Bravely Default

ccesarano wrote:

I'd argue "framerates" or whatnot that keeps NTSC and PAL from playing nice, but it's on a 3DS, not a TV. And I'm actually not sure if NTSC or PAL matters much in regards to HD Televisions, either.

I dunno. Nintendo is just starting to love Europe more.

In theory that could be, but that's only valid going from JP to EU/UK. JP is NTSC, same as the US, so even in that instance they'd have the source and the translation.

I think this is probably Reggie's fault. Somehow.

JRPGs sell worse in America than in Europe. It's why we weren't going to get the Rainfall games. NOA doesn't want to try to throw a JRPG into the Christmas holiday season where it wouldn't stand a chance. Better to wait until February when market conditions might be more favorable.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Better to wait until February when market conditions might be more favorable.

Does it have any competition other than Lightning Returns?

Maybe they don't want it to compete against Zelda Link between worlds?

In any case I just pre-ordered this yesterday for no particular reason. I got the Special edition.

gamerparent wrote:

In any case I just pre-ordered this yesterday for no particular reason. I got the Special edition.

Same here. Dropped pre-orders on my February games. Consumerism!

shoptroll wrote:

Same here. Dropped pre-orders on my February games. Consumerism!

now to just get through some more of my pile before then!

I constantly think this game is actually All The Bravest whenever the thread pops up.

Speaking of names, I'm sad they dropped the "flying fairy" part from the game's title for this expanded version. Then we could call it BDFF for short.

The Miiverse community for this game is live since it released in Europe, and I've been browsing it for impressions. Here are a few screenshots that really stood out to me:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Zrdi2X3.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/OrOgBRV.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/sFVtOYb.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/1f3nVy9.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/IcAjfrG.jpg)

Thanks. Now I went and preordered it. My wife will blame you.

I'm about 3 hours or so in and I REALLY like this game. Plays like a classic Final Fantasy game (complete with world-protecting crystals and the job system). I'd suggest checking out those screenshots via 3DS as they'll be in 3D for the full effect (the shot of the city is particularly nice at night - every time you idle in any similar location it zooms out to give you a panoramic view of the area you are in and it looks fantastic in the 3D mode).

In case anyone is worried about that "sleep points" microtransaction thing, I posted in the 3DS thread about it but to repeat here, all that stuff seems completely inconsequential. They just seem to offer a way of skipping a tough battle by cheating and freezing time for everyone except your team. To anyone with any sort of JRPG experience that should be completely unnecessary.

The other "time sink" style area is a village building area (you build structures to gain benefits you can purchase from the save point / adventurer chappie and fight what look like super tough randomly spawning mobs for extra goodies). It's similar to the Assasin's Creed Guild Management in AC2: Brotherhood or Kenway's Fleet in that actions take real-time and can be sped up by assigning villagers to each task - however there's no real money aspect, you gain extra villagers by recruiting them via streetpass.

Seems to be a lot of nice little semi-online features and functions, but I can't really test that until you lot get your hands on the game

* Oh and the translation so far is great. Some of the dialogue is rather witty.

"Must you ALWAYS shout, man. Daft or loud, pick one!"

Downloading when I get home.

FYI, you're now required to have a Nintendo Network ID to download demos from the e-Shop. I didn't have one, and had to spend 15 minutes setting it up.

The default name for one of the party members is Ringabel. This is GOTY material already folks

Janci wrote:

FYI, you're now required to have a Nintendo Network ID to download demos from the e-Shop. I didn't have one, and had to spend 15 minutes setting it up.

As I found out when my son wanted to try the demo on his 3DS. Good news: I could set up an underage account for him. OK news: it is linked to my email address. Bad news: I had to use a credit card to charge $0.50 to prove that I was an adult.

I played the demo a bit last night and felt rather confused. I hope the full game will explain things a bit more. At first I left town with no spells equipped. I did think to change the jobs for a couple characters to white mage and black mage but I didn't realize they didn't know any spells. Got beat fairly quickly.

I didn't play with it much more than that but it looks fun. I will need to spend more time understanding the setup before venturing out though.

stevenmack wrote:

The other "time sink" style area is a village building area (you build structures to gain benefits you can purchase from the save point / adventurer chappie and fight what look like super tough randomly spawning mobs for extra goodies). It's similar to the Assasin's Creed Guild Management in AC2: Brotherhood or Kenway's Fleet in that actions take real-time and can be sped up by assigning villagers to each task - however there's no real money aspect, you gain extra villagers by recruiting them via streetpass.

So I'm working from home today and I've already checked on my town twice today since I'm just starting out and even with one villager it's only taking a couple hours to do each of the initial upgrades. But, it's also drip-fed me a handful of free items which will be really handy going forward. I'm pretty certain that the 3DS is going to be going with me to work while I'm playing this game. Not to play the game proper but to make sure there's not a lot of downtime in the village.

So glad to see another game making smart use of the time I'm not actively engaging with the game to allow me to progress a little bit. Loved these features in TWEWY and I know Nintendo had some pretty good success with the Pokewalker in Pokemon G/S Redux.

farley3k wrote:

I played the demo a bit last night and felt rather confused. I hope the full game will explain things a bit more. At first I left town with no spells equipped. I did think to change the jobs for a couple characters to white mage and black mage but I didn't realize they didn't know any spells. Got beat fairly quickly.

I think one of the townspeople mentioned you need scrolls to cast spells, which you can find in the magic shop. The game is steeped in the mechanics from Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V and that means you'll be buying most of your spells from shops.

I didn't talk to people! I ran outside to see the battle system!

On my second visit I talked to people and found out a bit more. It seems like it will have a good system for customizing characters.

