REVIEW: ‘Granblue Fantasy: Relink’ Is an Epic Adventure (PC)

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is Cygames‘ latest action RPG. First announced over seven years ago and seemingly stuck in development hell, it’s finally here. After playing through the game, while it is extremely entertaining, it also has a surprising amount of disappointing aspects.

The Granblue series, which began as a mobile game, now spans several games and media. Relink, being the latest title, aims to raise the franchise to new heights with a robust, overarching narrative with new characters, locations, all-new gameplay mechanics, and more.

The game takes place in the mystical Sky Realm, which hosts several floating islands. These islands are guarded by powerful creatures, the Primal Beasts, which the mysterious organization, the Church of Avia, worships. 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 is 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, are not explained in the game itself. Instead, you’re left to use the in-game glossary to understand them. The game also features many returning characters with backgrounds and origins that aren’t covered. So, new players who care about this are likely to be confused if they don’t read the aforementioned glossary.

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, the bulk of the story is spent trying to rescue Lyria. Even though the plot has its fair share of engaging moments, the game doesn’t focus on the origins of the church or its 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.

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. As you traverse and scale platforms and fighting enemy mobs and bosses in real-time combat.

Like most RPGs, you can access several weapons, a skill tree to improve old and gain new skills, 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 Granblue Fantasy: Relink is also swift and precise, which greatly enhances 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. Each boss is well-crafted and unique, and their aesthetics remain 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 makes minimal improvements. And because the game is incredibly linear, there aren’t ways to grind out levels except by playing through the game.

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. 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. Even then, nothing less than a party wipe will make a seasoned action player struggle.

Furthermore, the AI in Granblue Fantasy: Relink is advanced and helpful. That said, players can’t freely switch between characters with a simple push of a button early on. Instead,  to do this, you must switch party leaders through the menu in between battles. By streamlining that one element,  fights, especially boss fights, would be much more organized. Lastly, another painfully noticeable aspect of Relink’s gameplay is that sometimes combat feels unsatisfying. Attacks feel too floaty and light. They lack the impact and weight you see in most other action RPGs. This is increased because bosses are quite bulky. Instead of feeling sticky, it always feels like you’re chipping away at a block of steel with a toothpick. This ultimately never feels nice.

Other than that, Granblue Fantasy: Relink looks incredible. For one, the game’s environments are highly detailed, highlighting its excellent art direction. It also sports excellent special effects and a flashy and vibrant look, which is especially noticeable on Ultra settings on PC. The only part of the visuals that is lacking is the inconsistent 3D character modeling. Some characters are great, while others feel noticeably dull and lacking in detail. However, the game runs excellently on an RTX 3060 PC with a great, consistent frame rate without any lags or glitches.

Overall, although not without faults, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a highly enjoyable entry that series fans will undoubtedly fall in love with. The game offers a captivating albeit simple narrative, mesmerizing visuals, and a fun gameplay experience. If you’re a JRPG fan looking for a great new experience, then you’ll do no wrong with Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Just don’t expect anything out of the ordinary.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink will launch on February 1 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.