I had been waiting for this game for years, ever since the first gameplay footages were shown. I was a bit worried at one point due to its long development cycle. But it finally came out, and now that I played it for over 100 hours, I can safely say this was well worth the excruciating wait. In fact, it's even better than I was initially anticipating.

Imma start off by saying that this is my first exposure to the Granblue franchise, I have not played the gacha, and never will since I hate gachas, which sucks because thanks to Relink, I really wanna dive deeper into the series' world and learn more about the characters (although I guess GBVSR will help a bit more with that at least). But yeah, I felt Relink did a fine job at introducing new players like me to its world thanks to its extensive glossary, the fate episodes- basically mini side-stories for each character in the roster- and the main story.

Speaking of the story, I thought it was fine, nothing out of the ordinary, but quite enjoyable from start to finish. Lots of cool moments and setpieces, the later chapters were especially great and the pacing felt just right : short but not too short (took me about 21 hours), while not overstaying its welcome. The main story may be short, but this isn't the whole game. In fact, it's basically just the tutorial. The real fun begins in the postgame...

Visually the game looks beautilful, reminds me a lot of Tales of Arise. The characters all look great animation-wise and some of the bosses' attacks are a sight to behold, I was blown away by some the cutscenes in the story as well. The ost goes crazy hard as well, this was my first exposure to Granblue music and it did not disappoint.

Before playing Relink, I actually had no idea what to expect from the game besides the action combat. So I was quite shocked (in a good way) when I came to the realization that I was basically playing a fucking Monster Hunter game. It's obviously not MonHun, but the gameplay loop, the quest progression, gear customization, coop aspect, all bear certain similarities that I couldn't unsee as a massive MH enjoyer.

Combat-wise, Relink kinda falls on the simpler side imo, but it's hella satisfying and more than makes up for that with its large roster of 19 playable characters (for now), all with their own moveset, fighting styles and unique abilities (comparable to MH's weapon classes, but not as complex), a deep gear system that allows for various different build for every character (just like MH), as well as the (mostly) fantastic boss fights with elaborate movesets and attack patterns that get stronger and more challenging as you climb up the quest ranks (JUST LIKE M-). I know I keep mentioning Monster Hunter, but don't misunderstand, these similarities I'm mentioning are mostly superficial. Relink's core combat is obviously nothing like MH, taking a much faster paced approach, as opposed to MH's slow and deliberate approach. The customization is just as extensive in its own unique way as well, with each character having 2 large skill trees and their own selection of upgradable weapons, a level up system, and so on...

If you're familiar with the quest system in MH or other games of that subgenre, then you'll see that Granblue Relink's also works similarly to those games. There are three ranks, withing each ranks you got different difficulty levels and as mentioned earlier, the bosses get stronger in higher ranks, and even get new moves in some cases. Getting to the higher ranks will require you to beat the main story. These quests can be done solo (either with CPU party member or entirely alone) or online, which once again works kinda like MH, you can create your session with your preferred settings, and then invite your friends or people you played with before. Wish you could also search for sessions, but apparently that's only an option on the PC version, which is fucking stupid.

With its amazing roster & satisfying combat, complemented by the incredible boss fights, its simple but enjoyable main story, incredibly extensive postgame and insane ost, Granblue Fantasy Relink easily semented itself as the best "MH-like" game I've ever played, as well as one of my favorite action RPGs, which I honestly wasn't expecting at all. I do have a few issues that I hope get fixed, such as not being able to search for Online sessions on console, the RNG being a bit too much in the endgame, as well as the recently announced paid item packs, and some smaller nitpicks. But overall, that game exceeded my expectations and was totally worth the long wait. I look forward to seeing how they handle the post-launch support (a bit worried about the paid item packs though) and honestly would buy a MH-style DLC expansion if they ever plan on making one.





(A MH collab would be peak too, just sayin')

What 11 million units sold do to a video game franchise...

I'll preface this review with a bit of my history with the series.

