I tried and failed to finish Bravely Default 1, and now I've tried and failed to complete Bravely Default 2. It's not that I don't like the game, there's a lot to like. The graphics and art style are amazing. I love the way the camera pans out to these beautiful set pieces and when it scans in close the level of detail is absolutely beautiful. The character models are great, the animations are wonderful. The music is great. However, it's a GRIND.
I love games with Job systems, and this game has a great one. The jobs unlock a little slowly, but you basically get one after every major dungeon. However, the get the damn jobs, you have to plow through so many basic, generic battles just to level up enough to beat the boss at the end of each dungeon. You can't just fight the enemies as you go and beat the crap out of the boss (which already is a ton of the same type of battle over and over again), you have to specifically grind it out to get strong enough to win. And God forbid you have the wrong job set-up for the boss fight, now you have to go back and level up that specific job by grinding again (you can't just switch jobs, you have to level them each up individually), and it just takes the fun out of the game for me.
While the battle system is fun, fighting the same enemy 50 times just to beat the boss is not fun. And while you can speed up battles, you still have to manually input every command. If you speed the battles up too much you may find your party dead before you know it, so I don't recommend that. The first BD had other options where you could basically auto-battle, and for some inexplicable reason you can't now, so you have to manually press every button which is slow and painful. I've decided I'm just too old and impatient now for a game to waste my time by making me grind it out just to progress through the game. Playing through the dungeon should be enough.
If you like that kind of game, you will enjoy this one. I liked everything else about the game, but I can't justify the amount of required grinding.
7/10