First opinions on Bravely Default

[Dat Matt]

Has anyone else picked this up? What are you opinions so far? Apparently I am the only one playing this. Ha ha! Europeans.

Quick Look:

I am currently 2:30 hours in an so far I am impressed. There is a lot of choice presented to you from the get-go. So far I have found 3 jobs (jobs are won via boss battles with someone of that specific class) and every character can equip anything regardless of class. This is offset by having rankings for the items from E to S. S rank in equipment will offer more bonuses dependent on job. For example, a Freelancer (starting job) has a B proficiency with every weapon, but using a stave an changing to a monk increases the proficeny to an S so the power of said staff automatically rises.

My original grievance with the game was that the encounter rate was non-existent. Walking around the world map took about 30 seconds to find an encounter which annoyed me, however I have found that you can increase/decrease the encounter rate by +/- 50-100 % which was super handy. As such I am now my starting character is level 12 where my newest party member is level 6 and I stomped the boss.

Brave is a fun system too. The chance to use 4 actions in one turn per character really increases the speed of battle and will be great for strategic actions during tougher bosses. I have a habit of using all of my points in the furst turn for all of my characters and winning the battle before the enemy attacks which is fun. This will kill me eventually though...

Update 16/12/13 - I have found combinations of jobs that work for my team, and I have found that the spellfencer / red mage combo is insane. I'll embue my swordwith fira, use a special attack, use a special attack to inprove my hit count and do 2000 per (4x) hits to a boss with 20,000 Hp. The music for special attacks is also amazing. This is Ringabell's (Every character has one). Sounds very similar to Layton.