I've dipped my toes into plenty of Cygames titles prior to this one. Got knee-deep into Princess Connect: Re:Dive, waded in the shallows of World Flipper, and went off the deep end for Dragalia Lost, including going down with the ship! What I'm getting at is that Cygames definitely has a winning formula for their gacha games, and while the gameplay (obviously) bears the closest resemblance to Granblue Fantasy, there are elements drawn from all their works that feel familiar. Big AoE attack circles that appear on the ground, visual novel side stories that give minor permanent buffs to character stats, raid-styled bosses that shift between normal, overdrive, and break states. They've translated the allure and mechanics of their mobile games into a product you only need to pay for once, and that alone is commendable. But is it good?

One trick that Cygames has up their sleeve is borrowing (and occasionally poaching) talent from across the industry. I bring this up because Relink was announced to be in development alongside Platinum Games back in 2018, only for their contract with Platinum to end in 2019. Either they "borrowed" some of their staff, or someone from Platinum leaked the recipe for their secret sauce, because Granblue Fantasy: Relink is the most fun Platinum game I've played in almost a decade, and it's not even necessarily made by Platinum. Their DNA is written all over Relink with stuff like like dodge offsetting combos, a cooldown after evading three times, and linear story stages with optional content off the beaten path (treasures, extra encounters, hidden items, etc). I hope some former Platinum talent works at Cygames now, because Platinum's going downhill fast, and their action game expertise needs to be preserved, damn it.

So obviously, I can't just use "punching down on Platinum" as an explanation as to why I like this game, so allow me to heap unfounded praise unto Cygames instead. This game is beautiful. I want to exist here. I stroll through the market of Seedhollow and I can hear every stall owner barking their sales pitches at me, it's been too long since I've played a game with a world that feels lived in. No matter who your team is comprised of, there's quite a bit of banter bouncing around during battles. It really hammers home that your group of skyfarers are like one big family going on adventures. And the music? From soothing serenades to glorious battle themes, this game truly looks and sounds the part.

The story is definitely your typical shounen adventure fare, but I never really minded that because it's constantly topping its previous setpieces as threats escalate, and it's just a fun ride to boot. Some people call it a "12 hour tutorial", and they're not exactly wrong. The game eases you into quite a few major game mechanics via scripted events, and you won't unlock most of the story bosses as standalone quests for a good while after it's all said and done. The "fate episodes" are extremely middling, however. Each character brings their individuality and emotional baggage to the table, and usually explores it via whatever random NPC happened to be within earshot that day. It's usually fine, but it often makes what could be a very personal story into something detached from their identity. We've got more than enough characters in the base roster to have them bounce off each other, but I guess they save that level of interaction for the freakin' mobile game.

While I sincerely appreciate the familiarity that comes with this game's gacha origins, it's also haunted by issues carried over from those titles. For every unique Primal Beast, Avia General, and Bahamut you fight, there's also four elemental variants of the same fucking rock lizard. Again, you gotta work your way back up to the good shit once you're done with the story. With all due respect, I think whittling a raid-style boss's health bar down is an exhilarating experience when the fight is actually interesting. Depending on how you've invested resources into various characters, you'll either finish under par, or you'll be in it for the long haul. I personally pumped 90% of my resources into my personal unga-bunga invincibility potato (Charlotta), and spent the remaining 10% trying to ensure that my remaining three CPU party members weren't too hopeless.

Basic attack combos are pretty braindead, but they're usually based around activating a character's special abilities. For example, pressing Y launches Charlotta into the air, and then pressing X will launch her halfway across the map (or towards the nearest enemy). Every single character has a few defining quirks to their playstyle that sets them apart from each other. They all have their own distinct skills to choose from, which is the real determining factor in choosing who you want to play as. Once you click with someone, it's time to build up their passive traits using sigils. The traits provided by sigils have extremely high level caps, much higher than a single sigil can provide on its own. You can equip multiple copies of the same type of sigil in order to min/max the ludicrous bonuses available at the higher levels, given you have enough sigil slots. It's fun to experiment, so long as you aren't addicted to the idea of a "meta".

Most players seem to be settling into the same meta build with little variation, but you shouldn't feel pressured to conform. Take it from me: Dealing any damage at all is more important than dealing the most damage possible. Meta builds don't really matter until the final tier of quest difficulty. Don't be afraid to equip sigils with survivability in mind. Being KO'd is a detriment to everyone involved. Quests end with a score tally and a ranking, dictated primarily by clear time and side objectives. Ranks and side objectives have extra item drops tied to them, encouraging you to play better, harder, faster, and stronger. In essence, make damage number go up, make enemy health go down faster, get more rewards. I am an advocate for straightforward gameplay loops.

