This game is honestly unforgivably bad. And it's 50 hours long, the story was so obviously re-written to be a JRPG, this mainly applies to the boss fights which were these scenarios clearly written in the context of an action game. The party members range from one cool dude who doesn't get much story to one chick who's there for an insanely dumb reason if you stop to think about it and the most annoying character in an rgg game period. Not to mention that when the time comes for badass boss fights that is only related to Ichiban, these goobers feel like they don't deserve any place in these boss fights whatsoever.

Yokohama is a very boring map that has places that really just don't have any activities to engage in. The only undeniably good part about this game is the management mini game, which feels like it had more thought put into it in than the core gameplay and main story.

I can only hope RGG's next game is good after the low point that is 6 into Kiwami 2 into 7. This series was so godlike man.

Ichiban is such a great new main character that they already seem to be throwing away with the 8th game by putting Kiryu on the box art when he fucking died in that one Yakuza game.

Unfortunately, they decided to follow tradition with the inspiration from Dragon Quest by taking the combat system from the series too. And they couldn't even do it well. Despite the enemy variety, it will never reach the wonder of variety that Mother offered; they're trying too hard to make a cohesive design. I should be fighting abstract art, not a very specific list of machinery like a roomba and construction shit. Even if this sounds appealing, the novelty wears thin very quickly the second you are forced to do the dungeon crawling from Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I can appreciate the originality in the mini-game's but I question if it border's on addictive mobile gaming rather than an actual quality mini-game.

Did you know gaming? This is the 2nd Japanese game whose 7th mainline entry also indicated a huge reinvention of the series and also when they decided to fuse the Japanese name and English localized title into the same title. That other game is called Resident Evil: Biohazard 7

I've adapted everything after this line from a Twitter thread I wrote - please forgive any clumsiness:

I've finally beat Yakuza 6 and I'm convinced I'll never be able to return to Like A Dragon/Y7 after this. Not as some kind of protest for them writing Kiryu out of the series, but because I really don't understand the allure of it at this point. The cast of Y7 is so huge and I'm like 60% of the way to caring about any of them as characters, but Ichiban permanently feels like a jester even in serious moments and the most endearing members of the cast are barely given room to breathe. The combat is decent enough but right as it starts wearing out its welcome there is a massive difficulty spike that forces you to just sit there and grind these fights that you've already been choking down for 20 hours.

I don't know man. This series has routinely been clumsy, but I made it through some of those clumsy moments because they had built up my attachment to a couple cities, characters, and showed me that they were capable of creating new attachment to characters when I least expected it. Y7 has just been an exercise in patience, fighting through some dull moments and my rewards are either interactions with a few new charisma vacuums, or trying to make my monkey brain light up by coldly bringing out a character I recognize from a previous game.

The answer to this is "you don't have to play games you don't like" and unfortunately I might just have to accept that outcome at this point. I spent a long while convincing myself I was having fun because the game was polished and I didn't actively hate the combat, but in retrospect I was just biding my time in the hopes that a Yakuza game would turn itself around and hook me as it has so many times before, only to let me down this time. It took a return to the Kiryu saga before I could put my finger on it, but seeing Kiryu's interactions with the new characters in Onomichi and being pleasantly surprised by how much I cared about them, how charming they were and how real their emotions (and their bond) felt, it highlighted how lacking Y7 is in comparison. At this point, I've given this game 50 hours of my time and completed 12 full chapters and it's just worn out its welcome. I wanted so badly to like this game, and knowing that other people see something great here and I'm just missing it leaves me feeling so tired, man.

