I first realized that Bravely Default was a game that would forever change the JRPG genre during a battle with the Jabberwock, which is a dragon whose name is a direct reference to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky poem. Though this boss fight was optional, it was part of a side quest to gain entry into the foreboding Vampire Castle, and getting into a place called “Vampire Castle” in a video game takes precedence over activating a crystal to save the world. The Jabberwock was my sixth battle against a series of elemental dragons to gain entry to the castle, and though I was slightly underleveled for this fight, my strategy against the other dragons had proved effective enough that I was confident I could pull off a win against this one as well.

I rolled into this fight with my party consisting of a Templar/Freelancer, a Spiritmaster/White Mage, an Arcanist/Black Mage, and a Ninja/Pirate. The engine of my strategy revolved around using Pirate skills to debuff the Jabberwock's magic defenses so the glass cannon Arcanist/Black Mage could deal even more damage with his high-level spells. Templar skills would stop the Jabberwock's powerful AoE attacks, while the Spiritmaster/White Mage would neutralize elemental attacks and heal any chip damage party members endured. Unlike the other dragons in this sidequest, the Jabberwock was immune to the strongest, Dark elemental spells in the Arcanist's kit, but I could still do enough damage with the high-level spells in the Black Mage's kit to do a moderate amount of damage each turn without the fight turning into too much of a slog.

This lengthier bout created more opportunities for mistakes, and by the time I got the dragon down to about one tenth of its health after half an hour of real-world playtime, I misread its attack pattern and all but my Ninja/Pirate was knocked out. My remaining party member didn't have enough brave points saved up to both defend herself with the Ninja job's guaranteed dodge command and use a phoenix down to revive a teammate in the same turn without leaving herself open to repeated attacks, so I was stuck in a, at best, infinite loop where I have her dodge the dragon's attacks endlessly.

I was frustrated and defeated as I queued up the dodge command, looking for any possible way out of the predicament after sinking so much time into a fight that it looked like I would have to scrap. I resigned myself to quitting out and grinding for a bit to unlock some high-level Light magic spells that would make the fight easier. However, something new happened as I gave into the sunk cost fallacy and spammed the Dodge command; my remaining party member's Counter skill activated in response to the Jabberwock's AoE attack and dealt north of 500 damage to the weakened monster. This had never happened before as the Counter skill is only supposed to activate in response to attacks that directly target a character, but apparently Bravely Default indexes party-wide attacks as single target attacks when all other party members are down! This meant that the endless loop I was trapped in was a can't lose situation, and I won the boss battle after about twenty rapid turns where I did nothing but enter the Dodge command.

This is single-handedly the greatest comeback moment I've ever experienced in a video game, with the feeling rivaling the handful of come-from-behind victories I experienced during my high school athletic career. I first experienced this moment in 2014 while staying up later than I should have the night before an Advanced Biology test during my senior year of high school. After playing through the 2025 Bravely Default Flying Fairy remaster for the Nintendo Switch 2, I'm confident saying that this is the greatest JRPG ever made, now in HD.

To back up a bit, Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster is a 2025 Nintendo Switch 2 launch title, based on the 2012 (though it wouldn't come to the States until 2014) Nintendo 3DS game Bravely Default. Published by Square Enix, the original game was developed by Silicon Studios, and this remaster was developed by studio Cattle Call, which also developed the similarly genre-defining JPRG Dungeon Encounters for Square Enix in 2021. The original Bravely Default was directed by Kensuke Nakahara and produced by Tomoya Asano, whose team within Square Enix's Creative Business Unit II is responsible for the games Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, the Octopath Traveler games, Triangle Strategy, the Live A Live remake, the Dragon Quest HD-2D remakes, and the upcoming The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. Naotaka Hayashi, who is also credited as a scenario writer on Steins;Gate, is Bravely Default's scenario writer, Akihiko Yoshida of Vagrant Story and NieR:Automata fame is credited as the main character designer and lead artist; and the music is by REVO of the symphonic rock group Sound Horizon.

If my fawning description of a single encounter in this game and its stacked credits didn't make it clear, this is a game made for JRPG sickos by an interdisciplinary super team of sickos. Originally intended to be a sequel to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, which itself is an iteration upon the mechanics and atmosphere of the first five Final Fantasy games and the first three Dragon Quest games, Bravely Default's an encapsulation of the mechanical ingenuity, storytelling, and visual and sonic direction that makes those games so special.

