I’ve been looking forward to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for a while, despite its seemingly troubled development cycle.
Ever since I spent some time playing the original mobile version of Granblue Fantasy, I’ve been hungry for the setting and characters to be adapted into a full-scale, not-free-to-play, not-mobile game. Because of all the mobile games I’ve spent some time with over the years, Granblue Fantasy is still one of the best in terms of the effort that has gone into its presentation and setting.
Ultimately, though, it was still a mobile game, and as such its appeal to me waned as the grind — or the temptation to spend money — ramped up. So does Granblue Fantasy: Relink provide what I wanted from a “proper game” adaptation of the franchise? Let’s take a closer look, based on a few hours of play.
For the unfamiliar, Granblue Fantasy unfolds in a world that primarily consists of floating islands. The world is split into “skydoms”, each of which consists of multiple islands, and between skydoms is a dangerous miasma known as the Grim Basin, making it difficult (though not impossible) to get from one to another.
The player character in Granblue Fantasy can either be male or female, and is known as Gran or Djeeta respectively — although you can rename them, and all the voiced lines in the game refer to them as “Captain” regardless of gender. Gran and/or Djeeta grew up in a sleepy corner of Phantagrande Skydom, but were thrown into adventure when they encountered a young girl named Lyria. An unfortunate run-in with a hydra meant that Lyria ended up sharing half her life force with Gran and/or Djeeta, bonding the pair together for life.
The mobile game then goes on to chronicle Gran and/or Djeeta’s adventures alongside Lyria as they gather together a crew and explore Phantagrande Skydom and beyond. Gran and/or Djeeta’s long-term aim is to track down their father, who is waiting “at the end of the sky” in a place called Estalucia, supposedly the home of a legendary race of ancient beings known as the Astrals. The Astrals once ruled the mortals, but long ago said mortals rose up against their rule and took control of their own destiny, and the subsequent fate of the Astrals is, at the outset of Granblue Fantasy, unknown.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink unfolds based on the assumption that Gran and/or Djeeta has already been on some adventures with some of the major characters from the game. Specifically, the narrative unfolds after Gran/Djeeta and Lyria have spent some time in the company of Katalina, Rackam, Io, Rosetta and Eugen, but doesn’t particularly demand that you’re up to date on Granblue Fantasy’s main narrative; instead, it conveniently shifts the action to an all-new skydom, and gives series newcomers the opportunity to catch up on some of the things that went before via several different means.
This is probably the optimal way that the situation could have been handled. While I’m sure some Granblue Fantasy veterans would prefer that Relink slot in a bit more neatly to the main game’s narrative, this is clearly a game with a decent budget behind it, meaning that it needed to appeal to an audience even beyond the mobile game’s admittedly substantial userbase.
And it does a good job at that. I’ve forgotten almost everything about my time with Granblue Fantasy from a few years back, but I didn’t feel like the game was “excluding” me from getting to know the characters; on the contrary, the game’s extensive glossary, in-game supplementary reading material and optional novel-style “Fate Episodes” for each of the characters provide plenty of opportunity to get a feel for who they are and some of the important events from their past, including some that are depicted in Granblue Fantasy, and others which simply form part of their background lore.
So to summarise all of the above in a somewhat more succinct manner: if you’ve never played Granblue Fantasy before (and/or have no intention of descending into gacha hell), you can jump into Granblue Fantasy: Relink and still have a good time.
Right. So what is Granblue Fantasy: Relink? Well, it’s an action RPG. You take direct control of one character from a party of four — and that character doesn’t have to be Gran and/or Djeeta — and fight enemies using two attack buttons, a dodge-roll with invincibility frames, a breakable block and a palette of up to four active skills, which include melee and ranged attacks, buffs, debuffs and strongly situational abilities depending on the character.
There’s also a “Link” mechanic from which the game draws its name. By repeatedly striking an enemy, you build up a “Link” bar, and when this is full pressing a button causes your playable character and the other party members to unleash a powerful Link Attack that deals heavy damage. Do this often enough and you can trigger “Link Time”, where time for the enemies slows down, you regenerate HP and get various other benefits.
Each character also has a character-specific Skybound Art move that they can use when their individual meter builds up. These are powerful, cinematic attacks that deal heavy damage, but they’re best saved for when the whole party can trigger them all at once; this leads to a “Full Burst” and even more damage.
Basic combat is straightforward but enjoyable, with each enemy being weak to a particular element, and each of your party members having their own associated element. Many enemy attacks are telegraphed, either by the enemy glowing red prior to striking, or by the path their attack will take (and/or its area of effect) glowing for a moment prior to the attack actually happening. This allows you to easily keep track of what’s going on in combat even when fighting multiple enemies.
