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Twitter user dol_goemon—who is a staff member at Dengeki Online—has completed Bravely Default: For the Sequel with random encounters turned off, he reports.
For those just getting caught up, Bravely Default: For the Sequel—or simply Bravely Default in the U.S. and Europe—has a random encounter slider in its options menu. By default, it’s set at 0%, which is the regular encounter rate. According to your preference, you can turn it up, going all the way to +100% for maximum grinding, or turn it all the way down to -100%, turning encounters off.
dol_goemon managed to complete the game on Easy difficulty with encounters turned off. Once they’ve accomplished this feat, players in Japan can upload their data to Square Enix’s website to be verified and placed in a Hall of Fame, which goemon did as well.
As reported previously, Bravely Default includes a Bravely Second feature, which lets you stop time to and deal more damage by spending Sleep Points (SP). In Bravely Default, SP can be charged two ways—by putting your 3DS in sleep mode (hence the name) or by buying SP Drinks using real money off the Nintendo eShop. dol_goemon says that he didn’t actually buy any Sleep Points, though, which means that he managed to beat Bravely Default from start to finish without random encounters and without having to spend money on DLC aids.
He also managed the impressive feat of clearing the game in 20 hours and 25 minutes.
This is important because it shows an incredible understanding of the changing times on the part of the game’s development team. Not everyone has the time—or patience—for random encounters or to grind in RPGs, and in Bravely Default, it looks like they won’t have to, provided they play smartly enough.
At any rate, if you’re the sort who wants to try for a no-encounter playthrough, it looks possible now. Get to it, Europeans! Meanwhile, America will get their shot starting February 7th, 2014, when Bravely Default releases in the U.S.
