I recently finished Bravely Default 2 and liked it a lot! I played the prior games and will compare them a little here, so relatively minor spoilers for BD and BS. (I tagged two somewhat spoilery things) Expect major untagged spoilers for BD2.

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Chapters

Prologue: Every Bravely Default game has a tedious/boring part. BD has a boring repetitive end game and BS has a very uneventful mid-game. BD2 gets a boring early game with the prologue, which I would say is pretty bad for a first impression for veterans and possibly for newcomers too. There's no crazy hook in this one like the first two games' prologues. I guess Adam is a bit interesting but he shows up at the very end. I would have preferred the game opened from Gloria's perspective with Musa being under attack but I guess the budget preferred Seth stumbling upon all the important characters by either washing up on a beach or fighting goblins. A boring start but at least it gets gradually better...

Ch1: I honestly thought this game was okay in chapter 1 but at this point, I felt the game had serious BD rehash problems. It's a desert that has a thief and merchant/gambler just like BD in chapter 1. Beastmaster was the saving grace as the first completely new job, and Caster made for a nice unexpected chapter boss.

Ch2: This is where the game started getting good. It has a very fun town and I like that it branches off (hah) with the first half. Things still felt rehashy with fighting a Red Mage and Hunter (at least red mage felt like a different job though), but the second half mixed it up more with the newish Shieldmaster and Pictomancer.

Ch3: My favourite chapter that has a fun episodic crystal adventure with fairy "witch trials" while also seamlessly becoming part of the main story. By that, I mean Adelle's unexpected fairy reveal plus the war at the end that segues into the plot for later chapters. The town is huge and the art just looks plain awesome here. I also loved Gladys' short character arc which makes her stand out among most of the asterisk characters.

Ch4: Half of it is revisiting areas, which is fine. It almost felt like doing asterisk side quests. (With amazing boss themes I might add.) The second half felt like two long dungeons taped together and could have been a bit shorter. I was kind of disappointed to see Adam was a throwaway antagonist, even if it was clear Edna was a bigger threat through cutscenes prior.

Ch5-6: I would say overall this game's story was kind of bland, but the last third of it gets interesting with the plot with stuff like Gloria's sacrifice and the fairies indirectly letting some human become the Night's Nexus. I liked that we had two bad endings but unlike BD it's linear, as in you get one ending and progress to the next one. My major gripe is the fact that Edna gets thrown out as a villain within a chapter just like Adam. Maybe I missed some extra diary entry or whatever but there was no elaboration on why she hated humans. Is it implied from the diary in Musa that it was mostly the Nexus influencing her?

Ch7: It's a small nitpick but why even bother with the final "dungeon" if it's just the overworld slapped together? Maybe it's just me, but a switch sleep mode boat mechanic doesn't sound to me like a good basis for a final area. Ch6 had what looked like a final dungeon. The devs were probably running out of time, so why not just fight the Nexus there again? Other than that I loved this game's meta twist being to overwrite the save data of the final boss. It's both hilarious and a neat tie-in to the memory-driven book, which was the save screen this whole time.

The final boss was pretty sweet too. I'm sick of RPGs having everyone you meet band together/cheer you on to help you beat the final boss. So it was especially nice to see that not happen this time around. Regaining everyone's memories is a lot more original and thematically fitting against the Nexus. (Also I don't need to say it but the final boss theme slaps!)

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Characters

Gloria: She's basically the main character. She went from another Agnes all about her duty involving crystals to a fairly likable character as I got farther in. Ch5 is what made her a lot more interesting with the added context of her having to sacrifice herself. It brings up a personal dilemma: Why bother with anything but your duty if you're going to die fulfilling it anyway?

Elvis: I think he's dethroned Ringabel as my favourite BD character. Like Ringabel he's a very social character who happens to carry around a plot-centric book. But he stands out as the goof of the party, and a bit of a slacker when it comes to his magic studies. The Scottish accent makes him all the more awesome. He's a go-to example of a likable RPG character. No need to sweat any more details than that. ;)

Adelle: A character related to one of the major villains, so basically she's Edea without the Mrrrgrrh. Okay, she's not that bad. Personality-wise she's pretty fun but I feel the twist of her being a fairy didn't change the plot much except for when it's needed in chapter 6. Maybe if Edna was a more active villain Adelle would have a bit more going on with her, but I'd put her as she is below Elvis and Gloria.

Seth: A very average generic character that exists for the player. I used to not think Tiz was all that interesting of a character but boy did Seth make me appreciate Tiz for having a bit of plot relevance. Tiz lost a village and his brother at the very start, and he had a Celestial in him. Those things kept him relevant for two games. All that happened to Seth was he died at sea and won the Wind Crystal lottery to get revived. At least his special theme's awesome.

Truff: Best pig boi. I kind of wish he was a major character. I guess it sounds stupid in retrospect but I thought the friend Truff was trying to meet was going to end up being Adam or someone important. Can Truff please replace Seth as a Warrior of Light? =D

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Sidequests: I might as well say here that this game handles side quests better than the first two because they're more character-focused. While most of them aren't for asterisks this time around, I think they're fun slice-of-life quests that flesh out the characters more. Elvis wanting to make his favourite tea or Gloria and Adelle having a painting competition is fun to see, even if the rewards are minimal.

