Heading into the onslaught of JRPG releases for this early half of 2024, where we are either getting the next big sequel or a full-fledged remake of a beloved franchise, I sure didn’t have Granblue Fantasy: Relink on my radar. This sort of sequel/spinoff for a franchise whose existence was first defined by a popular web browser/mobile gacha game back in 2014, which then generated a short-lived anime from 2017 before spawning as two fighting games from 2020 and 2023, didn’t scream to me as a priority to play since it released alongside so many fan favorites.
And then I played the demo.
Surprised by the quality of its combat, its charming characters, cheery tone, and promise of a grand adventure of epic scale against seemingly insurmountable odds, I certainly became a believer. And digging up more about the franchise and realizing some big Japanese names responsible for some of the best JRPG entries of yesteryear were involved in it (Nobuo Uematsu doing music with the Xenoblade Chronicles guy!? Hideo Minaba of Final Fantasy V, VI and IX fame doing the art!?), and suddenly I had big hopes for Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Could this first foray outside of its previous genres make it a contender worthy of the time of action-RPG fans, especially in such a brutally crowded time?
Sky High
Set at an undisclosed time following the events of the web browser/mobile main Granblue Fantasy game (and some of the story elements seen in the two fighting), Granblue Fantasy: Relink puts you in the shoes of Gran/Djeeta (you choose boy or girl with the name changing as such), the leader of a group of adventurers called the Skyfarers from the Phantagrande Skydom, as they journey to the distant lands of the Zegagrande Kingdom of the Sky-Realm, a vast world divided by different floating islands with a sea of clouds underneath. The skyfarers have embarked on a journey to discover a legendary island of an ancient civilization, and their journey to Zegagrande sets them on a collision course with some formidable foes that threaten the completion of their journey and the very existence of the Sky-Realm.
As you can expect from a traditional JRPG, the story of Granblue Fantasy: Relink hits the kind of expected tropes you can expect from this kind of game. An unlikely hero rising up to the occasion, a vast cast of charming, uniquely personable characters, an ever escalating adventure that reaches world ending heights, it’s all there. And it’s all presented with a sense of animated beauty that may seem a little too “anime” for some but fits right into the action JRPG genre that has made games like Bandai Namco’s Tales series succeed in their lane.
However, if there is one area where Granblue Fantasy: Relink definitely stumbles, it is in properly providing the right amount of story preamble to catch up players on the lore and these characters, especially considering there is so much story that happened before this game. Granblue Fantasy: Relink basically starts in what feels like an in media res opening, but instead of really flashing back to tell you how you got there, the game just keeps trucking along with very little explanation about these characters and the why of it all. It is the equivalent of jumping into a long running series on its seventh season with how much happened before this game. It almost feels like developer CyGames expects any player to have done their homework to understand who Gran/Djeeta is, what their connection to the blue haired girl Lyria is, how this huge crew of Skyfarers came together, why they are on their journey, what their roles are in slaying the different Primal Beasts from the long departed Astral civilization that once threatened to end the Sky-Realm years before, and so on and so forth.
Other than few moments where they kind of explain some tiny context after the fact to at least set the stakes of the here and now, if you want to really understand everything about this world, get ready to spend some time scouring the information provided to you in their very beefy glossary called Lyria’s Journal where they try recapping the information that came before. To the game’s credit, it highlights specific terms during some of the dialogue cut-scenes where you can refer to the glossary in case some of these esoteric terms feel a little too confusing at times (if you played Final Fantasy XVI from last year, it works very similarly to their Active Time Lore).
And later on, the more you go through the adventure and level up your characters, you get access to something called the Fates Episodes that retroactively try to tell the origin stories of these characters in the context of where they were and their current predicament that I found a little helpful. I do lament the fact that only a few of these “episodes” are playable, considering each playable character (of which there can be up to 18) all have 10 episodes each, and a series of walls of voice-over text is not the best way to present their entire story. I would have at least taken some cut-scenes in the non-playable parts.
