End-Game Discussion (MASSIVE SPOILERS, obvs)

[NeoCracker]

I swore it mentioned the ritual still went off though.

Otherwise what was even the point, and what was ti suppose to do, or at least what was the point is bringing up that it was forbidden and dangerous? Either way, it's kind of irrelevant I guess. Doesn't really answer or help anything one way or the other.

[Skyblade]

I swore it mentioned the ritual still went off though.

Otherwise what was even the point, and what was ti suppose to do, or at least what was the point is bringing up that it was forbidden and dangerous? Either way, it's kind of irrelevant I guess. Doesn't really answer or help anything one way or the other.

The Ritual did go off, though it was not believe to be completed. But, as I said, the effects of the Ritual were to cause the Earth Crystal to be radiating excess power, not to drain or darken it.

The point of the Ritual was, I think, to present Braev in a more sympathetic light. To show that there were good reasons for doing what he did, and showing how corrupt the Orthodoxy had become. It was also to help show that the white magic cables were more than just a desecration of the crystals or an attempt to keep Mahzer alive.

But without some huge catalyst for the Face Heel turn that Braev supposedly goes between the invasion of Eternia 15 years ago and his sudden war against Crystalism 3 years ago, I still don't see any reason to sympathize with the guy for his current actions. I mean, Kefka had an unfortunate past as well, but I don't think anyone sympathizes with him.

[Fynn]

Kefka never really shows us his human side. As for Braev, we can see how he cares about his daughter, wife, best friend, etc. probably a case of Even Bad Guys Love Their Mommies.

[Skyblade]

Kefka never really shows us his human side. As for Braev, we can see how he cares about his daughter, wife, best friend, etc. probably a case of Even Bad Guys Love Their Mommies.

His treatment of Edea really ruins that for me. He refuses to tell her anything about what's going on, jumping straight to fighting her. In the second world, he starts to explain why he rebelled and invaded Eternia fifteen years ago, but then when it gets to the current fight, he says "I'm not going to bother to explain why you should stop, just stop or I'll kill you". He would rather kill his own daughter than even bother talking things through. He never tries to convince her to stop, he simply orders her, and meets any refusal with bloodshed.

I do sympathize with the Braev from years ago. The guy who watched his family and hometown burn, and who was apparently just trying to help the world (although I have to note, if attaching the white magic cables was a last resort due to the Ritual actually being cast and the overload of energy it produced, why did they already have them prepared before the invasion of Eternia even began?). But in the intervening years, he lost all that humanity. Just how I sympathize with the pain and suffering Kefka went through before his mind broke. He doesn't care about the suffering of others, and he doesn't seem to interact with people except in how they serve as pawns for his plans. Yes, he mentions how much he trusts and relies on Kamiizumi and Alternis, but only when they're serving the role he wants. When Victoria casts her magic against Alternis, does he do anything? Yeah, he sits there and watches, and only intervenes when Alternis threatens the psychotic little witch back.

[Skyblade]

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to whine about this somewhere.

I have found it so hard to continue playing lately. I adored the entire second world run through the game. But World Three is just dull. So much of the dialogue and scenarios on the various quests is copied directly. Yes, it was fun when I ran into the Jackal, it played out exactly the same (making me think it was lazy writing), and then I discovered the children at the end. But doing that for every boss does make it feel like lazy writing.

The pacing of this part of the game is just atrocious. Repeating the same boss fights over and over with only minimal dialogue changes and no combat changes has gotten boring. I like the new story elements we get, but there is nowhere near enough new content. Next up I've got to trudge through Vampire Castle, uncover a bunch of information I already know, and fight a boss I've already beaten twice. It's just dull.

There was a lot of potential in this section. I loved World Two, discovering the different scenarios, seeing how foreknowledge changed things like the Profiteur and Konoe fights. It was awesome. Where is that imagination and attention to detail in World Three? Who thought copy/pasting that much content in a section was a good idea? It's all boss fights and dialogue, you need to change one or the other.

