Past Posts
***** SPOILERS THROUGHOUT POST *****
The Old Lady and the Boat
At the beginning of the game Seth saves an old lady and that’s how he meets Elvis and Adelle. The old lady lets Seth use her boat after that. This is the sleep mode quest similar to rebuilding Norende or the moon in Bravely Default and Bravely Second.
In this case your Seth will run into Seth’s from other players’ games. You’ll get messages of them clearing obstacles, fighting monsters, and finding treasure together. Go to the old lady after 12 hours, including non-play time, and you’ll get some items. Mostly you’ll get JP, EXP, and stat boosters.
Final Team Builds
Seth – For non-bosses I had him use Swordmaster’s Solid Stance (Attack now activates x2 per use), Multitask (sometimes get an extra Attack after Attack used), and Raw Power (attack up per use of Brave). Thus, Seth was a rapid fire machine sometimes getting as many as 12 Attacks in a round. His crit rate became pretty high too.
For bosses it’s all about Godspeed Strike. I’d put on Counter-Saavy too (100% dodge on physical counters).
Gloria – Main job was still to heal. Revenge remained great for getting extra BP. Above and Beyond (can heal self past max HP) was great just like in Octopath Traveler. Spiritmaster’s mastery passive gave it all spirits when BP at 1 or less at the end of the turn which meant periodic HP, MP, and status restore. Thrust and Parry (flat 15% damage reduction if equipped with a weapon) further made her hard to put down.
Elvis – For non-bosses was still about Black Magic. Got equipment that drastically reduced MP consumption so he could throw out -aga’s at will.
For bosses I found Salve-Maker to be very good. Godspeed Strike burns through MP in a hurry but Salve-Maker can Compound powerful Ethers. In a pinch Widen Area (use an item on whole team) was great for backup healing.
Adelle – Got her Sub-Job BP Saver (sub job abilities cost one less BP) for non-bosses. This allowed her to use Pressure Point (Monk attack that ignores defense and Default) at will. This made her my most reliable offense for non-bosses. For bosses, she also was a Godspeed Strike user for bosses. Her boss build was similar to Seth’s though I focused more on speed and less on defense for her.
Bravebearer
The last job earned and it’s pretty bonkers. BD games often have a job or two that can manipulate BP. Bravebearer has Wall of Woe which will periodically decrease all allies’ and enemies’ BP by one and Dawn of Odyssey, which does the opposite. Even more bonkers is Equaliser: it also affects all allies and enemies and it raises the BP of those in the negative and lowers the BP of those in the positive.
All these abilities give more BP tweaking tools to the player. For instance, you can burn your whole team down to negatives, trigger counters that raise the enemy’s BP to the max, and then screw the enemy over with Equaliser until everyone is set back to zero. Finally, Bravebearer has great stats. I put three allies in Bravebearer for the final boss.
Difficulty
Bravely Default II scored a 42.95 compared to a mean of 24.56 and a median of 15.15. That put it at 40th out of 176, 78th percentile. It’s next to games like Dragon Quest VII (PS1) and Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. That’s very fitting in my opinion; both those games also have job systems and also have quite a few tricky spots. That also makes it easily the toughest in the series so far.
Worth noting that BD2’s difficulty was very front loaded for me. Fights up through Chapter 3 or so tended to be tricky, especially bosses. From Chapter 4 onwards is about when it started seeming like my team was just getting too powerful for the enemies to keep up, as often happens in games like these.
Conclusion
First I’ll address the elephant in the room: Bravely Default II falls short of the rest of the Bravely series. This is in part because I enjoyed its predecessors so much; the bar is high. Most notably I enjoyed the story and characters less. The constant counters also got tedious.
But BD2 was a good game and I enjoyed playing it. The changes to the job system had me experimenting with different jobs more than I have before. A lot of those jobs were fun to use and so my tactics had a lot of variety. While I enjoyed them less the characters were still fun.
***** ENDGAME PLOT AND GAMEPLAY *****
Fount of Knowledge
The heroes go to Mag Mell and meet with Esmeralda, regent of the fairies. The queen disappeared 50 years ago to become a Hero of Light; she’s the previously unidentified Hero. Esmeralda further explains the Night’s Nexus was once a human named Inanna. Inanna went to the Fount of Knowledge that the fairies guard, absorbed a great deal of knowledge, created her own Asterisk, and became the Night’s Nexus: a being obsessed with absorbing all knowledge into herself.
The Night’s Nexus will return to the Fount to absorb more knowledge. Thus, the heroes go to face it. This was a cool dungeon. Since it’s made of memories there are pictures from throughout your journey in the background, including for all the Asterisk holders.
The Night’s Nexus
I made my best boss killing team to fight the Nexus. They matched up well. It countered Godspeed Strike with a physical but Counter-Saavy completely neutralized that. GS was very efficient at wasting the Nexus; I didn’t have to endure many attacks and Gloria and Elvis easily healed the ones I did.
