Release date: 29-1-2024.
After the last disaster I sat through, GBF relink would by my next game as there wasn't
anything else I wanted to play/get. I mainly picked this because I heard the story
wasn't too long and a fantasy setting and pastel-ish colours just felt right for my mood.
I''ll say it straight up my enjoyment of this game was like 50/50 but it was mostly good
some aspects just were not for me.
A thing to note is that Granblue Fantasy was originally a gacha/browser game and also one
of the very few that has like a 10+ years and still running even surviving the P5 collab curse.
Unfortunately I couldn't get into that game but it has its charms I saw that much.
Pro's
- Decent enough story.
- Awesome boss fights.
- Variety in playable characters with unique playstyles.
- Exploring is rewarding, variety of chests & map size is comfy.
Con's
- Terrible entry point, wastes no time introducing the main crew.
- Short, endgame is a grindblue fantasy fest.
- Fate episodes can seem cheap in trying to tell a story of a character.
I did play the demo and honestly that did not sell me on the story/characters...
you'll probably be fine since fate episodes exists which gives a little backstory to everyone
but sadly they expected you to already know GBF to some extend. I ended up watching
season 1 of the anime because I don't know this series and it did sell me a little better.
The anime actually had sakuga animation if you don't know what that means, its moments
were the animation is notoriously better. All this also reminds me a lot of the situation with the hamefura otome game cuz that game also wasted no time to introduce anyone
in great detail so the more you know the better.
TL;DR this game just didn't do much else other than being one more adventure with Gran&co.
It was epic at times and this had really high budget I also appreciate the effort they put into
the game since the party AI is much better than in most games.
Ultimately this game just fell kinda flat to me idk why. Maybe I am not enough
of a fan to enjoy this game as were my thoughts during chapter 9, it also felt like a lot
of story beats were repeated/reused and were a bit cliche maybe it was that
or they were just playing it safe or being too by the book which kinda put me off.
Didn't help that they put character stories as mini visual novels that... are super short
speaking of short the story was short too and then all you're left with is grindblue fantasy
which is boring if you don't have any friends that can play with you to make it easier or more fun.
There are also a lot of playable characters but most don't add anything to the main plot
I kinda disliked that, sure they have their own story but there's almost no time to tell them here.
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There's one final thing that I didn't like, characters would talk as they walk
or during battle and even would drop lore in there, needless to say I wasn't able to pay
fully attention to that. Near the end of the game Id would talk of his past which honestly
should have been a cutscene, my field of vision simply cannot pay attention to all that is onscreen.
Having to attack,dodge and run takes quite a bit of my attention already and I play on normal/action.
One ear in and out the other if you catch my drift. The final nail was this game
commited the cardinal sin of rolling the credits and then going but one more thing!
Meanwhile I am like then don't roll the credits yet if its not over? >:(
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I will say I ended up walking away from this game in a better mood than with fate/remnant
and that probably says a lot, me being salty about how they added an extensive post-credit epilogue
but hey! atleast it wasn't DLC cuz during the credits I was like oh no... what if its DLC???!!
Rest assured GBF relink is actually a complete package. Its just that I think the epilogue
would be better if they incorporated Id's fate episodes into it instead of turning it into
a monster hunter fetch quest and collecting Rolan's notes before doing the same thing
we did in chapter 9 which leads to the realization of oh my god! Rolan is the true heroine!
GBF is a series with a ton of charm and I think the characters carry it a lot but this game
sort of desensitizes the player because at the end of the day it just wants you to grind
for this or that to be as strong as possible and you ain't getting the final epilogue scene
if you don't plow finish SOMEONES to do list. Now I hope you can understand
why I am 50/50 on this game. Turning my ps5 on and seeing skybound heart
will take 40 mins but then 2 hours pass and I have to go to bed did not help at all.
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Mr fix-it dude except you're on cleanup duty.
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I still recommend this game if you like grindy games with epic boss battles
and are already familiar with the series in general.
6.5/10
More ramblings after the jump but I have pretty much said enough here already
but my final thoughts exist to get my thoughts out a bit more.
