Bravely Default is out in the US! Hooray! Finally. It's been a while but the first major 3DS game of 2014 is here thanks to Nintendo and Square Enix. Bravely Default is awesome. To find out why, read Heath Hindman's review. I've been scratching the surface of this massive and classically-minded Japanese role-playing game, so Heath had to help me with some (all) of these tips.
For low level enemies, go Bravely into debt
The heroes in Bravely Default can either stack moves or defend themselves and store up moves for a later turn. This means you can go into move-debt on the first turn to eliminate enemies before they can even act. Be careful with this tactic though, as enemies that aren’t killed with your loaned turns will have free reign to attack you back. Every turn gives your heroes one BP, the currency for turns in combat. You can store these up by using Default right off the bat, but our next tip will shed some light on why Braving the competition will make the rest of the game easier.
Win in One Turn and get up to 50% bonus exp
For every battle you finish in your team's first opportunity to act, you’ll earn 10% more experience points. That means if you defeat your opponents in one turn, you’ll increase the pace you level up. Continuing your One Turn streaks will allow for further experience boosts. In fact, finish 10 battles in a row (in just one move) and One Turn will double the experience bonus to 20% per battle. 10 more battles finished with One Turn will further your EXP boost with a 50% experience bonus per battle. You're on your way to maximum experience points.
Go out guns blazing if you want this bonus. If any foe survives your first turn, you won't get the bonus and your hot streak will be reset. This means you'll be back to fighting for the 10% bonus, even if you'd been getting 50% for some time.
Win Unscathed for bonus JP
Bravely Default features another bonus mechanic where players are rewarded with more Job Points when they finish their battles without any hero taking damage. You get a 10% JP bonus for finishing a single battle while taking no damage (dubbed the Unscathed bonus). Do this ten times in a row and you'll begin getting a 20% JP bonus per battle. 10 more times in a row and earn yourself a pretty 50% bonus in JP.
This one is a little trickier to keep running for a long time, because as soon as the enemies get a pre-emptive strike, welp, odds are that they'll find a way to do some damage. Still, there are job skills that can increase your team's chances of getting the upper hand in such things. Use them well, and you can find yourself trucking through the jobs list with this handy JP bonus.
Sweep the Leg
You can earn the "Sweeper" finish if you eliminate all enemies at the same time. This will be easiest with something like a Black Mage or Summoner, for example, who can hit everyone with a fiery blast. Kill every enemy simultaneously and earn a 10% increase in money for that battle. Do it 10 times in a row to get upgraded to a 20% money bonus. 10 more battles with the Sweeper bonus nets you 50% more cash per battle. As long as you keep the streak alive, you'll be rolling in it.
What you might do is attack the group with weak attacks first, and spread them out so that everyone is hit. Then unleash a monster Firaga on the whole enemy group. If they all die at once, you get the Sweeper bonus. If one bites it before the others, and they require a second blast, then you won't get the extra cash.
Watch out for enemies' elemental weaknesses. If you see there are two dudes weak against fire and a third who is not, then consider throwing a single-target attack on the guy without a weakness before you unload your group fire spell, to make up for the fact that he'll take less damage than the others. And in that same situation, finding an element to which all enemies are neither resistant nor vulnerable would be equally effective.
Improve your grind!
Playing Bravely Default the same way you'd play another RPG can turn it into a real grind! Using the Brave and Default system properly, as well as finding ways to hit the above bonuses allows you to play more aggressively and therefore move a lot faster. But if that's not fast enough, hit right on the d-pad during battle to speed it up. Still not fast enough, do it again to make the battle move at blistering speed. If you regret this, of course, you can hit d-pad left to take the speed back down.
Only use SP when you’re in a tight spot
Bravely Default’s only microtransaction will give you repeated turns and give the enemy no turns. It basically gives you a turn when you already have a turn. Yo dawg. For every 8 hours, you get a point just for leaving your 3DS in sleep mode with Bravely Default running, meaning you can get up to three SP points for free every day. Don’t bother buying these points, just take a break from the game and come back later when you’re rested and determined to finish the battle once and for all. If you sleep for 16 hours a night like we here at GR do, you'll wake up with two of your three SP locked and loaded.
Stacked specials
Bravely Default's heroes each have their own special moves, depending on their equipment. You can actually stack these specials to double the effectiveness of things like your heal spell. This was another tip Heath let me in on. For example, let's say your guy with a rod has the rod special "Piercing Bolt," and you use this in battle. It does a powerful attack against one enemy, but also gives your whole party a 120% magic attack power boost. This boost lasts as long as some special music plays (around 90 seconds if not sped up) and then goes away. But if you trigger another character's special move before the music ends, then the specials stack.
So let's say you have a sword-wielding party member use "Air Splitter" before the special music wears off from Piercing Bolt. That attack goes off, and it also grants the party a physical power boost. Not only will the party now enjoy more damage in their physical attacks, but they'll keep the magic power boost from Piercing Bolt.
If you can chain together special attacks one after another, you can keep their bonuses for a longer period of time. So another tip might be, at times when you have two specials ready to go at once, wait a turn or two to unleash the second one, so that you can space out your boost. Don't do this every time, of course, but to everything, there is a season (… turn, turn, turn).
You're not married to your job
Change up your job combinations. Maybe you think Ringabel looks amazing in his Performer outfit or you find Tiz is a devastating Black Mage, but sooner or later, in the interest of fleshing out your team's overall competence, you need to change things up. Different bosses can require radically different approaches, so you want to be prepared with several different templates you can slap your party into as a response. A character's secondary abilities are often just as important as his/her primary job class, so having a character only good at one thing will be holding your party back.
The same can be said for equipment. Don't be afraid to think outside the box. Specials are determined by what kind of weapon you have equipped, so the best choice might not always be as obvious as conventional RPG wisdom may suggest.
Have it your way
Heath added:
"The great thing is that Bravely Default lets you play however you want. Not every strategy has to be about efficiency or max powarz, but some can just be for your own enjoyment of the game. People should mess with the encounter rate, language settings, and difficulty settings to find a style that suits them. Here's how I played: in dungeons, I turned the encounter rate off and raided the place for treasure. Then I found a save point, turned the encounter rate all the way up, and fought stuff for a while. I'd find the best job/skill combinations to give myself a good chance at earning the EXP, JP, and money bonuses. Then I'd tick that encounter rate back down and hightail it back to an inn. After I was content, I'd move on to fight the boss. If I died, it usually meant a re-shuffle of my jobs and skills, but I found great excitement in that process."
With these tips, you should be ready for the adventure of a life-time… or, well at least one life time. I guess if you've been following the storied library of Square Enix role-playing games, you've probably rid the world of evil a hundred times over, but one more couldn't hurt. Bravely Default does away with the mechanical hurdles an RPG might present you, so if you've been away from the genre for a while this is a fantastic game for reentry.
