Granblue Fantasy Relink is a beautiful-looking upcoming Action-RPG with an anime aesthetic. But does this fast-paced combat title have enough to stand out in a crowd of JRPGs? We take a look at everything we know about the upcoming title including party combat, co-op, story, gameplay and more.
Granblue Fantasy Relink: What We Know So Far About the Action-RPG
Name: Granblue Fantasy RelinkPlatforms: PS5, PS4, PCDeveloper: CygamesPublisher: CygamesRelease Date: February 1st 2024Genre: Action-RPG
Features
Fast-paced Action-RPG combat with solo/AI co-op party gameplay
Online co-op with up to four players
Linear world with wide open spaces
Roughly 20 hours of main quest gameplay with further hours with endgame content
Over 100 hours in the hardest difficulty mode
Recruitable crewmates to assist you in battle
Fill the Link gauge to stun enemies
Use Skybound Arts to chain damage with party members causing a Chain Burst, and emitting an aftershock.
Each characters has unique abilities and can learn new talents with customisable weapons and sigils
Story, Setting, and the Sky Realm
Granblue Fantasy Relink is actually a spinoff of the series. Even if you haven’t played a Granblue game before you can dive right into this one as it features a brand-new story. Unlike the Granblue Fantasy mobile game, this isn’t a gacha game. It’s also different from Granblue Fantasy Versus as all characters in Relink are unlockable within the game without additional DLCs and it features a vibrant 3D world.
It takes place in the Sky realm or Skydom. These floating islands exist in the sea of clouds. This dreamy-like world hasn’t always been at peace though, as the Astrals tried to seize control of it roughly 500 years ago, but the citizens fought them back. For now, the world is tranquil, but you get a sense of “not for long”.
The Sky Realm is also home to a number of different races and civilisations. These include your usual humans but also more fantasy races such as the Erunes who have large animal-like ears. Then there are the Harvins who are smaller folk, and if you’ve played Final Fantasy XIV, they’re somewhat similar to the Lalafells. Harvins excel at business and seem to possess a lot of wisdom. Lastly, the Draphs who tower above all others, are great at labour-intensive skills such as construction and blacksmithing.
Players will start their adventure by finding a letter left behind by their father, which speaks of a legendary island. This seems to inspire the character to captain a crew and set off for this mysterious island. However, before getting the chance to do so, they meet a girl called Lyria. This meeting causes all kinds of events to unfold which is hinted to be fated. Along the way, players will meet a colourful cast of characters who can become crewmates. There are kings, misfits and more, so expect a real motley crew to join your party.
Now as I mentioned all isn’t well in this world because you have greater beings called Astral. They created the Primal Beasts, these creatures possess some extraordinary god-like powers. After the war they lay dormant, slumbering somewhere in the skies but have greatly impacted the world around them. No one else can control these mighty beings except the Astral. While awake their natural instinct seems to be to inflict destruction, and some say that this is just nature taking its path, bringing on a calamity.
From the get-go the story sounds rather sinister, hopefully there will be some lighter moments in between especially being a party-driven game. The gameplay shown shows a rather bright and airy world with floating airships and colourful picturesque backdrops. But of course, there will be some more darker areas as you encounter beasts looming in the shadows.
Gameplay
Developer Cygames has said it could take roughly 20 to 25 hours to complete the main questline. But of course, there are many side quests and further content to complete even after getting through the main story. There are over 100 quests and hours of post-endgame content. Quests don’t have different difficulty levels but rather they are organised by their difficulty mode.
According to a recent interview with Wccftech, the devs expect players to spend around 100 hours playing on the hardest difficulty. It’s not an open-world experience but rather features large areas to explore. While it does have online co-op the game is centered around its single-player experience when it comes to its main story. There won’t be any daily or focus on live service or battlepass in that sense. So if you want to play offline, you can.
It’s not that each quest has its own difficulty level but rather quests are split up by their difficulty levels. That 100-hour figure that I gave you earlier includes if you play through all of the hardest quests.
Interview with Cygames via Wcctech
Character Recruitment
This is a party-driven game so while you do play as the main character, there are additional characters that can be selected to join your party. There looks to be 17 different allies which range from more magical abilities to melee hack-and-slash combat. Bringing a different character to battle means a different approach can be taken to keep combat varied. According to an interview with RPG site and the general director Tetsuya Fukuhara, these characters can be recruited by completing quests and receiving items that will unlock characters from the main base in any order you wish.
Actually, it’s not progressing the story that unlocks the character. By progressing the story, you’ll receive items throughout the story that will allow you to unlock a character from a facility in the base area. That’s what we meant by unlocking characters in whatever order you’d like. You’ll receive an item and then you use the item to unlock your preferred character. You’ll just get items – that same item – to do that multiple times throughout the story.
