Things To Do While Waiting for Bravely Default February 3, 2014

If you’re planning to pick up Bravely Default on the 3DS when it gets released later on this week I recommend downloading the game’s demo off the Nintendo eShop before giving the full version a try.  It covers a portion of the game that’s not in the full version and depending on how far you progress in the demo, you can unlock items that will carry over to the full game.

If you want access to some of the best items and equipment the demo offers, you’re going to need to check out the demo’s SmartPhone inspired mini game, and restore the town of Norande.  It can be accessed by tapping on the arrow on the left side of the lower 3DS screen, and clicking on the icon that looks a little bit like a house from the menu that just opened up.  In the Norende minigame, you assign workers to complete various tasks that need to be done, like clearning rocks which will allow you to work on new areas or building and upgrading shops, which will allow you to buy the demo’s best items from save points.  By completing this minigame, not only will this allow you to purchase the best items and equipment from any of the game’s save points, it will unlock yet another set of free items you can bring with you to the full version of the game.  Trust me, you’re going to want the game’s most powerful equipment if you want any chance of defeating the demo’s final bosses.

The downside is restoring the town of Norende can take a lot of time to accomplish, especially if you’re working by yourself.  In fact I’ve heard figures taken that could amount to over 60 hours of real-time if you are just doing it by yourself with help from no extra workers, but with just four workers helping me out I was able to restore the town in less than a day.  While this time issue isn’t much of a problem for SmartPhone games that make use of a similar system, the 3DS has several limitations that can make waiting for these tasks to finish more of a chore than they should be.  You cannot quit the game or turn off the 3DS while the town is being restored, as either of those actions will cause the timers to stop.  You can however play the game or put your system in sleep mode while the game is running and the timers will continue to run in the background.

So if you are trying to restore the town, you’re going to want to do something else while the 3DS is asleep working its magic.  Here are a few things you can do while waiting for Norende to be restored.

• Play the Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII demo or watch our Lets Play of it.  The demo can be downloaded right now on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
• Read all of 8-Bit Theater.  If you ever wondered what the story of the original Final Fantasy game would be like if all the characters were idiots (and the Princess was secretly evil) you should give the webcomic a read.  While the series is finished, there are well over a thousand pages to read.
• Read The Grand List of Role Playing Game Clichés.
• Check out MistareFusion’s Final Fantasy Memories series.
• Watch The Spoony One’s hilarious Final Fantasy game reviews. As of this writing, Spoony has reviewed Final Fantasy VIII, X, X-2, and XIII. He goes really in depth about a lot of these games flaws, but they didn’t make me enjoy the games any less. In fact, his reviews made me seek out the games to give them a try myself and I haven’t regretted it.  Spoony plans to review Final Fantasy XIII-2 some time down the road.
• Check out GameTrailers.com’s Final Fantasy Retrospective.
• Check out my RPG Memories video.

Don’t forget, you can always make these tasks take less time by simply assigning more workers to the same task, and you can get more workers by coming into close proximity with other 3DS players who are also playing the demo.  If you don’t come across 3DS players during the course of your normal day, you can always check out a Nintendo zone hotspot. Anyone who uses the hotspot who has also played the demo will relay the demo’s StreetPass information along with their Miis.  Obtaining just three other players’ StreetPass data through this process saved me 40 hours.  The final version of the game will allow you to carry over a maximum of 20 workers from the demo that you’ve acquired through StreetPass.

Bravely Default is coming February 6th, 2014 exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS.