Granblue Fantasy: Relink

I've always been interested in Granblue Fantasy, but never liked turn-based gacha or fighting games, so Relink was my gateway into it, with the real-time ARPG combat as the main draw.

Negatives first: you can't play the story mode in co-op, which was my main disappointment. Multiplayer is relegated to the Quests, which are optional missions that you can do to get loot and EXP, and tie into the post-game. While extensive and very fun on their own, it doesn't scratch the same itch as playing through the campaign with a friend or two.

I have mixed feelings about the story, as the plot is a stand-alone story that takes place after the main story for the original mobile game. On one hand, it does make an attempt at onboarding new players, but at the start, you're just thrown into the crew with already established relationships, and have to rely on Fate Episodes to get to know them. These are visual novel style segments that give a brief summary of each character's backstory and how they joined the crew. It does a decent enough job that it got me curious to try the anime, which I recommend watching before playing Relink, since it's an adaptation of the original main story.

As for Relink's plot, it's pretty short and sweet, just stardard JRPG fare, but it's honestly kind of a vibe. It's very cliché in a comfortable, familiar way, and doesn't require any previous Granblue knowledge to understand beyond what the game gives you.

The art and graphics look great. It only gets a bit boring on the environment design, but the characters in particular translate really well from the art to the 3D models. It runs smooth at max graphics on my 3060 as well, which is always a plus for a good-looking game.

The combat was the main draw for me. It's an ARPG where dodging and blocking are your main defensive tools, as well as character-specific defensive skills, and then you can just wail on the enemies with flashy combos and abilities.

What kept me engaged was the fact that bosses are capable of handling four characters fighting them at the same time. They have hefty HP bars and lots of AoE and multi-target attacks that you have to at least consider instead of just spamming your stuff with no retaliation. It's no Elden Ring in terms of difficulty, you won't see the Game Over screen often at all, but the bosses are respectably challenging.

TL;DR: Get this game if you like ARPGs, or if you're like me and love JRPGs but dislike turn-based combat. Do watch Granblue Fantasy: The Animation to get to know the main cast.

114 hours and I gotta said it's worth it. The story, gameplay, etc. It was perfect down to the last minute detail

Such a beautiful JRPG. I love the character designs and their personalities. I also really enjoyed the story and combat. I think my only complaint would be how much I had to grind in the epilogue to finish the story completely but overall loved it.

Great storyline, fantastic coop, perfect pacing in combat, deep playstyle customization. Just get it.

This has been one of the best JRPG's I have played for me personally. It has everything that I would want in one. I do wish though that the hard mode was a bit harder. Granted I did die a few times lol. The music is top tier as well as everything else in it. My favorite part out of all of this though is when you're playing as the captain and you go around finding random treasures because she has one voice line in particular that gets me every time. It's like a little chuckle or something going oh ho ho or something. 10/10 on that.

This is my first ever review because I love this game so very much and I need Cygames to give me infinite updates or a sequel as soon as humanly possible. This is one of my favorite games of all time and its a shame its dead before super endgame on PC. The character design, combat, storytelling, and everything about this game is an 11/10 masterpiece. I wish I could experience this game again for the first time and relive the magic of it. This game got me heavily into the Granblue IP and I viciously need more. Thank you Cygames for making this immaculate video game <3

The single player is short but sweet, if you want to play coop its more like side quests you get after you complete the story mode. Its fun but coop is limited.

great game with fluid combat and tons of available characters to play as

each character has their own unique skill tree, craftable/upgradable weapons and the ai companions are no slouches either, you can play even post-msq content solo absolutely fine

has a glossary and fate episodes to get you familiar with the characters and lore which i really appreciate

i'm also glad they opted to give you a 10-12 hour main story where each chapter has something memorable and the optional grind is there for epilogue content if you'd like to play more

i really hope cygames continues to create more stuff for the granblue universe, each aspect of it feels like a lot of heart went into it

Mindless button mashing

Good times, all around. No complaints. It's not perfect but it's worth it imo. Not much to gripe about if you go in expecting things as described.

Great game with awesome combat and cool characters, highly recommend!

