Nothing makes me realize the power of nostalgia like thinking about the Coleco handheld sports games of my childhood (1976). In my mind there can never be a better game than the little football game that consumed so much of my time. While the graphic consisted of little blips of light that moved slowly and erratically up and down, back and forth on my screen it was a million times better than any other game that I will ever encounter.
Those games taught me not only the rules of football, but what it was to play an interactive, electronic game. Walkthroughs consisted of asking my cousins for help and Let’s Plays were watched totally over someone else’s shoulder. My Coleco handheld was my first. And it gave me a feeling that I can never have again no matter how hard I try to replicate it.
And that was the same feeling that I have always had about Final Fantasy VII. Many folks will say that FFVII is the best FF game in the series if not the best JRPG every. Great storyline, solid turn based combat system, and a diverse group of quirky characters. FFVII gave me my first RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury). It was a dark and beautiful weekend that involved huge bags of snack foods and a case of Mountain Dew. But that is a story for another day. In the years since the release of FFVII I have played countless JRPGs on various consoles and the PC looking for that experience once again. And don’t get me wrong I have have found some great ones Eternal Sonata, Persona 4 Golden, FFVIII, and Ni No Kuni just to name a few. And some of them have even held my attention for 100+ hours, but none have replaced FFVII.
Last week saw the release Square Enix’s beautiful 3DS bound JRPG, Bravely Default (which is named for it’s turn based gameplay mechanics Brave and Default). Bravely Default was proceeded by much hype about it’s embracing the true nature of the JRPG and a 4+ hour demo. Now, I usually don’t play demos for games that I am really excited for because bad demos can really ruin a game for me, but this time I thought I’d give it a shot because some of your stats transferred over if you bought the full game and you got a special item in the full game for playing. The demo left me torn. It started out with a female protagonist leading the party and included a good band of companions (a con/thief, a mage, a warrior), but the story was glossed over and the mechanics and battle system were not clearly explained. Bad move considering that those are the two most important things in a JRPG. I played the demo off and on for a couple of weeks in increments of 10-15 minutes but it never really took hold. I wavered on whether or not to buy the game at release, but I ultimately did.
And I have to say that after the first hour of game play I am glad that I did. Bravely Default feels like an old school Final Fantasy game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the game feels dated or has horrible graphics. It is actually one of the most beautiful games that I have seen on the 3DS. It starts with the (stereo)typical extensive cinematic cutscene that lays out the backstory of all of the characters who will eventually be in your party before it drops you into actual gameplay. And that gameplay is smooth. The battle system takes a little getting used to because of the banking of Brave Points (BP) and Sleep Points (SP) that can be used in battle to allow you to take multiple turns or to take your turn before the monsters that you are fighting. And this has actually been a point of contention for some folks, not because of a purity of battle, but because SP are earned for every 8 hour block that your 3DS is in sleep mode, or you can buy more via microtransaction by tapping on a convenient little button on the screen. Oh yeah, who doesn’t love microtransactions? After an hour of game time this is just being introduced to me so I can’t tell you how much it actually affects the game yet. Since I am a bit of a JRPG purist I seriously doubt that it will be an issue for me because I can’t see myself using them much (if at all).
As beautiful as the game is and as great as the combat feels I already have a couple of issues with the game and some of it’s characters. First, I was extremely disappointed that the beginning party member in the game was not Agnes (as it was in the demo), but rather Tiz, the young shepherd boy who has lost his whole family to the earthquake/chasm opening that was caused by the corruption of the magical crystal that seemingly keeps the world running.
Secondly, I have to say that I was more than a bit shocked by the female costumes in the game. Nintendo is usually a bit more conservative with this kind of thing and while it is true that the costumes were toned down and the characters aged up a bit for the EU/NA version of the game (the Japanese versions of the costumes were really risque and all of the characters were underaged Agnes is 17 and Edea is 15) some of the female characters are hypersexualized. Airy, the help fairy in the game (who is also the featured image on this post) is not only scantily clad but always positioned for titillation. Tinkerbell she definitely ain’t. And some of Edea’s and Agnes’ costumes are more fitting for a strip club than a battlefield (but I won’t talk about that at this point because you don’t see them in the first hour).
And finally, while the sexuality of Agnes and Edea seems to be fairly “good natured”. The female enemies in Bravely Default do not seem to fare as well. When we are introduced to Agnes in-game we are quickly introduced to a band of evil Eternian sky baddies who are hellbent on destroying her. The pirates are led (not officially but apparently by the genitals) by the beautiful, buxom white mage character, Holly Whyte. Holly persuades fighters to go to their certain death by telling her to show her how a real man does it, drops sexual innuendo of what will transpire once they will will return, and accues the ship’s captain of having a cannon that is too quick. Holly is definitely not the “holy” or “pure” mage that her name might suggest.
In terms of the gameplay and storyline, Bravely Default is quickly shaping up to be a really good JRPG. I dare say that if it continues in this way and progresses at a steady pace that it can be a great one. Unfortunately it’s treatment of its female characters is more along the lines of requests to make Lightning’s breasts unreasonably large in FFXIII than with some of the more cutting edge gender politics stories that we have seen coming out of Japan in recent years. I can only hope that this is not a trend that will continue and we can expect more enlightened games like Persona 4 and fewer rapey games like Dragon’s Crown.