My only hope currently dragging me along is that the story quests might excel where the side-quests have utterly failed in this world. I haven't been able to face several of them (Einheria and her sisters are missing, as is Braev), so hopefully they'll show up and add something new to this boss rush.

[Fynn]

Yeah, World 3 is the weakest of them all, IMHO, I'm how it recycles content. From what I heard, it was the same for the last two worlds in Japan, but we got the improved version with added script in Chapters 7 and 8, so don't worry - it's gonna get a little different

Then again, chapter 6 has my favorite side-quest, which I figure you have yet to begin

And yeah, too bad vampire castle is just the same in all worlds (with just a tiny little detail being different in the boss battle in the final world).

[Dat Matt]

This is what I was refereeing to when the game started to drag towards the end. There may be some hidden things I missed, but pretty much everything is recycled again chapters 6-8. With the exception of a few side quests. I think in chapter 8 for example two groups of side quest characters team up to fight as a group.

I loved dicking around in bravely default, but when I seen what they were doing here I just rushed for the goal.

(SPOILER)You shoul make 2 save files at some point. Continuing through to chapter 8 leads to true end, you true end. You can also overload any crystal during a ritual to break it and jump to the final chapter early. Break up that repetition some

[Fynn]

But you can't really save on another slot. Good news is the game saves automatically at a point where, once you get one ending, you can go back and try the other. Also, too bad you missed out - chapter 7 and 8 both have you battle teams of characters, with there being even more story to flesh out those characters and their relations. The teams also differ between both chapters, so you need to try different strategies. The final big sidequest in chapter 8 is just killer, even on level 99 and maxed out jobs, unless you know what you're doing (the mages, the goddamn mages, they jsut refuse to let me kill them...).

[Dat Matt]

I was under the impression you could make more than one save file. Weird.

I do wish that I had check out more of the side quests, but by that point the game had repeated the same side quests without any new content so I was hesitant to try again. For example, the Monk/White Mage fight came up in chapter 5, was great with new dialogue and fleshed out the two characters a bit. Chapter 6 and it's just the same dialouge from chapter 5 but they had increased the difficulty slightly. It's at this point I opted to not do the sidequests again as there didn't see any point. I am sure I fought the Bloodrose Legion though.

[Skyblade]

Actually, the Holly and Baras fight have, thus far, been the best part of Chapter 6. In World Two, they mention Tiz and Agnes beating them before you fight them. In World Three, they specifically say it was just Tiz (or Til, perhaps, given how that world opens). That was fantastic, and the change to the after battle dialogue was just as good.

I was loving this world. I wanted to explore what happened to the party in this world. What happened if Til and Agnes never started traveling together? The other fights in Caldisla also made it seem as though Edea had never turned traitor, so I was looking forward to seeing what happened to her.

But none of this carries on in the side quests outside Caldisla, which is a huge disappointment, and some real lost potential.

[Skyblade]

Currently fighting my way through Airy's Final Form (it's about time!). I'm actually kind of glad she got one. I mean, I knew that with a larva form and pupa form, she would be highly likely to have an imago form to finish off. But, with her being so dependent on Lord Ouroboros (really, spellcheck, you don't even recognize Ouroboros?), I was afraid she'd get abandoned since he was likely going to consume her along with the worlds as well.

That said, I didn't expect her final form to remind me so much of Volcarona. I know they have a lot of the same inspiration, but it's really hard to take one of the final bosses seriously when you just want to cram them in a Pokéball.

[Fynn]

Aw hail no. She wasn't nearly as majestic as my favorite sun god

[Skyblade]

Aw hail no. She wasn't nearly as majestic as my favorite sun god

No, she wasn't. But the form fit. The seraph-inspired multi-wing design, with how they arrayed around her and their relative proportions to her body, along with the general color and atmosphere they were using at that section, it really made me think almost immediately of Volcarona. She's not as majestic, nor as awesome (her weakness is Fire, after all, Volcarona would probably toast her), but the similarities are still there.