Guess I'll have to try this demo. I think FFV is the only "old" FF (pre-7) that I haven't played, even in one of it's remakes. And I never got around to Tactics either. So all this job talk I'm only vaguely familiar with from FF3 on the DS...

Stele wrote:

So all this job talk I'm only vaguely familiar with from FF3 on the DS... :?

I haven't played either incarnation of III, but my understanding is that the main changes in V/Tactics is that it's free to switch jobs and in addition to your assigned job you're allowed to use 1 ability that character has learned from any other class. Bravely Default retains the 1 off-class ability but splits it into 1 action ability (ie. cast a spell) and up to 4 passive abilities (ie. damage reduction, increased HP, etc.).

I played a couple hours of the demo last night. It's quite enjoyable. I don't feel comfortable in the cave to the west however. I beat one battle but that about took me out, so I ran away from the rest. I think I just need to grind in the overworld a bit more before doing that. I do have a couple questions.

So, you start a battle, generally, with BP 0. If you've rested at the inn, your first battle after that will let you start with a BP of 1. I saved BP from a battle but everyone got reset to 0 for the next battle. Bummer, but that makes sense. What I don't like is how, if you have a BP of 1, and you select Brave, it shows an arrow to -1. It obviously means you're going to add minus 1 to your current BP, but since the font is a similar size to your BP meter and the use an ARROW, it intuitively represents: Your BP is going from +1 to -1 by using the Brave action. I think it's stupid from an intuitive and aesthetic standpoint. I can get over it, though. Correct me if I'm not seeing the whole mechanic correctly.

For an actual question: How the hell does the magic work? I have my initial party jobs set to Knight, White Witch (?), Ninja, and Swordmaster. I have the heal and revive spells learned by spending money at the store. I can't get the White Witch to use magic in any situation. All she can do in battle is attack with the magic rod thing I bought. Her abilities are greyed out.

I never played any classic JRPGs, so these types of systems are not something I'm familiar with through experience. Thanks!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

For an actual question: How the hell does the magic work? I have my initial party jobs set to Knight, White Witch (?), Ninja, and Swordmaster. I have the heal and revive spells learned by spending money at the store. I can't get the White Witch to use magic in any situation. All she can do in battle is attack with the magic rod thing I bought. Her abilities are greyed out.

My guess is that the witch needs to gain some job levels to use those spells. The sorting in the magic store is ordered by spell level descending. So your level 3 spells are at the top, and level 1 is near the bottom of the list. There's a little number on the icon next to the spell name which should indicate the spell level.

shoptroll wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

For an actual question: How the hell does the magic work? I have my initial party jobs set to Knight, White Witch (?), Ninja, and Swordmaster. I have the heal and revive spells learned by spending money at the store. I can't get the White Witch to use magic in any situation. All she can do in battle is attack with the magic rod thing I bought. Her abilities are greyed out.

My guess is that the witch needs to gain some job levels to use those spells. The sorting in the magic store is ordered by spell level descending. So your level 3 spells are at the top, and level 1 is near the bottom of the list. There's a little number on the icon next to the spell name which should indicate the spell level.

Ha! Well, she is level 1 still. I believe heal and revive were at the top. I guess it's off to grind and/or buy some level 1 spells tonight. Thanks!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
shoptroll wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

For an actual question: How the hell does the magic work? I have my initial party jobs set to Knight, White Witch (?), Ninja, and Swordmaster. I have the heal and revive spells learned by spending money at the store. I can't get the White Witch to use magic in any situation. All she can do in battle is attack with the magic rod thing I bought. Her abilities are greyed out.

My guess is that the witch needs to gain some job levels to use those spells. The sorting in the magic store is ordered by spell level descending. So your level 3 spells are at the top, and level 1 is near the bottom of the list. There's a little number on the icon next to the spell name which should indicate the spell level.

Ha! Well, she is level 1 still. I believe heal and revive were at the top. I guess it's off to grind and/or buy some level 1 spells tonight. Thanks!

That is something I noticed and remembered from previous games. Spells follow a naming system where the start out with the name (cure), then add an "a" for the next most powerful (cura) then an "aga" for the most powerful (curaga).

This is another thing that I assume the full game would spell out more. In most of FF games you can't actually buy the "aga" spells until you could actually use them so it eases you into it.

Yeah the spells unlock with higher job levels.

for white magic specifically...

Job Level 1 - White magic level 1 (cure, poisona, blinda)
Job Level 3 - white magic level 2 (protect, shell, aero)
Job Level 6 - white magic level 3 (cura, raise, esuna)
Job Level 9 - white magic level 4 (reflect, dispel, aerora)
...still grinding to unlock the next tier myself but it's probably at level 12 I would assume.

farley3k wrote:

This is another thing that I assume the full game would spell out more. In most of FF games you can't actually buy the "aga" spells until you could actually use them so it eases you into it.

Probably just a demo thing, to give you more options in the one store presently available - the spells are spaced out more appropriately during the progression in the main game.

And yep, the usual changes are present in Bravely Default.

Pretty sure For the Default will have the Japanese graphics, but I wonder if the English translation in it will have the ages as 15 or as 18. I'll will find out soon-ish... in the meantime I'll just keep kicking myself for failing to pay for faster shipping again.

In the euro version, Tiz is referred to as 19, Agnes is 20, Edea is 18 and Ringabel doesn't remember but he's probably the eldest. No idea what the little goth fairy is supposed to be age-wise.

stevenmack wrote:

Probably just a demo thing, to give you more options in the one store presently available - the spells are spaced out more appropriately during the progression in the main game.

The demo also starts you off with like 10 Jobs to choose from which is pretty ridiculous. Usually Square's pretty good about easing you into the systems, so I'm expecting fewer options at the start of the full game.