PlatinumGames Got A New JRPG - Granblue Fantasy Project Re:Link

[Rean]

Hoping for a massive rebalance update for the campaign (fabulously optimistic).
It doesn't have to be Nioh, just make it so that it takes two hands to play.

 

[Ravielsk]

Hoping for a massive rebalance update for the campaign (fabulously optimistic).
It doesn't have to be Nioh, just make it so that it takes two hands to play.

It being a Granblue game I think the onehanded playstyle is very much the intended experience.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Hoping for a massive rebalance update for the campaign (fabulously optimistic).
It doesn't have to be Nioh, just make it so that it takes two hands to play.

It being a Granblue game I think the onehanded playstyle is very much the intended experience.

Fucking weebs.

 

[ADL]

I hate to be one of those it gets good after 30 hours people but it really does become a wholly different game at the endgame. Just get through the campaign, I know it's a slog when it takes an effort to die but it's worth it.

 

[Spike]

I hate to be one of those it gets good after 30 hours people but it really does become a wholly different game at the endgame. Just get through the campaign, I know it's a slog when it takes an effort to die but it's worth it.

Play on the hardest available difficulty for the campaign and endgame, then?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I hate to be one of those it gets good after 30 hours people but it really does become a wholly different game at the endgame. Just get through the campaign, I know it's a slog when it takes an effort to die but it's worth it.

Play on the hardest available difficulty for the campaign and endgame, then?

Yeah. I played on hard and it was sufficiently hard for me. I got walled on the second story Primal (the ice wolf) and after an hour of failed attempts, had to stop and do quests to become stronger before coming back and finally beating it. None of the bosses after were as hard but I nearly ran out of the critical gauge a few times.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The new Lucilius fight is cool - I like that it's not another big boss whose ankles you're slashing at - but it sucks if you play a melee character who can't chase or dodge during your combo. The boss is constantly teleporting all over the place and sending out barrages of AoEs. I'm playing Vaseraga and his playstyle revolves around charging up his heavy attacks for 2 seconds, which just can't be done most of the time because either Lucilius teleports out of range by the time I'm finished charging, or he is sending out another AoE that needs to be blocked or dodged. I do have a gap closer with the XYY combo but again, all of my damage comes from charged attacks which just can't be pulled off. Particularly difficult is the first intermission phase where you have to kill three waves of adds very quickly, and for each add that survives a chunk of your maximum HP is permanently reduced for the rest of the fight, but there are lasers going off every 3 seconds which makes it difficult to close distance to the adds and charge up a swing. I might have to switch to Siegfried as he doesn't rely on charge attacks, and can chase and dodge without interrupting his combo.

I wish the devs had chosen to play the Stella Magna version of Zero for the fight rather than the original.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Just realized that I've been getting this and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising confused this entire time. Is this thing actually good? What's the appeal, if any? For reference: I thought GBFVR was terrible dogshit from the demo.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is this thing actually good?

Well I've sunk 150 hours into it and I'm still playing it a month after launch so I'd say yes.

What's the appeal, if any?

• Good aesthetics, faithfully adapts Akihiko Yoshida's and Hideo Minaba's designs from the gacha.
• Fantastic soundtrack by Uematsu and Narita.
• Pleasant characters, the good guys are good. I didn't want to punch any of the heroes in the face, which is a sadly low bar these days.
• Good Japanese voice acting. Dunno about the English dub. I'm used to hearing the Japanese voices from the gacha, and what little I heard of the English dub from trailers did not sound inspiring.
• Nice looking fantasy environments. If I had to nitpick, I was a little bummed as the Zegagrande Skydom that this game is set in is an aesthetic rehash of Phantagarde, which is overexposed. Phantagarde was the first Skydom in the gacha and most side storylines are set in Phantagarde since the devs want new players to have easy access to those side storylines without having to play through 80 chapters to get to Nahlegrande with it's more original fusion of medieval European castles with Japanese/Chinese/Thai architecture.
• Story is good enough. The writing in Relink isn't deep stuff like Xenogears or Trails or even some of the gacha's storylines, and some moments can be rather cliche, but it serves its purpose as getting you from cool setpiece to cool setpiece, and some of the moments were admittedly pretty fun. If you're a fan of the gacha game like me then some of the lore in Relink makes no sense and can feel a little fanficy, though (where are the Enforcers during all of this? How does this random cult in this completely different Skydom know about Lyria and Gran? The Bahamut lore, etc).
• PC port is overall good. I've had no major issues, though the framerate does drop a little in the first town (Folca) even on a 3070ti at 4K, which I thought was a little odd. Also, if you press F12 to take a Steam screenshot, the game will stutter for a second. I had to use the Nvidia geforce screenshot keybind to take lots of screenshots without constant stutters during gameplay. There are network issues, though. I might queue up for the most popular quest in the game at prime time but then get repeated "no matches found" and have to retry over and over until it work, even though the game still has a big active playerbase on steam. The matchmaking/network connectivity issue is a common complaint. If you make a lobby and then queue for a quest it works just fine, though.

