Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster brought one of the most beloved Japanese RPGs of the Nintendo 3DS era to Nintendo Switch 2, reworked for the big screen. The story follows a quartet of heroes led by the young Tiz, whose village is swallowed by a chasm, and Agnès, a seer trying to restore the four crystals that keep the world in balance. At first it plays like a very classic fantasy plot about a journey to restore order, but the game deliberately toys with player expectations, and in its second half it takes a turn that is still cited in the genre to this day.

Combat rests on the Brave and Default system the game is named after. Every character can borrow turns from the future and fire off several actions at once, or instead skip a turn, take a defensive stance, and save them up for later. That creates a tactical game about risk: an aggressive opening can end a battle before the opponent even attacks, but if it fails, you're left defenseless for several turns. On top of that comes an extensive job system, where every character combines a main profession with skills from another, giving enormous room for party building and for experimenting with combinations the game itself never spells out. It also includes building your own village, which grows in real time and rewards the player with equipment.

The remaster uses the Switch 2's power to make the originally hand-painted backgrounds and paper-styled scenery look crisp even at high resolution, and adds modern conveniences like speeding up battles or adjusting difficulty. The music, built on melodic orchestral and rock motifs, is among the most consistently praised parts of the whole game. At the time of its original release, the game was considered one of the titles that breathed new life into the classic turn-based RPG at a time when the genre seemed to be fading. The series built on that success with further entries, and its battle system became a model for a number of smaller studios. Today the HD version is the natural place to experience this story for the first time, and also a reason to return to it after all these years.