I guess I haven't spent enough time on it to be sucked into the meta void, but it's a fun little pick-up-and-play rpg game for when you're on the go (and I haven't spent a penny on it). Really fun quick battles, plenty of variance between challenge and really casual play. Manages to just barely get past my repulsion towards how the majority of these types of rpgs treat gender but it's on thin ice lol. I am very much enjoying the story even if the dialogue can be pretty stilted, the world they've made for it is fantastic and more often that not it really does give you that feeling of being on a grand adventure.

for a while, sometime after the spark implementation and before the past couple years, granblue fantasy was a fairly accessible gacha that i recommended for anyone who enjoyed grinding and maybe didn't mind paying $30 for a character every now and then.

as of 2023, i feel granblue's gacha system and paid weapons have become so overwhelming the game is no longer worth introducing anyone to. the fact gacha weapons are standard even in magna (the 'f2p' grids) because they're so strong is insanely discouraging, and i say this as someone who plays primal light enough to have 2 harmonias, 2 rinnes, and 4 edens.

only play this game if you're interested in the story/characters. the state of game balance is dreadful and has only been getting worse.

Do not play Granblue Fantasy.

It's not like the game does not have redeeming features - the music is good and character designs are frequently appealing, and some of the storylines are nice (Society is really the only one that grabbed me personally). I've also met some great people through the game. But there is one thing that ties GBF players together and that is that they do not want to be playing GBF.

The "gameplay" in GBF is just one huge Skinner box, where you grind for an upgrade to your power, which will allow you to access the next grind for more power. 99% of this grinding is completely mindless, with just a handful of endgame content requiring thought. And once you have figured out that endgame raid - guess what? You've still got to grind it for tens of hours at least.

The UI is horrible and clunky. It's web-based, so if you don't live in Japan you're gonna have shitty ping slowing everything down even more. And the game's flagship event runs on JST, so if you live in NA or Europe you're going to be sleeping and/or working through it.

And yet, so many cannot escape it. The designers have figured out how to release just enough endorphins through the perpetual grind and gacha rolls that despite wanting to leave, people will keep coming back. How much of "hating" the game is ironic, and how much is a genuine wish to leave the timesink behind and spend your time on other games? You won't know until you leave. And that's why the best thing to do is to never go in to begin with.

solo guild war while my crewmates are unavailable is the single worst mode i've ever played in any video game. 10 straight hours of raids amounted to nothing because my opponent's friend woke up in the middle of the day and i had to fight 2 on 1. today at 10 pm JST i loaded up and blitzed nm95s as fast as i could while being forced to watch their honors count up at a pace just barely faster than mine, with the understanding that i would have to mindlessly play a losing battle for 2 hours straight in the possible case they might run out of meat and i might still win. they didn't, and i can't express enough how helpless and crushed i felt to see 10 whole hours of work go to waste. my 150,000,000+ honors today ended up meaning nothing, and i have to do this again the next 4 days in a row.

5 stars tho banger game see yall at the next gw 👍

- Grinding until die.
- Gacha powercreeps everything.
- Fuck Lottery
- NO Raid Finder
- Go suffer Cygame

as someone who has spent thousands of hours and unironically has done absolutely everything this game has to offer, i reccomend you to not download this. The game may seem charming at first because of it’s F2P generousity, but in actuality it has absolutely nothing to offer. The game is a full wikipedia gashapon fest, learn the basics copy and paste comps. The main attraction of this game is guild war, an event where crews duke it out spamming the same raid over and over for honors. Guild war is heavily reliant on ping, comp and scripting. You won’t be able to beat the top players being F2P and playing fair. As for the raid battles, some can be enjoyable at release date but as soon as they are cracked it returns to the same old gameplay, wiki+memorization. To conclude this is just an evil insane timegated, timewasting cookie clicker with micro transactions and with one of the worst communities of all time.