Surprisingly fun game. I was on the fence before trying, but the story was enjoyable enough and the combat is so fun that I kept playing long past the story being over. While quests post game is somewhat similar in nature to monster hunter style quests, the game is much more fluid and enjoyable (for me) than monster hunter type games.

Fun JRPG which takes all good gacha elements and implements them in a good way. No micro transactions needed and the game is not pay to win. Big W of a game, sure to bring atleast 50h of good fun.

Very short campaign but great fun
not worth it if full price imho

Story was not it
Combat has a lot of moment to moment depth but you aren't really asked by the game to explore it until the exact last boss
Grinding bahamut on a boat with canons for a % chance for a % chance to get the bis weapon for my character was not fun. Comparing to monster hunter world you at maximum are trying to get a rare part to finish a craft, but to get the bis weapons here you basically are grinding for an attack deco, these weapons give you like +30% damage, so its hard to justify skipping them.
Reward pacing is fine for only leveling one character up but if u are solo/hosting for a group of less than 4 you have to grind to bring ai to an acceptable level (there are enrage timers you have to beat)
A large part of the end game is figuring out how to use the very jrpg link windows and skybound arts to skip phases which pulls away from the actually engaging combat moments.
Builds lack room for innovation, every build must use half of their slots for dmg cap up, and eventually also war elemental and supplementary dmg.
The camera is also very very very unwieldy, you will target the adds and you will target the hands that flail around causing you to miss attacks.

Found this game by chance , and this is how you make a proper arpg . . . .
Sadly story is mostly like some large tutorial (arround 15h , maybe more if you want to buff your team ), but endgame is prety long (seen players with an average 400-600h if you hunt achievements) .
Game is beautiful , no bugs , no glitches and fun as hell .
Too bad not so many companys are capable of delivering a product of this quality , job well done .

Amazing combat, each character plays so differently so trying out new characters feel like playing the game anew
Highly recommend

Simply one of the best games i've played. The story telling is phenomenal and the hub islands/ main islands are wonderfully detailed. The base story for this game is a bit cliche but does execution really well.

I recommend picking up when on sale, not full price for the limited 10-15hrs of campaign

Now then, for the people reading this on the edge of buying this or not, I'll go into detail here. The core base story for this game is a damsel in distress for MOST of it, yes a cliche but allow me to expound a bit...

Spoilers are added to avoid tainting your experience and dumbed the story down a bit.

The game at it's core takes place in a MASSIVE storyline from the mobile/ web game granblue fantasy. Not directly from the start but somewhere near-ish it. You captain a crew of fellow adventurers that have decided to follow you for various reasons (the game itself shows a bit of the back story for every individual character in "fate episodes" which unlock as you play) which helps you understand each playable characters motives. The main skydom you're in for this story is the Zegagrande Skydom.

If you're a ONE PIECE enjoyer, this game feels like you're starting the main show randomly around before the time skip and instead of luffy and his crew getting to the one piece, it's your crew sailing the skies looking for "Estalucia, the island of the astrals" or "the end of the skies." Spoiler here thats not the main focus of this games story

After the intro of you crash landing onto a island (not the ship itself but you and another character) you eventually will butt heads with the main antagonist & antagonist organization after one of your crew members. This kicks off the whole damsel in distress sorta deal for most of the story. Towards the end (somewhat heavy spoiler) you free the crew member and you're attention turns to rescuing one of the people who was giving you pointers to help save your lost crew member. Really huge spoiler: you don't end up saving the informant and you end up taking the pinhead of the church down.

The only complaint i have with the story, i want MORE. I don't want to get into the old gacha web/mobile game just to learn the lore and enjoy the universe. Too much of a grindfest for the majority of players and honestly im sure not a lot of people knew what granblue was until it was expounded upon into this jrpg format (myself included).

the game stets up with this premise/ narrative of you going to the end of the skies, which i feel like the story here is a cop out in some way. But that doesn't excuse the level of polish that was put into story telling with characters and the enviorments

The level design is similar to Tales of Arise (2021) and the gameplay is similar to nier automata/ kingdom hearts.

Music is a treat to hear, combat is flush and very polished, the gods you fight look straight out of a persona game.

the whole dev team nailed so many aspects of this game.

Cygames NEEDS to remaster/ remake their main storyline mixed with gameplay start to finish with this level of polish and execution. This would LITERALLY be the one piece of modern gaming. Literally theres a ******* HUGE demand for it, the success of this game is a dam good indication of that. Even if it was a side story / venture being told.

6/10

I would recommend grabbing if it's on sale.

Pros:
Fun game with enjoyable gameplay.
It features some great boss and level designs.
There are a variety of characters with distinct play styles.

Cons:
It has a lack of exploration. It is kind of a shame because it has beautiful art style and scenery. The desert map felt most interesting because of how open it was and it had some fun mechanics.
The story is nothing special. There is an anime almost like a prequel for this game, but it was equally uninteresting.
Previously, when it had a larger player base, it was rather simple to match up with other players, and maxing up one character was enough. Now that it has a smaller player base and is more difficult to match up with players, it is necessary to build more characters for AI companions. With all of the RNG components, there are just too many things to grind for. It nearly feels like a GACHA game. For example, to upgrade weapons, some players put defense missions on repeat and do nothing while the AI kills all of the enemies and clears the stage, or to obtain all endgame weapons, they must complete the exact same quest 100+ times.
Cameras and lock-on systems are bad. It takes control of the camera and forces the player to focus on something. The worst-case situation is when there are two bosses to fight and you can't focus on the one behind the camera who is the more threatening. Lock on occasionally disappears, or the character focuses on body parts that are out of reach.
Personally, I dislike the damage cap because it does nothing but ruin the fun of the game. It simply determines how much damage the player can inflict on an enemy. To get around the damage cap, you must apply upgrades that boost it. As a result, fast-attacking characters are preferred over hard-hitting ones.

Genuinely fun game that kinda flew under everyone's radar, it's a Monster Hunter-like that was clearly made with love, even if they stopped updating the game now. The online matchmaking is pretty dead nowadays, but the game can still be fully enjoyed solo with a CPU-controlled party. If you like grinding and some genuinely in-depth combat and upgrade systems, then I highly recommend giving it a try

too short of a game for its price tag good game but just short....end game is boring as srtuff unlocks that should of during main story

monster hunt + final fantasy + anime vibe
solid gameplay and storyline
good game to coop

Fantastic action RPG with sharp and tight combat mechanics. Story is excellent, creature hunting is superb and Co-op is a great addition. Well polished, well designed and a solid endgame with a bit of a grind in weapon customization/upgrades for the full Fantasy Power trip. The extremely varied cast of characters & play styles along with a refined game/progression system & beautiful visuals ensures a top tier Fantasy Adventure Experience. Well worth it.

love the game, combat is really fun, targetting is a bit of a problem and the only other thing is that it needs a bigger player base. really really good and fun game

A solid action-RPG game with incredible visuals. Make sure to keep playing after completing the story as the game throws more content at you.

Granblue Fantasy Relink is what I wish Final Fantasy XVI could've been. A full party you can control, each with their own playstyle. A grand adventure through the skies. Some of the best execution of shonen anime tropes I've seen culminating in some truly climactic battles. This, Star Ocean 6 and Vision of Mana are "games I wish bore the Final Fantasy title".

Love the characters and the story and main attraction for me was the combat and the rpg theme. Fantastic

One of the best JRPGs i've ever played. The game was announced almost a decade ago now, but they managed to make the wait worth it for sure. Even though the game does have some minor issues, overall it's a very fantastic journey.

-The optimization is excellent, for the most part. I noticed some minor framedrop during certain dialogue cutscenes which seems like a bug, but everywhere else I had an extremely smooth experience, even during intense combat with dozens of enemies on the screen.

-Voice acting is great for both Japanese and English audio. I think Japanese audio could use additional subtitles in some places, such as villager dialogue and party member dialogue during regular combat.

-Story isn't groundbreaking but it was still very good. There's a lot of cool spectacles throughout the story, with really great cutscenes and some extremely good music that helps tighten it all together. They definitely didn't cheap out on the budget for the game that's for sure.

-Combat is very fluid and very stylish, but it can get repetitive if you stick with one character. Some characters definitely play better than others when it comes to mixing together different combos. Either way, it works well enough. I play on KB/M which took some getting used to, but it wasn't bad at all. Despite the game recommending you use a controller, KB/M works very well after a bit of muscle memory practice.

