“That appears acquainted.” It’s a phrase I stated to myself a dozen instances or extra within the first two hours of Cygames’ Granblue Fantasy Relink. When an enormous monster attacked my boat through the prologue. Once I realized my sidekick was a tiny, flying mascot with a high-pitched voice and room for roughly one emotion at any given time. When a seemingly benign cult revealed its malignant intentions. And particularly when the hero known as on the facility of friendship to save lots of the magical lady that first saved his life in his rural hometown after an evil empire invaded.
Cygames mixes well-worn RPG ideas and techniques, borrowing bits from Lunar: Silver Star Story, Bravely Default and Bandai Namco’s Tales of collection—and several other extra in addition to. The end result ought to be a hackneyed mess of tropes. However it’s not. As a substitute, Granblue Fantasy Relink’s brilliance comes from the way it imbues acquainted concepts with an earnestness and attraction that feels virtually unimaginable to withstand.
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Granblue Fantasy Relink is a sort-of sequel to Cygames’ Granblue Fantasy, a free-to-play mobile-and-browser sport that by no means formally launched outdoors Japan. A younger sky pilot named Gran, should you select the male-presenting hero, or Djeeta, should you select the female-presenting character, lives peacefully on a small, backwoods island within the sky. A woman with blue hair and magical powers named Lyria falls from the clouds someday, with troopers from an evil empire in pursuit. Our hero intervenes and virtually dies, and Lyria provides them half of her life to maintain them alive. Accompanied by Lyria’s bodyguard Katalina, the duo flee and begin an journey of their very own. Gran’s (or Djeeta’s) father left them a notice encouraging them to hunt Estalucia, a fabled island far-off that’s house to legendary beings of outdated, and Granblue occupies a lot of its time following Djeeta (or Gran) and their buddies as they journey to this legendary land and get entangled in dozens of smaller tales alongside the best way.
An epic journey
Cygames confronted a steep problem with Relink. Gran and Djeeta’s adventures span 10 years, and the broader worldwide viewers most likely by no means heard of Astrals or the Erste Empire, not to mention Lyria. Cygames met the problem by cramming just a few paragraphs of plot abstract into Lyria’s diary, which features as Relink’s in-game archive, after which shifting on. It feels like an inelegant resolution, however contemplating how lengthy Granblue’s story has run for, that’s most likely the easiest way to deal with it.
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No evil empire looms over your journey and important story follows a reasonably predictable route, however the hero wrestling withtheir father’s legacy is a pleasant contact that elevates the narrative a bit past customary RPG fare. I take pleasure in RPGs with one thing large to say about life, equivalent to Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, so I used to be stunned that I didn’t thoughts Relink having nothing particularly deep to say.
The actual draw comes from Relink’s characters, anyway. And Cygames’ confidence in its solid signifies that Relink avoids among the issues frequent to tales with massive ensembles. Quite than attempting to shoehorn everybody into each scene so that you don’t overlook them or specializing in prolonged facet tales, Relink is completely happy to let characters and their relationships develop alongside the principle story in small vignettes. The writing’s high quality and the depth of the connections between characters imply that even small scenes, such because the precocious mage Io promising Lyria she’ll share make-up suggestions—as soon as she learns methods to use make-up herself—have emotional weight.
Relink perfects the skit-style storytelling that’s frequent to Tales of video games, and the result’s a extra intimate expertise. Relink has all of the hallmarks of a slice-of-life anime one second, earlier than switching to everybody attempting to save lots of the world the subsequent, and essentially the most spectacular a part of that swap is that it doesn’t fumble both facet.
For the principle celebration, anyway. The draw back with the recruitable celebration members is that they by no means really feel as absolutely built-in into the story as your unique crew does. Their onboarding missions are surprisingly prolonged, but it surely appears evident Cygames included these further characters for cameo functions and to assist make multiplayer monster hunts extra attention-grabbing. They’re awfully enjoyable to make use of in battle, although.
The mechanics of journey
Relink’s story and solid are charming, however Cygames’ wonderful battle system shines even brighter.Every character has fundamental and powerful assaults that may be chained into combos. Every character regularly learns new expertise to weave into these combos—strategically, as all of them have cooldown timers of various size—and also you’re anticipated to utilize blocking and dodging to remain alive.
Relink provides a number of prospers to make all of it really feel deeper and richer, although. Pulling off combos ranges up your ability energy in a manner just like Xenoblade Chronicles 2, although the method is, mercifully, much less opaque than in Monolith’s RPG. Characters can carry out robust Hyperlink Assaults after assembly sure situations, and if everybody pulls off particular assaults on the proper time, the whole celebration groups up for a strong burst transfer. Every character additionally will get a Skybound Artwork, an final ability that offers heavy harm. You possibly can swap between celebration members at will, which is helpful, since everybody has completely different elemental affiniites, and there’s a lightweight AI system that allows you to affect how your celebration members act.
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Whereas previews and demo impressions in contrast Relink’s fight to Tales of Come up, it jogs my memory extra of Nihon Falcom’s Ys VIII and Ys IX. Relink feels much less heavy and deliberate than Come up, and the dearth of MP administration encourages you to experiment with expertise and completely different celebration mixtures. It’s a blast, and it solely will get extra concerned and pleasant as you collect new celebration members.
Relink’s exploration and adventuring are extra combined. The world outdoors of cities is a collection of enormous, semi-open areas with roaming monsters, secrets and techniques and treasures to uncover, and a few stunning vistas to cease and admire earlier than shifting on. Whereas the treasure and and environments are by no means thrilling sufficient to warrant exploring for the sake of journey, discovering hidden caches or taking down monster hordes is your ticket to raised tools, one thing you want loads of with a celebration the dimensions of Relink’s. The system works, but it surely does really feel much less impressed than just about all the pieces else on supply right here.
Much less stale is Cygames’ tackle RPG cities. The hamlets and bustling sky cities you go to in Relink have few factors of curiosity and fewer actions to busy your self with, however they really feel extra alive than most settings within the style. In every single place you go to is bustling with (voiced) exercise – hawkers plying their commerce out there, folks going about their day by day lives, assembly, preventing, falling in love, and virtually none of it’s tied to quests or something of conventional significance in RPGs.
There’s even a handful of voiced segments the place seemingly inconsequential NPCs chat with you and Lyria about fishing or meals or different small discuss subjects you’d anticipate to come back up should you have been visiting a spot for the primary time. It’s uncommon for RPG cities to really feel so alive, and whereas it’s tempting to say none of it has any narrative significance, that wouldn’t be fully true. All these little cases of emotional connection made me care concerning the islands and the individuals who dwell there, which, unexpectedly, lent an air of gravity to the story because it unfolded.
That knack of managing to evoke emotion with so many established storytelling conventions is what makes Granblue Fantasy Relink really feel particular. In a panorama stuffed with makes an attempt to rekindle nostalgia or seize the essence of yesteryear’s most memorable video games, Cygames did one higher. Relink isn’t enthusiastic about attempting to recapture these emotions. It jogs my memory why they have been particular to start with.
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