Oh boy oh boy, I've written an entire essay on Default in Our Stars before, and I'm going to be very brave today and write a steam review now, too. Wait, what? John Green made a second book?

GAMEPLAY: 3/5
Call me a Mai Tai cause I'm rather mixed about Bravely Default II's gameplay. On one hand, it has an absolutely brilliant combat system. As a self-proclaimed JRPG connoisseur, I've seen all kinds of games try handling job systems and abilities within the realm of turn-based combat. And honestly? BD2 puts the "based" in "turn-based combat" with the way it handles battles. The diversity in strategies and abilities are top-notch in this game. To name an example, I've never seen so many different ways to play as a supportive character before in a JRPG. You can focus on debuffing enemies, or applying status effects on them, or buffing your party instead, healing, casting spells that will support you in the future (preemptive measures), gambling, and tanking. Particularly, I found the Spiritmaster job to be quite stimulating, predicting turns in advance where I'd die and which ally I'd choose to resurrect beforehand. The dual-job system enables a plethora of options and strategies, and the ability system where you equip abilities from job classes creatively encourages players to strategize to minmax their supportive or offensive capabilities. As well, the "Brave" system in the combat engine where you can move several times in one turn for great risk and great reward added another fun layer of complexity to the fights. The combat system was so diverse that clearing enemies didn't even need to be your sole focus. You could also enter combat to recklessly gamble and farm money, search for or steal items, or achieve secondary goals to further upgrade your characters (e.g. Beastmaster's passive of boosting your character's stats by catching enemies). This took away from the repetition of combat, and always gave me as the player something to take away from any encounter. With BD2's combat engine, strategizing has almost never been more fun in a JRPG.
Now for some of the lowlights of the game - the balancing of bosses in the game can be questionable at times. In the beginning of the game, boss fights are especially grueling and require considerable grinding to clear (and your combat abilities are still lacking at this point, having barely unlocked any jobs). Why are bosses in Chapter 1 constantly putting me to sleep, or healing themselves repeatedly, or spamming spells that take away my abilities? Grinding is a normal aspect for JRPGs, but to dish out so much in the beginning before you can even properly build your characters was a little much. And from a universal game design perspective, I couldn't help but imagine most if not all casuals would be discouraged by the game's difficulty right off the bat, leading them to not finishing the game.
Another low point were the dungeons of the game. Almost all of the dungeons in the game were simply mazes designed to waste your time, and most of them were empty and had nothing to interact with save for a few chests. Literally every dungeon had numerous dead ends, and were littered with chests that had forced enemy encounters to obtain the item inside. There was nothing stimulating about the dungeons, and you just wanted to run to the end as soon as possible. Which leads me to the next point... the game would quite often just waste your time. Why was there no fast-travel outside of when you were in a town? And why was fast travel only limited to other towns? Why did leaving dungeons require an item to help you escape if you didn't want to backtrack all the way from the end, and why did story cut-scenes never take you to the next location you needed to be at even if it made zero sense to make the player painstakingly go from Point A to Point B again when they've already been to both? All of these inconveniences not only impact the main game, but hurt the post-game as well, including all side-quests, and all hall of tribulation trials. BD2 could have been a much smoother experience with some much needed QOL changes, and redesigned the dungeons to give the player actual incentive to explore and immerse themselves within them.

NARRATIVE: 3/5
Bravely Default II's story is kind of all over the place in terms of direction and quality, to be honest. Overall, I think there were some great ideas in the story that were held back by mediocre writing, or at times, questionable character writing. Sometimes, the character writing was so poor that my immersion was ruined, making the plot feel ridiculous and funny in a bad way (I'm looking at you, Rhimedal arc). The main cast felt relatively developed, and all the extra dialogues and cutscenes you can unlock also helped build their characters. The world-building for the different cities was surprisingly solid, and each location held a distinctive and unique identity. But even when the narrative felt coherent and acceptable, BD2 never could hit an emotional high for me, and lacked significant impact. And unfortunately, some of the story's weakest writing shows up at the end, leading up to a somewhat unsatisfactory resolution. Despite all this, I was never bored with the main story of BD2, which goes to show that with stronger writing, and a few adjustments to some bizarre narrative choices, the narrative of BD2 would be nothing short of incredible.

GRAPHICS: 2.5/5
The art style of Bravely Default II is unique and somewhat cute, with chibi models of your characters running around the world. However, at times the art direction clashes with the tone and atmosphere of the narrative. It was kind of hard to take the big bad guy entering the scene seriously when it looked like everyone was standing around like you would see in a theatrical play. Thankfully, there were also entire cutscenes added in too, which were considerably more immersive. For a game released within the past few years, I wasn't personally impressed with the graphics, and it definitely could have been more polished. As well, the game on Steam actually suffers from rendering issues, making everything look blurry and fuzzy. You could fix this by opening the menu for towns, but I could not find a fix for it in the overworld. With more polish, and perhaps a more light-hearted narrative, I could see the art direction behind BD2 be more fitting. However, with the way it presently stands, it detracts more from the game than it does enhance the gameplay experience.

SOUNDTRACK: 4/5
The music in Bravely Default II was quite solid! I think what I liked most about the soundtrack was how it was not only diverse and pleasant to the ears, but actually gave the individual locations more identity. Each major town clearly went hand-in-hand with the town music, and further enhanced the world-building. My favourite example of music and identity being interwoven together beautifully is Rhimedal! As a large, snowy city with ominous practices occurring, the music fittingly felt grand, wintery, and yet contained subtle dark undertones. And for the voice acting, while I wasn't a huge fan of the english vas, the japanese vas did a decent job at representing their characters and conveying emotion. Although lowkey... in my most humbled opinion, there was no need to make Elvis sound like an unc. HAHAHA.

OVERALL: 3/5
Bravely Default II was such an interesting game for me to write about, as it had some stellar highs and some appalling lows. Given how the game is structured, you'll need to be patient (and a little forgiving at times) to have a good time with Bravely Default II. Even for fans of the JRPG genre, this game is definitely not for everyone, and that is okay. So on what basis do I recommend playing the game? It's simple. The combat engine is truly the heart of the game - if you enjoyed the combat system of games like Octopath Traveler, or even Fire Emblem, consider giving Bravely Default II a try! Yeehaw.