Bravely Default - And finished. Level 76, 79 hours. Most PCs had 3-4 jobs mastered.
The second to last boss was extremely nasty and fun. Last boss was considerably easier overall but has a bit of a dick move in its fifth form out of five, kind of an annoying design there since the first four are mostly either trivial or plot fights, although at least they are somewhat interesting plot fights! Still overall enjoyable, very glad I stayed for the frue ending.
Anyway C5-8 in the game are a great concept but kind of a bad execution. I would have loved it if following Airy's advice until the end of, say, C6, earned you a game over (putting you back before breaking the last crystal of course) and instead you got the true ending by breaking the crystal. As is the actual "true ending" requires the PCs to act like braindead idiots and that puts a real damper on things, since it's definitely the more fun one gameplaywise! Obviously I'd have kept the Airy fights from the true ending because those were pretty great. I basically didn't give a shit about the plot outside of Airy towards the end (as I think I mentioned earlier, the scene where she pretends to be possessed to fuck with Agnes is a highlight). Yulyana and DeRosso are both terribly boring characters who talk far too much towards the end, especially Yulyana. The way the game starts drooling over the awkward comic relief character is a bit embarrassing actually, and I say this as someone who overall enjoyed his appearances early in the game. Ouroburos is a pretty damn boring villain too, and overall I found the whole world-destroying thing more over-the-top than effective.
Gameplaywise C5-8 really didn't need you to fight the same bosses four times in a row. They are fun bosses! But that's really too much. The random design also kinda falls off a cliff at that point, they turn into mostly punching bags for you to gain resources off of. Part of that is that Dark Knight and to a lesser extent Vampire ridiculously up your MT damage potential of course.
As a result I didn't feel very inclined to do much optional in C5-8. I did do the new optional dungeon because hey, new dungeon, with shinies. And I tried a few of the fights. I've heard good things about C8 but by that point I really just wanted the game to end; it is extremely long. Definitely a game I want to replay but I'm not sure how I will approach said replays with said lategame. At least it has sceneskip! Sceneskip will help a lot. The game certainly has considerably more dialog than it strictly needs. Special shout-out to those party chats which I kept watching and which kept disappointing me.
To say some nicer things about the game's writing it does have the aforementioned neat ideas (have the courage to disobey, indeed), Edea is a lot of fun, and the Eternian antagonists are very memorable at worst and at best have some pretty good scenes. It does occasionally stretch belief how little they manage to communicate to the party about the dangers of awakening the crystals but given the personalities involved it's not -that- big a stretch. It certainly has a better plot than the games it most resembles, which again isn't much of an accomplishment but says something about the game's ultimate placement.
Otherwise I've already said a lot about this game. Despite its pacing flaws it remains very good. Great class system, great boss design, an extremely interesting take on the traditional turn-based gameplay with the brave/default mechanics, and just so many polish and gameplay design decisions I approve of. There are a few things which stand out as dated - not getting exp from being dead at the end of a fight, an inability to scroll quickly through the item menu - but yeah not too many. Not sure exactly where I'll end up rating it, but it is either an 8 or a 9 probably.
Final party:
Edea - Dark Knight w/ Spellblade
Tiz - Spiritmaster w/ White Magic
Agnes - Pirate w/ Examine (also had Vampire, but this isn't a great skillset for bosses... their final passive is, though!)
Ringabel - Templar w/ Perform
Class notes:
Monk - I dunno, they hit things, and get some useful passives. Felt outclassed by many other physical options though.
White Mage - Top-tier class. White Mage's healing is indispensable and Angelic Ward is one of the best 1-CP skills, Staff Lore/Dispel/Esunaga/Arise also good. Oh yeah and they destroy undead.
Black Mage - Damage spells are good against weaknesses for a while, status spells are quite useful too. I dropped them when I found their damage aging poorly, but they were an essential part of my C1-2 strategies.
