn to take a defensive stance. This stacks up BP.

You let your BP deplete to the negative territory, but you can only make an action per turn if you have more than 0 BP. You can only recover 1 BP each turn which might result in a few action-less turns if you abuse the system

Now, after writing this I realized the good strategy to do. Stacking up turns first, then using them all at once. This is probably why I kept losing. I should've used "Default" more.

The Job System

Another integral system of the game is the Job system. In this Demo there are 5 Jobs: * Freelancer, Monk, Black Mage, White Mage & Vanguard. Each character can have a main and sub Job and each one of them can excel at any combination of Jobs.

The jobs in this Demo can be leveled up in a few battles, and the whole party could max out all the job combinations within a few hours of battling. I'm sure the progression will be slower in both the Final Demo, and the main game, but only time will tell in this regard.

What I Didn't Like?

This might seem strange but for some reason I felt the voices were off. It's normal for dubbed JRPGs to not have good characters/voices synching, but I felt the voice choices themselves are not right... I did get used to them after 2 hours of playing but Elvis voice felt strange for some reason. Though in Elvis case, I think it's intentional, with the accent and all...

This Demo also reminded me that I'm getting numb to the generic JRPG ideas. All characters feel like copies of other characters from games I played before: Gloria is copied from Final Fantasy IX's Garnet. Seth is FFV's Bartz. Adelle is every hyper-active anime girl.

Elvis actually doesn't remind me of anyo- Oh! ...He's Raven from Tales of Vesperia isn't he? I'm currently playing that game so I made the connection.

This is not a criticism of this game/demo. It's just the first time I noticed I'm getting... I believe I won't notice it in the main game because I probably would be invested in the characters because of their story roles. Introduction plays a huge role on how the player perceive characters Game Developers know that!

The Extra Difficult Grind

This first Demo of Bravely Default II has a very high difficulty curve. The Demo says that in the opening & they're not lying! Enemies can beat you no matter your level unless you learn how to use the system. I maxed a job or two per character and I still got crushed by the enemies in the ruins.

The problem was not that I couldn't beat those enemies. It was that a single mistake could make me lose the progress of the the last 5 fights. I didn't find the Save Point of the ruins. After losing many times, I decided that I don't need to finish this demo if I'd play the Final Demo next, so I'm leaving my First Impression here.

What do you think?

• All images are taken by me. Switch Lite's share button.

• This article is cross-posted here Read.cash and on Hive's PeakD.