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Bravely Default 2 Demo Discussion


vanguard333
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So, Square Enix released a demo for Bravely Default 2, and they plan to hear feedback "in the near future". 

If you've played the demo, what did you think of it?

 

EDIT: It's here! The survey is finally available: https://form.square-enix.com/a.p/196

If anyone's having trouble with the survey, there is a 300-character limit for each text box, so keep your answers fairly short. 

Edited by vanguard333
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1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

It was surprisingly hard. I didn't imagine cute bunny enemies ever being able to nearly oneshot my party members. 

The demo did say it was set to a higher difficulty to encourage people to experiment from the get-go, which was a problem for me, since I like to max out the freelancer class before moving on to the other classes. That made a lot of enemies harder than they would've been otherwise. 

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Other than the difficulty being way too f***ing high for me, thus preventing me from getting very far, I did love what I saw. Hope the full game can live up to the very positive first impression. Though it does seem like there is some recycling going on in terms of the four new main characters. While they are all pretty great from what I saw, they do feel somewhat like retreads of the original four, conceptually.
Seth = Tiz
Gloria = Agnès
Adele = Edea
Elvis (lol) = Ringabel
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you, as the actual backgrounds and descriptions are different, so their development will most likely be different, as well.

I'll definitely get this game once it releases. My mind is made up on at least that much.

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The difficulty gave me the kick to not play too passively, at least the game seems to be balanced around that. I'm not a big fan of the way the speed stat works, allowing fast characters to act multiple times before a slow one. I feel like classes like Vanguard are going to fall off because of that. Maybe some of the drop rates can be fixed, because I got 2 of the quest reward item you're given for the snake venom quest from regular monsters before I was able to complete the quest.

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5 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Other than the difficulty being way too f***ing high for me, thus preventing me from getting very far, I did love what I saw. Hope the full game can live up to the very positive first impression. Though it does seem like there is some recycling going on in terms of the four new main characters. While they are all pretty great from what I saw, they do feel somewhat like retreads of the original four, conceptually.
Seth = Tiz
Gloria = Agnès
Adele = Edea
Elvis (lol) = Ringabel
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you, as the actual backgrounds and descriptions are different, so their development will most likely be different, as well.

I noticed that too, even though I never actually played the first Bravely Default game. To me, it just seemed like Fire Emblem archetypes: the basic role's the same, but the characters themselves are different.

The game is significantly easier once you get more abilities in the different classes and obtain certain items. The wasp enemies were a nightmare for me until I found an earth-element axe in a treasure chest and gave that to Seth. 

 

36 minutes ago, LoneStar said:

The difficulty gave me the kick to not play too passively, at least the game seems to be balanced around that. I'm not a big fan of the way the speed stat works, allowing fast characters to act multiple times before a slow one. I feel like classes like Vanguard are going to fall off because of that. Maybe some of the drop rates can be fixed, because I got 2 of the quest reward item you're given for the snake venom quest from regular monsters before I was able to complete the quest.

Snake venom quest? The only quest I found was the one asking for wolf pelts. I agree about the speed stat; it should probably just affect who goes first in the sequence. 

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4 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I noticed that too, even though I never actually played the first Bravely Default game. To me, it just seemed like Fire Emblem archetypes: the basic role's the same, but the characters themselves are different.

Yup, that's what it feels like.

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The demo was fun, although it encouraged grinding a bit too heavily. 

The "secret" boss was a pain to crack but turns out the key is BP manipulation shenanigans (and ethers, tons of ethers). It reminds me of the Stillness cheese strats of the original BD, although a bit more RNG reliant. 

I'm torn on the combat system because it is a little too random for my tastes. While Speed should dictate turn order, it feels like at times it doesn't do jack and what's supposed to be the slowest character ends with 2 moves in a row, which was specially aggravating for me because that character was meant to be a BP battery and having them go twice and then just waste time with Default while the enemy gets to move is a pain. I can see that the devs made it that way to not allow for 100% cheese strats, but still. Hopefully the full game will have a way to get total control over turn order. 

I also missed the random encounter slider, having monsters in the overwold is fine and dandy but they are a little too aggro happy and their line of sight is too long. I'm also not a fan of having them run away from me when I'm trying to farm for drops.

As for characters, the demo barely gives you a general feeling of how each character is going to be. So far nothing too crazy.

Seth is pretty much Tiz with more AHOY! 

Gloria is Agnes with a british(?) accent. They feel pretty interchangeable, imo. 

Adelle I felt was different enough from Edea to stand on her own. She's more mature while also being pretty chill, she's my favorite so far.

Elvis is kind of a mix of Ringabel and Cyrus. His personality lies more towards the Ringabel side of things but he brings his own charm with that of being older than the others and stuff, so we'll see if he ends up being as awesome as Ringabel or not. His voice is going to take a while to get used to.