Knight - Two-handed is amazing, how is that their second ability. Their first, Stomp, is also great earlygame. They apparently have some neat death tank builds I didn't really get to, and a bunch of other useful passives.
Thief - I dunno, unimpressive fragile fighter type so I didn't really bother beyond getting Speed+ passives for various people. Heard good things about Godspeed Strike but I didn't get that far.
Merchant - Kinda trashy but More Money is great considering how stingy this game is with the cash. Low Leverage sounds pretty amazing but I didn't get it.
Spellfencer - As others have said, Brave makes this better than in FF5 because you can do things with them first-turn. They're more cost-effective than black mage at black mage's tricks, although they need to be paired with physical skills lest they suffer against evade. Merely good early, but they have great synergy with both of IMO the game's best physical jobs.
Time Mage - Speed manipulation is key, HM bosses can be brutal if they lap you at a bad time. Slow everything! Slow Parry can even do it for free which is nice. Unfortunately once you get Pirate and Performer this class' niche goes down the drain. Some of their later spells did look excellent though.
Ranger - Another class that does physical damage using a weapon which isn't 2H-friendly meh whatever. It's okay for a while, their skillset is decent against certain species certainly.
Summoner - 40 MP's a bit too much for me. Wasn't impressed.
Valkyrie - Crescent Moon! Bow before your new god, randoms. I used two people with it, but hell you should probably use three, wipe out everything for no MP cost. Synergises beautifully with Spellfencer. MT physical that statuses everything! MT physical that hits weaknesses! Did I mention this game has enemies who counter physicals, but they can't counter MT? Yeah. Oh the rest of the skillset's okay, Jump/Spirit Barrier have niche defensive uses and Judgement stings. The Valk/Spellfencer combination is kind of why I ditched offensive mages.
Red Mage - For a while, Red Magic is "White Mage which trades Reflect/Dispel for Sleep/Blind/more elements" which is an okay trade. Becomes crap once you get L5 magic though. They have some useful passives at least, although not ones which were mainstays in my own personal lineup.
Performer - The ability to distribute BP to whoever needs it most is already a great niche, but this class also has MT +25% buffs and a five-turn provoke skill. Great support class.
Salve-Maker - The first of your "double healing" passive skills which is really useful, as well as good MP restoration, full revival, and a few other tricks. The good items are pretty limited if you play offline, though.
Pirate - Stat downs simultaneous with damage is cool. I relied heavilly on this for crippling the last two bosses' speed and offence. Also S in axes good, axe lore good. And they have some good damage if you can deal with the MP costs.
Swordmaster - Counter builds are neat in theory. Didn't really bother though.
Ninja - Their hit-doubling skill is neat though it will put you into negative BP (barring various shenanigans), the evade game can be really potent. Same with drawing attacks to your choice of target. I probably found them the most useful of the low-def fighter-types, which is pretty standard for FF!
Arcanist - Didn't really bother.
Spiritmaster - So many valuable support abilities. Nulls status! Nulls elements! Nulls all damage! Ridiculously useful skillset, I can't imagine how much harder it would make certain bosses if I didn't have it. Probably a top three class in my mind.
Templar - Tanky as fuck, BP limit of 4 is nice. Their skillset has some uses... a lot of it is built around good fighters which my Templar wasn't, really, but Rampart can be really useful.
Dark Knight - Ridiculous and overshadows almost all other physical builds. 4x MT physical is -insane-. Rage is less relatively potent, but with how stingy the game is with letting you past the damage cap, Rage's ability to output 25-50k damage for the cost of 3 actions but (+1 if you need to activate Drain Sword) starts to look really damn good. Not even dark halving really slows them down, and dark immunity is rare and mostly found on undead which you can slaughter with white magic.
Vampire - So this class also has great MT options, though it looks a little less good after Dark Knight, and a bunch of utility. It isn't really worth the incredible amount of effort to get, but it is fun once you do. Their capstone skill is outstanding.
Conjurer - Like Arcanist, I mostly ignored this.
Play it!
