100 Hours In...
Alright, so I’ve had Granblue Fantasy Relink in my backlogs for almost a year now. I heard it was a Monster Hunter clone and while the initial gameplay intrigued me, I lost interest after realizing how generic the story was. However… something brought back my interest when I saw the Endless Ragnarok trailers, something that made me want to give it a second chance and prepare for the future content to come.
They added a cute martial arts girl with fire magic and animal ears.
So, as a fan of cute martial art girl characters I decided to dive back in and give the game another shot. And I have to say, I’m glad I came back. There’s a lot to like about this game. It’s fast, it’s punchy, it’s got a simple flow to it that makes it fun to put an hour or three into it. And… I went from having 5 hours into the game to over 100 in a span of two weeks. With all that time put into the game I wanted to give out some of my thoughts. Overall I’ve enjoyed the game, but I have some criticisms and issues here and there, as I’ll explain soon.
Story
The story is... fine. It’s a very generic plot if I’m being honest. Small, local problems within the area slowly escalate to fighting godlike beings while using the power of friendship to save the day. I can tell this was made for people that weren't too familiar with Granblue or its universe. I myself only know as much as the fighting game, the anime, and the handful of the Aliza lore I’ve consumed because I like fighter gals has told me. This was a very by-the-books JRPG plot and… it’s fine.
The Zegagrande Skydom is a passable location, the areas have some intrigue and general purpose for being there, it doesn’t feel like we’re just wandering through random locations which is good. I wish they broke some plot points down a little more like showing just how much the populous of the area actively revered and worshiped the 'Primeval Gods' despite it being common knowledge in most other Skydoms that these ‘gods’ are more personified forces of nature than holy beings. The Generals were also very interesting and I wished the story dove a little more into their backgrounds. How and why Gallanza seeks glory in battle and death, how Maglielle and her Sword Veil were banished and despised regardless of their skill, why Id sees himself as a protector despite the destructive nature of his group (though I haven’t done his Fate Episode yet so I’m holding my tongue here). Even more so given how interesting they could interact with the playable cast. Narmaya and Ghandagoza facing Gallanza with samurai stoicism and overwhelm machismo respectively, Yodarha and Charlotta showing respect and sadness facing a fellow Harvin warrior (an apparently hated one at that), the list goes on, but you get the point, it would had been nice if we had the chapters really focus on our enemies and played off them better, as the Generals were the most interest part of the story to me.
The Fate Episodes so far are hit or miss. I’ve only gotten through about half of them, but I loved the Captain, Eugen, Narmaya, Cagliostro, and Yodarha’s stories, all of which show a deeper side of the character or at least allow their personalities to shine. I still have about ten more stories to finish, but I've so far liked the Fate Episodes a little more than the main story.
Gameplay
This is where the game truly shines. I've heard it compared to Monster Hunter, though I've never played that game series too deeply due to its slower pace and Dual Blades being the only weapon I really liked out then 10-ish weapons available (and Switch Glaive, but I sucked at using it). This game is a lot faster paced to its benefit, and as much as I didn't care for the story, the fact that it can be finished in a simple weekend means you can access the real meat of the game a lot faster. There is a constant since of progression up until you reach around 10,000 PWR where the game expects you to have a main and have an actual loadout of Sigils that cater to them. And even then that's more a speed bump and knowledge check until you hit 15,000 PWR and the Proud Missions come into play.
Every character feels and plays in a unique way, most can go in a few different directions in terms of sigil loadout, and switching characters honestly feels like you're making a choice to switch up gameplans and strategies for the bosses up ahead. I'll go over some of the characters I've been playing the most within the last few weeks and give my general impressions of them.
Captain
The Captain is the all-rounder, capable of going all in on either debuffing, support/tanking, or damage. It's honestly amazing how versatile they are, but also not really a character I care to use outside of story mode. They can do just about anything, but building up their Arts gauge is a pain and a half once you get to Maniac and Proud missions. Enemies are either like the Behemoth and don’t stay still long enough to get your gauge up in a speedy fashion, or their like Bahamut where their damage windows are too small to go past Arts 3 and you’ll have to settle for subpar damage and heals to not waste your DPS time, at least for me.