Tekken is my number 1 fighting game franchise, been a huge fan since I was a kid. T5 was my first game, then I played every other game since, except for 4 and 6 (I still watched a ton of videos of those 2 games).

I love FGs in general (despite being trash at them), but there's not a single one that comes close to Tekken for me. The gameplay, the characters, modes, music... I love everything about it. Furthermore, it's the only FG franchise that got me invested in its lore. It is so wacky and doesn't make much sense half the time, but man is it so damn sick. Though I kinda started losing some of my passion with Tekken after 6, one of the reasons was that I didn't like the story's direction, mainly Jin's vilain arc, the other was kinda because of T7. Now don't get it twisted, I truly enjoyed T7 as a whole, but the lack of content really hurt it, although I understand why it was that way.

I still have a lot of respect for Tekken 7 despite my gripes with it, it's competitive era has especially been an absolute blast to watch. But most importantly, it is thanks to its massive success that Harada and his team were able to cook what's possibly one of the greatest fighting games ever made, as well as the best Tekken game since Tekken 5.

I had extremely high expectations for Tekken 8 due to T7's insane sales, and it's exceeded nearly all of them.

Gameplay-wise it's not super different from 7, but the high emphasis on offense, as well as all the new mechanics are more than enough to make it feel fresh, which was definitely something the series needed. At first I didn't know how to feel about the heat system when it was first shown, but it's actually such a fun ass mechanic to mess around with, it adds so much to the game's already deep combat. The base roster, while similar to 7 is pretty amazing, most of the returning characters got some major changes to their moveset, and all the newcomers are fantastic in their own ways (Reina being the best one of course 💜).

Aesthetically-speaking this is easily one of the prettiest games in the series, and a massive step-up from T7. The character models actually look good and the stages are fucking gorgeous although I don't like that they added separate versions of the same stages.

Tekken 8's presentation overall is also fantastic, from the incredible intro to the menu, character select screen, the special interactions, this game has so much charm. The ost is also exquisite, so many amazing stage tracks (Storm Rising my beloved). Plus, the returning jukebox feature is a godsend.

One of T7's biggest issues was its lackluster singleplayer content compared to its predecessor due to the limited budget they had when making that game. Thanks to those 11 million units sold though, they were able to make Tekken 8 arguably the most feature-rich game in the series, practically on par with T5. The amount of content the game has is fucking insane, especially in an era where a lot of FGs come out with little content. The only things I wish T8 had are Team Battle and Survival modes (please add them in a future update Harada 🙏🏾). Other than those, it's got everything :

- A whole ass story mode (more on that later)
- Character episodes for the whole roster with unique endings for each one
- A fleshed out arcade mode with 3 secret bosses
- Arcade quest, a fun tutorial story mode
- Super Ghost Battle
- The return of Tekken BALL
- An incredibly extensive training mode with tons of options
- Character Customization (albeit a bit limited at the moment)
- An incredibly helpful replay feature that allows you to DIRECRLY TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR CHARACTER OR THE OPPONENT'S
- An actually functioning online mode that uses rollback netcode

So yeah, not only is this game fucking PACKED, but it's also very beginner-friendly thanks to all its training features.

The story mode, oooh this fucking story mode... I'll start by saying this is without a doubt the absolute greatest story mode in a fighting game PERIOD. Not gonna go into details, but it's constant banger from start to finish. Short, but well paced. As huge Jin fan who disliked his T6 arc, this whole story was made for me. I was worried about how they'd handle his character arc in 8, but ended up absolutely blown away by how well they did it. The story mode as a whole genuinely felt like a love-letter to not only Jin, but also Tekken as a whole.

Tl;dr : Tekken 8 is the best Tekken game since 5 imo, and one of the most feature-rich fighting games in recent years. Solid roster, engaging new mechanics, tons of amazing game modes, beautiful visuals, peak story and actual good online. It does need some fine-tuning here and there, and could definitely use more customization (hope they won't fuck up Tekken shop). But I'm certain they're working on that, and I look forward to seeing how the game will evolve. Tekken is so fucking back, and I couldn't be happier about it.