Because of the backwards way it tries to explain it all, if you are not ingrained in the Granblue Fantasy lore, the story at the end does suffer a bit of feeling a little too simplistic to try to make up for the fact this could be so many people’s first introduction to this franchise, especially given the scattered nature that included the web game and the prior two fighting games. But despite its simplicity, the charm and personality of its characters, the briskness of the adventure (the rare JRPG adventure that can be beaten within 15-20 hours), its “heart in sleeve earnestness,” and the scale of its final few sequences definitely won me over by the end.
The spectacle of its final parts were such, I didn’t expect CyGames had it in them for their first real foray with this kind of game. While parts of it do feel like remnants of the time Platinum Games worked in this game before they departed the project in 2019, regardless of who gets final credits, they were worthy sights to behold that helped punt the adventure to a rousing finish that left me grinning ear to ear. And all of that combined with some incredible musical work by Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita? *chef’s kiss
Astral Chain
From a gameplay perspective, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a semi-linear action RPG that seems reminiscent to the combat seen in a similar franchise like the Tales series, with a vibe that weirdly reminds me of Kingdom Hearts with a hearty mix of Nier Automata and last year’s Final Fantasy XVI for good measure. From the outset, it looks like the kind of button-mashy, combo-based character action-based game with different moves and abilities, and, while some of this is true, much of the nuance they have added to the combat system prevents it from being just a mindless action game.
For one, the game embraces something called the Skybound Arts that are tied to the effectiveness of your four equipped special abilities. While use of these abilities already come with their cooldowns, if you hold off a bit from using them, you can build your Arts up to Level 4, making them more powerful and effective so as to reward careful patience in the middle of the hectic battles. While you don’t have direct control of your party besides setting up the AI pattern on when to unleash their full might of your Skybound Arts super attacks, some of the ways you can synergize with your party where you can link attacks with them across the battlefield leads to the perfect kind of pandemonium that can be very satisfying, if maybe a little too hectic to watch.
If you are someone that feels like you can’t handle a complex combo-based action game, the game comes with two kinds of accessibility options that might help you. The first one, just named “Assist Mode,” is for players who want to experience the story and want the game to do all the crazy combos and moves just by pressing the attack button. The second one, called “Full Assist Mode,” basically will do all attacks for you without needing to press a button; you only have to move the stick around and let the combat play itself out.
While I personally wouldn’t pick the option that plays the entire combat for you, I’m glad the option is there for someone that may have a disability to chain crazy combo attacks. If there is one area of accessibility I wish the game had gone further with, perhaps, it is in full control customization since it feels minimal, and some button prompts feel weird to me in lieu of experiencing some recent action games where things like the dodge button are in a different spot on the controller than here in Granblue Fantasy: Relink.
While you can mainly play the entire game as Gran/Djeeta, one of the more satisfying aspects of Granblue Fantasy: Relink is how it allows you the chance to play as all of the 18 different playable characters on offer. There is a certain beauty at how complex and different they have made the different characters with their own elemental classes, weapons, and special abilities so that they don’t feel like carbon copies of one another and making them all feel like they have a fully-decked kit. It’s to the game’s advantage that two fighting games featuring most of these characters came out before this game, and a lot of the ways those characters control in those games has been translated here. While it certainly will take a long while for you to unlock all 18 characters as they have to be unlocked after certain main story, side quest, and post-game parameters are completed, it’s a nice carrot at the end of the stick that leads to surprising depth and replayability.
Not So Gacha
Probably one of the most interesting aspects of Granblue Fantasy: Relink is how it is weirdly two separate games mixed into one that shouldn’t really work, but it does. While the main story campaign that lasts 15-20 hours plays out in the traditional sense as you go through the game’s 10 main chapters in linear fashion with a well-defined ending, the game also has a hub-based, Monster Hunter-style side quest and post-game structure that’s clearly meant to give this game some sort of long tail. It is a mix of quick missions that vary from quick enemy clearing to boss-focused long encounters that can test your mettle with some really tanky boss health, and it is the one area where you can team up with 4-players for online co-op. Everything about this game’s post-game is where a lot of system complexity appears, with suddenly many different crafting elements coming into play to tackle the game’s most difficult post game levels.