Boss fights use similar mechanics to the mobile game, whereby each boss has a bar that builds up to their “Overdrive” mode, where they earn new abilities and become stronger, and must then be beaten down into “Break” mode, which effectively gives you a bit of a breather to heal up and/or deal some “free” damage. Granblue Fantasy: Relink also adds a “Bloodthirst” status atop these modes, which is where bosses perform particularly powerful and deadly attacks, and are generally a signal you should back off and focus on blocking and dodging for a bit.
I’ve only played as Djeeta so far, but I’m under the impression that each character plays quite substantially differently from the others. You can switch up your playable character in the game’s main hub town, and even remove Gran/Djeeta from the party altogether for minor quests, though he/she does need to be present for main story episodes which, like Granblue Fantasy proper, focus primarily on the core cast and not the optional characters.
Speaking of optional characters, I’m also yet to recruit any, but the system for acquiring them is thankfully not a gacha mechanic. Instead, you appear to earn character recruitment tickets via various means, and these can then be spent on acquiring a specific character of your choice. That character is then added to your squad, and can be added to your party or made your playable character.
Character progression in Granblue Fantasy: Relink is kind of interesting, and is clearly intended to pay homage to how the mobile game does things. While each character has their own experience level, this is only one of several ways in which they can gain in power. They can also level up their weapon (and, a little later than where I am in the game so far, break the level cap on their weapon to make it even stronger), equip and level up “Sigils” to boost various stats, and each character also has two skill trees that focus on offensive and defensive skills.
One interesting wrinkle in all this is that the “points” required to unlock nodes on the skill tree apply to the whole party and must be shared between characters, rather than each character having their own stock. This means that you have to make a bit of a choice between turning one character into an absolute powerhouse or finding a somewhat more balanced approach. The points in question are easy to come by, as they can be acquired through questing and various other means as well as simply levelling up, but it does force you to think a little about your party as a whole.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink presents a hard divide between its main scenario and what it describes as “quests”: short, self-contained, instanced scenarios where you have to fend off a horde of enemies, fight a boss or battle your way from one point on a map to another. These quests are all repeatable, allowing for easy grinding of the rewards available — many of which are used in the various progression systems in different ways — and also have a ranking system that challenges you to beat them as “well” as possible.
Your basic score for a quest is determined by how quickly you complete it and how much damage you dish out over its duration, but additional points are earned by accomplishing up to three optional objectives as well as various “awards” the characters can earn by acting in different ways. The long-term aim for completionists will likely be to clear all quests with an “S++” rank, but the game doesn’t force you to play them any more than you feel like. They can also be played in online multiplayer, which I suspect would be quite fun, but I’m yet to try it at the time of writing.
Thus far I’m pretty impressed with Granblue Fantasy: Relink. It’s a lovely looking game, with the character models capturing the overall look of Granblue Fantasy’s 2D artwork quite nicely; I especially like how the texture work on the character models makes use of “pencil-style” shading such as crosshatching rather than simply using either solid, cartoonish colours or attempts at realism. The results are distinctive, and firmly in keeping with Granblue Fantasy’s overall aesthetic.
Likewise, the music is great, featuring a variety of sweeping orchestral themes, including some heard in the mobile game. Voice acting, too, is very good, with both a full dub and Japanese voice track available; the dub is actually decent quality, though the lipsyncing on the cutscenes is clearly done with the Japanese voice track in mind.
The game is a little prone to characters having meaningful conversations mid-battle, and it can be difficult to keep track of these thanks to the pace of the action combat, but I’m sure it just takes a bit of adjusting to. Thankfully, most things that characters say aside from battle cries are subtitled, so as long as you know to keep an eye on the lower part of the screen when someone is talking, you won’t miss anything.
One thing I really like about the game is how it very much rewards the way I tend to play games like this: poking my nose into every nook and cranny along the way rather than heading straight for the next objective. Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s areas are packed with things to discover, and not just treasure chests, either; there are documents to find which flesh out the backstory, optional combat challenges against tough “sealed” foes and slimes lurking in pots all over the place.
To support all this “hidden” stuff, Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s areas are all well-designed so that there is a clear path forwards, but you never feel like you’re just being funnelled down a corridor. There are often multiple routes you can take to the same destination, and places to investigate that are just there for the sake of exploration. It gives a nice feeling of freedom without veering too heavily into potentially overwhelming “open world” territory; investigating areas that are off the critical path always feels worthwhile, and I absolutely love that.
After spending a few hours with Granblue Fantasy: Relink, I’m keen to see more. I’m intrigued to see how the progression system expands over time, as well as take on some more quests and main scenario missions. I believe the whole thing isn’t actually that long in total, which is actually quite nice to know; I suspect you could spend a long time attempting to master the various quests, however, even if the main story can be breezed through relatively quickly.
Anyway, it’s still early days so far, but I anticipate this will be a good way to fill the time until Final Fantasy VII Rebirth arrives at the end of the month. So I’ll have more to share on the subject when I’ve actually played a bit more! And with that, it’s time to head off and do just that.
More about Granblue Fantasy: Relink
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