Bravely Second: I never realized just how short this was.

As mentioned on the Bravely Default Revisit, I originally played Second before I played Default, and I couldn't understand why so many of the series' fans didn't like Second. It clicked to me after I'd played Default and then Second, in that order.

What I Liked

Music was better than the first game. That's not to say the first had bad music, simply that Second took it up a step.

Character models are significantly improved. Things like legs actually look like legs instead of deformed baseball bats.

The branching system was interesting for the time, basically allowing players to make their own difficulty path.

No repeating section like with Default.

Being able to save favorite battle setups and equipment was a great QoL consideration.

What I Didn't Like

Second has you literally going back to every place you went in the first game if you actually want to get asterisks.

Reused map assets without modification felt lazy; for example, cave sprites that you can't enter (So why leave them on the map?)

The layout of the world has dramatically changed, inexplicably. An entire large town (the one you start in) has sprouted up in a place where there was just a single obelisk and the town you started in + Norende from the first game is nowhere to be seen. In two years entire city ecosystems are changed.

The moon rebuilding sidequest gives pitiful benefits compared to the Norende rebuild of the first.

The intro cutscene replays at the beginning of each chapter - it gets annoying real fast, and I like cutscenes, but not the same one over and over again.

The voice acting is not as good as the first.

There's not very much "game". It's just short compared to the first, and feels like a prologue rather than a full game.

I still say that Second was a smoother, overall more mature experience, but it took quite a few steps back from Default. It may be the reason that the head folks apologized for it when announcing Default II; unfortunately, based on that demo, they may have regressed even further.