If I've played Fantasy Life back in 2014 or atleast before I chose my game of the year then hands down would have taken it, but I didn't, so... read on.
Silicon Studio created Bravely Default btw, the same people who created 3D Dot Game Heroes, which is a Zelda ripoff that just so happens to surpass the quality of every actual Zelda title imo. My game of the year last year was a toss up between Bravely Default and Lords of Shadow 2. The rest of last year, aside from what I'm guessing is Dark Souls 2, haven't played though, was so full of crap it was no contest. I scored Lords of Shadow 2 higher, but the RPG genre has been such crap for the longest time, I gave it to Bravely Default. Lords of Shadow 2 is a better game, Bravely Default won because of what's technically a handicap.
SMT4, goty 2013, and Bravely Default are the two best RPGs in a long time, since the PSP was pushing out quality at the very least, but SMT4 is the better game and neither of them really stand a chance.
Bravely Default is a great game but it has a massive amount of flaws that keeps it from being as good as RPGs of the past.
For one, there's the story. The best part about the games storyline isn't even the story at all, it's the side dialogue that you can listen to every once in awhile and if it wasn't for Edea and Ringabel's comments t hen it wouldn't have been. Tiz and Agnes were mostly unlikeable in terms of dialogue, the storyline wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good either. A little mediocre except for the game's saw it a mile away twist that you are bound to have known what was going to happen at the very start of chapter five, and even then it was still the best part of the story.
Then there's the gameplay. Starting off, I guess I should throw out how useless magic users were throughout the game. Sure you can make some great builds, but whatever point in the game you were, beginning, mid, end, etc, a good melee build is going to outclass any magic build you can create but one end game build. As many abilities as you acquired and as much freedom you had with your characters, it just felt so limited that there were a few moves that were the obvious go to abilities. Example? Two handed is a ability you'll acquire very early in the game and you severely limit your capabilities by removing it at any point in the game.
Random battles consisted of using brave x 3 and then killing your opponent in a single round. If by chance you couldn't kill your opponent in a single round, then you'd either attack one turn or default then attack to kill off one enemy, then brave x 3 and kill them off the second round. There is no random battle that your party attacks more than twice.
Boss battles are were the best part in Bravely Default, where managing your brave was vital to winning. For the most part you would just keep defaulting and then have your damage dealers go to town , but there was a bit of strategy within the system that was required when fighting bosses and that's the best part about the game. .
Finally there was Norende Village. I actually hated this aspect of the game and I hope it doesn't return. Unless you played this stupid mini game which was ripped from a Facebook F2P, you would have missed out on the most powerful items, during the end game. Instead of having to grind for it and then purchase it for an absurd amount, I would have liked to actually explore dungeons to acquire powerful weapons and accessories. I did get everything from Norende, but it was a really weak attempt at a town system when they could have just ripped a great town system from any game in the past that's used this feature. They could have ripped off the simple yet still very enjoyable town systems from Breath of Fire 3, 4, or Dragon's Quarter than what they decided to add..
So yeah, it really doesn't stand up to the classics,, but it was a really good attempt with going back to the classic style and innovating in attempt to add some strategic depth to the battle system. They did a much better job than Square did for any of the Final Fantasy 13 games that's for sure.
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