Granblue Fantasy: Relink, the last project done by Cygames, is an action JRPG that shares similarities with games like the Tales series (especially their latest Tales of Arise), Xenoblade Chronicles and Genshin Impact.
I have been following the game development since I heard about it back in 2016, when it was announced as a collaboration between Cygames and PlatinumGames, and got incredibly excited about these development teams after playing NieR:Automata in 2017.
The game was meant to be released in 2018, as announced in the 2016 TGS Trailer, but the development was delayed because PlatinumGames stepped out of the project after the contract with Cygames ended, as stated in the official statement released by the company.
When I say delayed, I mean it. The game was officially released February 1, 2024. With this said and done, was the final product worth the wait?
In this Granblue Fantasy: Relink review I will try to cover every aspect of the game and give my opinion on the good and bad stuff that it has to offer to us gamers.
Oh, and I will keep everything Spoiler Free, so don’t worry about getting surprises.
Story – Definitely the Weakest Point of Granblue Fantasy: Relink
After the first 15 minutes in the game, I felt like I arrived late to an epic adventure that had already happened. The main character and their companions are flying in an airship after having already saved the world and whatnot and I went on Google and searched for “Granblue Fantasy play order” to understand if I should have played another game before this one.
In that moment I discovered that Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s story was indeed some sort of sequel to what happened in “Granblue Fantasy” the mobile game, which happened to be released only in Japan.
I could not be bothered in the slightest to search for a 2-hour long YouTube video explaining the story and the lore of the world, because I wanted to play the game in that very moment. I settled for the very short summary that you get at the beginning of the game, which involves the main character getting almost killed to save a girl, Lyria, that can summon Primal Beasts (think the summons in Final Fantasy), who in turn transferred half of her soul to save them.
From that moment on, they travelled together, met other people, got an airship, and did a lot of stuff which we don’t really get to know aside from glimpses of that from Lyria’s journal, the in-game wiki that will fill up the more you play. The current objective for this crew is to travel to a new Skydome and find a place called Estalucia.
The rest of the events will lead us from one Sky Island to another, following the wrongdoings of a cult that can potentially end the world if left alone. Yeah, it’s your classic JRPG story with a focus on the power of friendship and forgiveness, so you may like it or not.
Honestly, the story is not the game’s central interest. Don’t expect to play the game just for that and feel satisfied. The story is “Ok” at best, and “OhMyGodStopTalking” at worst… which brings me to something that deserves me ranting about it: Combat Dialogues.
Rant Time – Combat Dialogues
Xenoblade Chronicles, Tales of Arise… and now this game, have in common this problem: the characters will not shut their mouths when fighting. Everybody will shout the name of their skill, will compliment for a perfect dodge, will scream to come and revive you… ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
“Why is this relevant to the story?” you ask. Because on top of the epic music, the characters and monsters sound effects, and people shouting nonsense, sometimes important characters will converse like nothing is happening explaining important things relevant to the story.
How the hell am I supposed to focus on what they say while I’m dodging left and right and have to time my attacks and stuff like that? Plus, it takes me out from that immersion and adrenaline of the gameplay, which is the reason you want to play this game.
After ranting non-stop for 300 words, let me finally praise what the game does right.
Gameplay – You Are Going To Be Entertained
From starting the game up until finishing the end game content, one sentence kept defining the game in my mind: “Granblue Fantasy: Relink is what a great mobile gacha game would be if it wasn’t for the Free-to-play live-service crap that you get these days”.
The game scratches my itch of constantly changing party members, acquiring and level up new characters, masteries, and weapons.
There are 20 characters, each with their unique combat mechanics, that you can unlock by obtaining tickets through the story and side-quests. For each character, you also get their side-stories that you want to do, since each chapter done will raise their stats and unlock sigil slots (that raise your stats or grant you passive abilities).
Are the side-stories any good? Meh. You can also just press X and get on with it. At the beginning I really tried my best to be interested in them, but they are so generic that I couldn’t take it anymore. Out of 6 that I read, 3 of them started with the character’s master disappearing and them trying to find their mentor back.
