Perhaps many of you have already heard of Granblue Fantasy, a well-known IP for those who play Gacha on their smartphone, or perhaps reading the manga or watching the anime (which came later). After a slightly troubled development, now finally Granblue Fantasy also arrives on consoles with this Relink. In this immersive JRPG, players are challenged to explore a fantasy world of floating islands and airships, guiding the protagonist Grand and the mysterious Lyria in search of the legendary island of Estalucia. However, behind the allure of this epic journey, Granblue Fantasy: Relink faces challenges and complexities that can impact the gaming experience. Let's find out together if this title manages to sail the skies of anticipation and offer an adventure that lives up to expectations.
A story to discover
Granblue Fantasy: Relink offers fairly traditional gameplay. By playing you will take on the role of Gran and his party (where you can change the active party while you are out of battle, but from which you can never remove the protagonist), in search of a legendary island called Estalucia.
The story revolves around Gran, in a world abandoned by the Gods inhabited by warriors. Our protagonist is an inhabitant of one of these islands. The story begins when Gran discovers a letter from his father which tells of a legendary island, Estalucia, pushing him to undertake an expedition with his crew. During the journey he will meet however Lyria, a mysterious entity that will save the hero's life and share his vital essence with him. This encounter will trigger a series of events that will take the player through islands and adventuresin search of their goal and revealing the mystery that surrounds the girl.
Even if the incipit is interesting, it must be said that the plot follows the hero's journey very faithfully, without distortions of any kind. Unfortunately, this translates into a plot that is very easy to understand, but where it is also easy to understand the progress. There will certainly be some twists and turns, expect them, but don't expect any out of the ordinary plot ideas, because they are absent.
As far as the dialogues are concerned, the game masks its linearity with a choice, every now and then, to be made: this will actually not change the story of the game, making everything exclusively a scenic artifact to prevent the dialogues from being too verbose and boring.
Despite everything, from the side of the story we can say that Granblue Fantasy: Relink does its thing, because to all intents and purposes it offers a plot that follows the gacha style, sometimes even too much. However, if you are only interested in it, the game offers one assisted modecapable of making you perform attacks by pressing just a button, so you can make the gameplay easier to deal with, or even the Full Assist Modewhich will carry out the fights automatically.
A team, a multitude
If much of the game follows the classic style of Action JRPGs, this is why shines Granblue Fantasy: Relink is definitely his roster of characters. They will be about 20and each of them, in addition to being actively playable and insertable into the party, will also have with it a story to reveal.
In fact, during the game you will have the Character Episodes, scenes, dialogues and gameplay phases that will reveal the story of the individuals. However, these will not be available immediately, but will be unlocked as you progress through the game, so as not to let you get stuck on individual stories without advancing even a little in the main storyline.
In practical terms you will therefore have character episodes, around 100 side missions, and one main campaign of approximately 15-20 hours. In fact, if the story might seem short, the desire to delve into the characters and all the secondary missions – which strangely are not monotonous and actually manage to differentiate themselves in an intelligent way – make Granblue Fantasy: Relink of a gender-appropriate longevity. In short, it is neither too short nor too long.
The side missions they will also be “farmable”: you can then replay them, take more rewards based on your ranking, and even put them in a loop so you can replay them immediately as soon as they are finished.
In terms of gameplaythe game shows a classic system action with RPG bases: although you will be able to carry out various types of attacks, Granblue Fantasy: Relink it focuses a lot on spectacularity, which is why the gameplay will reward the battle that relies more on finishing moves, which are much more lethal than the standard ones.
For those interested, the game offers a partial open world, offering challenges to seek out, but without allowing an open world to explore. Furthermore, the level advancement of the players is interesting personagessince it will use gods skill points, currency that you will accumulate and you will choose how to divide it among the various heroes. Finally, this currency will also be accumulable through the progression of the character and story episodes, not requiring too much the need to have to farm.
Talking about this very thing, if you come from experience gacha, farming too much could “break” the game: finding clashes that are excessively easy after having done many secondaries or unlocked many points could damage the final experience. Luckily, we find the modality to help Ultimatewhich will make you play a sort of New Game+ with more powerful and differentiated enemies, but which you will only unlock once the story is finished.
Two of the things you notice right in the mode Ultimate are the elemental damagemuch more dangerous to manage due to the weaknesses, and the resistance of the enemies, which if in the standard mode they could only be hard to put down but not dangerous, in this case they could surprise you and require a more complex strategy.
They also become important the weapons and sealsunique upgradeable objects that you can level up: the former will even be able to unlock skills and overcome the limits a certain number of times, giving you support in the most difficult battles, while the latter will be used to increase statistics of various kinds.
Finally, to close the package, there is also the possibility of doing missions – both in the standard and completed levels – up to 4 players onlineso you can manage the strategy at field level with other real players, in order to create useful tactics to take down more difficult enemies, allowing you to further strengthen your characters and obtain epic rewards.
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