Granblue Fantasy: Relink Review – It Was Worth the Wait!

An endless expanse of deep sky outstretched as far as the eye can see. What wonders does it hold? What makes it blue?

Granblue Fantasy: Relink has been in the works for a while, to say the least. Announced back in 2016, Cygames’ project saw its fair share of development troubles. Initially slated to be made by none other than the revered Platinum Games, in the end, it was Cygames’ own Osaka studio that saw the project to its completion.

It’s hard to tell if the initial vision for what the game was going to be changed in any way, as the roadmap updates were scarce and didn’t really show or tell much aside from combat and bosses. But all of that doesn’t matter, as what we got in the end is quite spectacular.

What is Granblue Fantasy: Relink, you may ask? Despite it having co-op elements and going against modern trends, it’s not a live service game by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a single-player action RPG with an expansive story and a lot of distinct playable characters. It’s a spin-off, albeit a canonical one, of the original mobile gacha RPG Granblue Fantasy. Visitors of our website are probably familiar with the setting through another spin-off, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, which we reviewed in December.

I’ve been a Granblue Fantasy player since 2018, and one of the more important things that I wanted and expected from this RPG was authenticity. There are certain ways the original game does some things, and I wanted to see them translated into Relink rather than it being just another cookie-cutter Tales of-like action RPG with nothing to set it apart. I judged the entire game through this prism of authenticity, and I’m pleased to say that it passed with flying colors.

Story

What is Granblue Fantasy’s story about? It’s about a crew of adventurers that are banded together through necessity at first, but soon they grow to like and trust each other, and their goals become shared. It’s also about the raw and free spirit of adventure and the constant surprises that the future holds. Granblue Fantasy: Relink never loses this, be it in its story, or even just the feelings its environments evoke.

I would be lying if I said the story of this game is remarkable or that it breaks new ground in JRPG storytelling. It doesn’t. It never tried to. The way it handles its major points is quite interesting, nevertheless – the developers kept in mind that lots of people who’ll be playing this game will be unfamiliar with the original setting. They didn’t go the route of full-on exposition; instead, they opted for subtly telling what the player needs to know through the casual dialogue and banter of the main crew members. It establishes that the setting of Relink is quite unusual – everything happens in what’s called skydoms, floating islands in the never-ending expanse of blue skies, and the main transportation method of people that are inhabiting these islands is the airships. We’re also told about the primal beasts and the crew’s relationship with them, as well as the main goal of the captain of the Grandcypher, our main playable character.

It never goes into too much detail about the stuff that’s not entirely relevant to this game. We’re never told about who the Divine Generals are, or why some of the primary antagonists of the original game are so obsessed with the captain. It’s irrelevant, and it’s good that the developers didn’t waste their efforts in vain. Those who become interested in the setting will find a way to interact with it more – either through said mobile game or through the Granblue Fantasy anime, which follows the main storyline of the setting. The developers did recommend watching it before playing the game, but it’s not a requirement. Think of The Witcher 3 and Andrzej Sapkowski’s books – it’s good to know how everything transpired up to this point, but not knowing it will not diminish your enjoyment.

If we were to talk about the story itself, it’s obviously pure anime. It has its share of pathos, the Power of Friendship™, unexpectedly expected revelations, and all the other staples of your typical shounen. That, in and of itself, isn’t good or bad, but the execution is, as I already said, quite unambitious. Still, some of the story beats are quite well-written, and in some parts, they remind me of last year’s Final Fantasy XVI. Especially the Garuda fight – visuals and the environments of the first island the crew visits evoked the same feelings.

Speaking of Final Fantasy XVI, there is one element that would very much enhance Relink if the developers implemented it. It’s the Dynamic Lore. In FFXVI, at any point in the cutscenes, you could bring up a window with all the relevant information about the on-screen characters and their roles in the current events. Granblue Fantasy: Relink has quite an expansive compendium of all the relevant information, but you need to constantly rummage though a lot of menus to access the exact bit of info you currently need. Still, this is almost a non-issue – the game never requires you to read anything to understand what’s happening, it’s just a repository of all the information you’ve already seen. And it’s always better to have that than not.

Going back to the story, I have exactly one major criticism – the final act drags out way too much. There are moments where everything indicates that you’ve reached the climactic point of the plot, only for it to be revealed that there are further problems to solve. It takes away from the feeling of actually accomplishing something a bit and makes you question, “Is this really it this time?” all the way. And it doesn’t happen once or even twice; it happens a whopping three times. And it’s not that I wanted the story to finish as soon as possible. It’s more about the wasted crescendo – it’s hard to continue to be emotionally invested in something you expected to be over already.

A smaller criticism would be that I’d very much like to see the recruited characters being acknowledged in the story, even in a minor way. The issue is that the only permanent and canonical parts of the captain’s crew are Lyria, Vyrn, Katalina, Rackam, Eugen, Io, and Rosetta. All other characters constantly come and go, and it’s not always clear where all your gacha characters in the original game fit into the plot. And thus, the only characters you see are the aforementioned adventurers. But aside from them, Relink has quite a lot of additional characters that you can get by spending the Siero ticket. You can play as them, run as them in the cities and towns, but they’re never present in any cutscenes; they’re not even traveling with you on board of the Grandcypher. The only place you can see them is the starting town, Folca. I don’t think putting them somewhere as silent bystanders would be difficult.