Combat – Easily The Best Part of Granblue Fantasy: Relink
The combat system is awesome and by far the best part of the game. Each character has an element that will be stronger or weaker against the monsters’ elements, and you will find yourself wanting to aim for a boss’s weak points to unleash a link attack, which will do a lot of damage and give you the ability to keep your combo madness going on.
Talking about bosses, they are 80% of all the combat you are going to experience in Granblue Fantasy: Relink. They are overall great, with several phases and made even more fun by the “Overdrive” mode, that makes the boss go berserk and almost invulnerable for a bit. It’s a shame that there is not a great variety. Some of the bosses are even reskins of others, and you don’t get unique ones after the story.
One thing that was a bit of a letdown, was that I never had a “game over” screen on normal difficulty, even in the end game content. No, I’m not flexing my gaming skills, because I got slapped hard dozens of times and reduced to a pulp with 0 HPs, but I always had somebody picking me up, or I picked myself up, or used a revive potion.
I did not start the game thinking to have a FromSoftware “You Died” experience, but after the first 5 hours into the story I understood that I could take it easy in the fights… and I did not like that.
End Game Content: Fun… For A Bit.
I was super excited about the Granblue Fantasy: Relink end-game content. After finishing the story, which would last around 15 hours, you get a story hint to keep doing side-quests. Considering that I loved the gameplay loop, I was incredibly happy to dedicate more hours to just kill stuff. After 10 hours, though, it gets incredibly repetitive.
As said before, those side quests involve monsters you already fought in places you already visited… and some of these combination makes 0 sense lore-wise, but hey, who cares about that, even for a person like me who runs a blog almost entirely dedicated to video game lore.
Like this article about the lore of Hollow knight, or this one about Dark Souls!
I dragged myself for the last 5-6 hours of endgame content for the sake of writing this review, just because I wanted to have all the necessary knowledge to give my informed opinion. I felt satisfied nonetheless, just because the combat is that good.
Characters – Why Vyrn Has To Exist?
I really like the characters, both the ones from the core crew and the additional ones. Still, I feel like scratching the surface with all of them, as if I had to play the mobile game to know enough to really care about any of them.
The voice acting is mostly on point for an anime-themed game. Another case of “you like it or not”, even in case of Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s mascot “Vyrn”, which I hate with all my heart. I found it a bit forced, as if since it’s some kind of anime game, it must have a mascot. So here we are, with a little dragon that speaks like an adult that tries to interface with the youth of the ‘90s.
About the main character, the Captain (Gran/Djeeta), there is not much to say. They are the usual (almost) silent character who surprisingly finds the voice when we must choose an answer in a dialogue. Props to the developers, because they address this very thing in one of Vyrn’s dialogues. I love it when developers joke about the game quirks like that.
Art & Sound – Absolutely Fitting
The game looks gorgeous, and the style, although not unique in the slightest, is just great for a game like this. The music is absolutely fitting, thanks also to Nobuo Uematsu, one of the two music composers working on the game (the other being Tsutomu Narita). The final boss music was ok, although the combat dialogues, sounds effects and the male vocalist in the song mixed to annoy me as much as possible.
Alright, I spoke enough. Let’s wrap this review with a verdict!
Verdict
After reading back what I wrote, I noticed that I spent 99% of my time talking about the game’s negative traits and I want you to understand why. It makes me mad that even after ranting about it, I really enjoyed playing the game.
The gameplay is the most important thing in a videogame, and it is also one of the few things that Granblue Fantasy: Relink got absolutely right. I don’t get why the story is underdeveloped or why more than half of the game’s content must happen after the main story ended. Believe it or not, you unlock only 2-3 weapons up until the final boss. Are you telling me that nobody thought of spreading the content more evenly, so to beat the final boss and get more satisfaction out of it? Then leave very hard missions as end game content, along with other weapons and masteries.
All things considered, I give Granblue Fantasy: Relink a 6.5/10. It’s good, but it’s not something to tell my grandkids about it when I will be old. It made me want to play Tales of Arise again, though!
Thank you, dear reader, for reading up until here! It was super exciting to write my first review for the blog, and you can expect more coming soon!