Granblue Fantasy Relink is an ambitious title that is exceptional in most categories and solid in the rest.

At this point, there's a good chance that if you are plugged into the gaming space, you have heard of Granblue Fantasy in some capacity. Granblue Fantasy Relink is an action RPG based on the Granblue Fantasy universe from Cygames. This is another attempt to bring the Granblue characters into other genres beyond the mobile gacha space alongside efforts like Granblue Fantasy Versus (and Rising). I have no experience with the mobile game but have enjoyed Versus Rising. I have some background with the cast members and the overall vibe of the setting, but I'm not deeply versed in the intricacies of the lore or world.

Let's start with the core concepts. Granblue Fantasy Relink is an action RPG where you control one character and have up to three other party members supporting you. A mixture of pre-rendered and in-engine cutscenes delivers the story where the characters journey together through the skies. They venture from sky-island to sky-island, encountering villains and saving the people by battling monsters. Gran, Katarina, Lyria, and the others are searching for the mysterious island Estalucia, but things get more complicated as new threats arise and friendships are tested.

The combat is front and center here, and it does its best to emphasize the action. There's a pretty familiar mechanical setup: light and heavy attacks that can be chained together to make combos, dodging and jumping to avoid attacks or set up strikes of your own, a special skill bar with associated cooldowns unique to each character, link and super attacks for delivering big chunks of damage. Most of this probably sounds familiar if you have played similar action RPG titles in recent years.

Despite its familiarity, I found the combat fresh throughout my playthrough. The mechanics flowed nicely into one another, and I found myself making fluid strings and setting up big fight-winning blows without missing a beat. The feedback was very satisfying, and even combats that would be rated as relatively simple fights in many RPG titles – say, fighting a small band of goblins – were a fun and rewarding experience. It is simple enough that even if you don't appreciate all the underlying systems, you can probably mash through most fights without much hardship. But significant fights like boss battles are engaging enough that you must pay attention to individual mechanics and attack timings.

Perhaps my favorite aspect was how often conditions were a part of the main story combats. There were plenty of fights where the objective was to kill all the enemies, and that's it, but quite frequently, there were added objectives to spice up the fights. Sometimes, this was having enemies with unique attack patterns or time-sensitive challenges to beat them within a given time limit. At other times, things became more complicated, and I had to adjust my playstyle accordingly. For example, early in the story, your ship is attacked by other airships, and the enemy vessels have incredibly powerful cannons. You repel a few waves of boarders in standard combat, and things get interesting. Enemy cannons fire, and you hop on a turret to shoot the projectiles out of the sky while also trying to destroy their turrets. Then swarms of enemy boarders attack, and you have to board their ship and destroy the turrets and engines before they can bring down your craft, creating a situation where enemy hordes are more obstacles than peer combatants and emphasizing your knowledge of the movement mechanics and crowd control abilities.

Other sequences can be just as engaging. Maybe it's a boss who is very difficult, but during specific attack sequences, drops their weapon, which you can pick up and hurl back at them for massive damage. At other times a friendly wizard is channeling to open a doorway while you guard them, and if enemy soldiers hit the wizard it pauses the timer and prevents your progress. None of these ideas are so complex as to be overwhelming. At the same time, the steady stream of new objectives keeps you engaged with the game and rethinking party compositions, ability selection, and more. When wedded to the already stellar core combat system, this variety creates a superbly engaging game on a mechanical level.

The character variety helps in this regard as well. Your party composition greatly impacts the flow of battles, and even from the early hours, you have a generous cast to choose from. As the story progresses, you will add new characters to the party for greater variety, and you can further increase this by summoning other characters using crewmate cards. Even a few hours into the story, I found myself with more party members than I knew what to do with. That made choosing just four that much harder because Granblue's character designs are so distinct, and exploring their unique playstyles becomes a fun journey. I was extra pleased to find that my Granblue Fantasy Versus main – Charlotta – hits like a Mac truck in Relink just like she does in Rising.

There are also plenty of side activities as well. Sprinkled throughout the levels are speed-running parkour challenges to test your platforming and map knowledge. Vendors in towns will offer up quests that players can complete solo or tackle online with up to three other players to gain experience, treasure, and mastery points to spend on abilities. And, of course, you can always wander around to find item drops and crafting materials throughout the world.