Io
The first character I tried to main. I saw what a level 5 Stargaze could do in the story mode and I knew I wanted that. She just puts out so much damage it isn't just funny, it’s downright comical. With some charge and crit damage sigils I breezed through a lot of the Very Hard and Extreme bosses with her, but her slow ramp-up made her less fun as time went on and other characters with faster attack speed started overshadowing her DPS. And, like with the Captain, later bosses having faster movement and smaller damage windows (and double bosses being more aggressive in general) made it difficult to pull my weight in harder content.
Rackam
This was the character I went to after Io and he's just as fun as her. What he lacks in the mind-melting damage numbers Io could dish out he makes up for in consistent damage at almost all ranges. And once I learned of his rhythmic burst fire I could almost reach the same amount of damage as Io, if not in massive bursts then in consistent pressure. His skills are easy to grasp, he can comfortable help at almost any team with the damage, he only really lacks support skills. And he can even do Io-levels of stupid numbers with Collateral Damage without killing him self if you dodge right after firing it off… provided you aren’t directly above the boss.
The Grind
Okay, no more getting around it anymore. The grind is horrid. I think I get why Monster Hunter fans have such a hard time onboarding people when they know what endgame is like. The progression up until you hit PWR 15,000 is pretty smooth. You're getting decent-to-good sigils, the grind to level up the important ones is a little painful but manageable, and I was lucky enough to get two War Elementals and a Rackam Awakening Sigil very early into the Proud missions which helped out a lot with the damage.
Then you reach 15,000 PWR and hit the wall where you actually need fully leveled weapons and sigils to get through some of these double or even triple bosses and more. And the materials to get these upgrades can’t exactly be done in an hour or two. This is where hell usually begins. Where the game goes from being a fun little action game with consistent progression to feeling like a job. I said I spend 100+ hours in this game but a good 40 of those was spent grinding slimes for mastery points, grinding eyes for fortitude crystals, and grinding bosses for materials to get one sigil from level 13 to level 14, with 8 more sigils needing a further boost. I honestly wish there were some methods to make this grind easier outside of modes. Optimizing a build can only go so far before the joy is gone and it starts to feel like work. I can kill Vulkan Bolla in about 4 minutes per run but it doesn’t feel like an accomplishment anymore, it just feels like busywork to get the materials I need for leveling up my Damage Cap sigils. And the fact that there are built in damage caps in this game is something I very much do not like as a fan of RPGs. Capping off damage and gating it behind sigils just to increase the grind feels like the game forgot it isn’t a gacha game and added it in so the gacha players could feel those slave chains again.
Part of this boredom and sense of ennui is on me for overplaying this game in a two-week span, but it was fun when I was putting nearly 70 hours into it. Now it feels like a chore. I honestly got sick of it this morning and started using mods that increase the spawn rate of rainbow slimes and other goodies to shorten the grind a little. I honestly feel zero guilt in using them to cut down the hours I spent grinding Bahamut into a single hour of doing a few quests to just craft a damn Terminus Weapon rather than fight that stupid dragon I hate another 10 times with nothing to show for it.
And yes, I do turn off the mods when playing online, folks. I'm not that much of a jackass.
Conclusion
Overall I like this game a lot, but the endgame is pretty hellish if you aren't cheating a little with mods to cut down the grind. I'm hoping they make the progression more fun when the update hits, but this'll probably be my last weekend with the game until Endless Ragnarok. Thank you for reading and if you were ever partying with an AllenX on Steam then thanks for carrying me in all those Bahamut and Behemoth fights, hope my subpar Rackam and Charlotta didn't screw you guys over too much.
Except that one group that made me and only me shoot all the orbs by myself without help. Y'all... y'all made that fight so much harder.
Posted Jun 12, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC