Skyblade
02-06-2014, 04:31 AM
Bravely Default has one of the best demos I have ever seen. It achieves the incredibly rare objective of satisfying the player, while still enticing them to want to play the main game, and I'd like to talk about how it did that.
Let's start with a look at the jobs. In Bravely Default, you start with the Freelancer job, and you acquire more through gameplay. In the demo, however, you have access to a handful of jobs right off the bat, and can freely experiment with them. Your characters start in the Freelancer job, and each character comes equipped with a different weapon. This allows you to jump straight into the demo's content, if you so choose, but it also allows you quite a bit of customization.
Since the Freelancer job can use every weapon and armor type equally, there is no real difference to the characters based on the type of weapon they have equipped, but it does help to showcase some of the variety of weapon types immediately. However, since you start with access to several jobs, this does give you the equipment to immediately outfit your characters with suitable equipment if you choose to experiment with some of the different jobs.
However, the immediate availability of the jobs was not the only change to the system in the demo version. Each job has also been retooled and reshaped. The job progression has been halted at Level 4. However, the jobs are not simply the jobs from the game restricted. The developers chose particular abilities for each job, to best highlight the overall role of each job, as well as to create a well balanced and complete experience.
The jobs are not alone in this treatment. Everything from the levels you explore, to the enemies you face, to the town of Norende that you rebuild have received a similar treatment.
The levels are subsections of levels from the main game. All the dungeons are converted to a single floor, and the chest contents are changed. Locked chests throughout dungeons are opened.
Norende is smaller than it is in the full game. The shops are in different positions, and they (like the jobs) are restricted to only a few levels. Also like the jobs, however, their contents have changed to provide a balanced and complete experience in the demo itself.
The quest line for the demo is entirely separate from the story and quests of Bravely Default. You don't face any spoilers. But, perhaps more important, you don't find yourself stuck in the middle of a story that you don't understand, and left off before the finale. The story and quests of the demo are complete in themselves. It isn't a particularly deep story, but it's enough. You help the town and NPCs with their troubles, and that's really all you need.
In short, the Bravely Default demo is a full game. It clocked in at 9 hours, 30 minutes for me to complete, and it is chock full of content and fun gameplay. It's a free game, and of nowhere near the length of the full game, or of your standard RPG, but it is still a separate entity. It has a quest line for you to work through, challenges to overcome, and incredibly fun gameplay systems to experiment with. The gameplay and carryover bonuses are just that, bonuses.
In most demos, you walk away feeling "wow, that was short". This is alright, it can make you want to purchase the full game, but it is still a negative impression. If you want to pick up the full game, it's to fill a gap that the demo left incomplete. In the demo for Bravely Default, you want to play the full game in the same way that you want a sequel to Chrono Trigger. You want more of this world, these characters, this gameplay system. You're not left with an incomplete experience, you're left with a satisfying experience that you can't wait to see more of.
I think the Bravely Default demo has spoiled me for future demos. I'm not sure that I will accept another pitiful "here's a half-hour introduction spliced down for you to play early" the way they did for Lightning Returns.
Let's start with a look at the jobs. In Bravely Default, you start with the Freelancer job, and you acquire more through gameplay. In the demo, however, you have access to a handful of jobs right off the bat, and can freely experiment with them. Your characters start in the Freelancer job, and each character comes equipped with a different weapon. This allows you to jump straight into the demo's content, if you so choose, but it also allows you quite a bit of customization.
Since the Freelancer job can use every weapon and armor type equally, there is no real difference to the characters based on the type of weapon they have equipped, but it does help to showcase some of the variety of weapon types immediately. However, since you start with access to several jobs, this does give you the equipment to immediately outfit your characters with suitable equipment if you choose to experiment with some of the different jobs.
However, the immediate availability of the jobs was not the only change to the system in the demo version. Each job has also been retooled and reshaped. The job progression has been halted at Level 4. However, the jobs are not simply the jobs from the game restricted. The developers chose particular abilities for each job, to best highlight the overall role of each job, as well as to create a well balanced and complete experience.
The jobs are not alone in this treatment. Everything from the levels you explore, to the enemies you face, to the town of Norende that you rebuild have received a similar treatment.
The levels are subsections of levels from the main game. All the dungeons are converted to a single floor, and the chest contents are changed. Locked chests throughout dungeons are opened.
Norende is smaller than it is in the full game. The shops are in different positions, and they (like the jobs) are restricted to only a few levels. Also like the jobs, however, their contents have changed to provide a balanced and complete experience in the demo itself.
The quest line for the demo is entirely separate from the story and quests of Bravely Default. You don't face any spoilers. But, perhaps more important, you don't find yourself stuck in the middle of a story that you don't understand, and left off before the finale. The story and quests of the demo are complete in themselves. It isn't a particularly deep story, but it's enough. You help the town and NPCs with their troubles, and that's really all you need.
In short, the Bravely Default demo is a full game. It clocked in at 9 hours, 30 minutes for me to complete, and it is chock full of content and fun gameplay. It's a free game, and of nowhere near the length of the full game, or of your standard RPG, but it is still a separate entity. It has a quest line for you to work through, challenges to overcome, and incredibly fun gameplay systems to experiment with. The gameplay and carryover bonuses are just that, bonuses.
In most demos, you walk away feeling "wow, that was short". This is alright, it can make you want to purchase the full game, but it is still a negative impression. If you want to pick up the full game, it's to fill a gap that the demo left incomplete. In the demo for Bravely Default, you want to play the full game in the same way that you want a sequel to Chrono Trigger. You want more of this world, these characters, this gameplay system. You're not left with an incomplete experience, you're left with a satisfying experience that you can't wait to see more of.
I think the Bravely Default demo has spoiled me for future demos. I'm not sure that I will accept another pitiful "here's a half-hour introduction spliced down for you to play early" the way they did for Lightning Returns.