It… might just be the worst game I’ve ever played 😡 I ended up completing the whole thing out of curiosity after about 5 hours, including optional bosses, and here are my thoughts on it all.
Characters / Story
- Characters feel pretty average overall (despite the fact that Seth sounds exactly like Xenoblade Rex)
- Story feels pretty typical as well: adventurers chasing an enemy over something valuable. Nothing too much to expect from a demo though
Environment
- 3D models feel like they just don’t belong in the beautiful 2D art world 😡
- Ton of empty space throughout the map, made exploring subpar despite how pretty the art is. Why can I explore the top half of the palace with nothing there
- Why was there literally nothing interesting in the ruins
Menu
- Who made the decision to hold the – button to view a description
- Why you gotta wait 234987129834 years after equipping an item / skill to continue navigating through the menu
- Why do the tooltips on items obstruct the view of the item below it
- Navigating through the menu generally makes sense, but oh is it so cluttered with elements scattered among the screen almost arbitrarily (e.g. under the Equipment menu, navigating through the 4 characters is on the bottom right, but in the Jobs menu it’s at the bottom left. Under the Abilities menu, part of those characters are blocked by another window)
- Thick black text stroke and possibly the worst font to choose
- Windows are arbitrarily tilted at dutch angles, just making things look messy
- Negative space is often either too much or too little, almost never just right
- Why not just use Y to unequip an item instead of – in the awkward JoyCon / Pro Controller corner (Y was unused)
Overworld
- Why is the field attack worse than DK’s jab
- Why do you get no iframes when returning the the map from a battle, so you can be forced to fight twice in a row
- Why can’t you tell how strong an area is (e.g. like a recommended level listing) without just dying, regardless of how close you are to the weakest enemy in the game
- Why is cutting grass such a chore with how slow the field attack is
- Camera on map feels very limited, sometimes obstructing the view of enemies dashing at you
- Enemies chase you down VERY fast, so unless if you’re expecting one and there’s a lot of open space to run around / away, you will get caught and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Some will even spot you when they’re not even on the screen, notably the wolves.
- Why does the overworld go through night and day every 30 seconds, literally
Enemies
- Why is the 3rd easiest enemy 29837498274893279x harder than the 2nd easiest
- Why is the hardest wild enemy in the game (the bees) so close in proximity to the weakest enemy in the game
- Why does said hardest enemy OHKO you, even when defending, until you’re like 3 levels away from the max level in the demo
- Why do you have no idea how strong any enemy is until you lose to it
- Why was grinding for multiple hours the majority of the demo a necessity — I spent 5 hours on the demo, and 3-4 hours were spent just grinding
Combat
- Why do you not get to see anybody’s turn order
- Why can you (accidentally or otherwise) select Default as your last action when you’re using BP, where Default would just override everything
- Why is it that when you speed up the battles, the voices all collide like a cacophony at a bar at 4am
- Why are the boss battles practically impossible unless you spam multiple mages and healers
- Why can the bosses spam area-of-effect (AoE) skills with BP, OHKOing your entire party despite defending at full health
- Why do you have to mash A literally over a dozen times to select the same move if using BP
- Why do you not heal upon leveling up so you have to travel 5 minutes to the inn — every 5 minutes
- Why can you not see your max HP/MP, only current
- Can’t view stat changes / weaknesses / other important info without holding the awkward + button
Misc
- Dialogue felt clunky, to where it seemed like some inputs to continue the dialogue wouldn’t register.
- Party chat (when pressing + in the overworld) portraits seemed arbitrarily placed every time.
Things I did like!
- The enemies and attacks actually look sick and smooth, compared the your party’s clay-like models
- 2D art throughout the demo was fantastic — oh so wish that was used instead of the 3D protagonists
- Town music and main boss music are pretty great, though like 10 minutes into the latter just feels like you’re playing DDR lol (not a bad thing) (all the other music was fairly average)
- Job outfits are actually really sick. Black Mage Adelle is 2B, and Thief Adelle is Frozen’s Elsa :^)
All that said, I do realize that this is just a demo, and that the developers have it out to hear our thoughts on it all so far! But… why do I have 36 negative points compared to just 4 positive ones LOL.
I’m actually so bummed. This was probably my most anticipated game I saw from The Game Awards + the Nintendo direct where this trailer was first revealed, especially when all of the art shown was just the beautiful 2D art. But… I can’t see myself buying this game at all, no matter how much they improve the release version. I haven’t played the prior Bravely Default games, but I do hope they were nothing compared to this one 😡
Kevin Who 
All of this takes place in the first chapter of Bravely Default II, which the demo will allow you to explore for as much as five hours. You’ll receive hourly …
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