amazing visual & gameplay!

fun and good story

Relink turned out to be just what I wanted out of the Granblue Fantasy franchise ever since I fell in love with Versus.

I'm going at this from the perspective of someone who became a fan of this franchise after playing the first Granblue Fantasy Versus game, not the mobile/browser game. That's not out of any kind of distaste for it, it's just that I hadn't gotten into it. I mention that because I wanna recommend this game even as someone who's not a long-time, die-hard fan of these characters, setting, and story.

It's certainly converting me though. This is the type of game that I wished a lot of those turn-based JRPGs back in the day that I just couldn't get into were. Party-based action RPG with accessible controls, flashy combat, a pretty huge roster of characters who all play very differently from one another and a wide array of skills and specialties that bounce off one another, even when you're doing the game entirely solo with CPU party members. It's an exceptionally simple system to pick up mechanically, but the meat is in its progression that goes far beyond anything I saw in the simplified RPG Mode in the fighting game. It seems to be applying what the original mobile game does to an action RPG, and to great effect. It goes pretty hard the further you get into it, but I never felt overwhelmed. Challenge comes, for the most part, from bosses with insane move sets and Overdrive/Bloodlust abilities where the bosses go wild and you're expected to just avoid their attacks and wait for them to tire themselves out before you go ham on them again, though I do wish there was more variety in some of the side quest bosses. If you're only interested in the story, it's fairly well-balanced all the way to the end, including the brilliant epilogue chapter that I hope you don't skip. 'Cause it's an even better, more epic finale than the final chapter.

If you're looking for tight Souls-like combat, this ain't that. Not one bit. I love those games, but I don't think that fits what Relink is going for, and it doesn't need to try and emulate DS3 or Sekiro like almost every other game has been trying to do for the past several years. Blocking is actually useful. Perfect dodges don't just grant i-frames during the dodge, they grant invincibility for a few seconds after. Skills are on cool-downs rather than mana. There's a special meter for cinematic Skybound Arts like in the fighting game. This is meant for fun, flashy, overall simpler combat where the spectacle is the focus. What I like about this system is you could definitely go deep, min-max, use characters with timed combos like Siegfried, pick a party that suits a specific play style, expand on your build with different sigils, especially the late game ones with massive buffs and interesting drawbacks like disabling dodges and blocking for a huge damage boost, etc... OR you could just pick your four favorite waifus and play with that team for the entire run time and the endgame. That's what I'm doin'. Katalina, my stalwart, knightly, gap moe darling <3

Where I think this game suffers is in its localization, subs for which match the dub, not the original Japanese. Cygames' in-house localization team certainly has a bit of that Mahvel influence. You might see occasional [current year] lingo, which is kinda cringe. It's not too bad if you're used to how anime works once it's been twisted by Americans, but it's jarring for someone who's listening to the Japanese dub, and has been learning the language, to see how mismatched so much of the dialogue is to the subs. A "thank you" can be translated into a snarky comment. A motivational shout in Japanese could be translated to some kind millennial lingo. An explanation of a certain thing that would've been good world-building is described in not the most compelling way in English. And they actually made my boy Rackam say a "that just happened" line. There's just little things that get in the way of an otherwise perfectly fun fantasy anime romp. Not enough to ruin the game's story since I can at least understand enough of it while just ignoring the localization, but I see why it turns some people off, especially when they're playing the dub. And given this is an in-house team, this was already the case in the fighting game, and I wouldn't be surprised if the original mobile/browser game has always been this way. A more concrete example is Djeeta, the female version of the main character. She's far more consistent in voice and writing in Japanese, for both Relink and Versus, as a motivated, optimistic young girl who found herself in a wild situation and is excited to make the most of it. She's known hardship but appreciates the bonds she's built from it. But in English, it's jarring hearing this girl introspect about her long-term goals of reaching Estalucia, how she values her crew, her life link with Lyria, her respect and admiration for Katalina... while also occasionally talking sass in a kid-friendly sitcom kind of way that makes me gag. It's like EN Djeeta and JP Djeeta are two entirely different people. It's not the worst nor is it the vast majority of the game's dialogue. But it could've been way better if they didn't use the dub's subtitles for the Japanese dialogue and had those translated separately.

For as "shallow" and "weeb" as some reviews might consider this game's story, it's a good time. A lot of its depth and world-building is found through archive entries that can be picked up throughout the main story quests or found in higher difficulty side quests, as well as unlockable voiceover stories that talk of each character's adventures that I assume are from the mobile game's established lore. There's a ton to look through, just like there was in GBVS. There's a lot here that goes beyond just the cutscenes and the dialogue during gameplay, and as someone who's enjoyed that sort of less direct storytelling from the FromSoftware games, it's something I ended up enjoying even from a franchise that I had very little exposure to. I should say that this is by no means an opaque, indirect story. It's far more traditional, lotta cutscenes, some dialogue that's presented in a visual novel style like in the original game and Versus, but it's served well by all the archive entries and item text to find, some of which can even only be found in the epilogue chapter and in the endgame.