-There's plenty of content for the game as well. If you only care about the main story in games and nothing else, you might not feel like you got your money's worth. But the Mainstory is only part of the experience, and the game doesn't truly open up until after it's completed. You've got more freedom with your party customization post-game, as well as a lot of new quests to complete. This is where the grind really begins, and where you'll be spending most of your time.

-The dlc is largely ignorable, outside of the color packs if such a thing strikes your fancy. Otherwise everything is earnable ingame. If you're looking for a solid JRPG, or new to the genre, then I think this is an excellent title worth your time and also a good entry point for anyone wanting to get into the world of Granblue. Also Rosetta is my waifu.

I had never played one of these types of games before.

After finishing the story I can say this game is an absolutely masterpiece. The gameplay is great. The story is great. The music is great. The characters are great.

And there is still tons to do like Monster Hunter once done with the main story.

Bought the game to play with a friend, but the Coop mode is limited to a few quests.
You can't play the story in Coop.

*Story* - 2/10

*Graphics* - Anime/10

*Music* - Hype/10

*Gameplay* - Intense/10

*Endgame Content* - Final Fantasy X/10

*Will your Steam friends judge you for playing this *- If your friends enjoy Fantasy Football or Call of Duty, probably/10

Amount of different characters - 22/10, but if you don't main Siegfried you're cringe.

I will take no further questions on my scoring system.

Awesome game that feels like a straight forward old school console adventure RPG and yet looks and plays incredible. Lots of replayability with the co op quest system and lots of characters to unlock and upgrade which keeps it interesting.

Edit: I think this is one of my favourite games of all time now. Just has that perfect balance of gameplay, graphics and epic moves without over complicating it. 20 classes to unlock all with different flashy abilities, all with different weapons to unlock all with different skills and rotations to learn. All of this and with online co op that has lots to work on with varying missions!

I didn’t realize I hadn’t reviewed this yet. This is one of the best games I’ve played this year. It was perfectly enjoyable solo for the story campaign, and a lot of fun with friends in multiplayer.

If you like action games and big bombastic boss fights, with great art and music throughout, don’t sleep on this one. It’s really a great time and I won’t hesitate to recommend it.

You really don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a good game. Banger soundtrack, gorgeous visuals, stellar voice acting, wicked fun mechanics and gameplay loop, etc. Story makes you feel like you did as a kid watching anime for the first time. If I knew what being loved by a woman was, I'd imagine it feels a lot like playing this.

Great game to jump into, even if you havent played previous iterations. Story is pretty good, variety of characters is really good, and those who are min-maxing will be the only ones that care about which character is slightly better than others. End game is still varied and can be played solo or online co-op.

This game is significantly underrated. It took longer to be released, and when it finally came out, it did not disappoint me.

There's no other Action RPG out there where you can play as Djeeta! Main story is a bit surprisingly short but there's TONS of post-game content including online quests with others and many other characters to play with which you won't unlock on the default playthrough.

I think no one is playing the game anymore. I've been online for hours, wanting to play co-op - can't find any game sessions. It's more fun playing with somebody than playing alone

Game reminds me of a anime Monster Hunter. Worth a grab.

one of the best rpg in terms of gameplay that i have played, i really like that each character has its own unique battle style, not to mention the party system coordinate attack. for the story its somewhat predictable, especially if u have watch a lot of fantasy anime, but still entertaining, overall is gud yall should play it

Genuinely one of the most gorgeous games I've ever played. I hardly know a thing about Granblue as a franchise but now I'm completely engrossed in it. Katalina is the goat <3

From 400+ hours (completed all quests)
- Very fun, beautiful graphics
- Very difficult to finish the game, need to practice skills quite a bit and find information on character build more and more
- Need to farm a lottttttttttttttt
- When you pass the last quest, you will feel bored, it would be great if you have friends to play with
- If you need to collect all trophies I think 600++ hrs

9/10 Story
10/10 Graphics
8/10 Voice
9/10 Soundtrack
10/10 Gameplay
10+/10 Difficulty (at end-game but can handle it)

DLC, you will get a red sword for 1 main character, color and some support items in the early game, whether you buy it or not, it does not affect the content.