Al grano: en lo referente a narrativa, el juego es nefasto. Plantea situaciones de pretendida importancia que aparca u olvida a conveniencia, expele tufo a machonería shonenesca (y no tan shonenesca) y es tan desvergonzadamente manipulador (en su blanqueo de la delincuencia) que ni el tono animesco consigue desviar mi indignación al respecto, sinsentidos e hipérboles aparte. El juego defiende las zonas grises, pero opera bajo una filosofía de blancos y negros. Lo demás ya lo sabéis: protagonista pluscuamperfecto solucionando problemas hipercomplicados a puñetazos, el enfoque que llores y te empalmes. Y muchos, muchos giros absurdos en la trama. Vamos, un Yakuza. Y no, su prota no es el personaje imperfecto que se ha dicho, sino una versión desenfadada de Kiryu: ahora bromea y bromean con él, pero siempre tiene claro lo que quiere hacer y lo hace, siempre es justo, nunca comete errores y por ser más fuerte que los demás vencerá todas las veces. Sí, otro Goku, pelacos inclusive y ahora con un dragón a la espalda. Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Like Dragon Quest (por el RPG), pero también like Dragon Ball (por el shonen juvenil pasado de rosca).

Pero es que ni siquiera es eso. Podría tolerar, de verdad que sí, si sus mecanismos no fuesen de baratillo. Like a Dragon es la clase de historia que interviene a través de sus personajes. Los usa como altavoz de aquello que los desarrolladores quieren decirnos, directa y a veces casi explícitamente. Piensan en voz alta, gritan lo que sienten para forzar una emoción que no alcanzan los sucesos y explican cada nuevo acontecimiento para que hasta el jugador menos atento no se pierda. Vamos, que los personajes exponen lo que el juego es incapaz de expresar. El título te dice lo que debes sentir, en imperativo, consiguiendo que (yo) lo sienta menos. Y esa distancia entre lo pretendido y lo logrado, al menos en mí, genera un efecto de incomodidad que a veces, en sus momentos más melodramáticos, alcanza la vergüenza ajena.

Volví a Yakuza tras mi experiencia negativa con Zero a ver si los cambios de Like a Dragon (nuevo protagonista, aventura en grupo, sistema RPG) suponían la redención y vuelta a empezar que su argumento reencarnador sugería. Algo de eso encontré: el combate por turnos expande las posibilidades cómicas y tácticas del título, y gracias a la cantidad de posibles premios (experiencia, ítems, equipamiento, ayudas en batalla, etc.) que trae la transición a RPG la ciudad llama a ser explorada más que antes. Pero, a grandes rasgos, la cosa sigue igual.

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Adoro el sentido del humor y el mimo al contenido opcional de Yakuza. La relevancia de las pequeñas cosas, siempre las más locas y divertidas, como si la vida fuese para disfrutarla y pasarlo bien, donde y cuando sea, aprovechando cada momento y situación aparentemente intrascendentes. Los curradísimos karaokes, las sesiones de cine, misiones secundarias con personajes tan estrafalarios como entrañables. Cada rincón con suma atención al detalle, cinemáticas incluidas. Sí, la vida son las pequeñas cosas. Es, sin duda, lo mejor de estos juegos. ¡Y Yakuza: Like a Dragon es el Yakuza que más empeño pone en hacer reír! Lo que pasa es que reír, lamentablemente, es parte accesoria en estos juegos. Puede que la risa sea su corazón, pero a efectos prácticos está adherida a una genérica y mediocre estructura dramática que es su esqueleto. Es el drama lo que mueve la trama, apareciendo el sentido del humor aquí y allá pero quedando mayormente relegado a lo opcional o colindante. Reír en Yakuza es misión secundaria, su humor contenido opcional.

Y uno puede pensar: ¿cuál es el problema? Una vueltecilla por la ciudad para echarnos unas risas hasta que toque ponerse serios de nuevo ¿no? Solo que, en estos juegos, nunca quiero que llegue el momento de ponerse serios, porque sé lo que me espera. Sé el shonen prototípico por el que tengo que pasar. Esos diálogos, esa conocida vergüenza ajena. Pero es lo que se me exige para avanzar, lo que me ofrecen sus historias. Son dos mitades conviviendo: drama y comedia. Juntas pero no unidas. Una de ellas, la primordial y obligatoria, execrable.