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I find the combat system rather enjoyable. Although it was quite a lot to get used to at first and had me going back and forth between the world area and the town for quite a while. I ended up basically grinding 2 jobs for each character before i made it to the boss in the ruins. I found myself having to very carefully pay attention to how i went about engaging the random enemies, which i find rarely happens in rpgs. Most often those types of battle take place at end game if at all so that was a welcomed change of pace.

The ruins boss was difficult as fuck. I was not ready to have him basically stall me out. Only way i could do enough damage was to have my black mage thundara spam. But that meant running out of MP very fast... so i basically had to wittle him down by defaulting with the black mage every turn, until  my Vanguard/Freelancer had enough BP to lucky charm the Black mage for the next 4 thundara's in a row. Meanwhile my monk/vanguard would get lower his magic resistance right before the thundaras happened or just spam attack. White mage basically spammed default and staff of life as needed.

However this strategy meant that i was barely doing enough damage to keep up with his healing from Draw Breath. I was doing positive net damage, but it was sloooooow. Finally managed to end it because he ran out of MP. Which i don't think i have ever managed to do in an RPG before.

It is a fun system, but i realized after that you have to equip class skills for them to take effect (even if you are playing as the job they come from). 20% mana reduction would have helped a lot, among other things.

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I'm also missing the encounter slider. Such a great feature, dunno why it's missing from all subsequent Asano games. Being able to see monsters now and hack them with your sword isn't an improvement at all for me. I like the uncertainty of random encounters. 

After watching the trailers, I was a bit worried about some art style choices. I have never been a fan of super-deformed aesthetics, and the clay look of BDII seemed much more sterile than the drawn-style graphics drawn on 3DS. Fortunately, it's one of those games that looks much better IRL than on trailers. I quickly got used to character models. Lighting is often impressive, e.g. the black mage outfit is shiny as if it was at least made of latex 😅

The battle system is good ol' Bravely, hasn't really changed, so I felt right at home buffing and debuffing my way until the secret boss (yeah, much harder than the dragons in BD or Baal in BS). Seems we get no demo rewards this time, which is mildly disappointing. 

I was a bit annoyed that after confirming the action with a given character and moving on to the next one, you can't go back / cancel all attacks (or I haven't found where to do it, mashing B doesn't work). As far as I remember in previous Bravely's it was not a problem. It's easy to 'missclick'.  

Anyway, I'm super hyped - it's more Bravely Default! And that's so very fine. One of my most anticipated releases in 2020 for sure. 

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5 hours ago, know_naim said:

I'm also missing the encounter slider. Such a great feature, dunno why it's missing from all subsequent Asano games. Being able to see monsters now and hack them with your sword isn't an improvement at all for me. I like the uncertainty of random encounters. 

I prefer being able to see monsters over random encounters, but I do miss the encounter slider. 

Here's what I want to see added to the game:

  1. An encounter slider.
  2. A slider for how quickly enemies can reappear on the map after being defeated. I find it very annoying to fight a tough enemy guarding a treasure chest, grab the treasure chest, and then get attacked by the same monster.
  3. A scroll at the top of the screen showing the order in which the different units will attack, thus enabling for better strategizing. 
  4. Direct Sunlight to be more reliable by making it either more accurate, make blinded opponents guaranteed to miss, or last for more turns. 
  5. Speed only determines who goes first; not how many times a unit can attack before another unit gets their turn. 
  6. The boss can't cheat; I could've sworn that he would default, and then, on the very same turn, unleash multiple attacks. I can't attack if I default, so why can he?
  7. A zoom in feature to make it easier to see the characters, icons, and treasure chests

 

5 hours ago, know_naim said:

The battle system is good ol' Bravely, hasn't really changed, so I felt right at home buffing and debuffing my way until the secret boss (yeah, much harder than the dragons in BD or Baal in BS). Seems we get no demo rewards this time, which is mildly disappointing. 

Secret boss? Are you talking about the thief, or is there another boss?

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10 minutes ago, know_naim said:

There are two, actually.

  Hide contents

a worm and a tree

 

Thanks. It seems I somehow missed a lot, given that I also only found one sidequest (the one for the wolf pelts). 

What did you think of my suggestions?

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So far I really like the game itself. Everything looks very nice and they seem to be streamlining some jobs when I look at the new vanguard class. I'll have to get used to defaulting not being instant, but i'll get used to it.

On the other hand I did't care much for the demo itself. Perhaps its not entirely fair to compare it to the bravely second demo, but i'm going ahead to do so anyway. The second demo was a neat stand alone story with a surprisingly long running time. This demo was one dungeon that had its runtime extended by the enemies just being really though. The cast

The thief boss fight was cool though.  I beat him in my first attempt, but only barely. He was fast, strong and he did't seem to use the same patern over and over. A good challenge, but not a unfair one.

