In February 2014, Square Enix released Bravely Default worldwide to mainly positive reviews, including my own. Two years later, Bravely Second: End Layer takes players back to the fantastic world of Luxendarc to experience more of what the original did right.

If you haven’t played the original Bravely Default, stop reading now and do so. It’s available in pretty much any store that sells games and can be downloaded off of the 3DS E-shop. It’s an enjoyable RPG that calls back to the classic Final Fantasy games.

The story begins right away. Kaiser Oblivion of the Empire crashes a holy ceremony and kidnaps Anges Oblige, the current pope. Her personal guard, Yew Geneolgia, is nearly killed in the conflict. After regaining consciousness, Yew sets out with Janne Angard and Nikolai Nikolanikov in order to take down the empire and save Anges.

Unfortunately, Bravely Second’s story never gets much better. There are some surprising plot twists here and there, but the goal is never much more than “stop the bad guy.” This is further impaired by the poor writing, which tries too hard to be funny at several points. A prime example is the character Minette Napkatti, who throws in a gratuitous amount of “meows.” What starts out adorable becomes quite annoying.

Luckily, the gameplay more than makes up for the lacking story. The Brave and Default system makes a return. Players can Default to reduce damage taken during a turn and store up Brave Points (BP). These can be used to Brave, which allows a character to take multiple actions in a single turn. Combined with Bravely Second, which permits a single character to take an extra action, there’s much to consider at all times.

Outside of battle, there’s still the Job system to take into consideration. Each character can assume one out of 30 available classes, and can also utilize the abilities of others in addition to their set commands. This allows for a huge amount of possible combinations and strategies. The game offers a fair amount of new Jobs, such as the Hawkeye, a specialist in Firearms, and the Guardian, who can possess enemies and allies.

Side stories present an opportunity for players to acquire many of the returning Jobs, such as the Thief and Knight. But in these situations, players will have to choose between one Job or the other: they won’t be able to get both. This is one of my main problems with the game: the side stories are overly wordy, and I found myself skipping scenes out of boredom.

The game prods players to do side stories because enemies that appear during them aren’t as powerful as enemies in the main plot.  It didn’t really matter to me what part of the conflict I was fighting on—I just wanted to get the new Job and move on with the main plotline.

In terms of sound direction, the voice acting is decent. Many actors return to reprise their roles, such as Bryce Papenbrook as Tiz, and Cassandra Lee Morris as Edea. Newcomers include Grant George as Giest, who absolutely nails it, and Tony Azzolino as Janne.

The sound track is about on on par with Bravely Default, but that’s mostly because there’s quite a few songs being reused, such as “Silence of the Forest” and “Land of Civil War.” New songs “Battle of Ordeal” and “Sound Stripped Bell” live up to the quality of the original game.

Bravely Second: End Layer makes up for a mediocre story with fantastic gameplay and great presentation. It provides a good 40 hours of entertainment and was certainly worth the two-year wait.