Revisit. Review. Relink.
When I was in high school, a friend of mine took me to see one of the movies of Bleach, the massively popular anime. At that point I had no idea what Bleach was about, but still had a good time with the feeling of jumping into an already established world. It was this experience that reminded me most of my time playing Granblue Fantasy: Relink, which also throws you into an established world without much of an on ramp.
Granblue Fantasy is a 2014 mobile RPG game created by developer Cygames with the assistance of Final Fantasy veterans like composer Nobuo Uematsu and art director Hideo Minaba, which released to enough success to warrant a number of spin-offs, including an anime adaptation, a manga adaptation, two fighting games, and now Granblue Fantasy: Relink, an action RPG aimed for the console market. Since I haven’t played either the mobile game or the fighting games and haven’t watched the anime, I came into Relink completely blind, only knowing that this has become a major franchise.
In the game you are thrown into the middle of the story with only a few flashbacks to previous story events. You are the protagonist that has, through a series of events, had their life tied to a mysterious girl named Lyria while escaping from the empire. Over time a motley crew of adventurers have been formed to sail the airship Grandcypher and seek the mysterious land of Estalucia.
Yes, there is a lot of information that is both given to you in exposition or flashbacks, and a lot of events are eluded to but not shown. However, I was amazed at how quickly I didn’t really care about that. This is a middle chapter of an overarching story, but there was something appealing about immediately getting to know a crew of adventurers that already trust and care about one another rather than having yet another origin story. And while the story itself doesn’t do much new, the characters are excellent and made me care about them really quickly. Bolstered by veteran voice talent like Yukari Tamura and Saori Hayami, even the thinnest part of the stories still feels endearing, and I still ended up emotionally affected, which is even more impressive given the relatively small runtime of the main storyline (about 15 hours, depending on if you speed through the story or do more side quests up front). Before starting the game I had heard that most people don’t come to this for the story, but I ended up really liking my time.
What most people come to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for are the other elements like the combat, which I really enjoyed. It’s a fast paced action RPG with controls that generally felt good, and with a lot of characters to try out (Six to start and more you can recruit later on that don’t impact the story). I personally stuck with the protagonist throughout most of the main story, but have started to try out other characters during the postgame, which is robust and features a fair amount of content which include quests you can take on either multiplayer or solo. I played these exclusively solo, with the rest of the slots taken up by the CPU characters I used during the main story, so if you are mostly a solo player it won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything, but I can see taking on endgame content with friends to be a fun time. This version is bolstered by the Endless Ragnarok upgrade pack, which adds even more content to the endgame. I haven’t had a chance to play the new exclusive content for this addition yet, but I enjoyed the combat and playing these characters so much that I definitely want to keep going into the endgame.
The other thing that I noticed was that this is just a gorgeous game, especially in art and character design. This is a lovely game to run around in and just look at, especially when you are on the deck of your airship looking out to the wide open sky. The music is also notably delightful, this time done by Tsutomu Narita. This is also helped by how beautifully Granblue Fantasy: Relink runs on Switch 2. The only time I felt even a hint of a slowed framerate were in a few battles with a large number of enemies, but even then it was only by a little. This runs and plays great on Switch 2, and I can see this being a great game for traveling to do a quest here or there.
The only thing I’m not so sure on is the pacing of the story. 15 hours for a JRPG is fast, and sometimes it felt like we were just going from one setpiece to the next. Granted, part of that was that I was not going back to town in between main story events, and these set pieces were REALLY excellent (one of the boss fights in particular is just so fun), but sometimes it felt like things were rushing to get you to the endgame. That being said, there was some repetition of boss fights that felt a bit like padding. Ultimately the game is fun to play so it’s not a terrible issue, but more than a few times I longed for just a few more quests or open world elements to feel like I was really exploring these open skies.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink isn’t a game that I’d suggest for everybody, but if you’re a JRPG fan looking for something new to try and enjoy I’d say you can’t go wrong. With a fun roster of characters, beautiful art, and fast, energetic gameplay, I can’t wait to revisit Relink.