Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok Switch 2 Review
Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
As someone who doesn’t have patience for random encounters with turn-based fighting, I’ve always avoided stories like Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok, as they mostly seemed to have those mechanics. But when Joshua told me about the fighting style of Granblue Fantasy, I was intrigued to learn more. Will my patience levels engage with Granblue Fantasy, or will I revert to my old avoidance ways? What’s it like? Strap on your armour, gather your party, and ready up your attacks as we review Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok on Nintendo Switch 2.
You step into a preset character who is the captain of a crew of mixed experts who have been on many adventures together, and you are quickly immersed into the beautiful world of Granblue Fantasy onboard a full-on flying Ship: The Grandcypher. This introduction is full of gorgeous characters and stunning scenery, and before deciding where to go on this adventure, you are interrupted by an attack of Wyverns that will help you learn the basic fight mechanics of the game. This rapid-fire introduction had me enraptured by the lack of turn-based mechanics, introducing a strong combat system that forms the backbone of the game. The fights are engaging, quick, and smooth, with enough variety to look super cool. In order to survive the assault, you and your counterpart Lyria join forces to summon a “Primeval Dragon”, Bahamut, who quickly decimates all your enemies. Unfortunately, he also quickly turns on you and grounds the airship as you and your crew beat him back into submission.
After the chaos of the opening battle, you and Lyria are separated from your crew and land in the Sundappled Grove. Here you learn to overlay your map, much like in Diablo, and quickly learn how to navigate around the world, finding treasure chests that give you Fortitude and elemental Shards and Rupies. You can also find blue balls that give you random items and MSP. I found the map was amazingly helpful for showing you all the chests and blue balls that were available, although moving your character with the map open was at times a bit janky due to it almost being inverted, and I found it was just easier to ignore my character completely and focus on the arrow icon on the map to get the items shown. The map can be toggled on and off by clicking your right stick, so I found myself toggling the map on to focus on obtaining the items, then toggling it off to focus on the story, quests and fights.
Once I had the hang of navigating the area, I was told about Elements and what element your foes are weakest against. The Captain’s Element is Wind, but on my playthrough this wasn’t really a feature I focused on or needed to consider much to begin with, but I can see that it would be used a lot later for endgame tuning and team optimisation. Soon you are joined by your crew who were looking for you, and this is where the fun really begins. Fighting bigger bosses, your crew all individually attack with their special moves, but you can link attacks, which eventually triggers a group attack dealing maximum damage with cool Sailor Moon-type cut scenes.
As the Captain, you won’t fight alone, as each character can be controlled by a real-life friend in co-op, but with solo play, they are controlled by a CPU that looks after itself. You can choose to play whoever you want, but the Captain must be in your party to continue the storyline. You are given a couple of choices for progressing the storyline and where to proceed, and I took my team to the nearest town in the Zegagrande Skydom. I also chose to explore before moving on. Collecting random items that are placed around the map gives you items you can trade for Rafale Coins. And completing quests gives you Mastery Points (MSP) that you use to level up your character and crew. There is a huge list of Crew members you can access with Crewmate Cards, which are obtained by completing the main storyline, and these can be traded at Siero’s Knickknack Shack. Offering a lot of replayability and variety with your team dynamics. However, the MSP is shared, so the choice is yours how you level up each character, knowing these limitations. When you unlock Crewmates, they arrive with the same or a higher level than you are currently on and their skill tree already partially unlocked, which I found quite nice for a quick rotation in. A lot of the time with games like this, I’d end up sticking to the same team because I wouldn’t want to bring a weaker member along to level up, so it was refreshing to have that barrier removed.
Of course, it isn’t just your characters that can be upgraded. Weapons can all also be upgraded fairly quickly in town using Fortitude Shards and Crystals, but the beginning weapons are capped at level 10. To remove the cap, you obtain items such as standard Refinium to begin with and more items later. I always find I’m reluctant to spend on upgrading here, and you later on find out it was better to save it and upgrade with later items, but throwing caution to the wind, I quickly maxed out my party as much as possible. Later on you will also be able to forge new weapons for your team at the blacksmith.
Now, this is a lot of information to take in, and if you ever find yourself wondering where all this information is kept, Lyria’s Journal keeps track of a huge amount of knowledge for you to read. Scenes can be rewatched from the main story; she keeps field notes about characters, weapons, foes, treasure, and archives. There are also Trophies to work on where you can collect rewards and music collections. I recommend checking this regularly to claim your rewards. There is also the glossary, where there is a huge wealth of knowledge that you can get some background on the game, and I found it truly helpful for learning about the huge world and colourful storyline. Side quests within the game give extra rewards, and I found most of them were easily completable just by doing the main storyline. In a refreshing break from normal side quests, Granblue Fantasy allows for instant travel to the quest giver when you are ready to hand it in, as long as you are in the same area.