Gameplay and plotwise, you fight the Nexus three successive times. It keeps getting back up. With no way to keep it down the group gets desperate. Esmeralda decides that the only thing that can be done is to stop time in Mag Mell. This will put the Nexus in stasis but will put the fairies in stasis too.
Esmeralda urges the heroes, including Adelle, to escape Mag Mell before that happens. The group feels a lot of guilt but flees nonetheless. However, Adelle stays behind just as the gate between Mag Mell and the human world closes. She feels too much guilt at her sister’s actions to not share in the fairies’ fate. The group can do nothing more than grieve losing her.
A Hero in His Prime
Once again reload the game after an ending. The book gives another vision but this time it’s of the previous Heroes of Light. During their fight with the Nexus Sir Sloan had an Asterisk that was cut in two. Turns out one half is in the dagger he gave Gloria and the other half was found by Seth.
Take the two halves to Sir Sloan’s grave and his spirit will give a test to the team, appearing as he was in his prime. Sir Sloan was the last boss to present a challenge. He can do a lot of damage and he can mess with BP as described in Bravebearer above. He also has a ton of evasion; only 1/3 of my Godspeed Strikes were landing. At one point I spent all Seth’s and Adelle’s BP hoping to take him out, missed too much, and had to survive until they recovered to 0 BP. And that recovery took longer due to Sir Sloan’s BP shennanigans. Trial for the Brave Ones is the theme here and it’s both awesome and fitting.
Sir Sloan’s Bravebearer was the last Asterisk I had to get. Once you have all of them Elvis gets another revelation: the book is the Librarian Asterisk created by the Nexus. The book stores knowledge and memory, including that of the Nexus. The Nexus’s memories restores it when it falls. That memory must be destroyed. But how? Elvis mentions he once accidentally set the book on fire and it did no damage.
Time for a Bravely Default meta twist. Next time you go to save you’ll see the previously-unaccessible bottom save slot turn purple. Go to it and you’ll see a strange save in an unintelligible font. This is the Nexus’s memories. It’s the Nexus’s save file. The Nexus comes back after defeat the same way you come back after defeat: it reloads its save file. Overwrite that save and it can no longer come back. I really loved this meta twist.
Isle of Nothingness
With the Nexus no longer able to come back it’s time to hunt it down and finish it. The group sees a vision of an old woman: the same old woman that’s managed the boat described above. The four go to talk to her. She’s actually Queen Aileen of the fairies, the last of the four previous Heroes of Light. She was tasked with setting the current Heroes of Light on their way and now will help them finish their journey.
The Night’s Nexus can now be found at the Isle of Nothingness, an island beyond the current plane. Only with the help of one from another plane (Seth) can the group go there. Aileen guides them there and then disappears forever. This is the final dungeon. Visually, it’s a bit of a let down compared to the last few dungeons: it’s a mash-up of the world map with some corrupted liquid around. One cool twist is that there are numerous obstacles in the way. When you get to one you’ll get a message about how you got past it in the same format as the boat sidequest described above: this is the island that your Seth has been exploring and working with other Seth’s on.
Final Boss
One last confrontation against the Nexus. As usual for the Bravely series, the final boss theme is amazing: Eyes That Gaze Into the Nexus – The Ones Who Gather Stars in the Night. After beating the form you’ve already beaten, it starts draining the memories from the group. Gloria, Elvis, and Adelle all lose their memories. During this time they get no turns, not even to recover BP. Seth’s Special command gets replaced with Remember! One-by-one he helps the other three to remember who they are, at which point they get turns again.
Then the Nexus turns its attention on Seth. He loses his memories and all his commands are replaced with “???.” The other three help him to remember. You’re given the option to Brave. Now normally when you Brave it duplicates the menu and puts it behind your current menu, like you have a couple notecards to go through. Here the game has you Brave over and over until the whole screen is filled with menus. Eventually, this breaks Seth out of his stupor. The triumphant portion of the theme, The Ones Who Gather Stars in the Night, begins here.
The fight itself was a joke. A Wellspring Depleted removed all the MP from my team but between the passive MP regens my mages had and Elvis and his salves that was a temporary setback. Courage Squandered reduces everyone’s BP by 1. Thing is, we have Bravebearer now so I used Equaliser to bring everyone back to 0. And of course, Godspeed Strike still does ridiculous damage.
Ending
The Crystals speak to their chosen heroes. They say they’ll bring them back to their world. Thing is, Seth isn’t from the same world and he’s supposed to be dead to boot. The other three wake up on the same shore Seth did at the beginning of the game. They look for him but despair when they can’t find him.
You’re brought back to the Title Screen. The only option is to Continue. The Wind Crystal speaks to Seth. It tells him much like how the wind never stops Seth will continue onwards. Seth is brought to the shore with his companions who are relieved to see him.
And… that’s it. No explanation for what world Seth was originally from, how he died, or anything. There are fan theories but the game doesn’t give much to go on. While I don’t always mind not having everything spelled out this seems like a case where they intended to go somewhere and ran out of time in development.
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