Action combat: Your mileage may vary. I'm typically not a fan of action combat. They're usually too fast paced for me. I slogged through the first Ys game, and then gave up half way through Ys 2. I finished Tokyo Xanadu but I was mainly there for the other things (pleasant characters, sense of community, good music, etc). I had fun playing through the story on hard difficulty and enjoyed persevering through the fights and eventually triumphing over them, though I did not like how the main character Gran played due to his counterintuitive mechanic. I began having a lot more fun when I switched to the non-canon character of Vaseraga, who uses slow 2 second long charge attacks. There are twenty playable characters and they're each a little bit differentiated from each other in terms of combos, tempo, and mechanics. You have different flavors of swordsmen, have a magical girl who can charge up spells from range, two riflemen one of whom can manually aim like in a shooter, etc. There are utility spells, but at the end of the day everyone is mainly dealing damage, so you don't have specialized roles like in the gacha or in an RPG where one person is dedicated to always healing/buffing/debuffing/CCing/tanking/etc.

Once you beat the story, you can then do quests (either with 3 other players or 3 other NPC party members) which amounts to fighting a boss in an arena. Progressing through the quests can take a few afternoons, and then once you've beaten all of the quests, you can farm items to upgrade your favorite characters and make them more powerful. A couple weeks ago I finished upgrading Vaseraga and began working on my three other characters.

Today the devs patched in a new boss, Lucilius, who is now currently the hardest boss in the game. Harder than anything I've fought yet. Might be a little too tough for most people and the fight does not favor characters that require commitment like Io or Vaseraga but maybe people will learn and get better over the next few weeks. We don't know if they're going to add more bosses. Three additional playable characters have been announced and will be added over the next couple of months. We don't know if there will be any more content after that.

Also, don't go in expecting it to have a JRPG sized world. There are only two town areas - the small village of Folca, and then a single district of the capital city of Seedhollow. You don't get to run around loose on the islands, only walk through corridors of them during the story or some of the early quests. The endgame is queueing for quests and loading into an arena to fight a boss and fighting those bosses over and over to get mats to get stronger.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Just realized that I've been getting this and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising confused this entire time. Is this thing actually good? What's the appeal, if any? For reference: I thought GBFVR was terrible dogshit from the demo.

It's gay anime Monster Hunter.

 

[Spike]

Just realized that I've been getting this and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising confused this entire time. Is this thing actually good? What's the appeal, if any? For reference: I thought GBFVR was terrible dogshit from the demo.

It's gay anime Monster Hunter.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Just realized that I've been getting this and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising confused this entire time. Is this thing actually good? What's the appeal, if any? For reference: I thought GBFVR was terrible dogshit from the demo.

It's gay anime Monster Hunter.

... That's just Monster Hunter.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

After 2 to 3 hours of attempts, I have finally beaten Lucilius. I was getting walled at 50% HP, and then got a magic run where we got him down to 50% and kept going and killed him and the credits rolled. I wonder if that's the end for planned content.

Basically just equip Untouchable, Flight over Fight, and stack +3 seconds of invincibility after dodge sigils for a grand total of 6 seconds of invincibility after you dodge. Spam the dodge button whenever the boss starts glowing purple or his swords glow yellow or red to get the invincibility buff. That's it.

