If you ask anyone who owned and played their Nintendo 3DS religiously, “What is the handheld most known for?”, they’ll tell you that it was an awesome little RPG machine with dozens, if not countless, cult hits to sink your teeth into. As someone who didn’t own the console at the time, I look at my fiancée’s collection on our game shelf and note the many RPGs that would still be well talked about now, more than 14 years after the platform’s original release. Countless Pokémon games, Fire Emblem Awakening, and some of Atlus’ most underrated and best work in the Radiant Historia remake and the Persona Q series… the list feels endless. Yet, it’s perhaps the original Bravely Default that captured the audience’s attention most. A very true to its roots RPG from Square Enix, wholly a sister series to Final Fantasy and very much inspired by that series’ classics. Those in the know knew they’d experienced something special.

For years to come, Bravely Default fans would be urging their friends and people they know and love to play that original game. I know because I’ve been hounded by some closest to me. After some time, I finally got with Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster, a remaster to coincide with the release of the Nintendo Switch 2. Finally, the Square Enix classic can be played elsewhere. Finally, I understand what all the damn fuss is about.

Bravely Default is set in a fantasy land known as Luxendarc. Keeping the world in check and everything running as it should be are the four elemental crystals, zealously protected by the Crystal Orthodoxy, a religious organisation with influence across the world. A bit suspect, no? Our story follows four characters affected by the crystals suddenly falling into darkness. Agnès Oblige is a vestal of the Wind Crystal, now feeling obligated to help and restore the crystals in any way she can. There’s Tiz Arrior, a village’s sole survivor of the explosion and blight from the crystals. Edea Lee is a figure part of an organisation that was tasked with taking down Agnès, but instead defects and joins the party. Last but not least is the amnesiac Ringabel (get it?), a ladies’ man who’s found himself in possession of a mysterious journal that already details a lot about the journey the crew has just begun.

Together, the party must return the world to its status quo, traversing across the lands to restore these four crystals to how they once were. The loop for the first few chapters is the group learning of the location of the next crystal, finding its closest main town, discovering how its darkness is afflicting that area, then working through dungeons and surrounding areas to inevitably restore the crystal. While all of that is going on, there’s an overarching plot: the party is being hunted by the army Edea abandoned, there’s a new league of villains that gets introduced and remains largely within that chapter, and so on. All of that sounds very paint-by-numbers, but that’s also only really half the game.

Even by its constraints on what the 3DS could do, Bravely Default was pushing the limits on what a game could deliver technically and how it could look. Opting for more chibi-like, rotund character sprites in the world helped the game evoke Final Fantasy IX. Aiding this familiar feeling were the unbelievably gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds that made you feel like you were walking through a tapestry or a painting. The way a crystal resides over a cliffside within a dungeon is magnificent, and light slowly seeps through it as you restore it, finally illuminating your environment. The starting capital of Caldisla is a painterly castle town situated on a hillside. It provides you a real sense of place as you walk up the long cobblestone streets and steps to reach the King’s building, a gothic old thing situated at the tippy top. Anchiem is an industrial town situated in the sky, suspended by two bridges and containing a giant clockwork as a backdrop with windmills.

With the HD upping of resolution on this new version on the Switch 2, the world is captured in an even better light. But it also isn’t exactly doing anything that another console, even the original Switch, can’t do. The same can be said for the newly added minigames exclusive to this version. One of these is a rhythm game where you’re using the Joy-Cons’ mouse controls, moving cursors to coincide with a point as a beat hits, à la Theatrhythm. This is a prime opportunity to revel some more in the fantastic and broad soundtrack on offer. The other has you piloting the party’s air vessel in a first-person perspective, navigating an obstacle course and engaging in a game of spinning plates as you have to interact with levers, gears and different machinery while avoiding an onslaught of gunfire.

Both of these minigames won’t hold your attention long due to there not being many levels in either of them, and that’s disappointing. What’s more frustrating, however, is that both of these minigames could be handled on other platforms via motion controls or analog stick inputs. There is, as such, no reason for this new version of Bravely Default to be stuck only on the Switch 2, and frankly, the game deserves better than that.

The utmost hallmark thing about Bravely Default is the robust turn-based combat system. Everything is determined by the Battle Points a character might have, the very thing that lets a character make a turn. In a given turn (provided they have Battle Points), players can have each party member either ‘Brave’ or ‘Default.’ The latter is similar to a block, allowing a character to hunker down into a defensive stance to also regenerate a Battle Point. Brave can use up several Battle Points at once, allowing for up to four moves in a turn rather than the typical one. Of course, this can allow for more damage and more room to work with on an initial turn, but it’ll impact the one after that, making it a very strategic system to learn to work with. It’s a mechanic that you’ll have to master and won’t be able to break easily. How very exciting.

Even when it comes to combat, skills and other moving parts, Bravely Default manages to feel like a big and impactful world that is shared. In menus, you can upgrade a town, allocating townspeople to improve and increasing the resources you can get from a trader. This works on timers and a real-world clock at that, meaning when you return to the game hours later, you’ve earned and progressed. My favourite touch of making the world feel shared is all the remnants of the 3DS Streetpass system that function better this time around. In battle on a given turn, players can summon a friend’s version of, say, Tiz, that might have a different, more powerful ability to help you scrape through battle. The world is dark, scary, and difficult, but it’s better with your friends, whether that’s Agnès and company or your very real human ones.