Square Enix’s Bravely Default Brilliant Lights CBT has just ended their first CBT event on 28th July. After playing around with what was available to beta testers for the game, here are our initial thoughts on the game.
▍What is BDBL
Bravely Default Brilliant Lights is the first mobile entry to the Bravely series made in commemoration to the series’ 10th anniversary. BDBC will feature an original story with new characters. Iconic characters from the series including Tiz, Edea, Seth, and Gloria will be available in the game for players to collect and use as part of their party.
▍PV
▍Combat
BDBL inherits the classic turn-based combat from the Bravely series. Players who have played previous titles in the series will be find familiar features in the combat including the Bravely Point system and the Shield points system. Much like in the previous titles, each character in BDBL has their own unique active skills. In BDBL, each character has three skills. The first skill is a basic attack that does not require any MP to cast. The second and third skill will require MP to cast. Each Character’s third skill is their most unique skill, they generally require more MP to cast, but when casting these skills, he game will show a special skill animation cutscene.
The series’ iconic signature BP system plays well in BDBL combat. Each turn players can choose to either use a skill, charge their BP gauge, or spend BP to make an additional move. Each turn players can burn three BP at most, meaning they can make up to four actions in one single turn. Whilst this sounds great, each characters’ BP gauge can actually go into the negative. Having negative BP will force that character to charge their BP gauge until it is back to positive (flat zero). Though this isn’t anything particularly new, it does make the combat feel more complex when playing manually as you can gamble everything into one moment and overdraw your BP to create make-or-break moments which keeps you on your toes.
▍Weapon / Accessories
BDBL is a mobile gacha game, and the gacha element has players rolling for weapons and equipments. The highest tier drops players can obtain in the game is R10. The game does include generic R10 equipments that players can obtain, but to fully gear their character to be as strong as they can be, players will have to roll for their exclusive equipment.
Special Effect: All teammates recover 10% of Max MP at the beginning of turn
Exclusive equipments include a Weapon and three Accessories. Weapons will add additional passive bonuses to your character whilst each accessory will modify the character’s skill, giving it additional effects.
▍Bravely Default Brilliant Lights CBT Thoughts
From what is seen in the CBT, the game already feels very complete and solid. One of the things I particularly appreciated in BDBL is that each stage doesn’t actually have that many waves to it. Instead of doing multiple waves with a stronger mini boss at the end, BDBL just puts you straight into the action in each stage. Some stages will have to clearing mobs, some will have single bosses but each has their own challenges as players can freely decide who to attack first. Each skill has its own effective range, some may only hit front row characters so in stages where there are tanks in front and mages at the back, players will really have to find a way to clear the stage before the enemy mages take you out. Each stage is short, but sometimes they’re not as simple and direct as other mobile turn-based games.
Depending on the enemies you’re facing and the characters in your party, brute force might not be able to help you clear the stage. Alternative approaches like slowly grinding it out with a healer might be viable options.
In addition to the combat aspect of the game, there is also a town area where players can interact with the different characters from the Bravely series. In this area, characters will sometime have special dialogues and give players gifts. However, the the dialogues aren’t fully voiced, so as a person who doesn’t really pay too much attention to the story and lore in mobile games, this part of the game seemed nothing more than just a place to obtain additional items.
In terms of performance, during the CBT, I didn’t run into any major bugs. The game doesn’t really bring anything particularly new to the gacha game scene, but it runs very well. Asides from a few FPS lags during the skill animation scenes at x3 speed, the game runs incredibly smooth on a Samsung S20+. The forced tutorial is also fairly short, if that doesn’t change a launch, the rerolling process for this game should be quite fast.
Although I’m not the biggest fan of the Bravely series, I am definitely looking forward to playing BDBL when it officially comes out. To keep up with the latest news for the game, stay tuned to QooApp.
