Shall We Do It? (I'm back in Seattle, and back to sashaying my way through Bravely Default)

Some of you may have noticed that I've published fewer posts than usual over the last two weeks. Don't worry, this recent dip in output has had nothing to do with a corresponding dip in my blogging interest or anything like that. Rather, it had to do with my husband and I traveling to Palm Springs, California, to take in a little sun and a lot of professional tennis. (A few photos of both experiences can be seen here, if you're interested.)

Sadly, we're back in Seattle now, which means I'm not only back to publishing blog posts five or six times a week but I'm also back to playing as many video games as I'm able. (Although I took my North American 3DS XL with me, I barely touched it during our week-plus vacation.)

It also means, of course, that I'm back to playing Bravely Default--a game that had nabbed more than 40 hours of my life before Palm Springs et al stole my attention.

Anyway, last time I checked in, I was just about to complete this 3DS RPG's fourth chapter, right? Well, I finally did just that in the days before my recent travels began. Currently, I'm meandering my way through the game's controversial fifth chapter.

I don't want to spoil for any latecomers what happens at this juncture in the game, so all I'll say here is that initially it had me rolling my eyes. I've since moved past my annoyance, thankfully, and I'm now back to mostly enjoying the experience.

I say mostly, of course, because I'm still a bit irked by this game's obsession with conversation. Every time someone starts speaking, my eyes glaze over. I feel kind of bad admitting that, as clearly a number of people spent a lot of time localizing Bravely Default's text, but I can't help but wish they'd simply removed, rather than translated, a good portion of it.

Other than that, though, I'm liking it well enough and I'm curious as to where this journey is going to take me in subsequent chapters.

Oh, one thing I should have mentioned earlier: in the days leading up to my vacation, I gained access to the game's "vampire" job--which, of course, caused me to obsessively scour the globe in search of "genome abilities." (The vampire job in Bravely Default is a lot like the "blue mage" one in Final Fantasy V, for those of you who've played the latter. And for those of you who haven't played it, the vampire occupation enables party members in Bravely Default to learn certain moves and spells from enemies.)

With that done, I completed the chapter and ... continued obsessively scouring the globe in search of genome abilities. (This will make a lot more sense once you've gotten to this part of the game, believe me.)

I've also been completing the other tasks that are required of players in chapter five, mind you, so it isn't like my last five to 10 hours with the game have been a total waste of time.

Aside from that, I'm not sure what else to say about Bravely Default at the moment--other than I'm kind of looking forward to finishing it so I can start playing Yoshi's New Island and a bunch of other games that have fallen into my lap in the last couple of weeks. (More on those in an upcoming post or two, of course).

In the meantime, are any of you still plugging away at Bravely Default? If so, what is your current opinion of it? And if not, what games are you playing instead?

See also: previous 'Shall We Do It?' posts