General director Tetsuya Fukuhara – via RPG site interview
Power Level
Power Level indicates the combination of the character’s level and levelled equipment. Each quest will have a recommended Power Level, of course, you can always take them on earlier for a further challenge. The devs do expect it would be quite difficult to tackle the game this way as the game is balanced with Power Level in mind.
Characters also have separate Power Levels but also have Sigil accessories which are interchangeable between characters and factor into the level. Upgrading is not just limited to levels as weapons have unique stats and traits which can be upgraded by the local blacksmith. This reminds me of how weapons are upgraded in titles such as Monster Hunter Rise, but instead in Granblue Fantasy Relink you have a party of characters.
Co-op
In Granblue Fantasty Relink you can take on the game solo, with no AI characters, or party up with characters. You can also group up with a max of four players in online mode.
How quests are handled when playing online, is that if members in your group complete the quest with you, they too will clear the quest. However, they will have needed to have unlocked the quest also. Interestingly, players can still join to help you complete a quest, even if they haven’t unlocked it themselves, but they won’t be able to progress in their quest log but you will still get rewards.
Assist Modes
If you’re not a fan of controlling every aspect of combat, or just want to concentrate on the story, there is an Assist Mode. This mode auto attacks for you, making for a less challenging experience, however, you should note that not all content can be tackled in this mode. Post main story content there are further tiers of quests, the last tier is not playable in this mode.
If you’ve played such games as Final Fantasy 7‘s Classic Mode, you may have experienced a similar mode which helps take over some of the combat. The characters will auto-attack but you can take over use abilities which is optional. Full Assist will have all actions taken on automatically. This includes healing, dashing and guarding.
Combat
The gameplay uses real-time combat with a mix of melee and special powers depending on your party members. Teaming up can also inflict further damage. Stunning enemies require filling a stun gauge which fills up as you attack them.
Once the gauge is full you can use a Link Attack which applies a full party attack for some real damage. Getting that link level to 100% and successfully pulling off a Link Attack triggers Link Time. This causes time to slow down for a short period.
Skills are unique to each character which can range from damage, to healing in more of a support role. As you’d expected, each character has their own skills and can have up to four skills at the ready. In a party you can access each talent tree to learn new abilities by unlocking mastery nodes, making numerous build options. Characters will also have certain sigils or weapons they can equip. The attacks are bright and flashy, looking very satisfying to build enough of the gauge to pull off some awesome killer moves. Attacks aren’t limited to the ground, as characters can jump high and even dive from above.
The mage character Io uses a staff to perform long-range magical attacks and can even set off an AOE to hit large groups of enemies. While Lancelot as the name suggests wields a sword, effortlessly slicing and dicing in fast succession. Siegfried on the other hand uses a great sword which relies on precision timed attacks. Getting the perfect timing means not only gaining a better combo but also granting a unique finisher for some meaty damage. You won’t be able to switch characters on the fly, but rather choose a character to main before heading into a battle. You can also prepare for battles by switching up party compositions.
Enemies are mythical-looking beasts which can come at you from all sides. While bosses are larger-than-life behemoths. There could be some really fun fights ahead not only in your own party of characters but in co-op too.
Final Thoughts
The game kind of reminds me of Tales of Arise with its soft, anime style. However, its combat gets some more dimension, especially with the option of online co-op and more open spaces. This will surely provide more fun ways to play, especially if you would rather take on quests with friends. While single-player RPGs are always great for story, sometimes it’s great to have co-op content to join in with friends or other online players especially once you’ve finished main quests like in Monster Hunter Rise.
The game is a feast for the eyes, taking the hand-drawn artstyle of the Granblue series and adding a 3D world which looks fantastic as an Action-RPG. The sheer amount of characters that can join your party and ways to customise them means there are many playstyles to adopt. You can also opt to play completely solo without AI characters if you really want to up the challenge. Having further challenging quests for endgame content will also provide some extra hours for those who want to 100% everything.
There’s a wide roster of characters in the Granblue franchise so it is a wonder if they will add further characters in the future through DLCs or later updates. Whether an expansion will later come to the game is also unknown but maybe we’ll get an answer a little closer to the game’s release next year. Adding further co-op activities or a new region could make for further hours into the game as optional additional content.
What do you think of Granblue Fantasy Relink? What do you think about the combat party system? Are you excited for its launch? Let us know in the comments below.
Granblue Fantasy Relink will be coming to PS4, PS5 and PC on February 1st 2024 with the standard edition starting at $59.99.
If you enjoyed this preview be sure to check out more in Remnant 2: The Awakened King DLC Preview.
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