I'm disappointed with this game. I was open to new characters in the franchise since Kiryu's journey (seemingly)
came to an end. However, aside from Ichiban who's great and actually a pretty loveable dork and a great contrast to Kiryu, the other characters are not really memorable. Like many other people, 0 was my first Yakuza game and my favorite in the franchise. I played all the other games and fell in love with the series as a result. So when they announced Yakuza 7 I was really excited but also concerned, because of the decision to change the combat to a turn-based system. The previous games were all amazing to play in its beat em up format, so I thought changing to turn-based will make the game play just like every other JRPG out there. And well..I was right.

The combat itself is your totally standard JRPG turn-based combat. Tactics and strategies are all well and good, but most JRPGs as well as LAD don't require them. Both turn-based combat and real time combat can be executed well or badly and both have advantages and disadvantages designers must consider when making their game. It really depends on how good the turn-based system is. Well designed turn based combat gives players direct access to the strategic elements of combat. For example, I love me some good SRPGs like Fire Emblem, but LAD and other JRPGs just happen to have a very bland and generic system implemented that require no strategy/tactics whatsoever.

The turn-based fighting system can be a change for the first few hours in the game, then it gets insanely slow and monotonous. What REALLY frustrated me was the grinding.
Previous Yakuza games didn't need this cheap way to make the game "last longer" while you need to go through hundreds of fights to farm exp points and level up the characters. What I usually most immerse in is the story. Unfortunately, to get through the story, you have to grind through thousands of boring encounters and repetitive fights. The turn-based combat is just not very engaging and most fights are without any challenge. The game is also very unbalanced. I just don't have the time and patience for a game that purposely wastes my time.

LAD seems slightly more campy and overacted, which is not a bad thing considering it's a completely new saga featuring new characters. It's also pretty fitting for a main character like Ichiban. For the Kiryu games, however, I prefer the balance of keeping overacted and cartoonish aspects in the substories and general side content of the game (which I always adore), while the main story remains serious and tense. So I'm curious how LAD 8 will handle this.

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of the JRPG mechanics. The story starts strong but goes off the rails very early on and gets really slow and boring. I don't think LAD is necessarily a bad game, but its not a good Yakuza game neither. I really wish this had been a spin-off instead.

This is a pretty harsh review, maybe one that is not reflective of how I felt about the game for a significant portion of its runtime, but I'm angry at how many things about this game legitimately infuriated me, and how only a few people are willing to talk about them.

There's definitely good stuff here. The cast is charismatic and likeable, the "Essence Of" animations are very funny, and the game has a lot of charm in how it interprets the conventions of classic JRPGs into the modern Yakuza universe. The soundtrack bangs harder than it has any right to, almost certainly the best of the Yakuza games I've played. Yakuza: Like a Dragon wears a shit-eating grin and an attitude you can't help be swept up by, but as the hours drag on and on, the charm wears thin, and the flaws stick out more and more, until I had grown to resent and even, to a certain extent, hate a game I once loved.

The plot is a complete mess that changes gears completely every three chapters or so, leaving me with a near-constant state of narrative and thematic whiplash, which would maybe be forgivable if this was a 30 hour game, but it's far closer to 60, 70, even up to 100 hours long. At least it's fun for that length, right? Well...

I'm a big fan of JRPGs. They're probably my favourite genre. And I love turn-based combat...when done well. When I heard that Like A Dragon would be a turn-based RPG, my excitement couldn't be contained. It felt like they were making a game I had dreamed about for years. So trust me when I say that the battle system of Like A Dragon is the worst I've experienced in a big JRPG in years. Progression is thoughtless and on-rails, with the only choice being which one of the game's jobs you want to be grinding at a specific moment. Moment to moment, the combat offers no interesting choices, almost every encounter playing out the exact same way: big AOE attacks if enemies are clustered together, or big single-target attacks if they aren't. Boss design is routinely awful, with the game almost always simply resorting to having the boss be a big tough guy with loads of health and resistances that does a fuck-ton of damage, without any other mechanics to make them feel distinct or memorable or fun. Artificial difficulty abounds in the final third, with both the Chapter 12 and Chapter 15 bosses literally having the game tell you to grind out about 10 levels before facing them, OHKO attacks that can hit your main character with little warning and give you an instant game over, wiping out all your progress through these overlong boss encounters, and dungeons as a whole containing almost no save points. Do you have a life you'd like to get back to anytime soon? Tough luck, buddy! Stick it out or do that shitty final dungeon where you run into the same room and fight the same enemies about a dozen times all over again.

