Cygames’ Granblue Fantasy: Relink is now out after over seven years in development. The JRPG aims to follow years of established lore and character background with an all new story and new real-time gameplay elements. After playing through the game. I can say that the developers do a great job with the title but it has clear pitfalls.
A New Grand Adventure
Granblue Fantasy: Relink features a new story that takes place in the mystical Sky Realm, which hosts several floating islands. These islands are guarded by powerful creatures known as primal beasts, which are worshiped by the mysterious organization known as the Church of Avia. In the game, players control The Captain, who can be either a male character whose default name is Gran or a female whose default name is Djeeta. You and your crew, consisting of a young girl, Lyria, who has the ability to capture and hold these primal beasts and a slew of other interesting characters, sail the sky as Skyfarers and go on adventures. Unsurprisingly, during their latest journey to a fabled land called Eustalucia, the group gets mixed up with the church, and Lyria gets captured. As such, it’s up to Gran and his crew to rescue her.
It’s worth noting that Relink serves as an indirect continuation of the previous games in the series. While advertised as a spinoff title, players jumping into the game will experience an all-new story but with the same characters from the already-established series. As such, if you’re new to the series, there are a lot of details you’ll be missing. Many of the character relationships, like Lyria’s life-link to the protagonist, and how that happened is not explained in the game besides from the in-game glossary. The game also features many returning characters whose backgrounds and origins aren’t covered, so new players who care about this will likely be confused if they don’t read the aforementioned glossary.
An unsurprising Story
If you can look past this, Relink’s narrative is highly engaging. While the story starts slow as it begins like most generic JRPGs, it quickly gets more exciting with the introduction of the mysterious Alvia group. However, while the plot has its fair share of engaging moments, the bulk of the story is spent trying to rescue Lyria. The game doesn’t focus on the origins of the church and their motivations, at least not until much later, which is unfortunate. Despite this, the narrative is still captivating, and the characters are endearing, albeit a bit tropey at times.
Other than that, it’s also worth noting that Granblue Fantasy: Relink is incredibly linear. Much more linear than anticipated, especially compared to most JRPGs. While you can fast travel from the game’s main hub town to the current mission’s location, at the start of each chapter, each location is large but still highly linear. These areas are where each chapter starts and ends before moving on to the next. As such, players who want a grand world to explore freely and openly with no barriers will not find that with Granblue Fantasy: Relink.
Highly Engaging, Highly Simplistic
In terms of the meat and potatoes of the game, the gameplay, Granblue Fantasy: Relink sports highly engaging elements, specifically its combat mechanics. While these elements are far from complex, they make the gameplay experience very enjoyable and stress-free. Players explore several unique locations and biomes in each chapter, traversing and scaling platforms and fighting enemy mobs and bosses in real-time combat. Like most RPGs, players have access to several weapons, a skill tree to improve old skills and gain new ones, and a blacksmith to upgrade weapons. Learning to use new skills is an incredibly painless process, and using abilities during battles is always exciting. Additionally, you don’t have to reattune spells or skills whenever you get a new one, as the game will let you use any of them when their cooldown is up. That way, you’ll always have a skill you can use every few seconds.
Movements in Relink are also swift and precise, which greatly enhances the fast-paced combat. Attacks and skills are flashy, and they all have mesmerizing special effects. The game’s bosses are one of its major highlights, as each is well-crafted, unique, and incredibly fun.
However, unfortunately, while being fun to fight, these bosses are also incredibly spongy despite not being particularly tough. So much so that many boss fights often end up being over twenty minutes long. And because they scale with each chapter, leveling up and upgrading your weapons does minimal improvements. And because the game is incredibly linear, there aren’t ways to grind out levels except by playing through the game.
The Good and Bad of Gameplay
In terms of difficulty, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is disappointingly easy. It is incredibly hard for an average RPG player to get a game over screen even on medium difficulty. And due to the game’s linear nature, you won’t have time to grind but you’ll always get healing items at the start of each chapter. To make things even easier, each character can heal and revive you when you’re about to die, and you can also just revive yourself back to full health by mashing buttons. What’s more, you also get two revive potions at the start of each chapter, just in case you find yourself struggling for some absurd, highly unlikely reason. As such, if you intend to have a reasonably challenging experience, it’d be best to crank up the difficulty to the most challenging, and even then, nothing less than a party wipe will make a seasoned action player struggle.
Furthermore, while the AI in Relink is really advanced and helpful, it would have been nice if players could freely switch between characters with a simple push of a button early on instead of switching party leaders through the menu in between battles. This would make fights, especially boss fights, much more organized. Lastly, another painfully noticeable aspect of Relink’s gameplay is that sometimes combat feels unsatisfying. Attacks feel way too floaty and light, and lack the impact and weight you’ll see in most other action RPGs. And because bosses are quite bulky, it always feels like you’re chipping away at a block of steel with a toothpick, which never feels nice.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is also one of the best looking JRPGs of the year so far, as the models are incredibly detailed, the reflections are impeccable, it sports amazing lighting with captivating colors, and an amazing art direction. While some character models are less detailed than others, the character designs makeup for it. In terms of performance, the PlayStation 5 version runs really well with a consistent 60FPS on and great visuals in their respective settings.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is far from perfect but it’s also a well crafted game that provides a stellar RPG experience. While said experience would’ve been better with less linear gameplay and a more fleshed out story, the gameplay is entertaining and easy to understand making it one of the most fun JRPGs in recent years.
The Review
Granblue Fantasy: Relink
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is far from perfect but it's also a well crafted game that provides a stellar RPG experience. While said experience would’ve been better with less linear gameplay and a more fleshed out story, the gameplay is entertaining and easy to understand making it one of the most fun JRPGs in recent years.
PROS
- Great visuals
- Fun and direct gameplay
- Fun story for most parts
CONS
- Inconsistent character models
- Predictable narrative
- Too linear
