I am still playing Bravely Default II! Once again I will keep any explicit spoilers behind a cut, but I am going to talk about some general stuff from the game first so watch out for that! I am currently playing through Chapter 3, and have just returned from visiting the Jaws of Judgement.

✦ I am largely moving away from my "history repeating across worlds" theory, expect in-so-far as this is kind of always happening with Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy-adjacent games. That being said, I do have some other theories kicking around! Gloria has a destiny that she isn't disclosing, which almost definitely means she's fated to sacrifice herself :(

My big theory right now, though, is that Adelle is a fairy. At first I thought it was a bit of a joke theory, just like 'oh, I hope Adelle's one' when we first arrived in Rimedhal and they talked about fairies being able to disguise themselves as humans and conceal their wings and whatever. But since then I feel like some stuff has slipped into place? She knows the Lord of Dragons personally! She's always made little quips about wanting to keep her air of mystery! And more than once she's made 'humans are ____' statements that you can totally read as an outsider looking in. IS ADELLE A FAIRY??? I do not know. But I think I might headcanon her as a fairy unless I'm explicitly shown otherwise.

✦ I liked the guest characters in Chapter Two quite a lot, and I'm not generally a 'cute animal mascot' type person so I wasn't overly fussed about Gwilym when he first appeared. But then I witnessed him in battle and actually I love him so much and if anyone or anything ever takes him away from me I will kill everyone involved and then myself? I am going to quit playing the game when Gwilym stops accompanying us. I need baby dragon for all.

✦ I still really like this party, and I'm surprised to see quite a lot of people saying they're just not as charming as the original Bravely Default cast. Charming as who? Tiz? Bloody Ringading? Nah, man. Agnes and Edea were good, and Tiz was completely inoffensive. But there isn't a single bad party member in BDII. Seth is Tiz but just a tiny bit rounder as a character (albeit lacking a dead baby brother tragedy, which I guess could be taken for depth on Tiz's part if. that's your metric for such things). Gloria and Adelle and Elvis are all wonderful, and I really believe they've all had whole ass lives before the game began. I don't quite mean to say that the Bravely Default cast is bad, or that II is definitely better. But I definitely have a preference, and I'm a bit surprised how many people seem to lean really hard in the opposite direction!

✦ JOB CLASSES WANT THEM ALL, WANT... ALL JOB CLASSES... I've also seen people say they don't like the battle system in this game as much as they did in the original titles, and it makes me realise I haven't played the originals in quite a while because I can hardly tell any difference at all? I love this game and how it plays, my only regret right now is that I seem to be overleveled and I'm not sure how to get out of that rut. I want to keep getting JP for my new Asterisks, but I don't really want any more standard EXP? But I keep hitting new locations and finding the enemies there are already running away from me, which is a shame. I'm not sure I want to commit to Hard Mode, though...

✦ Managed to beat a few of the extra difficult overworld monsters! There are some who are still WAY out of my league, but every time I've gone back and defeated a previously undefeatable monster? Heck yeah that feeling, heck yeah heck yeah heck yeah.

( Spoilers for Chapter Two and some of Chapter Three! )

I have almost fifty hours on this game and I don't think I'm at all close to being done with it! Between visiting old towns to check for sidequests and just loving every moment I'm in the world, I've been pouring hours in to this title. And I'm so happy!! I'm so so happy with this stupid adorable actually-kinda-dark-as-heck game. Another update soon, no doubt!