A pretty good effort for their first full on JRPG. While a bit bare bones, the game is mechanically solid, and pretty nice to look at.
Coming at this one as a newcomer to Granblue, I thought the introduction to the characters and the world was well done, with lots of lore to read for catching up. I thought the story as a whole was pretty bland, with not a lot of character development or unique ideas, just a pretty straight forward anime filler arc. The main story was surprisingly short, with small a handful of unique locations to explore, and only one of them being somewhat nonlinear. Side quests were also extremely basic, having only a small blurb of text for each one along with a list of enemies to defeat. The quests you can receive from the quest counter help to increase replayability, and kind of blend the mobile game structure into Relink, allowing for quick bursts of combat and grinding without any hassle.
The combat is luckily pretty fun, though a bit simple once you find a character you really like. All of them have a short list of combos and special attacks, so mastery does not take long. Personally, I think this game would be a lot more fun to play with the ability to swap characters mid battle, similar to ff7 Remake. Some sort of elemental combo system like Genshin Impact or multi-character combos of some kind could bring the gameplay to a new level.
Hoping Cygames continues to put out full console games, since they have made some of the more engaging mobile games that I've tried. I think they could knock a second game out of the park if they go for a more traditional RPG structure with an actual world to explore, a deep story, and meaningful character arcs.
Coming at this one as a newcomer to Granblue, I thought the introduction to the characters and the world was well done, with lots of lore to read for catching up. I thought the story as a whole was pretty bland, with not a lot of character development or unique ideas, just a pretty straight forward anime filler arc. The main story was surprisingly short, with small a handful of unique locations to explore, and only one of them being somewhat nonlinear. Side quests were also extremely basic, having only a small blurb of text for each one along with a list of enemies to defeat. The quests you can receive from the quest counter help to increase replayability, and kind of blend the mobile game structure into Relink, allowing for quick bursts of combat and grinding without any hassle.
The combat is luckily pretty fun, though a bit simple once you find a character you really like. All of them have a short list of combos and special attacks, so mastery does not take long. Personally, I think this game would be a lot more fun to play with the ability to swap characters mid battle, similar to ff7 Remake. Some sort of elemental combo system like Genshin Impact or multi-character combos of some kind could bring the gameplay to a new level.
Hoping Cygames continues to put out full console games, since they have made some of the more engaging mobile games that I've tried. I think they could knock a second game out of the park if they go for a more traditional RPG structure with an actual world to explore, a deep story, and meaningful character arcs.