The gameplay loop and top-level battle mechanics of Bravely Default are instantly recognizable to anyone who's played a turn-based Final Fantasy game or a mainline Dragon Quest title. This game takes place in an open fantasy world featuring airships, an entire bestiery's worth of monsters, and plenty of dungeons to explore. In battle, you control a party of four members, spells are broken into tiers like Fire, Fira, and Fireaga; and battles are turn-based, with the speed stat of characters and enemies roughly determining turn order.

The innovation that makes Bravely Default a standout in the genre starts in the game's namesake Brave/Default system. A simple, but impactful, iteration on turn-based combat mechanics found in older JPRGs, using the Brave command allows a character to take up to four actions in a given turn, though having a negative number of action points will leave a character unable to move until the points return to neutral. One point is replenished every turn where an action is not taken or when the Default command is used, which is analogous to the Guard defensive command in older games. This means that a player can have a given character Default on the first turn of a battle, attack twice with the Brave command on the second, and then still take a new action on the third turn.

Beyond making guarding feel like less of a wasted, or at least stagnant action, both your party and enemies being able to store and take multiple actions opens up a wealth of game design possibilities that Bravely Default thoroughly explores. As an example, fights against low-level mobs are now much quicker, as a player can just spam attack actions if they know they can win a fight easily. Having an additional resource pool not tied to Magic Points also means that some of the strongest commands in the game are tied to these Brave Points and cost multiple actions, creating a risk and reward system that makes this style of turn-based combat far more gripping.

Further expanding the battle mechanics in Bravely Default's combat is its Job System. A refinement on the Job System in Final Fantasy V and the Crown System in 4 Heroes of Light, party members can switch between any of the game's twenty-four distinct character classes once the player defeats the boss associated with a given job. However, Bravely Default's Job System allows the player to equip a sub-job to a character that gives them access to all of the unlocked battle commands tied to that job, AND passive abilities unlocked under a specific job can be assigned to any character that's unlocked said ability.

A tremendous amount of depth and consideration goes into how these different jobs and abilities fit together, too. For instance, having a Monk with a Dark Knight sub-job is a great combination for an offense-focused party member, as the Monk has the highest HP stat in the game and the Dark Knight's strongest commands involve expending HP or dealing increased damage based on the amount of HP lost. However, having that character max out the more support-oriented Spirit Master job will benefit the engine of this build further, as the final ability tied to the Spirit Master job doubles a given character's HP during battle. Taking on the Vampire job's Rise from the Dead ability is also a good idea for this build, as it provides a chance at auto-recovery if the Dark Knight accidentally takes a hit while HP critical.

This is just one possible character build that fits into a broader strategy involving four characters that can be customized independently, which can lead to what feels like an endless number of party combinations. Thinking about how all of these pieces fit together is nearly as fun and gripping as having these strategies play out in Bravely Default, and that's maybe the greatest compliment any game can receive. Bravely Default is nothing short of a joy for people who like thinking about interlocking systems and strategies in game design, and will be an endlessly rewarding experience for players who prioritize those parts of a video game

Bravely Default begins in an almost stereotypical fashion for a JRPG. Following a tragedy that disrupts the idyllic countryside life of the humble Tiz, he meets a priestess of the world's dominant, crystal-focused religion named Agnes, as well as her helper fairy Airy. They inform Tiz that if they awaken the four elemental crystals scattered around the world, they can close the chasm that swallowed his hometown and prevent further needless destruction. Shortly after, Ringabell, an amnesiac womanizer with a mysterious book that portends developments in their adventure, and Edea, the daughter of the leader of a militaristic nation that wants to control the crystals, join their cause!

Even in the early hours of Bravely Default when the setup and characters seem to be dipping into cliches, the character writing shines through. The dynamic between these main characters is immediately charming, with their quirks and flaws leading to some fun dialogue. A recurring gag involves Tiz, an admitted bumkin, and the incredibly sheltered Agnes being entirely out of their depth whenever the party arrives in a new city. This leads to the ever-confident Ringabell and more worldly Edea taking charge, only for the amnesiac to reveal that he's operating solely on vibes and that the rich girl isn't responsible enough to make all the decisions for the group. The exchanges between the party feel fun, honest, and often focus on little things they run across in their adventure, like local cuisine. This makes the player's time with them often feel more evocative of a road trip with buddies than an epic quest.

