Bravely Default 2

Developer Claytechworks Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now

For a while, the third Bravely Default game is as confounding as its title. We’re loath ever to say of a game “it gets good after 20 hours” – anything that takes that long to find its feet probably isn’t worth persevering with – but suffice it to say for the first two chapters it’s a bit of a slog. That its story largely covers well-trodden ground hardly helps: it begins with a shipwrecked amnesiac washing up on the shore of a strange kingdom before moving onto elemental crystals and heroes of light destined to save the world from a terrible fate. And since the two 3DS entries we’ve had Octopath Traveller, another throwback to JRPGs of yesteryear, but one whose battles carried a sense of visual drama that’s severely lacking here.

It’s a dawdler, too. One of the joys of the original and its equally fine, if less celebrated, successor was the way it streamlined the typical genre grind, letting you quickly amass job points to diversify your party’s