23
votes
Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster released on Steam
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- Title
- Save 20% on BRAVELY DEFAULT FLYING FAIRY HD Remaster on Steam
- Published
- Mar 12 2026
- Word count
- 388 words
In case there's any confusion, it's the original Bravely Default game. "Bravely Default Flying Fairy" is the Japanese title.
I'm excited to pile this onto my deep backlog. I played the demo on 3DS way back when, but never got around to playing the game. Which is strange for a lifelong Final Fantasy fan. I've always heard good things, and I like the soundtrack.
As far as I can tell, there was no marketing around this, and they quietly released it on Steam. The Steam reviews say it's a very well optimized port. It's also on Xbox Series now. It's surprising because it seemed like a Nintendo platform exclusive, but apparently not!
Hm. Denuvo, sadly. I've wanted to play this, but I can wait. (Got enough in my backlog anyway.)
Big fan of the original game. I played the original (OK, strictly speaking, the Japanese "For the Sequel" re-release) on the 3DS and it was the closest I've ever come to feeling like I was playing a new 'classic' Final Fantasy game of the kind they used to make before FF7.
I've played both of the sequels and while the gameplay loop is still solid, I don't think either of the stories or gimmicks are as well executed as in this one.
For anyone else who loves this series and wants more while hanging out for Bravely Sword to maybe eventually come out, check out Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light on the DS. It's the progenitor to the Bravely Default series in all but name and has a very similar system and style of storytelling.
I know this is meant to be a remaster of a Nintendo 3DS game but damn, some of these character models, environment objects and maps look bad. I wouldn't have even minded if they did what the FFIX Moguri Mod developer did, put some of the textures and background environments through stable diffusion algorithms and manually redrew inconsistent areas and layer edges.
Makes me wonder just how weak Nintendo's handheld system really was.
I remember a reason why the Ice Climbers were cut from Super Smash Bros 4's roster was because Sakurai's team couldn't get them to work properly on the 3DS (they wanted roster parity between the 3DS and Wii U versions for some reason, despite neither platform having crossplay.) And that has me questioning how they couldn't get a character from a then-13 year old game to function. My only guess is that the 3DS has an inferior clock speed and VRAM compared to the Gamecube, and has the additional stress of needing to render double the frames just to achieve the system's stereoscopic 3D effect.
Remember that with a handheld you have a fixed screen resolution target. The 3DS had a 400x240 screen - you only need the textures and models to look good on a 400x240 screen. Anything more is completely wasted effort.
The issue with ice climbers is that it means that in every mode, the maximum potential number of characters is doubled.
In 4 player for all, for example, without ice climbers, there is a maximum of 4 playable character models on screen. With ice climbers, all 4 players could choose ice climbers, and now there's 8 playable character models on screen.
So if you optimize so that the game is playable with ice climbers, it means that you really need to nerf the graphics of the game, and realistically, most matches are not going to have 4 ice climbers.
I remember the art style looking great on the 3DS's 400x240 (lol) screen. Blown up to HD, it looks quite mushy. I feel like this is a game that would need a true remake to look good on hi-res screens.