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The thrill of adventure in a limitless playground tickles the imagination, something intimately familiar to players of Granblue Fantasy, a mobile/browser-based title that has been an international hit for over a decade. The original title resembles turn-based 16-bit RPGs like the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games of old, leaving daydreams on a grander scale and exploiting hopeful desire rather than inevitable reality. With Granblue Fantasy: Relink, developer CyGames has the opportunity to explore a fantasy world of open skies and magic as it transforms the game from a relatively modest mobile title into a 3D action game. While not quite a hit, Granblue Fantasy: Relink should be commended for going most of the way to being a memorable title, but it needed a bit more ambition and unique content to achieve that goal.
Relink guides players through a single-player campaign with the crew of the grandfather, a band of skyfarers who have adventures resolved in combat on every new island they find. An entirely original island and story was created for this title, tasking the crew with rescuing one by defeating giant monsters called Primal Beasts and defeating a witch who controlled them.
Those unfamiliar with the story and characters of Granblue Fantasy won’t find Relink particularly interested in catching up with the player. Little vignettes of how the characters met and how they got to the last pit stop island that sets up this game’s adventures are essentially all the player gets without the help of fanmade wikis to fill in the rest. It has a similar energy to collecting anime a piece halfway through or jumping into the middle of a Tales game, with no intention or desire to dwell on their past history that the player is supposed to have seen.
Relink can also look pretty, especially with its painterly environments, but it’s hard not to notice that the art style translates inconsistently between characters. Arc System Works’ Granblue Fantasy Versus is a much more successful experiment using the same designs.
The single-player campaign, while short, features interesting challenges like climbing to a wind god atop a stormy mountain or reclaiming a castle from an invading force. Players take control of an unlockable cast of 19 characters with different fighting styles and special moves to follow a somewhat basic story that doesn’t require too many big or unpredictable changes.
All of these characters share a similar template of using four special moves and move options, but vary significantly in special abilities and meters. My favorite character bounced over enemies and specialized in ground parries, but a late unlock focused more on morphs and building counters, making even those two feel different.
Unfortunately, the levels are largely linear paths without much exploration. Infinite skies and floating islands are rarely used for anything other than backgrounds and carryover to the next fight, leaving little reason to poke your nose into anything other than the most linear path. A world where the characters talk about an inexhaustible space for escapes and capers, but spend much of their time in caves and walkways is incongruous in a way that gets worse as time goes on.
After completing the single-player campaign, players can take on combat missions that can be played cooperatively with friends or strangers. Difficulty increases alongside progressive ranks, and characters must strengthen themselves through elective means such as skill trees and weapons to keep up. In the late game, maintaining a team powerful enough for these solo missions takes a lot of work, but focusing on one character discourages variety, especially when there’s the option to use 18 more. There’s no real way around this rut, which wants you to re-do quests over and over for guaranteed materials and experience to upgrade them, although reversing the smoothness of early game progress can act as a frustrating brick wall.
Late game bosses are monstrous with equally gargantuan HP bars, making battles tedious. Unlike a monster hunter, your quarry never escapes or requires different strategies, and the likelihood of going through any elimination state means the player is mostly in a race against finishing the battle before boring- yes
The saving grace of these extended gameplay encounters is that the combat is reasonably engaging, and the character interactions will likely delight existing Granblue Fantasy fans. Relink is unlikely to be any newcomer’s favorite game. Still, the core gameplay is fun and keeps you moving on the treadmill, especially if you have a gathering of fans of the source material to help you slay its larger figurative and literal dragons.
Source: gameinformer.com