Warning: Your computer must be powerful to handle it.

Finally, if you like this kind of game, do not hesitate to buy it.
(This game also has a sexy character mod xD)

PS. Narmaya is the best!!
But my skills are not good enough, I finished it with Tweyen xD

The environments are beautiful, the gameplay is super fun, the characters play very differently from each other, and this game offers many hours of side-missions and post-game content. VFX, animations, SFX, and soundtrack are also superb.

Game's a lotta fun!
It's a shame we won't ever get to see the full potential it could've had had they decided to make it a live service game...
Introducing even more of the Granblue cast (which is massive) would have been really cool.

disclaimer: gbf player since 2016

this one is the best version of gbf out there, the story still sucks but the gameplay is top notch platinum stuff too bad they didn't get more time to cook with it because the pacing is horrid the story is too long the time needed to reach the good fights is eternal but when you finally get there the game is very good very enjoyable the co-op is fantastic would recommend, i got 2 copies for me and the fam

I have such an incredible love/hate relationship with Granblue Fantasy Relink. The story, albeit rather basic, is an absolute spectacle that I thoroughly enjoyed. The story is a bit on the shorter side, taking me about 30 hours while taking it incredibly slowly, but each boss battle throughout said story had me grinning from ear to ear - the majority of which felt very Monster Hunter-esque in its presentation.

The main draw for this game for me was that combat and I'm happy to say that out of the 22 available playable characters, the majority of them felt entirely unique with their own sorta gimmick. Personally I spent the majority of my time playing Charlotta whose whole gimmick is basically staying glued to the enemy and continuing an infinite combo that gets stronger by parrying attacks which then perpetuates said combo. I tried my hand at a few of the other characters and they all felt easy enough to pick up but with enough depth that I knew each one would take me dozens of hours to truly master.

That all being said, after the 30 hour campaign, I was met with the post game which has a lot of high moments and an obscene amount of low moments. Anyone who played this game will know about the Bahamut farming and it gets egregious. There are so many great moments in the post game that I absolutely adore, but it was marred by the fact that you have to spent a few minutes at a time fighting the same boss over and over again for a 5% drop for a weapon. It's made even worse by the fact that the weapon will drop for a random character that you own, meaning that each 2 - 5 minute boss run only has about a 0.2% chance of dropping what you're looking for.

I eventually did get said weapon and spend about a dozen hours farming materials to upgrade said weapon along with the weapons for the other characters in my party, but by the time I got to that point, I realized there really isn't much to do from there. There are a handful of other bosses that you can beat, but it felt like by the time I truly got the gears going in post game, the game sorta just ended, leaving me feeling like there was something missing. If you want to have a fun time with friends just blowing through quests, I highly recommend this game, but I very much would recommend ignoring the Terminus weapons and just moving on.

Super great quality of life, fun, relaxing, overall one of the best games i havbe played, keep in mind this is especially fun with freinds

Great game.

First the art, voice acting, and music, are incredible. Campaign took roughly ~15-20 hrs. With some cleanup quests. A bit more gear/character progression and missions you can farm. Did not do multiplayer so can't say how well that works.

Combat feels very good with the block and dodge very responsive. The combos are a bit repetitive but it's nice to feel that slowly lead to doing more damage overall. Lots of different party members you can swap out for a different play style.

My only few grips with it really. Wish the campaign was a lil longer. An it's very corny but that would be most things FF and JRPGS.

8.8/10 would play again or if someone I know wants a friend on their play through.

This game is amazing, the story part is kinda mehh but the gameplay part, an easy 11/10. Absolutely addicting and fun all around, but god the end game is grindy asf. Went for all the achievements because I was having a blast but proto bahamut is kicking my a$$ and each boss gets harder and harder, constant one shots near the end of the fight so it gets pretty irritating after a bit. I'd honestly love this game if the servers still had players because that would be a ton of fun and make stuff easier but every mission/quick quest I tried to do an open search, there was never any sessions. Overall a 8/10 game. It would be a 9/10 or 10/10 if the story was as good as the gameplay.

Combat system really great, play solo and AI partner are very good.
The game not too hard not too easy. and Loving this game so far. The story isn't that special but I do love the style, music, setting, mechanics, combat and gameplay overall!