Bravely Default II - Bravely Second didn't happen

Announced this morning for Switch in 2020 a sequel to Bravely Default produced by Team Asano, developed by Claytechworks, music by Revo.

Now, this has all-new Heroes of Light, where Bravely Second was the cast of Bravely Default right?

That’s right. This is... odd. Bit of a Xenoblade situation, but not because X was the spin-off there and 2 was the sequel-ish.

Oh well! The heroes look like anime figurines, the towns are still hand-painted, and best of all, Revo are back! I am very much up for this.

As happy as I am that this franchise lives on this better not be like Xenoblade X.   I need my Ringabel Interdimensional Police Force sequel tease answered dammit!

Also Second was better than Default.  The choice to be half-parody half-loveletter to the genre was the correct one and I'd be very sad if they just went back to playing everything completely straight.

Still I'll take a sequel than not! I honestly thought the franchise was dead after Second's sales figures, glad to see that's not the case.

Never played the series but this looks nice, count me in.

It's like the old Final Fantasies, but with a system that lets you save or spend turns, and a host of QoL improvements. Athrun's right that Second was better than Default, so hopefully this'll continue the upward trend (ignoring Octopath).

@Athrun888 wrote:

As happy as I am that this franchise lives on this better not be like Xenoblade X.   I need my Ringabel Interdimensional Police Force sequel tease answered dammit!

I mean, they said this'd be in an all-new world. Who do we know who can travel between worlds?

@Balladeer wrote:

That’s right.  This is... odd.  Bit of a Xenoblade situation, but not because X was the spin-off there and 2 was the sequel-ish.

My take was that it was a bit more like FFX/FFX-2 and then this is the next installment in the series. I could be wrong.

Perhaps I should play my copies of Bravely Default and Bravely Second.

Think I've read that as well that Bravely Second was basically Final Fantasy X-2, where this new game is Final Fantasy XI in comparison.

@JayMoyles wrote:

Perhaps I should play my copies of Bravely Default and Bravely Second.

At this stage, my tentative advice would be: leave Default, look up the plot, and play Second. You’ll miss out on some amazing story beats and set-pieces, but you’ll also miss out on the dogshit second half of the game, and given the limited time available to you you don’t have time for half a JRPG of dogshit.

Or do whatever so long as it isn’t spending all your gaming time on live service nonsense.

@Balladeer wrote:

Or do whatever so long as it isn’t spending all your gaming time on live service nonsense.

I think I've squeezed most of the substantial content out of D2 and maybe - just maybe! - I'll escape this GaaS hell.