Speaking of storylines, make sure you watch the Fate Episodes at the Quest Counter after you complete each chapter. It levels up your HP and attack and provides a deeper knowledge of each character’s storyline and history. With their individual dialogues and unique voices, the stories are engaging and entertaining to read or listen to. And many of the stories introduced a fair amount of mystery and intrigue, adding more dimension to the characters. Some will also have you playing that character in a bit of a mini quest to further their storyline. It was really interesting learning the different mechanics, and gave me a greater appreciation for my main toon and her ease of use by comparison. But the learning curve was definitely rewarded by unlocking another sigil spot after a few Fate Episodes. While I spent a lot of my time getting to know the characters, Granblue Fantasy also gives you the option to experience the game with other players. Online life within the game has some well-thought-out features, as you could lock game spoilers with your quest selections, and speaking to each other could be done through cute stickers, chat shortcuts and emotes.
Granblue Fantasy is very much an action role-playing game. You follow the storyline and explore the maps provided. Quests will have you rescuing Islanders, defeating Primal Beasts and taking on Avia’s three generals. Fighting becomes more in-depth the further you progress into your skill tree, with the use of R to toggle your skills menu in fights. There are also Sigils to collect and manage by assigning them to your team to boost different powers and skills. Along with this, there are also Omen Stones, which release a more challenging monster for you to defeat in a limited amount of time. Using Navyrngate with your ZL button helps you stay on track for the storyline. And the story assist can be toggled on and off through your in-game menus. Later chapters will have you participating in massive Airship battles, using cannons and boarding their ships to take out your foes and their engines. Taking on gargantuan Primal Beasts very similar to Sonic Frontiers and explore maps with different biomes.
Spoilers ahead: The other thing I found quite refreshing about the game was the clear moral lessons they reiterate throughout the game, such as how important teamwork, friendships and perseverance can be. How it’s good to be loyal to friends, but not necessarily following those friends blindly if they’re set on destroying the world. Although at times it did feel never-ending, as there was final boss fight after final boss fight, by the end of it, I had converted all my enemies to friends, and we allied to defeat the overall boss.
The graphics of Granblue Fantasy are truly a beautiful work of art. Characters are manga Fantasy style, and the characters are all equally cute, handsome and pretty. There is a little bit of pixelation and visual inconsistencies with the capes and hair, but with that said, it seems to have its own physics engine for movement with wind interaction, which is a nice touch. The worlds are usually engaging with immersive towns. The performance was mostly smooth; I did find a few glitches on my playthrough, like Goblins getting stuck on a wall, people going through capes and items disappearing. Shooting the Goblins seemed to fix their glitch, but the rest were quick to fix themselves. Also, sometimes it was hard to stop attacks; I’d be trying to dodge, hit the wrong button and be stuck doing the manoeuvre in the damage circle. A cancel action button would have been handy here. Along with this, some of the boss hit boxes were quite hard to target, but luckily I was playing with CPUs, which could always find it, so I’d follow their lead. Later boss battles also happen on an epic scale, but this does mean loss of vision and some really odd camera angles and even more difficulty with hit boxes, and that was on story mode. I’d be keen to hear how people who completed the harder difficulties went.
For my Skyfarers looking into accessibility options, there is a colourblind support mode that can be toggled on, the ability to reduce effects and highlight the player. Controls can be semi-customised, and there are audio options like a clear voice to highlight dialogue and several gameplay assist features. There is a demo you can download to give it a go, but as always I recommend further research to see if Granblue Fantasy supports your accessibility needs.
For just under $115 AUD for the Special Edition and just under $85 AUD for the standard edition, Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok commands a premium price point, but you do get a huge amount of content, backstories, characters, individual character play styles and replayability for your money. Once the initial credits roll, Endless Ragnarok begins, opening up a whole new chapter of the adventure with new enemies, bosses and challenges to take on. Six new characters can join your crew, each bringing their own unique fighting styles, while the new Summon system lets you equip up to four Summons to your team, with some even able to enter the battlefield and fight alongside you. There is also the new Conflux mode, which gives you an increasingly challenging series of battles to tackle, as well as the new Chaos difficulty for those looking for an even tougher challenge. With Master Traits and Weapon Transcendence adding further ways to strengthen your characters and equipment, there is plenty here to keep you playing long after the original story has ended. And with crossplay and local co-op on Switch 2, there are even more ways to experience the Endless Ragnarok content with friends.
I feel like I have only scratched the surface of what Granblue Fantasy: Relink has to offer. The original story gave me a really enjoyable 20 hours, but with new characters to learn, tougher challenges to overcome, Summons to experiment with and plenty more progression systems to unlock, there is still a huge amount for me to explore. I really enjoyed the fast-paced combat, the colourful characters and the way the game encouraged me to experiment with my team, and I can definitely see myself continuing to play and discovering what the later challenges have in store. There were a few frustrations along the way, particularly with some of the camera angles and hit boxes during the bigger battles, but these rarely stopped me from having fun. For me, Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok is a beautiful, fast-paced action RPG that has given me far more to enjoy than I expected when I first picked it up.
So what’s it like? Granblue Fantasy Relink Endless Ragnarok is like Final Fantasy crossed with Monster Hunter.
Granblue Fantasy Relink Endless Ragnarok is a What’s It Like Certified Exception Game.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this doesn’t influence my score.
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