A Switch 2 launch title that won’t put you into Default.
On the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch day, they’re putting out the original Bravely Default out in HD, aptly titled “Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster.” This was a 3DS game originally released in 2012 before coming out in the West a year later via a slightly reworked, slightly expanded format.
There’s a whole historical context behind this game and how it originally started as a Final Fantasy spin-off before becoming its own franchise, but I’ll mostly skip that. Wikipedia exists for a reason, and I’m guessing an NWR alum wrote that article and/or video better than I ever could about 47 years ago.
What I will say is that the original Bravely Default is a turn-based JRPG – and a damn good one I hear – that started the whole “Brave/Default” mechanic utilized in several Square Enix RPGs since (such as the Octopath Travelers). While your party fights monsters, you can choose to “Default,” in which you don’t attack and save up a move for a future turn, or “Brave,” which allows you to spend up to three banked turns (four including your current one) to do a bunch of damage against enemies all at once.
There are other intricacies, but all you need to know is that it’s a really cool system that differentiates itself from the meat-and-potatoes aspects of many contemporaries.
I’m interested in this release in part because I’ve played Bravely Default II and Octopath Traveler II but not this predecessor. I hear Bravely Default is a really good time (we have reviews attesting to this) – one of those 70-hour RPGs that evokes SNES-era Final Fantasy while offering its own modern twists. It helps that Flying Fairy HD Remaster is coming out well below “full price” – $40 MSRP in the States – which feels smart and sensible against $70 and $80 first-party releases.
I played Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster during a brief appointment demo during PAX East 2025. I played with Joy-Con 2s in the new grip for the RPG parts, and I played the two new minigames with mouse controls. We weren’t able to play on handheld (only TV), and I’ll note that what I played was a development kit so technically I can’t speak to the Switch 2 final retail experience. Joysticks seem real good though!
I played the first 10 or so minutes of Bravely Default (up through a few random encounters in that first cave) and hey, it looks good. You can tell it’s a remaster of the 3DS game rather than a full on remake (which is totally fine), but it looked sharp and ran great. Because of preview limitations, we weren’t able to take direct or even indirect gameplay to check things out on our end, but it felt like it was running at 60fps (at least). Special shout out to the hand-drawn backgrounds from the original game, which look extra pretty with the enhanced resolution.
Flying Fairy HD Remaster also includes two new minigames that utilize the Switch 2’s mouse controls: Luxencheer Rhythm Catch and Ringabel’s Panic Cruise.
My initial impression of the Switch 2’s mouse functionality is that it seems like every other thing like this Nintendo has done in the last 20 years; on one hand it obviously didn’t feel nearly as good as a standard computer mouse, but on the other, some kids are probably going to get into the Civilization franchise through this control scheme and that’s pretty cool.
Luxencheer plays almost like a take on Theatrhythm where you move the left and right Joy-Con 2s as cheering apparatuses to the rhythm of a few songs, pressing the shoulder buttons once in a while for specific beats. Although it was awkwardly fun and kinetic moving the left and right controllers around a coffee table to catch notes, I can’t really say I felt the “rhythm” piece. I did play on an easier difficulty (I love rhythm games but wanted to be efficient with limited preview time) so maybe harder difficulties will feel better.
Ringabel was more up my alley because it played into the fundamental awkwardness of this control scheme. You pilot an airship in first-person and fly through rings at different elevations while using your mice as hands to control the airship dashboard. The point is to juggle turning the wheel while managing an elevation lever, the occasional valve you need to fix, and various buttons that the game occasionally instructs you to check. It’s silly and overwhelming, and I think this is the one of the two that has party game potential.
These are both fairly small bonuses that act as a nice application of Switch 2 functionality on launch day. It’s not the selling point, but rather a cute little thing. The new release also includes a single-screen UI, the StreetPass mode redesigned with network functionality, and quality of life upgrades such as fast-forwarding.
Here’s all you need to know: on June 5, Square Enix is selling an HD version of a huge, well-received JRPG from the early 3DS era. It’s launching at a pretty good price, and it seems like they did a pretty good job with it. There are still questions about whether every feature from the original game comes back (the spokesperson I spoke with mentioned that there’s more to share RE: some of the early questions folks had), but it seems pretty good!