And all of this would be bad enough, if not for the fact that the battle system is the vehicle by which the game delivers the truly unpleasant politics it has beneath it's surface-level charm and empathy. Through the cutscenes, the game affects a facade of being caring and empathetic towards sex workers (though that in and of itself is fairly lacking in nuance) but the former sex worker in your party, Saeko, is reduced to a caricature of feminine stereotypes when she's in battle, having a set of "female exclusive" jobs with abilities like "Sexy Pose" and weapons that are handbags. The game earnestly tries to convince you that it really cares about the plight of Japan's homeless, up until the point the game's "metal slime" equivalents are revealed: largely defenceless homeless men who you are encouraged to seek out and kill as fast as possible for an enormous EXP bonus. The initially charming and funny way battles are framed, as the overactive imagination of a central character raised on a diet of Dragon Quest, eventually left a bad taste in my mouth as Ichiban kept imagining deeply offensive caricatures of black men and trans people for him to beat up with his baseball bat.

As with the year's other big disappointment, Doom Eternal, the awful attitudes this game has beneath the surface have gone almost completely undiscussed by the wider gaming press, with only Dia Lacina's piece (which I initially thought was harsh but now reads as almost startlingly on-the-point) and a few people on discord and twitter acknowleging it. When the game asked me to grind out levels in a boring-as-fuck sewer dungeon right before the final boss, where it had me beat up trans caricatures that made me a bit sick to look at, I found myself getting really angry that I wasn't warned that this was waiting for me.

If you watched "YAKUZA: LIKE A DRAGON: FULL MOVIE 1080p 60fps" on youtube, or played the first four or five chapters exclusively, you might be forgiven for thinking that this game really is an empathetic portrayal of people on society's bottom rung rising up to reclaim their lives. But the actual game doesn't bear up to that scrutiny. It pretends to care about subaltern, and does a good job of pretending, but it doesn't. Not really. Not when it comes time to make shitty jokes at their expense.

When I loved Like A Dragon, I really loved it. There's truly moving scenes and moments, all the way up to the end. But when I hated it, I really hated it. And over time, the latter emotion won out over the former. In many ways, it is the true sequel to Persona 5. A game I was incredibly excited for, played obsessively through it's obscenely overlong length, and felt my enthusiasm sap out of me in real time over the course of it, until I watched it chicken out of landing it's themes home time and time again, until it's conservative attitudes bubbled to the surface, until my memories of the game, once positive and warm, turned cold and resentful in my hands.

The most I've been disappointed in a game in a long time.

This is by far one of the best Yakuza games and one of my favorites in this series. I consider Yakuza 5 to be the embodiment of everything that makes the Yakuza series great. There are so many twists and turns that kept me engaged through out the whole thing. I was completely hooked from beginning to end and I loved it.

This game has 5 cities to explore, the most in any Yakuza game, and they’re all packed with hilarious or emotional sub stories. Combat and graphics are also greatly improved on from the previous games.

It's a less refined and focused experience than Yakuza 0, which is my absolute favorite in this series, but does a lot of unique things from a series standpoint that has not been replicated since. And no matter what people say, Saejima's story was very interesting and fun to go through and I enjoyed that they included Haruka as a playable character. While I can see that some may be turned off by Haruka's story, being that it is rhythm game oriented, I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt that, for what it was, they did a great job.

Overall, If you're a Yakuza fan, you will be doing yourself a disservice by not playing this amazing game, because it reminded me again why the Yakuza franchise is one of my absolute favorites.

On a sidenote, after Yakuza 5 I'm even more disappointed that the series switched to boring turn-based combat.

Just some quick thoughts for this one, apologies if it's a little scatterbrained.

