It's a wonderful celebration of turn-based combat, buoyed by a smattering of quality-of-life improvements that help to make it more accessible than its predecessors. After the credits roll, there's still plenty of impetus to explore Bravely Default 2's large world as you develop your job classes even further. Each area is its own unique challenge, encouraging you to mix and match jobs while richly rewarding experimentation. But upon digging into its myriad systems, Bravely Default 2 reveals itself to be a rich and layered experience with its own sense of style. Rebekah Valentineįor more, check out IGN's Tales of Arise review.īravely Default 2 is a fairly unassuming RPG on the face of it, with more than a few dismissing it for its minimalist story and strange, doll-like protagonists. With them at the helm of an adventure across a beautiful, intriguing new world, Arise comes together to give the Tales of series a much-needed reinvigoration while still feeling, thankfully, like a Tales game. But it also is still a Tales story, peppered with humor and light-hearted interactions between its complex and fascinating cast of heroes. Its story tackles hefty topics like the horrors of war, slavery, colonization, and the challenges of rebuilding after all that, and mostly manages to handle the difficult intricacies with care. It amps up the formerly linear motion battle system to almost full-blown character action RPG intensity, all while retaining the jubilant anime franticness of everyone yelling attack names at once. The Tales of series has been comfort food JRPG goodness for years, and Arise keeps that warm familiarity while making a number of overdue changes to the Tales of formula. Despite there being exciting options across western RPGs, JRPGs, and beyond, a few have risen above the undoubtedly impressive pack. The RPG genre can be a vast one, but there are always a few things at the heart of it: the constant growth and progression of your character or party driven by a focus on story – be that a story that is down to earth or entirely fantastical.Ģ021 was packed full of epic RPGs, some set in warped versions of our own world and others in entirely new fantasy locations.

Game epic war 6