I built my justice potato with the intention of taking her online for co-op. Joke's on me, over a month since release, and apparently the matchmaking is basically broken on PC! I thought it could be because everyone's already busy playing endgame content and I'm late to the party, but I swear the "quick quest" option just doesn't work half the time. If SteamDB says the game has 7000-15000 players online, then why do we seem so disconnected? I switched Steam's download region to Tokyo, and it barely improved anything! Regardless, successfully getting a group together gives you the ideal Relink experience, it's leagues above playing with your braindead CPU partners. When every player has their designated build and knows how to properly play as their character, the game's mechanics finally click.

Unfortunately, I can't praise everything this game does. Particularly, you're constantly being showered in particle effects during combat, which makes it really difficult at times to identify and properly react to incoming attacks. I don't consider that a game-ruiner; Relink is much less a pure action game and moreso an action-RPG with very fluid combat. You can tank a few hits and heal yourself up with no harm done in most situations, but sometimes the act of dodging feels closer to a guessing game. Perfect dodges are a thing in this game though, and the brief invincibility you gain for pulling one off feels glorious. Also, guard. Guard guard guard guard guard. You can casually block way more attacks than you'd expect, do not neglect to do so in a pinch.

I hope I'm not overselling it too much, but outside of Monster Hunter, multiplayer action of this caliber is pretty hard to come by. Most importantly though, I can use this game as an excuse to never ever play the gacha game. What can I say? I feel like a kid who got exactly what he wanted on Christmas morning. If this game is successful, then I hope other Cygames properties can be immortalized as non-gacha games. You hear me, Cygames? Do this for Princess Connect! And Dragalia Lost, and Uma Musume, and World Flipper, and

It's a good thing this is a "Noire game" and not a "Nep game", otherwise this might damage the good reputation of the Neptunia franchise! Ha, haha, haaaaaaaaaa...

I know someone who enjoyed this game because "it's a strategy game, you can't make them bad".

Are you sure about that?

I'd have to say this game's biggest flaw is the fact that it's built like a typical Neptunia RPG. Health and attack values are way larger than necessary, maps and enemy types are constantly reused. The game's big gimmick is lowering the exorbitant SP costs on your skills by keeping other units adjacent to you, represented by a yuri kiss on the cheek. This is counter-intuitive because grouping everyone together makes it absurdly easy for an enemy to stroll over and use an attack that targets your entire cluster of chibis. Sometimes you don't even need to be grouped together, some enemies just have attacks that hit like a truck and cover half the damn map. On top of that, your units can be afflicted with status effects, of which there are WAY too many to keep track of. I don't even know what half of them do!

The game is also just constantly wasting your time (and not just because I'm spending mine playing a Neptunia game, har har). Even once you cave in and turn off all attack animations and whatnot in the settings menu, it still feels like it's dragging its feet. Stop showing me that enemies aren't taking any actions, it adds up when eight or so of them aren't necessarily doing anything as I slowly approach them. So many of this game's maps revolve around shitty gimmicks, like tediously lifting and tossing wooden boxes to gradually create staircases, or avoiding floor panels that damage you and instantly end your turn, or waiting a turn for a moving platform to come back, just so you can board it and wait another turn to have it take you to your destination, and THEN you can depart it on the turn after that. Maps are reused ad nauseam, so you'll grow accustomed to groaning at the mere sight of certain locales.

The writing just rubs me the wrong way, moreso than usual for a game of this pedigree. Most of Noire's friendships just result in her getting sexually harassed in extra scenes, with the accompanying CGs having the Bad kind of voyeuristic feeling. And then there's the self-insert, with probably one of the worst examples of this trope I've ever experienced. A true self-insert comes with a certain amount of agency from the player, but you don't get any choices here. Secretary-san is effectively his own character, one you're expected to project yourself onto. Sorry Noire, our relationship fell through years ago. I've personally been sizing up Vert quite a bit lately...

The true ending of this game is locked behind Noire having a lily rank of at least 70 with every other unit by the end of the game. This mandates an endgame grind that's a total snog-I mean slogfest. I unironically think this game is on the same level of enjoyment I had with the original HDN on PS3, and that is a very low bar to cross. You are missing nothing by ignoring this, even if you're a Nep freak like me.