The retro-throwback RPG looks beautiful in some ways, and charmingly rudimentary in others

Switch 2's Bravely Default Remaster Rings In The 3DS Nostalgia Era With A Great Version Of A Great RPG

The retro-throwback RPG looks beautiful in some ways, and charmingly rudimentary in others

To start, the game looks fantastic. The prerendered painterly backgrounds look incredible and vibrant on the big screen, which is all the more impressive when you consider they were originally made to appear on a 3DS. This visual style--your polygonal characters running against a painted backdrop--was itself a throwback to early 3D RPGs like Final Fantasy 7, but it looks especially wonderful here. Meanwhile, the style of the character models themselves largely holds up. It's a testament to the strength of the art style that these characters--squat chibi characters rendered in the unmistakable style of Akihiko Yoshida--still look so elegant in their simplicity. I wasn't able to tinker with the job classes to see the lovely way these models look when donning their various outfits, but I'm looking forward to it.

The battle system remains untouched as far as I can tell, which is fine by me because it's already perfectly balanced. I only played a little bit of an early area but I know from experience that the combination of the Brave/Default and job-class systems creates some engaging combat puzzles, especially once the game starts challenging you to split its systems wide open. This is a game that absolutely wants to make you feel like you've outsmarted it.

The newest element is a pair of minigames, which seem well designed even if they're temporary diversions at best. Both use the Switch 2 mouse functionality, challenging you to use both at once in different ways. The first is a rhythm game that has a glowing tether between your two cursors, and so matching the rhythm means lining up the tether to intersect with the music prompts, or hitting exact notes with the cursors themselves. The second is an airship-piloting game set in the first-person perspective of a pilot, so you have to manage steering the ship's wheel while also tending to other tasks. Imagine Steel Battalion but cute, with its massive controller being virtualized on screen. Neither game feeds back into the main game, but you can use the job-class costumes in the minigames as you unlock them for a bit of personalization.

I doubt I'll play much of the minigames. They're neat little showpieces for the Switch 2 mouse functionality, but they aren't the draw. The real prize is Bravely Default, one of my favorite modern(ish) RPGs, getting a beautiful restoration and being released from 3DS jail. If you haven't played it before, or even if you have, this looks to be the way to experience it.

All The Nintendo Switch 2 Games (Confirmed And Rumored) So Far