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Gameplay

ATB like bar replacing turns: It was atrocious when the bars didn't exist in the demo, but in the final game the bar (and ! bubble above enemies) makes fights feel a little more dynamic. For about every boss in the previous games, I would spam default on everyone at the start of the turn most of the time, but now you have to put in more thought than that with different turns coming at different times. The only annoying thing is some jobs are so damn slow they're practically being forced upon you as a sub job if you want to get a turn ever... (Looking at you, Berserker and Oracle!)

Edit: Forgot to mention Haste and Slow are actually important now. Any turn-focused abilities are what really benefit from this new system.

Field Mechanics & QoL: No more random encounters is easily the best change. The sword is super basic but satisfying to first strike and cut grass with. Having to use an item to evade monsters instead of turning them off in a menu is more natural to be in the gameplay like that. Same with using monster treats to get more fights. Needing to do sidequests and then give up an equipment slot to turn off EXP/JP on the other hand is dumb and I'd prefer a menu.

Equipment Weight: This one is probably the worst new feature but I don't mind it that much. It gives armor-heavy jobs more equipment options and leaves the more squishy jobs with crappier gear. It's probably not that necessary with the S-D ranks in weapons already being a thing. At the very least it serves as a buff for two-handed and a slight nerf to dual wield.

Enemy Counter Mechanic: I know people have said this feels like a harder game, especially with the counter mechanic but I feel like this is the game I died the least in. Maybe I'm just biased and understood the job system in the prior games to get more broken builds, but I feel like this one has enough things to help you deal with the counters. White Mages can spam Benediction to buff healing, Shieldmasters alone can tank hits (including counters) on everyone/dual wield shields/get easy BP with their second speciality, and Hunters get Counter-Savvy.

General Difficulty: I will say the difficulty curve overall is whack, with chapter 1 probably getting the hardest bosses. After that chapter 2 is moderately hard but from there you get so many job options I was beating like two-thirds of the bosses first try. I think that's just the nature of the job system letting you break the game though. Speaking of that...

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Job System:

This is the most important part of any BD game, and this one does it quite possibly the best. I liked BS for having the job levels cap at 10/11, but this time even with the cap at 12/15, the rate that you level up jobs feels quick. Thanks to monster treats and the boat mechanic, it doesn't really take that long to get the JP flooding in.

The abilities in each job are pretty well spread out this time around too. I actually think I got just about every job except for Gambler, Freelancer and Bravebearer up to like level 9 at least. A lot of the jobs had some amazing ability, even if the job itself I didn't care for. I never cared for Dragoon but I had Full Force on both Gloria and Elvis. I also got Sub Job BP saver on Gloria, despite her being my primary physical fighter. All it took was a few monster treat battles or getting a hoard of JP orbs.

The second specialty thing I at first thought could have just been a costly passive ability, but on the other hand, most of them are so good that they give you a reason to stick with your job even after it's maxed. I also want to say upping the job level cap to 15 from optional late-game refights was an amazing idea.

The only thing that sucked about this version of the job system goes back to my main complaint about the game. The early game is kind of boring. The early game jobs are all rehashes up until Beastmaster. (Vanguard barely feels like a new one) Not just that but passive abilities felt so uncommon early on. Mages don't get as many because they need room for spells, but the early physical fighters don't get too many either. Monk only gets one. All in all, it gets good with a mix of old and new job abilities by chapter 2, and the farther in you are the better it gets.

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How I'd Rank Each Game

Maybe this is a spicy hot take but...

BS > BD2 > BD

I kind of like Bravely Second a bit more for going all out with the new jobs. It got it right having all the new ones part of the main quest, many of which had fun gimmicks (shoutouts to Spellcraft). Then you still get the old ones to be picked in sidequests. I also can't help but say despite being in the same world, BS felt less rehashy than BD2 did in the early game. Having the story not be directly about the crystal helps, as does not having the exact same order of biomes from the prologue to ch2 in BD. New Game being part of the main story was also really clever. It does have its faults with a kind of plotless mid-game and not as good music (I mean any music that's not by Revo is at a huge disadvantage lol) but overall I think it held my attention a bit better.

Bravely Default on the other hand gets super boring with the end game loop. The job system also wasn't perfected yet, making you have to slowly unlock each passive ability slot after each crystal, and I recall it took forever to max out most jobs. It had possibly the best story and music but I think BD is my least favourite. BD2 beats it easily by having an interesting enough story during the end game while not destroying the gameplay. (That's not to say BD sucks. I still think it's an awesome game.)

Bravely Default 2 is in the middle but I still consider it super good. It builds upon the job system a lot. The early game is a bit uneventful and filled with rehashing, but the field gameplay got improved a lot. The story is at first nonexistent but interesting stuff happens at the end, save for the final "dungeon". I think the game stuck the landing pretty well, considering I went out of my way to make this post.

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Well I don't know if this still counts as a quick review after several walls of text, but there it is. I hope the series continues, whether it builds upon the new BD2 mechanics or not.

tldr; It's very good, but the early game holds it back a little bit.