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14 minutes ago, Sasori said:

On the other hand I didn't care much for the demo itself. Perhaps its not entirely fair to compare it to the bravely second demo, but i'm going ahead to do so anyway. The second demo was a neat stand alone story with a surprisingly long running time. This demo was one dungeon that had its runtime extended by the enemies just being really tough. 

Funny enough, to this day, The Three Cavaliers is all I've played of the first two games, and it is easily my favourite demo for those reasons: it had a decent runtime and it was its own full standalone story. Plus, it makes Yew and Magnolia make a lot more sense. I would be lying if I said that this demo didn't feel inferior to that one. 

That said, I understand why the Bravely Default 2 demo couldn't be as developed as Bravely Second's; the game's earlier in development, and they released it with the intent to hear feedback from those playing it. 

19 minutes ago, Sasori said:

The cast

Was there something you were going to say about the cast? Your sentence just kind-of ends abruptly. 

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1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

Funny enough, to this day, The Three Cavaliers is all I've played of the first two games, and it is easily my favourite demo for those reasons: it had a decent runtime and it was its own full standalone story. Plus, it makes Yew and Magnolia make a lot more sense. I would be lying if I said that this demo didn't feel inferior to that one. 

That said, I understand why the Bravely Default 2 demo couldn't be as developed as Bravely Second's; the game's earlier in development, and they released it with the intent to hear feedback from those playing it. 

Was there something you were going to say about the cast? Your sentence just kind-of ends abruptly. 

Ah I did't backspace enough I think. Tried to delete that sentence so the post did't get to long.  I wanted to say that the bravely second demo also had a lot of character interaction from the cast. You had a better idea about Yew, Magnolia and the caveliers. In this demo only Elvis really made a impression.

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15 minutes ago, Sasori said:

Ah I did't backspace enough I think. Tried to delete that sentence so the post did't get to long.  I wanted to say that the bravely second demo also had a lot of character interaction from the cast. You had a better idea about Yew, Magnolia and the caveliers. In this demo only Elvis really made a impression.

I agree; that demo did a great job showing off all four characters, and it even did a decent job with Agnes' interactions with them, and I say this as someone who never played the first game and had no idea who Agnes was. 

Yeah; Elvis definitely made the biggest impression of the four, for me at least.

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6 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Here's what I want to see added to the game:

  1. ...
  2. ...
  3. A scroll at the top of the screen showing the order in which the different units will attack, thus enabling for better strategizing. 
  4. Direct Sunlight to be more reliable by making it either more accurate, make blinded opponents guaranteed to miss, or last for more turns. 
  5. Speed only determines who goes first; not how many times a unit can attack before another unit gets their turn. 
  6. The boss can't cheat; I could've sworn that he would default, and then, on the very same turn, unleash multiple attacks. I can't attack if I default, so why can he?
  7. ...

I really like some of these suggestions. I have been playing the rest of the game and currently trying to kill the last secret boss... Having 3 would help sooooo much, because bosses can be really cheap and have 2 turns one after the other. So either having either suggestion 3 or 6 would help a lot. Both would be great too, though i don't think both are needed. I find that i can usually survive the default then move combo if I am defaulting.

With respect to 5, I am fine with speed being related to how fast your turn comes up as opposed to when your turn will be wrt everyone else. I think if we got to see turn order, this would not be as big an issue.

Direct sunlight being 100% accurate would be soooo good. Also just in general having things last for more turns would be great. 4 turns max for protect doesn't feel enough.

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38 minutes ago, Zanarkin said:

With respect to 5, I am fine with speed being related to how fast your turn comes up as opposed to when your turn will be wrt everyone else. I think if we got to see turn order, this would not be as big an issue.

For me, it just seems like a balancing issue rather than a strategizing issue: why have a slower class like Vanguard as one of your characters' main classes if it means missing out on turns compared to the others, when having it as sub-class would give them the abilities (provided you've progressed as far as you need in the class already) and having a faster class as the main class then gives them more turns by comparison?

By the way, thanks for the input. What did you think of suggestions 1, 2 and 7?

Remember: they said they will be doing a survey in the near future to hear feedback. 

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42 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

For me, it just seems like a balancing issue rather than a strategizing issue: why have a slower class like Vanguard as one of your characters' main classes if it means missing out on turns compared to the others, when having it as sub-class would give them the abilities (provided you've progressed as far as you need in the class already) and having a faster class as the main class then gives them more turns by comparison?

By the way, thanks for the input. What did you think of suggestions 1, 2 and 7?

Remember: they said they will be doing a survey in the near future to hear feedback. 

I see what you mean for 5. I am definitely feeling it in the last boss with my vanguard. And the fact that provoke only lasts 1 turn and doesn't seem to be guaranteed kinda sucks too. If I fail this round i might switch out the main job for thief and see what difference it makes. BTW do sub classes affect stats or does it just give access to the moves learned?

