Do you have that one activity that you just get entranced when doing? You go to do it for a short break and the next thing you know it has been a half-hour, and despite the mild disappointment you feel with yourself you would do it again in a heartbeat. For me, this is playing video games. Sometimes for incredibly stupid reasons: how does a game where you play solitaire to race a horse so freaking engaging? I normally suck at solitaire.

I'm not making this up. It's called Pocket Card Jockey. It's about as complex and weird as it looks.

One genre that seems to be effective at eating my time while playing it is JRPGs. You know, the kind of RPG where you have a squad of chibi anime characters who take turns casting spells and attacking giant anime monsters.

This sort of thing.

My most favorite of these games has been "Bravely Default," a game by the same company that makes "Final Fantasy" but isn't "Final Fantasy." I'm surprisingly not a big fan of those sort of games: the only one I ever played was "Final Fantasy 3" on my parent's iPad, and I didn't get very far...maybe to around the Water Crystal? Anyway, I have clocked 87 hours into this game. Certainly not straight through, but through a summer and some ways beyond. My parents got me the sequel "Bravely Second" for my birthday in April but wisely kept it with them until after I finished up the semester. I, however, out of curiosity looked for a demo on the Nintendo eShop on my 3DS, remembering there was a pretty cool demo out for "Bravely Default," which may have been what led me to purchasing the game.

It's honestly more interesting than the box looks.

Dear God, I should have waited it out. I will admit, it was a very good demo; they even had a little mini-prequel with a plot that featured memorable characters from the first game. A plot that I spent six and a half hours completing (not in one sitting, obviously), time that should have probably been used to study for the four finals I had this week. Why do I love this game so much? How does it prove so engaging? That's what I want to explore in this article.

Is it the plot?

The plot of "Bravely Default" is fairly simple: you are Tiz Arrior, a villager whose village gets destroyed by a giant chasm. On the rim of the chasm, you encounter an odd maiden named Agnes Oblige. She is the Vestal of Wind, a special priestess dedicated to one of the four giant magical crystals that fill the world with order and light. Don't question it too much, that's just how it works. Together with Ringabel, an amnesiac with a strange journal and looking for love, and Edea, the headstrong princess of Eternia, a country of crystal atheists who want to capture Agnes (did I mention these sorts of games have really complex world building?), they work together to awaken the crystals and purge the land of Luxendarc of evil. They also have an adorable little fairy guide named Airy! ...

While the plot does have its share of twists and turns, all partially animated and fully voice-acted, it's not the most dramatic or engaging thing. I get more narrative enjoyment out of "Fire Emblem Awakening," honestly. It's like playing an anime.

Even with anime shipping. All your OTPs are canon, because you can make them so.

Also, if I wanted a compelling narrative, I would read a book or watch real anime, not chibi doll theatre.

Is it the aesthetic?

I will admit, "Bravely Default's" backgrounds, music, and style are appealing to me. The opening movies are absolutely gorgeous. However, all sorts of thing appeal to my aesthetic. This:

this:

and this:

are equally appealing to me, so this is not a very good metric to use on this game.

Is it the mechanics?

Even though it draws from classical JRPG roots, "Bravely Default" has several innovations from the traditional JRPG battle. Its first major one involves the titular "Brave" and "Default." Every character normally starts a battle with 0 Brave points, one of which is spent for every action a character makes. You can "Default" to defend and save up BP if your characters' skills aren't needed or if a big attack is coming up. You can then expend your BP by using "Brave" to increase the number of actions each character does, expending BP. Be careful, though: some powerful moves also require BP, and if your character has negative BP, they have to skip turns until their BP isn't negative.

Another innovation involved making the normally tedious grinding associated with these sorts of games a bit more tolerable. I didn't have much of a problem in that regard, but I will admit the game starts to drag a bit after Chapter 4. The game lets you turn down or even off the enemy encounter rate. So if you're stuck in a dungeon without any recovery items or are just sick and tired of foes, turn off the enemies. If you do need to grind EXP, you can crank it up and set yourself to auto-battle.The game is versatile that way.

Is it the strategy?

Another interesting thing about "Bravely Default"is its elaborate job system. The game has 24 different classes available for your character to learn skills from. The classes range from traditional Final Fantasy fare such as the White Mage and Black Mage, to odd ducks like the Spell Fencer which imbues physical attacks with elemental properties, Performer, which gives group buffs in silly outfits, to the ...Salve-Maker. It's actually more useful than it sounds; you can mix up attacks and buffs from component items. At any time a character has access to their current job skills, which increase with their job level, as well as one set of job skills from another class, most often set to another class they have levels in. They also have access to a pool of support abilities from all classes they have ranks of.

This level of customization, not even counting equipment options, leads to a wide range of options and party builds to fit any situation. For instance, Agnes is my designated healer/caster; I currently have a maxed out Salve-Maker as her support class, main class cycling through my casters with supports set to maximize healing and minimize MP. Tiz is a conventional knight/ tank: the Templar class provides maximized defense capabilities and am currently cycling through the offensive classes in the main class. AlternRingabel is the secondary caster/ miscellaneous support: right now he's in the thief class because I heard you can steal great items from bosses in the later chapters. Edea is my exotic attacker: right now she's a Valkyrie that can use super-charged sword magic and dual-wields katanas.

...Well, that answers part of my question: I go in depth wherever there is depth to be found. I do this kind of thing in every field I care about.

It's the structure

Ultimately, I think it's the structure that this sort of game has. There are definite goals and quests to accomplish. To do those quests, you go to new areas with new monsters. Killing those monsters unlocks new abilities and gives you gold. You can use this gold to upgrade your equipment which means you can get stronger and able to beat the boss at the end, and unlock the next bit of story and quest. I guess there's just some part of our brains that likes to watch the numbers go up. The hit points, the stats, the gold, experience points and levels... it makes us feel...powerful.

Wooh. That felt good to get off my chest. Now to finish up studying so I can get the true ending for "Bravely Default." Right now I have to awaken the Crystal of Fire. Again. I hope I do it right this time. Airy's starting to get weird about it...