Bravely Second Has Amazing Gameplay Mechanics

I love Japanese Role-Playing games as much as the next gamer, but boy, do I hate random encounters. During the SNES days and the Golden Age of JRPGs, random encounters were tolerable and made sense mechanically and thematically. Game developers could use the extra memory towards another part of the game rather than having visible enemies on screen, and random encounters encouraged the sense of danger and excitement on this grand adventure you partake in. Back in my innocent, lack-of-adult-responsibilities youth, random encounters were the bees knees.

"Bring 'em all on!" I chanted.

Unfortunately, I sing a different song today, and it's called, "Don't put random encounters in video games anymore." Thankfully, technology and gaming hardware has advanced and now a majority of modern JRPGs have enemies on the screen, allowing the player to engage in combat or not. Whether I'm not in the mood to fight round after round of monsters, the dungeon I'm exploring has a complex design, or I just want to continue the story, too many random battles bog down my experience.

So here we have Bravely Second, sequel to the critically acclaimed Bravely Default, that continues the genre's iconic legacy with some stellar modern gameplay features. As I mentioned before, random encounters can make your experience tedious and frustrating. While Bravely Default and its sequel both have random encounters, this one mechanic makes all the difference:

BAM! An enemy encounter rate. Looking to grind some levels and max out your jobs? Put the rate at + 100% to double the chances to battle. Or maybe you want to do some fighting, but not enough to make you roll your eyes. Choose - 50% to decrease the average rate of encounters to something more manageable.

Sometimes I feel like level grinding and other times I just want to get to the next cut scene. I love the enemy encounter rate because it allows me to play an obvious love letter to classics JRPGs my own way while also saving me time from the tedious battles.

On top of an encounter rate, Bravely Second also has three other gameplay mechanics that make you wish every other classic JRPG had the same idea: autobattle, fast forward, and victory streaks.

How auto battle works is self-explanatory, but Bravely Second lets you customize your commands like so:

While fast forwarding makes battles go, well, faster.

To completely mitigate tedious level grinding, continuous 1-turn victory streaks will increase the average amount of experience and jobs points given. The more 1-turn victories, the bigger the rate, the more points! Wooo!

It's because of these innovative gameplay designs that puts Bravely Second's gameplay at its best, while keeping the original DNA of JRPGs. From a gameplay perspective, it's the perfect blend of old and new. I'm 20 hours into Bravely Second, and it has a lot going for it with unique characters, an enjoyable story, and immersive music. I'm loving every bit of it, but its convenient gameplay features are turning out to be the true stars of this sequel.