As a game this is probably the most ""content"" for your dollar that you could possibly get out of a scripted game and I'm truly blown away by how much effort it must have been to put this whole thing together. Dondoko Island is a minigame with more mechanics than 98% of the games I play each month. If that were all there is to say then I'd be giving it a 10/10 - and I understand that everything after this point is going to make me sound like an insane person to 85% of people playing this - but the truth is that this game (like Y7) is so hell-bent on being silly at all times that it often undercuts itself when it comes to dramatic tension or consistency of plot/characters - again! Genuinely, if the Ichiban games just knew how to solve their tonal issues then I'd be giving this game an extra star, if not more. Classic Yakuza goofiness works best as a break from the drama - it's less effective when the cutscene establishes a legitimate, serious threat to your loved ones and then immediately warps to your female party member decked out in a coconut bra and maracas strumming a ukulele at a guy with a beach ball for a torso.

Some things (the combat and chain attacks, Hawaii, every non-Sujimon minigame) are miles better than they were in Y7, but the game also loves to tell the same jokes over and over so things that are initially endearing (seonhee fangirling over kiryu) become extremely grating by the end. I also think Yakuza Gaiden works better as a farewell tour for Kiryu because it's not just crammed into a game about someone else in a city he's barely been to - having Kiryu reminisce can be fun at points but so many of the locations are completely arbitrary and having Kiryu go "Remember all the times Date rescued me in a helicopter?" because he walked into a cafe feels dry and artificial, not fun. I'm almost resentful that so much of the focus is placed on him in this story when his main purpose for most (not all) of it is to be a cool friend who people on the street constantly recognize. The big Kiryu checklist wavers between being interesting (reflecting on basic things Kiryu never got to enjoy because of his insane life of constant fighting) and mind-numbing (do you remember the dancing minigame in Y0? how about the fishing minigame?). Ultimately though, it's part of a larger push to make these characters feel like they have lives outside of Ichiban's adventures (Ichiban included) and it works wonders... when it works at all. Tomizawa shines particularly brightly as someone whose drink links highlight a life that's been uprooted in a way that ties into the main plot while remaining personal to him and exposing more of his character. Saeko and the other women, however, mostly get these nothingburger chats that are about Ichiban or how cool Kiryu is or how stressful it is to run a business.

Also: It needs to be better about signposting when you're about to switch protagonists. At one point it splits your group between two locations and warns you that you're going to need good gear because there's some combat coming up, but it doesn't tell you that it's going to switch you to the other group first, leading me to 75 straight minutes of fighting with a party that is severely underpowered because I read the warning and assumed I'd be fighting with the group I was currently controlling.

Also also: I'm still not a fan of the enemies they cook up in the Ichiban games. A lot of them are creative and fun and a lot of them really, truly are not - it's cool to see what attacks they assign to random day jobs, it's not funny or interesting when the fat guy in ill-fitting clothes hits you with a big hot dog or the Chinese mafioso performs acupuncture in the middle of a fight. That shit is so fucking boring, dog. Ichiban could really use a better imagination.

I realize that this might seem overly negative for the rating I've given. I enjoyed myself for the vast majority of its runtime, but so much of this just collapses in on itself for me when I give it any thought at all. I'm still in awe at the production value here - this game blows my mind in much the same way that 2D mode in Dragon Quest XI did - they simply did not need to go so hard in crafting a big video game buffet. Combat has only seen a few changes but the changes that have been made take it from something I tolerated in Y7 to something I truly enjoy (as long as I'm not underleveled). Y8 addresses so many of the concerns I had with Y7 but about once an hour I'm reminded that the Daidoji faction is transparently complete nonsense (in the same way the Florist used to be), that the Drink Links still insist on having One Big Problem that each character must solve that ends in a fight (which means each character only gets to talk about a single thing during their moments in the spotlight), that both the English and the Japanese dubs feel inappropriate for the setting at least 50% of the time. There's a lot to like about this game and for significant chunks of it - mostly while I was ignoring the story - I was considering just giving it 5 stars and calling it a day, but the more I think about it, the less appropriate that feels.

