Granblue Fantasy: Relink Review
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a JRPG that checks off a laundry list of action RPG clichés. From boss fights against gargantuan, luminescent monsters to an evil deity, catboys, damage numbers popping off enemies, women in combat-ready split skirts, incongruous sunglasses, and horned giants wielding caravan-sized halberds, it’s all there.
However, despite the risk of becoming formulaic, Granblue Fantasy: Relink manages to hold its own. Its layered combat system may seem daunting at first glance, but once understood, it reveals a game that is unapologetically committed to the “rule of cool.” The setting defies the laws of physics, and every battle is a disorienting spectacle that teeters on the edge of being a photosensitivity hazard. It’s a chaotic charm that’s hard to resist.
I recall having difficulties reviewing this game initially, but since its retail launch, it has proven to be considerably more stable. Stable enough, in fact, for me to join the crew of the Grandcypher on a classic, save-the-chosen-one-save-the-world type of adventure. The world in question is the Sky Realm, a place where small, biome-diverse islands float in an endless sky instead of continents. The chosen one is a magical young woman named Lyria, who can control a massive dragon and shares a life-bond with the main character, the captain of the Grandcypher, whom I named Horace.
This life-bond was established in Granblue Fantasy, the mobile game to which Relink is a direct sequel. However, Relink doesn’t rehash this backstory. Instead, it focuses on the fact that Lyria has been abducted by an alluring yet malevolent woman named Lillith, who is using Lyria to awaken a… some sort of realm-traversing stone bird… the specifics escape me. The crux of the matter is that you, along with three of your crew, explore islands and engage in epic battles interspersed with intensely dramatic cutscenes.
The battles are the heart of the game. You begin in a pastoral floating city and travel via your steampunk airship to a nearby, often element-themed island (snow, lava, collapsing goblin mine, etc.). These islands are semi-open maps where you can find optional treasure chests, but essentially, you’re guided in one direction. The rhythm of the game is comforting: you fight increasingly challenging waves of mobs and mini-bosses until you reach the area’s main boss, typically a fiery wyvern or a colossal mech reminiscent of Shadow Of The Colossus.
You can play as any member of your diverse crew during battles, which includes gun-toting swashbucklers, stoic paladins, and enchanting magicians. The combat reveals that the “Relink” in the title refers not only to rescuing Lyria but also to the way you fight. When an enemy’s stun gauge fills up, you can perform a link attack with any other attacking character - a kind of special combo. You also have Skybound Arts (SBA), each character’s unique special attacks. To trigger these, you need to max out your SBA meter, which fills as you perform your standard special abilities, such as heals, buffs, debuffs, AOE attacks, and so on. If the other characters have also filled their SBA meters, you can trigger a Chain Attack, where each character unleashes an SBA before you all collaborate on a super hyper mega final attack with a name like “Void Bastard” or something similar.
Moreover, there’s the Link Level. Executing link attacks, SBAs, or reviving fallen comrades contributes to your Link Level. Once it reaches 100%, you can activate Link Time, which puts your enemy into a super slow-motion state, allowing you to deal extra damage. It’s a lot to manage, and the combat becomes more manageable when playing in co-op mode with actual people. Despite Relink’s impressive sales of a million copies, I found the matchmaking to be inconsistent. Therefore, it’s advisable to have a dedicated group of friends to play Relink with. However, if you don’t, the combat is still manageable. In fact, the combat is so chaotic, with magic and colors exploding everywhere like an extravagant Jackson Pollock painting, that single-player mode doesn’t feel significantly less chaotic.
There are other elements to engage with that simplify things. The prudent player should check and upgrade their Masteries, a simplified version of a Final Fantasy Sphere grid, where you can spend points to earn rewards (increases to attack and defense stats, and new special abilities). Adventuring around earns you rare crafting materials, which can be traded to forge and enhance weapons, and sigils, magical items that can be attached to characters for passive buffs. These should be switched up depending on the biome you’re visiting. If you encounter a boss you can’t defeat, you can return to town to farm XP in quests from the XP Farming Quest Booth, which essentially replays previous levels you’ve beaten and provides XP and crafting rewards. It’s worth investing the time to understand all this, as it makes the combat less confusing and more rewarding. However, the game introduces many of its core concepts through quick tooltips rather than hands-on action tutorials, which is a drawback.
Still, you can probably muddle through the first few hours of Relink without understanding anything. It’ll just take you significantly longer to finish. There are also accessibility and assist options to automate some or all of the more complex aspects of the combat. There are some larger issues with a few of the fundamentals, however. The combat lock is so unhelpful that it’s easier to leave it off when dealing with multiple enemies, and despite the appealing animations, all the attacks feel insubstantial, making your giant sword feel more like a cosplay prop with a safety tag attached by a clueless man in a high-visibility vest.
Perhaps it’s because they become so enormous that the relative size of any one attack loses all significance. In one boss fight, I generated almost a million damage with a special attack, using the damage indicator itself as a dramatic storytelling device. But the bosses are such grand spectacles that you sort of don’t mind, and elsewhere the game is slick and streamlined to remove any friction in playing. When you complete a side quest (like killing a certain number of wolves), you can automatically warp to the quest giver to turn it in. If you’ve returned to town to farm XP, you can immediately warp back to the last checkpoint of the main story.
VERDICT
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is unpretentious, doesn’t make any profound statements, and is wholly committed to its fantasy. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and a hot witch who explodes roses everywhere in battle is cool. So are planet-sized attacks, monsters with hands on strings flying everywhere, and pirate captains who are also dudes with big cow horns. Unless all of that doesn’t sound at all cool to you - in which case, you’d best steer clear of this game.