Considering the origins of Granblue Fantasy come from a web browser/mobile gacha game, some gacha style design does seem like it rears its ugly head here, even though the game is clearly not a gacha game that requires you to spend any money. But what that means is that the further you go up the difficulty ladder, in order to keep up with the power requirements to succeed, some very important material will be at the mercy of random rewards. I can see how they will eventually lead to a lot of dice rolls as you keep playing and repeating different levels and boss-fights in the chance they will drop the materials needed for your next weapon upgrade.
As mentioned, there is no monetization to speed this process up as of this moment (the only micro-transactions available right now are some different color swaths for your character’s outfits and an upgrade to the Digital Deluxe Edition that comes with some early upgrade materials and a strong sword to use early in the game), so everything is all done in-game. As of right now, I still have not been stonewalled with what I’ve engaged with in its endgame, though I see the signs that could lead to a grind down the line. Considering how fun the game is in its gameplay, I appreciate that Granblue Fantasy: Relink offer a legit way to keep playing it besides just replaying some of its main story missions (with chapter select unlocked after campaign completion), but I’d be remiss to say that I definitely enjoyed its systems more in its main campaign than in the post-game, especially the quality of its boss battles.
Man, those boss battles. It’s clear CyGames has played a lot of MMO’s like the ever-popular Final Fantasy XIV because a lot of its boss fights require the kind of expert positioning that reminds me of the boss fights you do in the raid of that game. Some of the scale of these battles against the Primal Beasts are a true sight to behold, delivering high-energy encounters with foes of immeasurable scale and fantastic sights that reminded me a bit of the highs from last year’s Final Fantasy XVI. While fighting them under-leveled will sometimes make them feel a little too health tanky if you don’t keep up with the side content that keeps you perfectly in level, unleashing everything you’ve got to bring down these Primal Beasts delivered the goods. The final string of boss battles in particular are an ever-escalating journey that crescendos perfectly, and I’m so happy chapter select gives me an opportunity to relive these moments.
The audiovisual presentation of Granblue Fantasy: Relink is generally pretty great. The game’s cel-shaded anime art style mixes perfectly with the wide variety of locales on offer, with characters exuding charm with their animation and expressions. The voice acting, on the other hand, can be a little hit or miss, with some characters delivering hilarious banter with others crossing the line a little too hard into overly expressive melodrama, which can often be blamed as a victim of its localization effort. From a technical perspective, the game comes with a 4K30fps fidelity mode and a 1080p 60fps performance mode. While the game generally performs solidly on its fidelity mode, this is a game that I absolutely recommend playing on its performance mode. The game’s art style manages to hide the softness of the lower resolution pretty well both in game and in cutscenes, and the almost perfectly rock solid framerate just works so much better for this kind of action JRPG.
Considering sometimes just how NOISY the screen gets filled with shining particle effects, it holds up surprisingly well when the screen is exploding with this noise. And for the soundtrack, it’s the kind of expected excellent work from two of the most recognizable legends in JRPG land, with many of the boss fight songs being absolute bangers. I have turned the game on and gone into its soundtrack menu just to listen to a few of these on loop as I wait for the release of the music either on Spotify or Youtube. A good JRPG’s soul can be found in its soundtrack, and the one in Granblue Fantasy: Relink definitely helps elevate its simple and earnest story to the next level.
Overall, I had a great time with Granblue Fantasy: Relink. While I certainly have qualms with the way CyGames presented this grand entry into their Granblue Fantasy universe as something that feels like it requires homework to fully appreciate it from the get go, the rest of the game’s strengths helped make up for some of the sacrifices made to their story to work for newcomers.
For their first foray into the action/RPG realm, CyGames certainly have cooked a really solid combat system with great potential for growth with potential new entries. It is a great statement on the potential of the franchise outside of their long running web/mobile game and the excellent fighting games by ArcSystem Works. While certainly not at the caliber of other JRPG greats launching besides it, there’s nothing wrong with a solid first entry into this realm. The JRPG greats eventually grew to become genre stalwarts, and I certainly see a future where, upon great iteration and improved storytelling, Granblue Fantasy also gets there. If you are looking for a JRPG that is a solid counter-programming to tried and true franchises, Granblue Fantasy: Relink definitely gets the job done.
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