Bravely Default looks like the RPG we've all been waiting for

[lestatdark]

RolStoppable said:

lestatdark said:

The bonuses will be good if you start the game with just Agnes and don't have access to a shop in the first couple of hours, it'll probably be a life saver on Hard. 

Got to say that i'm not intending to play the game on any lower difficulty. While on Hard it is difficult to progress at the start and bosses are overpowered goliaths with tons of HP, once you do start piling up the jobs and equipments, then it just becomes a matter of strategy. With too many jobs and equip, the game can be easily broken on lower difficulties.

I am going to stick with normal, because I don't want to hit a wall where I have to grind for an extended period of time. It's not like normal was a breeze on the demo, it was still necessary to level up some jobs in order to have a good chance against the bosses. Of course, after playing the demo I don't have to guess which of those nine jobs have worthwhile skills, so that's an advantage that saves time. If I like the game enough, I'll do another playthrough anyway.

As for your final sentence, doesn't excessive grinding make any JRPG easy? Leveling up a lot of different jobs is pretty much the same as classic grinding to overwhelm bosses with brute force. But anyway, if I take your playstyle in Fire Emblem: Awakening into consideration, then yes, you should absolutely play on hard.

My excessive FE:A grinding was more of an overzealous OCD in trying to max most of the relations and classes in a single playthrough, not because I hit a wall. The only wall I ever hit was on Lunatic, when I was forced to grind away the little money I manage to gain from some missons because I was stubborn enough to not use Frederick at all during the first chapters. Let's just say that chapter 5 was...annoying (putting it mildly).

On Bravely Default Hard the bosses themselves are the walls since they're not your regular jRPG bosses, but more akin of Etrian Odyssey bosses (Bosses that have massively improved abilities and stats over the rest of the common enemies plus once they go below a certain HP threshold they go full berserk), at least on the demo.

On the main game, things will probably be different. The jump between bosses will be significantly lower and with the previous knowledge of what abilities to seek, it can be planned ahead to avoid any kind of unnecessary grinding. After hitting a certain number of abilities and balancing my team, I'm confident i'll be able to manage Hard rather well (at least better than in the early stages of the demo).