Anyway, I finally beat the game. It was concluded brilliantly. That final battle. So much awesome.

It's a real shame about Chapter 6 (World 3). The rest of the game was almost all top-notch, but that Chapter had some huge missed potential. I feel so sorry for the Japanese players, since every Chapter from 5 to 8 was identical.


If I start a New Game+, and choose to carry over my Norende status, will it carry over my current Nemeses storage as well? I don't want to lose the ones I have. I also don't want to lose my stock of stat buns, so please tell me they do get carried over in inventory, even though they aren't part of the standard game inventory.

[metagloria]

Sorry for resurrecting, but I just finished the game, so I feel like chiming in.

1) As for the asterisk bearers and how they are similar/different across chapters: I got the feeling that they knew more in each world. Like, DeRosso and Yulyana obviously seemed to know a lot (everything?) from the get-go, but in the first world, I don't think Braev and the rest of the Eternian command knew everything. Their violence toward the crystalists was genuinely imperial, not just to stop Airy's plan. But their motivations and actions change slightly through the chain of worlds, to the end that in the final world, they're aware that they are fighting only to test/toughen up Edea and company for the big battle.

(Also: this game practically trips over itself emphasizing that things aren't always black and white. Are the crystalists good, and anti-crystalists evil? Or are the anti-crystalists good, and the crystalists evil? The answer: no. Everyone is varying shades of good and evil in each world. The fact that we don't get a definitive resolution is exactly the point.)

2) It is pretty reprehensible how lazy chapters 5-8 are, although the multi-boss battles in the last two chapters make things interesting. I grinded up to 99 as soon as possible in chapter 5 and then just blazed through the rest of the game (I did fight every asterisk bearer each time). Square has a tendency to pad their handheld titles with repetitive gameplay, but this is way beyond anything they've ever done. It's right at the threshold of being enjoyable vs. unbearable. Hopefully they don't pull something like that with Bravely Second. Speaking of which...

3) The Tiz/celestial thing is really nebulous in this game, obviously because that's going to be the subject matter of the sequel. I was very okay with the ending. I actually think they might pull a Star Ocean 3 here... SO3 spoilers where the "celestial realm" is like the real world, and the bajillions of worlds in Bravely Default were many iterations of a simulated world. Yeah, that would feel kind of weird, since there are no indications that BD's world isn't "real", but clearly Tiz's spirit went somewhere outside of BD's world...guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Skyblade]

2) It is pretty reprehensible how lazy chapters 5-8 are, although the multi-boss battles in the last two chapters make things interesting. I grinded up to 99 as soon as possible in chapter 5 and then just blazed through the rest of the game (I did fight every asterisk bearer each time). Square has a tendency to pad their handheld titles with repetitive gameplay, but this is way beyond anything they've ever done. It's right at the threshold of being enjoyable vs. unbearable. Hopefully they don't pull something like that with Bravely Second. Speaking of which...

Not when you realize that the chapters were, in Japan, completely identical in terms of story content and released entirely as DLC. Getting the multi-boss battles in the last two worlds was a huge overhaul done in the For the Sequel version, and we got even more updated content when they translated that over the seas.

3) The Tiz/celestial thing is really nebulous in this game, obviously because that's going to be the subject matter of the sequel. I was very okay with the ending. I actually think they might pull a Star Ocean 3 here... SO3 spoilers where the "celestial realm" is like the real world, and the bajillions of worlds in Bravely Default were many iterations of a simulated world. Yeah, that would feel kind of weird, since there are no indications that BD's world isn't "real", but clearly Tiz's spirit went somewhere outside of BD's world...guess we'll have to wait and see.

Or did it? Did you watch the Bravely Second special vid at the end? Tiz is still alive and kicking, somehow. We'll just have to see how that plays out.