Finished today.... I think I should stay away from mainline titles from now on. Because surely their badly paced jrpg nature is not for me.

Gameplay wise it's a huge improvement. Now you have combo attacks, you can move, you can use environmental objects and there is grapple required enemies now. So they solved almost every problem of mine from 7.

For example If you stay in the right position and attack from right point you can send enemy with knockback attack(the ones with arrow pointing where the enemy gonna fly back) at places and if you can knock them to other partners you initiate a combo move and it's mad fun(when the physics doesn't screw up that is). I can even go as far as to say when it works it's the best jrpg gameplay I had played currently. You can get so creative with knocking that it's INSANE.

For example knock an enemy like a bowling ball to other enemies or bounce them like a ball between party members or punch them to walls again and again to stun them to hell. Gameplay choices are almost endless.

Also substories comes back and this time they are not just spam dialogue buttons anymore, some of them include minigames or a bit more interactive now! That's an awesome upgrade. Not just that, fan service inside of them is simply insane and impossible to make you dissappointed.

Also we have new major minigames that is dondoko island and sujimon fights. I haven't played dondoko because I don't care that much about town simulation games but played sujimon hell of a lot and I recommend you because it makes good amount of money when you arrive to it's last point(also you will hecking need lots of money in this game). So, It was fun.

And that's where my praise ends.

I don't want to talk about story nor the boring villains nor the awful... AWFUL PACING. But I will with talk about it briefly as possible. First things first is I can say story itself actually made me miss 7's Arakawa storyline. Because I couldn't care about Kasuga's mom storyline and so all the emotional baggage went to garbage. That means the whole main campaign.

There is nice suprises I am gonna give you that, for example that Yamai dark clothed guy from the trailers was pretty interesting, or new party members really had interesting stories about them. But spending with side characters isn't the main point right?

What is the main emotional core of this story? It's mom I guess... I mean it's suppossed to be I assume? But then why the heck she have just 15-25 minutes in the whole 70 hour GODDAMN MAIN STORY AND I AM EXPECTED TO EMOTIONALLY CONNECT TO HER? I don't know.

Maybe it's Kiryu's story huh?... No. Kiryu is only here to help Kasuga to finish his adventure and support him from the sides with making his own search. He doesn't have emotional connection to anything going on and he is like, I don't care I am deathly cancer anyway, so... I WILL FINISH THIS FOR KASUGA and act pissed of like always. He makes damn good fanservice moments there is no lie for that. Especially last chapters gonna give you a lot with familiar faces. But funny enough, fanservice is still mostly in substories and their time just 5 minutes or close to that, so try to engage as much as you can with the old characters you love in that 5 minutes because it's just that. A substory. Nothing more.

Kiryu have only one objective and that is just helping Kasuga. So he just does that. (Also both of their finale bosses sucks ass and they straight go to my own most boring top 10 yakuza villains list, they are that boring. Maybe they could even rival with y4 villains when it comes to cliche B movie forgettable types who knows)

Also remember I said gameplay is fun? Yeah they mess this as well. With grind of course. What I mean is just like 7, finale part suddenly boosts enemy levels up to ROOF. AND OF COURSE I AM PISSED OFF.

Surely, it looks like like A dragon soft reboot titles isn't for me nor their pacing with spending 3 times longer on side characters and stuff rather than the main story. But it looks like new type of fans having a lot of fun. I see 5/5 everywhere. What can I say, have fun. I am not here to take that. But maybe it's best for me to stop here for like a dragon other than maybe spin off titles.

Anyway that's all I will say. Bon voyage or whatever.

First things first, yes its 4.5 cus I'm upset that negan isn't in this game and I'm doubly upset that the closest replacement is an annoying character who's personality is drinking caffeine, a substance i unironically believe should be criminalized. But other than that this game is everything I could want from a Tekken 8. It's quick and easy to play with friends and there's less downtime between matches, thank god. Tekken 7 was my most played fighting game ever and im here for this games launch i cant wait to see how good i get at this game. Im gonna get so good and beat all of you, just watch.