But I get it, many wouldn't be interested in just reading about a world they only just got into. You'd have to see it, and play in it, and actually be curious about it from what the actual game offers. Show, don't tell, right? Relink's certainly good at the showing part. I'd already been interested in the setting since the fighting game. Just the idea of an entire world where people sail on airships to different floating islands was already wild to me, and I wanted to find out more. Relink delivered. Its environments are gorgeous. Its world is beautifully stylized and vibrant, and all the different locations that you go through in this adventure can range from idyllic to hellish in a heartbeat without feeling inconsistent. While an open world game like that would be insanely cool, this isn't so. It's sadly not Black Flag for Weebs where we get to sail to each island freely on the Grandcypher. Maybe someday, Cygames. It's more linear than that, with the main quest taking you to different parts of the Zegagrande Skydom, and in between chapters, you can choose to spend some time on the deck of your ship or in one of the two beautifully designed hub towns to take on side quests. It's a net positive and avoids a lotta the problems that big open worlds have.

So-so localization and repetitive side bosses aside, it's wild that this is the first time this franchise went the 3D action RPG route and did it so well right off the bat. Relink was meant to be a small diversion from Gran/Djeeta's larger adventure, but I don't mind sticking around Zegagrande a little longer.

Fun with friends, buy on a discount, not sure how active the community is but have managed to get my parties to fill relatively quickly during peak hours.

A good action game with a decent main story, great art style, and great voice acting.

I have been a full of Grindblue Granblue Fantasy ever since the mobile web game version and seeing how Relink was on sale, I decided to get it and I was not disappointed. The story, the plot, the action, the BGMs, the character design and intereactions, brings me back to when I first started and I thoroughly enjoyed the grind game. Love playing this as you can tell. Would definitely recommend if you like fantasy genre games.

> Cooked for 10years
> Fixed and changed gameplay 100 times
> Got very postive review on steam on release
> It's a fun and challenge Multiplayer game
> Refuse to make live service
> Axed after 2 updates
> Cygames.
I dont understand Japanese Dev's mind but still a very fun game. Yall should try

I just wish there was more.

I liked it so much I 100%ed it. Imagine an Action MMORPG without the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that comes with MMOs and you got this game. Excellent boss fight design, especially towards the end.

Interesting game. There are pros and cons, and unfortunately more of the latter. But it was enjoyable, so I recommend.

Pros:
- Fun hack and slash gameplay, also with dodging and blocking which are very satisfying when executed them perfectly
- Bot party members are actually competent which is nice. They are almost too good - it was difficult to enjoy fighting trash enemies because other party members would instantly annihilate them.
- There are lots of different characters which you unlock, add to your party, and play as. They all have their own voice acting, aesthetic, and abilities
- The characters have short personal stories which you must read (or skip) through to complete their progression. Though they were a bit heavy-handed, I was pleasantly surprised that some of them had unexpectedly good prose and presented some ideas that are not commonly found in video games or other media in my experience.
- There are a lot of different enemy types, and the variety of maps isn't bad either
- The game continues even after the main story finishes

Cons:
- Main story was uninteresting
- I didn't like being forced to have the default hero character in my party for the story when I would prefer to have other characters.
- After the story ends there isn't much horde fighting content, and you're mostly just fighting bosses. I don't really enjoy fighting bosses that much, they're not very fun. I prefer having tons of weaker enemies thrown at me, which I think is more interesting than arbitrary boss challenges
- It would be nice to have more ranged characters, as most characters are melee. (And there are quite a few annoying flying enemies in the game.)
- Lots of time is spent in menus or unskippable animations. If you're grinding the same super easy mission over and over again, you will spend more time with the animations and menus than with the actual mission. It would be nice to be able to skip those things and streamline the grinding process. And get a big summary menu at the end instead if you have a long grinding session repeating the same mission.
- The lock-on system is pretty unintuitive to use. It will often automatically choose enemies I am not interested in, and when I try to change which enemy it has selected it will select a different enemy than the one I expected
- Damage cap just seems like a pointless part of the game and wastes sigil slots
- Horde missions will often have a challenge that involves killing enemies with thrown objects, which is annoying to do and prevents you from playing your chosen character the way you want to play them
- Some tasks given by NPCs (I don't say "quests" because missions are also called that) involve giving crafting materials to the NPCs, and this is annoying because I have to be careful to avoid these tasks if I want to keep materials for my own uses.

Overall I'd say the game relies heavily on very scripted, handcrafted boss fights, and then makes you repeat them (unskippable intro and transformation cutscenes included). It is the same with all the UI menus, which can get in the way of actually playing the game. Personally I'd prefer to a bit more of an open system approach where you have to fight lots of enemies with minimal scripted stuff happening which would disable gameplay.