Review: Granblue Fantasy Relink - Endless Ragnarok
- Guilherme Ribeiro
- 24 hours ago
- 6 min read
Assemble your crew and prepare for an epic journey to save the Sky Realm.
THE GAME
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is an action RPG developed and published by Cygames, Inc. Aiming to reach Estalúcia, a legendary island, the crew of the Grandcypher, an airship that flies through the Sky Realm, arrives in the celestial space of Zegagrande, home to numerous floating islands. Upon arrival, our crew becomes embroiled in a larger conflict involving the Church of Avia, which threatens the very existence of Zegagrande. Assemble your team of four characters, choosing from a wide variety of unique characters, both in appearance and gameplay. With the new expansion Endless Ragnarok, in addition to several improvements implemented in the game, a continuation of the main story unfolds, with new challenges and more epic battles. Climb aboard the Grandcypher and explore the mysteries and adventures of the Sky Realm.
MY IMPRESSIONS
If there's one game that looks like an anime, it's Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Its main campaign, essential for introducing the game and all its mechanics, puts the player in the role of the story's protagonist. The plot follows the protagonist (who the player can choose between a boy or a girl) who is the team's captain, a girl with great powers named Lyria, a small mascot dragon named Vyrn, and a wide variety of characters who can join their crew. The main story of Granblue Fantasy: Relink follows many clichés, but these are compensated for by the very fun and varied gameplay, thanks to the variety of playable characters and their different gameplay styles. Despite this, it's undeniable that the final stretch of the story becomes dragged out and repetitive. All the characters are very charismatic and unique, in such a way that it's impossible not to become fond of at least one of them. The moments that the main story provides are epic and put you in battles worthy of a shonen anime. There are also Destiny Episodes, which delve deeper into the stories of the other crew members as you recruit each one, allowing you to learn more about the character and encouraging the player to experience their individual gameplay. With the Endless Ragnarok expansion, we gain even more story, continuing the events of the main campaign and delivering another journey for your team, with more challenges and new additions. The game is in Brazilian Portuguese, with a very competent localization job that translates very well how the character is saying a sentence, using our way of speaking, without losing the essence and personality idealized by the game's original language.
The end of the main story is just the beginning of what Granblue Fantasy: Relink has to offer. With new missions and the possibility of breaking the characters' limits, the real challenge begins here. You can play alone or in cooperative mode, as well as find people to play with, which changes the entire gaming experience, allowing you to create strategies instead of just relying on the CPU controlling your allies. With this, Granblue Fantasy: Relink manages to keep the player making the most of everything the game offers and keeping the game alive. This is the moment where the player will likely choose a character and try to master them, both in terms of gameplay, increasing their attributes and unlocking new abilities, and improving or creating weapons and perfecting seals, which are enhancements added to characters, like equipment that grants specific attributes. Among the missions, variety is not lacking. You can face bosses or hordes, with secondary objectives that improve your spoils. You can also replay stages of the main story. With Endless Ragnarok, the Confluence mode was also added, which is basically a roguelike mode within Granblue Fantasy: Relink, where you advance through missions and can choose upgrades for your character to keep during that mission. And since we're talking about new mechanics, Endless Ragnarok introduces summons to the game, a way to increase the range of tactical options for your gameplay, allowing you to control summons or have them participate in team attacks.
It's even difficult to explain how varied the gameplay of Granblue Fantasy: Relink is because, in addition to each character having their own play style, the mechanics are quite comprehensive. You might find it better to defend than to dodge, and acting in each of these ways changes what you gain, as well as using connected attacks, breaking the enemy's defense, or using the aforementioned summons. This is without even mentioning the diversity of abilities and their effects, and ways to combo them with your standard attacks. It might seem dauntingly complex, but I promise it's not. Granblue Fantasy: Relink is quite user-friendly and manages to keep the player from feeling frustrated. The fights against boss monsters are truly epic battles that can last a long time and require a lot of skill from the player to know when to attack or dodge, for example. For me, this is where the game shines.
Graphically, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is gorgeous. With vivid and vibrant colors, simple but effective environments surround all the game's maps. However, it's impossible not to mention Hideo Minaba and his illustrations. Just looking at one of the character artworks, you already know the artistic quality, since Hideo Minaba has worked on other major franchises and his art is unparalleled and unforgettable. The character, monster, and weapon designs are wonderful and full of personality. Equally incredible is the soundtrack, which in epic moments grows along with the action, immersing you in battles and transforming them into unique moments for the player.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a game that will captivate you for a long time. The main campaign will only be the appetizer; the endgame will offer you a feast with many options, regardless of how you want to play, whether alone, with three friends, or with strangers. Whether in short gaming sessions or long hours of battles. The Endless Ragnarok expansion only improved what was already very good. Granblue Fantasy: Relink awaits you with open arms, with incredible adventures and epic battles.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Boredom won't be a problem for those driven to complete all the game's achievements. Detailing each one would be a daunting task, as they cover all elements of the game, from character-related achievements and specific actions to be completed in the main story, to collectible achievements and high mission scores. When I said that finishing the main story was just the beginning of what Granblue Fantasy: Relink has to offer, that's partly what I was trying to show. It's hard not to be hooked on the game, and the achievements appear as an extra factor for the player, a challenge outside the game itself, but one that enhances the experience, adding another layer of activities. And it won't be an easy task, since to achieve 100% of the achievements, the player will basically have to explore everything the game has to offer and, in some cases, put in a lot of effort, whether due to the time spent or the skill required. Therefore, I recommend enjoying Granblue Fantasy: Relink to the fullest, and if you get excited about completing all the achievements, that will give you much more fuel to keep playing and mastering your gameplay.
CONCLUSION
After focusing 100% on the story of Granblue Fantasy: Relink, I explored more of what the game had already presented to me, but which I had left aside in order to complete the main campaign. It's astonishing how much there is to do in this game. It took me a while to get my bearings, but I soon realized I had only scratched the surface. And that's a great strength of Granblue Fantasy: Relink, because it offers a lot to the player, and it doesn't matter if you're more casual or more hardcore, there's content for everyone. I really like the variety of characters which, in one way or another, ends up making the game even more varied, because there will always be a different way to play with each character and this also changes how the player interacts with the whole thing. The boss battles are where the game shines for me. Some battles drag on for a long time, which might seem like just a way to waste the player's time, but in reality, it requires coordination and skill to do everything at the right time, and this makes the whole battle something more epic.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink positively surprised me. It features a very well-constructed world, with beautiful art and a great soundtrack. It's so hard to choose a character to master because they all seem so cool, each in their own way. It's a great game to play with friends and defeat bosses by coordinating strategies and performing insane combos. The Endless Ragnarok expansion is the icing on the cake, adding a lot of cool stuff to the whole package. It's a game that, even with so many elements, manages to be quite unique in what it sets out to do, delivering a lot of fun and challenge.
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