So this game has a lot going for it. There's plenty of reviews that cover stuff like story/graphics so I'm going to skip them completely(because lol character limit) and focus on the absolutely inspired design decisions that really sets this game apart from anything else I've played.
Accessibility of Options: This game makes some major strides in making its competitive environment accessible to new players. In most creature collector games, making even a single team requires playing through some 30+ hour long story mode, spend at least an hour gathering the characters you want to put on your team, and then spend several more hours training them up with the desired stat spread, movesets and so on. Bravery Network Online throws all that noise out the window with considerable force. Less then 5 minutes into the game, you get a well balanced sample team without any major holes or weaknesses. This team is not only good enough to carry you through the single player content, but can even be taken onto ladder and win some games. Competitive viability isn't locked behind some massive timesink or arbitrary challenge, it's right there waiting for you, the player. Unlocking the rest of the roster can be done by completing the 2-3 hours of single player content mentioned earlier in the review. The time difference becomes even more apparent when you start tweaking movesets and stat investments. Instead of having to spend hours grinding out specific encounters or dumping piles of in game cash for stat boosters and/or move items, you can adjust these things freely in your teambuilder. While you don't have all a character's moves and abilities unlocked from the get go, you can equip up to one move/ability your character hasn't learned yet and use it in battle to gain the experience to learn it (called "building confidence" in game). Learning a move generally takes somewhere between 3 and 10 battles, depending on how long the battles take and which move/ability you're trying to make a character learn. This could potentially be a pain point, but every character comes with a competitively viable default set, so you frequently only need to do this process for one or two moves before you have the set you want. Even more importantly, once you have a move unlocked for a certain character, that move remains unlocked no matter how many teams you put that character in, so you only need to go through the process of unlocking things once as opposed to once per team. TL;DR There are no arbitrary barriers between you and playing this game "properly", allowing you to freely play, compete, and experiment without punishing you with massive grinding.
Accessibility of Information: Of course, just because you have access to all your options doesn't mean you know what to do with them. Anyone who has played online battle simulators can tell you about the information overload present in trying to sort through all the different moves, types, characters, abilities, many of which have little to no competitive value at all. Thankfully, this game has a ton of features that help new and experienced players alike find their footing and keep all the information straight. As mentioned earlier, every character has a perfectly viable "default set", complete with a trait and stat investment spread. Having a default spread is not only good for players who would rather be battling then teambuilding, but it also tells the player what this character wants to do in battle and gives them an idea of the role they're intended to fill. There is also just less information in this game then there are in other games. Instead of having movesets containing dozens of superfluous moves, most characters have between 8 and 12 moves, and they all have some kind of competitive value. Instead of having dozens or hundreds of characters to choose from, we have a finely balanced cast of 18 characters, with 6 more planned before release. Instead of having to memorize some kind of 10x10 grid of type matchups, every move is one of three types, which hit one of a character's three defensive stats. You don't even need to memorize character's stats either, because the in battle UI will show both your and your opponent's character's base stats, and their revealed moves, abilities, items, and even stat investments! There is also an in-battle damage calculator, so if your opponent reveals that they have a move, you can mouse over it to see how much damage that move does to your team. You can do this for your own moves too. It sounds like a lot to take in, but all of these features take significant mental load off the player and lets them focus more on their overall strategy and making those turn by turn reads this genre is known for.
Battle Systems: I want to spend the remainder of this review going in depth on the various design decisions that set this game's battle system apart from its competitors. After all, all the accessibility in the world isn't good for much if all your getting access to is a game that isn't fun in the first place. Fortunately, this game is designed such that you have to make meaningful decisions starting at the teambuilder and continuing until the very last turn of each battle. The two big game-defining mechanics in this game are the captain's plan and the battery system. Every team has a captain, and every character has a captain plan, which is essentially a unique benefit that character grants their team while they are captain. These plans range from giving everyone an attack boost if they attack after getting hit that turn to increasing the effects of status moves inflicted upon the opponent. These captain plans often define how you build your team and can even cause teams consisting of the exact same characters to function radically differently depending on whom they have set as their captain. This isn't just a teambuilding gimmick though, if you lose your captain in battle, your captain's plan is no longer active, putting you at a significant disadvantage for the rest of the match. The other major battle mechanic is the battery system. In Bravery Network Online, there are no random critical hits, or any other random events. Instead, whether or not a move is a critical hit is a conscious decision made by the player to spend a resource called "battery" to "flourish" a move (which usually functions as a critical hit, but some moves do other things instead). Each time a player lands an attack or loses a character, they gain 1 charge. Once a player has 5 charges, they have a battery, which can either be spent on the aforementioned flourish or a parry. A parry will negate the next hit sustained by your character, unless that hit was a critical hit. The battery mechanic is not only interesting from a resource perspective, but also gives every game at least 1 crucial turn that can completely turn the game around on a good guess/read. There are dozens of other, much smaller decisions that add up to a unique experience. For example, the decision to give all moves a low number of uses helps limit how long games last and makes things that increase/decrease move uses valuable. Limiting the number of moveslots each character has to 3 means that you never quite get to fit in every move you want, leading to moveset variety. 3 defensive stats means allows you to build effective defensive cores without making any character unbreakable. This game is very well designed, and that more than anything else will give this game a ton of longevity and replay value.
TL;DR Bravery Network Online is a multiplayer game that lets players immediately jump into play without any unnecessary barriers to entry. The game is easy to pick up but offers a ton of depth and rewards experimentation more than any other game I've recently played in this genre. I highly recommend it for folks looking for a competitive alternative to Pokemon, Temtem, or any other creature collector game.