Gameplay and Characters

The gameplay and characters are where this game truly shines. When you first start Relink, you have your main cast available to play as immediately, and all of them have very distinct playstyles. Your main character, Gran or Djeeta, is a typical swordsman, somewhat agile and fast, with a plethora of supporting skills at their disposal. Katalina summons Ares, and its upkeep is one of the most important aspects of her gameplay. Io and Rosetta are long-range mages with different patterns, while Rackam and Eugen are the team’s marksmen, with the latter playing like it’s almost a third-person shooter.

The characters you can recruit bring even more gameplay diversity. Narmaya, the character I main, is a katana user who highly benefits from external buffs while she merrily slashes away with her basic attacks. Vaseraga is a tank nuker that absorbs the damage intended for your teammates and returns it tenfold, Zeta can chain loop spear divebombs, Charlotta can endlessly attack with constantly increasing power, Percival relies on his hard-hitting skills, Ferry summons various critters to help out in battle, and so on. Every character is able to use four skills, which is consistent with the original Granblue Fantasy, where each party member had up to four spells to use. Again, authenticity.

But character diversity isn’t where this ends. You get more than four core skills for every character, so you can pick and choose the ones that suit your playstyle more. Furthermore, there are several different weapons you could craft and enhance, and they all provide different bonuses and are aimed at different styles. Sigils that you can put into your gear increase the variance even higher.

The place that has no diversity, however, is the skill tree of every character. You essentially get linear progression for offense and defense, and you’re pretty much expected to simply max it all out despite it having pseudo-branching options. Honestly, it’s the least interesting system to interface with, as most of the nodes you unlock give you passive start bonuses like +2% crit chance or +5% skill cooldown. It’s not exciting, and I wish the developers stopped masquerading such meaningless options under the guise of a progression system. An additional point of frustration is that much of this skill tree is locked behind the completion of the main story.

Overall, though, the gameplay is incredibly snappy and responsive, and the bosses are a delight to fight. There are some frustrating fights because some characters much prefer stationary enemies, and when the opponent jumps around the arena all the time, it’s hard to deal damage.

A very important part of the gameplay loop and progression are the side activities. Regular sidequests are available throughout the story, as is the guild that gives out quests and fate episodes. Easy and Normal quests can be done at any point, and they give some very nice rewards. But the huge bulk of the game begins when you beat the main story and unlock quests of further difficulty, which are intended to mainly be undertaken in co-op with other players rather than with AI companions. It seems to be a bit grindy at first, but it isn’t – imagine Monster Hunter; that’s the loop the developers are going for. You’re killing enemies to get upgrades to kill enemies faster and better. Your skill will always play the biggest role.

The same guild that offers you these quests also allows you to replay the story chapters, much like Final Fantasy XVI does. You can check every nook and cranny that you might have missed in search of chests and valuable items, and participate in the optional battles you may not have been able to power through before. That’s hardly necessary, though, as even on the hard difficulty, those optional battles offer little challenge.

Visuals and Technical Side

Granblue Fantasy always had incredible artists, but the original only had static images and occasional small videos to showcase all of its beauty. When Granblue Fantasy Versus first came out, it was hugely praised for its presentation. Relink trumps even that, as the game is simply stunning. What helps is that it’s not just anime-esque, but it has its own distinct style that’s reflected in everything, from environments and backgrounds to character models and even user interface. The game has this unique style of cell-shading that makes it look almost like an oil painting at times, with distinct “brushstrokes” and hues.

Our review copy was a PlayStation 5 one, so we can’t really comment on the state of it on PC, but even the PS version has issues. Relink’s graphic-intensive mode works in 4K at 30 frames per second, and this is par for the course in modern times. The performance mode, however, is only 1080p at 60 FPS, and it shows. When upscaled to 4K, it’s quite noticeable that the native resolution is very low. This is especially true for the fonts that get blurry and jaggedy. The game’s technical side and stylized looks do not justify the performance mode not being at least 1440p. This is quite disappointing, as the game is incredibly stunning otherwise. I don’t expect this to be an issue for the PC version, as there will be much better granular settings for your preferred resolution.

We’ve already criticized the practices of locking some of the additional bonuses for a specific platform when we reviewed GBVSR. Sadly, Relink suffers from the same issue, as the Steam version still gets none of the benefits the PlayStation one does. This is disappointing to see once again. Hopefully, Cygames will rethink this practice moving forward.

Conclusion

After almost eight years since the initial announcement, we finally got Granblue Fantasy: Relink in our hands. It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed since then, but the wait was worth it, as the finished game is one of the most fun action RPGs I’ve played in a good while. Anime story aside, I enjoyed every bit of gameplay that was thrown my way, and I simply can’t wait to do all the hardest difficulty content with my fellow seafarers after the game is officially out.

Highly Recommended, 9/10