 

[Rean]

Fine, I've decided to give it another try.
I was about 6 hours in last time, I decided to just restart.

Happy to see they've patched in some needed options: clear voice for dialogue (it was abysmally low) and being able to disable smoothing for the camera.
I'll stick with it, hopefully to the end this time.

Caught this nice gem going over the starting village again too:

The state of highly-paid professional translations in 2024.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Just realized that I've been getting this and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising confused this entire time. Is this thing actually good? What's the appeal, if any? For reference: I thought GBFVR was terrible dogshit from the demo.

It's gay anime Monster Hunter.

... That's just Monster Hunter.

There are certain requirements for something to count as anime. It must have the cartoon look, all the characters must have deformed alien heads and postures, like females standing with one leg facing outward and the other leg turned awkwardly inward, like she's suffering from some horrific skeletal disorder. Also they all speak like there's something wrong with them, like their heroin junkie mom tripped on the stairs and took a horrible fall while breastfeeding them poisoned milk.

Monster Hunter only checks the last box.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I actually had no idea this was based on some cartoon. Never heard of it tbh.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I actually had no idea this was based on some cartoon. Never heard of it tbh.

No, it's a gacha. Admittedly, it's one of those franchises that has actually tried to go beyond just being a gacha, though.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I actually had no idea this was based on some cartoon. Never heard of it tbh.

It started out as a gacha game, made by former Square talent. Akhiko Yoshida, Hideo Minaba, and a few others. They wanted to make real games but didn't have the capital, so they made the gacha to get the money they need to make the real games they want to make, which has finally come to fruition with Relink (too bad about Platinum holding up the project for years). Also has Final Fantasy veterans Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita doing the music. GBF plays like classic turn based Final Fantasy and started the trend of having visual novel level stories in gacha games. The first 40 chapters are just "okay" but then it gets good at Amalthea island. More enjoyable than the plots of many full priced JRPGs I've played. Gameplay wise there is a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy XI with the chain attacks that have a final detonation whose element can be changed, levelling up jobs to unlock abilities to be use on other jobs, etc.

There was an anime adaptation but sadly it came out in the mid 2010s, long after the anime industry had become a shadow of its formerself with the veteran talent gone and the industry stretched thin trying to shovel out too many shows too fast. There were some pretty egregious compositing issues, but Cygames was only a producer. They now own their own animation studio, which is currently making that new mecha show featuring Masami Obari. I haven't seen it yet because the concept of 3D CGI mechs is offputting but from what I've heard people are really enjoying it, so if a GBF season 3 happened it'd probably be better. Also, it didn't help that plot wise, season 1 starts at the lackluster early part of the main story. In season 2 when they got to Albion Citadel the storytelling got much better (probably because they were working with a straight up better material) but then they go to the ghost island and it's boring (was boring in the gacha too).

 

[Spike]

I actually had no idea this was based on some cartoon. Never heard of it tbh.

It started out as a gacha game, made by former Square talent. Akhiko Yoshida, Hideo Minaba, and a few others. They wanted to make real games but didn't have the capital, so they made the gacha to get the money they need to make the real games they want to make, which has finally come to fruition with Relink (too bad about Platinum holding up the project for years). Also has Final Fantasy veterans Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita doing the music. GBF plays like classic turn based Final Fantasy and started the trend of having visual novel level stories in gacha games. The first 40 chapters are just "okay" but then it gets good at Amalthea island. More enjoyable than the plots of many full priced JRPGs I've played. Gameplay wise there is a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy XI with the chain attacks that have a final detonation whose element can be changed, levelling up jobs to unlock abilities to be use on other jobs, etc.

There was an anime adaptation but sadly it came out in the mid 2010s, long after the anime industry had become a shadow of its formerself with the veteran talent gone and the industry stretched thin trying to shovel out too many shows too fast. There were some pretty egregious compositing issues, but Cygames was only a producer. They now own their own animation studio, which is currently making that new mecha show featuring Masami Obari. I haven't seen it yet because the concept of 3D CGI mechs is offputting but from what I've heard people are really enjoying it, so if a GBF season 3 happened it'd probably be better. Also, it didn't help that plot wise, season 1 starts at the lackluster early part of the main story. In season 2 when they got to Albion Citadel the storytelling got much better (probably because they were working with a straight up better material) but then they go to the ghost island and it's boring (was boring in the gacha too).