Wandering around is probably something you will find yourself doing regardless because, good Lord, this game is beautiful. I knew that Granblue Fantasy Relink had stiff competition in this space – titles like Tales of Arise and Final Fantasy XVI are both recent heavy-hitters in the action RPG space that are jaw-dropping visually – but this title manages to hang with that crowd and in some areas stand apart. This is closer to the Tales of Arise end of the spectrum, with clearly more cartoon-stylized designs, vibrant color choices, and big flashy environmental attacks. The whole world pops off the screen with its amazing-looking environments and detailed character models. It manages to strike the balance of being supremely colorful without being too much.

The rest of the presentation is strong as well. The music has exactly the right mix of melodic town themes and big, exciting battle tracks. Environments have a significant breadth of detail and fun touches that help add immersion. The voice acting is all top-notch, and the performances never took me out of the moment. Story segments were rather robust, and it never felt overwhelming despite the volume of information.

I found the game's performance to be strong as well. My desktop PC is getting a bit up there in years, though it still managed to handle the game on medium to high settings in most scenarios. In addition to that, I put in several hours on my Steam Deck, and it worked like a charm. It never had any crashes or anything of that nature, and the game looked fluid and vibrant. I did not test out the online play features, so I can't speak to the connection quality therein, but the multiplayer features are optional, so I doubt it would impact my feelings on the game much, even if the experience was poor.

That said, the game isn't without its flaws.

The biggest area where Granblue Fantasy Relink stumbles for me is in the story and characters. Not in the moment-to-moment pacing or the narrative contents, per se. The events move at a nice, steady clip and make sense within their content. I just couldn't quite get to grips with the world. It isn't overly complicated; it isn't like the characters aren't likable. But I never found myself genuinely invested in the broader setting or specific character beats. I'm not sure where the disconnect is either because nominally, I couldn't point out any particular fault with what was on offer, yet at the same time, I was never fully in the story in a meaningful way.

Part of the problem is the sheer breadth of what is given to the player right out of the gate. You start as just Gran running around bonking wolves in the opening section. But in almost no time, you have multiple party members to manage; you're traveling on an airship to exotic islands in the sky, deep lore terms and proper noun nation-states are thrown around – it's a lot all at once and never seems to let up. It wasn't so jarring that I felt pushed out of the narrative, but it was enough that it all washed over me beyond the surface-level details.

And it's not that the game doesn't try to get you to engage with the deeper lore. If you go into one of the sub-menus, you can watch cutscenes and read backstories that provide little snippets of the characters' lives outside of Relink's events. The game will even reward you with in-game currency, build points, crafting materials, and so forth just for engaging with this background. That's a great way to add that extra incentive to get invested in the world. I wish the details stuck with me because I struggled to remember much of the world and characters beyond their first impressions despite the game's best efforts. It is one thing to experience these events alongside the characters as they grow and change – that tends to create strong connections. Sadly, it's not as effective to experience all this character growth through what amounts to a slideshow and to do so seven or eight times to catch up with the entire cast.

Truth be told, I was surprised that this disconnect was still there. I assumed that after my time with Versus Rising, I would have a leg up on understanding the cast, at least how they express themselves in combat and knowing more names. Sadly, I don't think it did me all that much good here, and perhaps the key difference is the mobile game. I'm sure if you've played the mobile game, then many of these backstories are old news, and you're glad they are moving ahead with new material. For myself, I think a slower build-up would have been more beneficial.

I also found the customization expansive while not necessarily deep. The equipment options felt more dull than engaging. The mobile game influences were apparent in the weapon upgrades, where you dump shards and materials into raw strength up to a certain level cap. Then, you invest more rare materials to boost the level cap and move past that. I also found the mastery trees initially interesting, but that faded with time. Each character has multiple mastery trees to invest skill points in, and the trees have some choices to make. Sadly, the linearity of the trees made for minimal build options for each character. I felt less like I was making a unique or exciting build and more like I was deciding which character to dump points into and buy everything available. The combat system is interesting enough that I didn't feel the build or gear issues were huge drawbacks, but they were noticeably less attractive than they initially appeared.

Despite these minor hangups, Granblue Fantasy Relink is an excellent game and succeeds in almost every area. It looks and plays great, with high-quality presentation throughout. The sheer variety of combat scenarios keeps you engaged in every fight, and the breadth of character options in individual builds and general party composition keeps gameplay evergreen. The characters and story in Granblue Fantasy Relink are somewhat challenging to connect with for those who are not long-time fans of the series. Still, they all make positive surface-level impressions—and with gameplay this good, maybe that's all you need.