This same caliber of writing is extended to side characters in Bravely Default as well. Out of the gate, the first bosses are fun subversions of fantasy game tropes, with the White Mage Holly being sadistic and mean-spirited and the Monk Barras being temperamental and prone to violence. Just about every named character in this game has a quirk or tangent story beat that makes them memorable. Of particular note are the characters Victor and Victoria, who are maybe the most outright evil human characters in this game, but approach each opportunity to inflict harm with a Team Rocket level of gusto that they can't help but come off as likeable. Lord DeRosso is also a standout, as that immortal man is having far too much fun pretending to be a vampire, though he'd never admit to it.

As the game goes on, it becomes clear that this isn't going to be the cut-and-dry power fantasy like a lot of games of this ilk. Agnes' religion is revealed to have a morally dubious history, the seemingly one-note villains that oppose them have some pretty understandable motivations, and our heroes slowly have to accept that they aren't the executives of an abject moral good while finding new motivations to carry them forward. Bravely Default raises this moral ambiguity without falling into “both sides bad” style of cynicism either, and remains a fun, thought-provoking piece of media all throughout.

Bravely Default is the story of a group of young people going out into the world, discovering that many of the platitudes they assumed about it are untrue, and figuring out who they are in the process. It is nothing short of uplifting and, as the world today feels increasingly tumultuous, I can't help but feel inspired by these characters who retain their identities and aspirations even as they lose foundational assumptions about how this kind of story is supposed to play out. As hokey as it is to say, playing Bravely Default, both as a teenager about to leave for college and now again as a 30-year-old adult, has made me a stronger person who's more resolute in my beliefs and values.

While everything thus far in this review applies to both the 3DS and Remastered versions of Bravely Default, the audiovisuals are where the games start to differ. While both are amazing and seamlessly blend the game's many vivid backgrounds with the pseudo-chibi character designs, technological differences give each version its strengths and weaknesses. The HD Remaster is the best-looking and sounding version of the game from most traditional standpoints. The HD graphics capture the scope and detail of this game's world brilliantly, and, though the sound system in the 3DS was impressive for a handheld console, REVO's score deserves the surround sound experience that a docked Switch 2 can provide through a television.

However, much of the visuals of Bravely Default were originally designed with the unique affordances of the 3DS in mind, and those effects aren't mimicked in the Switch 2 version of the game. Using the 3DS's artificial 3D slider, the backgrounds of Bravely Default's cities had an added depth that made them feel even more like a navigable space. Other elements of the original game are lost in this hardware change as well, including Street Pass functionality. In the original game, connecting with people over Street Pass added them to a passive mini-game where they would help rebuild Tiz's destroyed hometown and unlock new items and special moves for the player to utilize. While the mini-game still exists in the remaster, new villagers are instead recruited via NPCs that appear every few hours in different towns.

While this change doesn't undercut any core part of the game, and can result in items locked to the mini-game becoming available faster, this change does diminish the importance the game places on themes like community and interpersonal relationships.

While the remaster lacks 3D effects and Street Pass functionality, it does have two new mini-games to make up for the losses. Both take advantage of the JoyCon 2 controller doubling as a mouse, and take the form of a rhythm game and airship piloting sim. While both are well done and play into some of the game's strong suits — the music and striking vistas — they both feel a little tacked on. With so many of Bravely Default's previously established systems interlocking so perfectly mechanically and thematically, these new additions feel clunky by comparison. That said, playing them does provide tokens that can be used to obtain high-level items and unlock new information about the main characters. As these characters are a delight, any time spent to learn more about them and their actions before the game's narrative begins is time well spent.

In short, Bravely Default is the best version of everything that's made JRPGs an enduring video game genre since the medium first rose to prominence. It's simultaneously a work that's crafted by people with a deep appreciation for this type of game, while also iterating upon and subverting both mechanical and narrative expectations. Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster takes what worked in the original game and, outside of a handful of hardware-related gimmicks, improves an already stellar experience.

This is a game whose mechanics are nothing short of intoxicating, with writing so sharp and considered that a single offhanded sentence from a supporting character will completely recontextualize a major one, and with character, creature, and world designs that have only aged better over time. The English voice cast is stacked with talent, and I somehow managed to find more new things to like about this game twelve years after playing the original.

Bravely Default's release on the 3DS in the 2010s helped revitalize the JPRG genre and kicked off the wave of iteration and experimentation that's made the niche so interesting over the past decade or so. After playing Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster, I'm more confident than ever that one of the oldest and most expansive genres in video games can still reach even greater heights.