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.