My first impression on Bravely Default was much like any other JRPG fan, "I must have it!" It didn't help that I didn't own a 3ds but the number of titles Nintendo randomly decided to smack the masses with late 2013 and the beginning of this year quickly made me reconsider. The original 3ds does not do justice to the grand scale of Bravely, and because of the carpal tunnel I had every grind session I had leveling my crews levels and job classes, I quickly traded up for an XL. The sheer difficulty of the game is enough to scare away the most persistent game breakers and at chapter 3 with well over 30 hours of play time sunk I can tell you from experience it is not to be taken lightly.

The learning curve for the battle mechanics is steep. It doesn't help that the commercials downplay It's complexity by stating you can choose brave or default, it is so much more. There are 'jobs' which require leveling for powers and moves, but there is also base leveling for base stats of each individual player. With over 14 levels per job and over 90 base levels, you can piece together why I am 30 hours in at chapter 3. There are obviously weaknesses and strengths against powers and enemies, but reaching the point where you can utilize them takes patience even on normal. In addition, grinding through these ranks is not nearly as tedious as Pokemon or FF in the sense that you can control frequency of encounter rate as well as speed of combat. From experience grinding through hundreds of thousands of exp points at x4 speed is a whole hell of alot entertaining then slushing through at regular speed.

The difficulty however is what makes it so appealing. I am what people call a gamebreaker, I love to exploit every possible outcome of a game regardless of genere or type. If It's fighting I am beating every boss on intense on super smash brothers brawl with EVERY CHARACTER, if it is tactical, I am aquiring every chest while retaining all my forces like on Fire Emblem Awakening on Lunatic (please do not try at home). With Bravely it is the daunting task of unlocking every job and hidden job and special move, and special move parts and beating every stylus chucking boss and locating secret bosses, that alone is challenge enough to have Leonidas himself shaking in his sandals. The vast difference in challenge you get from hard mode forces players to think, the AI puts you in the corner if you run into battle without careful strategy, finding the weakness becomes first nature before long and new foes give you that excited and uncertain feeling you get when your about to do something totally crazy.