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Episode 703: Incursions Into Complete Despair: A Holiday Special

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Guillaume Veillette - December 20, 2020, 9:03 pm EST
Total comments: 4

Tis the season...

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It's the final episode of the year, and Seasonal Affective Disorder is in full swing. James is feeling particularly hurt by the "final" demo of Bravely Default II. He does get some relief when he and Greg talk Sephiroth's arrival in Smash Bros. After the break, Guillaume has been busy: PixelJunk Eden 2, Mechstermination Force, and Contra Hard Corps. He's also joined the ranks of the World's Most Powerful, with the Xbox Series X. He's used it to explore Viva Pinata, Star Wars Squadrons, and Banjo Kazooie. Jon wraps-up the show with Dragon Quest XI S, and Project xCloud.

That's it for us this year, we'll be taking the coming week off, and drop our next episode in the New Year. We have a couple stream plans in-mind for the holidays, so keep an eye on our Twitter account @RFNPodcast. As always you can send questions to our inbox.

This episode was edited by Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Perry's SoundCloud. The Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See more of his work at his website.

This episode's ending music is J-E-N-O-V-A from Final Fantasy VII. Composition by Nobuo Uematsu. It was selected by Greg. All rights reserved by its Square Enix Co., Ltd.

Talkback

rewsanDecember 21, 2020

Just listening to the episode now, great so far as always. I know it's too late for James now but some info for the Bravely Default 2 Demo, you can set defult to L in the options menu!

Not sure why it isn't on by deafult but there you go.

Order.RSSDecember 21, 2020

My fave RFN subplot is Guillaume relitigating old IGN Forum grudges.

Quote from: rewsan

Just listening to the episode now, great so far as always. I know it's too late for James now but some info for the Bravely Default 2 Demo, you can set defult to L in the options menu!

Not sure why it isn't on by deafult but there you go.

THANK YOU!

Gamer@LawDecember 27, 2020

My biggest complaint with both Bravely Default II demos remains the removal of turn-round combat.  The new quasi-ATB system found in the “Final Demo” is a mild improvement from the first demo, but it too fails in its attempt to incorporate the Brave/Default mechanics.

Turn-round combat afforded the player the ability to properly strategize, to employ Braving/Defaulting (as well as other buffs/debuffs) effectively and to build effective combinations of skills.  It worked perfectly in the 3DS titles and there was no valid reason for removing it now.

Another glaring flaw is the redundant combat dialogue.  It gets so bad after a few hours that many players are likely to turn off the volume during combat.  A shame because what I have heard of the soundtrack thus far is very good.

Removing random encounters, along with the player’s ability to control their frequency, strikes me as yet another unforced error by the dev team.

BD II was the title I was most looking forward to going into 2020.  The first two games in the series hold a special place for me and I have told countless people that I consider Bravely Default to be the best ‘Final Fantasy’ game since IX.  Sadly, these demos leave me convinced that BD II will fall far short of the mark left by the earlier entries in the series. 

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