Six years was worth the wait.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink helps scratch an itch for both fluid action combat mechanic and MMO-style boss mechanics. This is the perfect game for the era of live-service schlock- a flawlessly integrated online co-op ecosystem, with all its substantive content able to be fully enjoyed offline as well. The only way it could be fundamentally improved (outside of the crossplay issue) is allowing for LAN play- but that's sadly something of a dinosaur in today's AAA releases. Otherwise PlatinumGames, well known for its ability to translate beloved IPs to quality action games, has stuck the landing here.

Any Cygames veteran can attest to the quality that goes into each of their productions, but they somewhat fail to transcend their mobage framework. Granblue Fantasy (2014) proper is a ridiculously tedious grind, such that even spending tons of money doesn't fully circumvent it. Hidden deep within Granblue's stigma as a gacha game is actually an extremely in-depth JRPG storyline, to speak nothing of its combat mechanics and boss design. After several years, I couldn't be bothered to enjoy it anymore underneath the crushing daily grind- but there was so much to love about it. There was incredible art direction by the CyDesignation team (which also did similar fantastic work on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: War of the Visions) and wonderful music by the likes of Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita. A vast, well-established world and characters whom the team truly cared about, meticulously developing their stories and updating units. That is what makes Relink that much more special- seeing these characters and their various skillsets rendered beautifully and allowed to escape the small aspect ratio of the phone screen. Each respective character was brought to life here with a stunning attention to detail by PlatinumGames. And that's not to discount the wonderful job Arcsys did with Granblue Fantasy Versus, but the game is far more accessible to a wider audience. This is what helps bring this game from fan service to a niche base to something capable of engendering an entirely new audience to its universe.

Cygames was actually no stranger to highly-polished action combat either, with Dragalia Lost (2018) offering some of the best co-op boss raids for its respective platform. The gameplay loop in Dragalia was a cut above what most gacha shovelware was offering, and it had a similarly well-respected single player campaign to Granblue as well. Dragalia's end of service was a stinging loss to many people, but PlatinumGames has managed to deliver them from janky private servers. The boss mechanics are highly reminiscent of Dragalia's and serve as a worthy successor. It is pretty easy to pick up and play too. The only real hurdle Relink players will have getting started is wrangling the camera and targeting system, something Dragalia didn't really have to contend with due to its top-down perspective. I did get kind of frustrated with this at first, but it mostly boils down to a couple hours of experience to resolve. Kind of a Super Mario 64 situation, but a lot less egregious.

Everything in Relink just manages to feel right, and feel good. Surely it won't hit as hard with people who aren't interested with things like incremental mastery of the different characters' mechanics, or people who don't like seeing numbers go up. But there is a market for that, and its a big market if Monster Hunter's meteoric rise was any indication. Action game fans with no knowledge of the source material won't really find any of this too daunting either. The 10-15 hour initial campaign can be played and enjoyed standalone, and the combat itself is self-explanatory. I do recommend getting acquainted with the basic Granblue lore through the Lyria's note section (as well as the Fate Episodes) as it will help contextualize a lot of what people love about these characters and their world. The writing might be a little flowery in some parts, a little nekketsu in others, but overall its pretty good. I would consider Relink's story basically akin to a movie adaptation of an anime- with dubious implications as to the canon and basically non-consequential to the overall plot. It is thus pretty easy to just enjoy as its own thing.

Notably, it's kind of hilarious how Cygames integrated the source gacha's DNA into the UI, sometimes seemingly for the sake of it. It's never too intrusive and its really only there for the hardcore players, but it is still very funny to see cursed Granblue mechanics like Plus Marks, Over Mastery Bonuses, and Spellbooks in an action RPG title. They all work well enough though, and the difference-maker here is the pacing. Take the Treasure Trade and material system they transplanted from the gacha. The grind in OG Granblue for certain materials can take weeks, even months. In here, its just going to be a few hours at worst. Allowing one to enjoy all the aesthetics of Granblue without having to devote enough time for it to being a second job? I would have stuck out ten years for this.