1 2 and 7 are fine suggestions, but i could take them or leave them to be honest. I do feel like being able to move the camera around a little more, would be useful though.

 

Oh also, can we get a special ability counter? In my time with the demo i couldn't get seth to activate any of the special abilities. Eventhough i kept using the stuff needed to do so. I found that kinda confusing.

 

Also the targeting stat was kinda wonky, despite my white mage having the lowest chance at and my vanguard at 99 my white mage got hit quite a lot in comparison to the other characters. My other 2 characters had it at low 40 and high 40.

Edited by Zanarkin
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4 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

I see what you mean for 5. I am definitely feeling it in the last boss with my vanguard. And the fact that provoke only lasts 1 turn and doesn't seem to be guaranteed kinda sucks too. If I fail this round i might switch out the main job for thief and see what difference it makes. BTW do sub classes affect stats or does it just give access to the moves learned?

Provoke only lasting one turn definitely adds to it as an issue. I don't know if sub-classes affect stats. I don't think so, but I would have to double-check. 

Speaking of thief, their final ability involves stealing BP. It costs 34 MP and only has a 50% chance of occurring. Why both? Isn't just one of those enough to make it high-risk-high-reward?

4 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

1 2 and 7 are fine suggestions, but i could take them or leave them to be honest. I do feel like being able to move the camera around a little more, would be useful though.

Oh also, can we get a special ability counter? In my time with the demo i couldn't get seth to activate any of the special abilities. Eventhough i kept using the stuff needed to do so. I found that kinda confusing.

I see. Thanks. 

A special ability counter could definitely be useful. I didn't have that issue, but having to remember how many of each ability I did in my head is an inconvenience.

 

I just tried fighting both secret bosses for the first time. Is it just me, or are they both HP sponges? The thief's max HP was 20,000. I can understand having a fair bit more since they're secret bosses, but 54,000 for the worm and 76,000 for the tree golem?! My units were max level, had the best equipment, and I was strategizing like crazy, and I was barely scratching them!

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4 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Speaking of thief, their final ability involves stealing BP. It costs 34 MP and only has a 50% chance of occurring. Why both? Isn't just one of those enough to make it high-risk-high-reward?

I think its meant to stop continued abuse of it. Not that that really stops it from being op. There are videos of people killing the last boss without the boss getting a single turn in. That move is part of the reason why. Turns out the game needs a lot of fine tuning, judging by the strats the mechanics in this game allow. You can stack multiples of the same buffs and debuffs, which makes characters really op.

A special ability counter could definitely be useful. I didn't have that issue, but having to remember how many of each ability I did in my head is an inconvenience.

Where does the special ability show up? I thought it would happen automatically or something, or get a very obvious prompt, but i must have missed them whenever they appeared.

 

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7 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

Where does the special ability show up? I thought it would happen automatically or something, or get a very obvious prompt, but i must have missed them whenever they appeared.

Only Seth can do a special ability. The button for selecting "special" is just above the one for selecting "attack". You can tell it's available when its coloured the same as the other buttons. It is unavailable when it is faded. 

 

7 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

I think its meant to stop continued abuse of it. Not that that really stops it from being op. There are videos of people killing the last boss without the boss getting a single turn in. That move is part of the reason why. Turns out the game needs a lot of fine tuning, judging by the strats the mechanics in this game allow. You can stack multiples of the same buffs and debuffs, which makes characters really op.

Surely the fact that it's expensive would stop continued use of it? And yeah; I ended up depending on it for the fight against the sandworm boss. The moment it stopped working is the moment everything went wrong. The problem was that the boss repeatedly defaulted and so, even with my units also defaulting, it unleashed a series of attacks that wiped them all out. And that was a max level team with each person maxed out in at least two classes. 

Huh; I had no idea you could stack multiple buffs and debuffs; I'll try that instead. 

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I must be damn blind. Can't believe i didn't see it, but i guess i didn't look too hard lol

11 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Surely the fact that it's expensive would stop continued use of it? And yeah; I ended up depending on it for the fight against the sandworm boss. The moment it stopped working is the moment everything went wrong. The problem was that the boss repeatedly defaulted and so, even with my units also defaulting, it unleashed a series of attacks that wiped them all out. And that was a max level team with each person maxed out in at least two classes.

I think with enough ethers you could wittle him down fast enough, specially having the buff and debuff stacking. I don't remember how i survived the sandworm, i know i was at max health, but it would always kill my mages. However i think the monk and vanguard could survive it by defaulting. Though i think the time i did it, it came down to luck. If the sandworm did sandstorm 2 times in a row when he did 3 or four attacks it would almost guarantee a wipe, specially if he targetted my monk or vanguard with his spit attack they'd be dead. I ended up getting lucky and managed to survive or avoid that somehow.

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