It plays like classic turn-based FF...? I thought this game was action-based.

 

[ADL]

He's talking about the mobile gacha game Relink is based on. This is an action game through and through.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

After 2 to 3 hours of attempts, I have finally beaten Lucilius. I was getting walled at 50% HP, and then got a magic run where we got him down to 50% and kept going and killed him and the credits rolled. I wonder if that's the end for planned content.

Basically just equip Untouchable, Flight over Fight, and stack +3 seconds of invincibility after dodge sigils for a grand total of 6 seconds of invincibility after you dodge. Spam the dodge button whenever the boss starts glowing purple or his swords glow yellow or red to get the invincibility buff. That's it.

On the bright side, at least you didn't get blasted in the face for 50k for joining the raid. Yes, this happens in the main game when you join the newest Faa-san raid.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

An anon on 4chan datamined a Lucilius hard mode. Maybe it will be added in a future patch.

>He gets Regen def up and atk up periodically through the fight
>He gets Regen damage cut and def up at final stand
>its a new moveset, he has differnt attack chains, 12 labors are harder, his paradise lost is completely different. EVERY Paradise lost requires a 4 burst to cancel. he applies buffs to himself, he will timestop some of his moves and either reverse them, slow them down or just leave them sitting there as obsticles. he also has different health gates and golpherwood arc is just death unless you perfect dodge.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

An anon on 4chan datamined a Lucilius hard mode. Maybe it will be added in a future patch.

>He gets Regen def up and atk up periodically through the fight
>He gets Regen damage cut and def up at final stand
>its a new moveset, he has differnt attack chains, 12 labors are harder, his paradise lost is completely different. EVERY Paradise lost requires a 4 burst to cancel. he applies buffs to himself, he will timestop some of his moves and either reverse them, slow them down or just leave them sitting there as obsticles. he also has different health gates and golpherwood arc is just death unless you perfect dodge.

Here's hoping that he blasts you in the face for 30k worth of damage via Paradise Lost when you immediately join the fight as he does in the hard mode raid of the original game.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

New patch. Two new characters. Two new quests, including one new boss fight.

The new boss is the Behemoth. After Lucilius, it's nice to have a boss that actually stands still in one spot for more than two seconds, allowing Vaseraga to fully charge up his XXYY double swings for at least half of the duration of the fight. The boss still jumps around a lot, though. Also has a new track that I do not recall hearing in the gacha game, so this might be another GBF Relink original? Sadly it's not on the OST that released last month.

To unlock the two new characters of Seofon and Tweyen, you have to farm the Behemoth boss for Supreme Merits (you need three to unlock an eternal, so six for both). Fortunately I only had to fight him 5 or 6 times. I got three Supreme Merit drops, and also got 90 Revenant Medallions which I converted into three more Supreme Merits so I unlocked both after only about an hour of play.

Tweyen is pretty easy and fun to play. She is the fourth ranged character, but her magical arrows are more flashy than Eugen's and Rackam's guns, and she is not crippled by long cast times like Io in a game where most bosses are jumping around the arena every two seconds or there is an AoE you have to dodge. Her XX charged Y Y combo fires a volley of arrows at a wide angle, and her charged attack fires off heat seeker arrows that follow enemies, so it's hard to miss. She also has a powerful ability that can inflict half a dozen different debuffs/DoTs on all enemies in its path, and another powerful ability that can extend the duration of those debuffs/DoTs, but that ability can only be used once per battle.


On a dev livestream, it was announced that in next month's patch, you will be able to combine sigil traits together. So you will finally be able to obtain BIS sigils with the trait and sub traits you want. No more farming for the elusive supplementary damage V+ sigil and hoping it has a good sub trait.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

Behemoth is another boss from the original game. It shows up in Unite and Fight/Guild Wars.