Although Cygames has all the time been a cell recreation developer, the corporate has traditionally been fairly good about supporting its video games with some wonderful console-focused spinoffs. Shadowverse obtained Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle, Battle Champs obtained Little Noah: Scion of Paradise, and Dragalia Misplaced obtained… oh.
Although the corporate’s well-liked Granblue Fantasy cell RPG remains to be going robust over ten years after its debut, it obtained its personal spinoff in 2024 with Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Now that it’s been reinvigorated with the launch of a shiny new enlargement, Cygames has ported it to the Swap 2 as Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Limitless Ragnarok. I’m happy to report that it matches completely with the moveable {hardware}, combining thrilling motion, tons of replayability, and exquisite graphics to make for an RPG journey that I’d counsel choosing up at your earliest comfort.
The story takes place within the Skylands, a set of floating islands drifting amongst an limitless sea of clouds, and locations you within the function of a self-insert foremost character known as “The Captain”. The Captain shaped a non secular bond referred to as a life hyperlink with a woman named Lyria who has the highly effective magical capability to seize and summon godlike creatures, and the 2 of you might have shaped a sizeable social gathering of adventurers, nobles, and mercenaries who journey the skies in an airship referred to as the Grandcypher.
You and your social gathering are finally in search of a legendary place on the finish of the skies referred to as Estalucia, however you’re shortly deterred by a non secular group referred to as the Pilgrims of Avia who’re after the identical aim for their very own nefarious causes. In pursuit of this, they shortly seize Lyria to achieve entry to her powers, kicking off a fifteen-hour marketing campaign during which your social gathering pursues the pilgrims to free their good friend and cease the pilgrims.
Admittedly, the narrative is the weakest a part of the whole package deal right here, however that’s to not say that it’s dangerous. A part of the issue is that this narrative is canon with and set effectively after the occasions of the cell recreation, and whereas there may be some supplementary flashback and journal content material that helps to elucidate all the pieces that occurred up until this level, it finally offers a newcomer the identical feeling they’d get in the event that they began watching Sport of Thrones in its fifth season. There’s simply a lot of backstory and subplots right here that don’t get targeted on very a lot, which might really feel slightly disorienting.
Past this, the story itself is just okay. That is the type of recreation that likes to lean on many well-worn anime tropes, comparable to a loud-mouthed, cute, and foolish aspect character who tags together with the social gathering on their journey or overcoming the egocentric huge dangerous on the finish with the ability of friendship.
Such tropes aren’t essentially executed poorly, however after the preliminary credit roll, it doesn’t really feel like a narrative that amounted to greater than the sum of its components. All the identical, it’s a brilliantly well-paced journey, with the highlights being the numerous huge set-piece boss fights that swing for the fences with super spectacle.
Many have in contrast the gameplay loop of this launch to Capcom’s famed Monster Hunter franchise and never with out motive. Whereas the story mode is basically oriented round a linear set of huge and explorable ranges, the postgame (and the true meat of all of it) is constructed round a quest counter the place you choose missions from a menu after which dispatch to numerous arenas and small locales to kill bosses and enemy hordes for drops and rewards.
Although you’re all the time enjoying as a lead character, you dispatch in a celebration of 4, with the opposite three both being piloted by surprisingly competent AI or stuffed in by different gamers you’ll be able to join with on-line or in native wi-fi.
Fight feels a bit like a cross between Kingdom Hearts and Dynasty Warriors, specializing in hack ‘n’ slash gameplay that mixes in abilities and combos in a manner that provides a delicate component of shallow technique. Each character has a base equipment of sunshine and heavy assaults that may be blended collectively for various combo results, whereas a fast menu of cooldown-limited abilities permit for the utilization of extra highly effective assaults, buffs, and different skills.
Once in a while, you can even execute a Hyperlink Assault or Chain Burst to actually convey the ache, working along with your complete social gathering to eradicate enemies with huge display nukes. With this arrange, it’s simple sufficient for newcomers to get the gist of enemy encounters and to have the ability to choose up new character with relative ease, however that’s solely scratching the floor.
A part of the brilliance of the fight system is present in how every character has a particular playstyle that fully alters the way in which you strategy the combos. Should you’re enjoying as Eustace, you battle from a distance utilizing a reloadable rifle that builds up a meter with every profitable shot—as soon as it fills up, you get entry to a restricted clip of particular ammo that does a ton of injury.
When enjoying as Yodarha, a dual-wielding swordsman, you’ll be able to chain collectively combos a lot quicker than different characters whereas additionally buying ‘marks’ for every combo finisher he executes. These marks can then be spent to amplify abilities with way more highly effective results and injury outputs.
There are a number of dozen characters to unlock, every simply as distinctive because the final, which results in tons of mechanical depth to find as you experiment with totally different four-member group compositions for taking down missions and managers effectively. This goes a good distance in bolstering the general replayability; provided that that is the type of recreation the place you’ll be repeatedly grinding totally different bosses and fight encounters for drops and loot, it may very well be simple for restricted playstyles to make the fiftieth run of Quakadile really feel a bit uninteresting.
However not solely do the additional characters make the fight itself extra fascinating by various your strategy to encounters, however in addition they act as an ongoing incentive for the fight rewards as you’re employed to construct your social gathering to the utmost potential.
Character constructing is a big a part of the gameplay loop, and Cygames has achieved an awesome job right here of supplying you with a wide range of methods for powering up characters with out making issues too overly complicated or summary. Past easy leveling, the primary manner you’ll widen your characters’ talent repertoires and stats is thru a easy node-based talent tree.
Although every tree itself is moderately linear, they go very deep to accommodate the veritable torrent of factors you get showered with. You acquire talent factors from exploration, leveling, and quest rewards, however given that each one characters make the most of the identical factors, you’ll must be picky in whose tree you resolve to funnel your newest factors windfall into.
Past this, your characters may be additional amplified via their weapons, every of which may be cast and refined at a blacksmith to boost stats additional, and thru their sigils. Sigils act as equippable passives that may increase particular stats and provide you with a mushy ‘construct’ for a personality to raised form the function that you really want them to play in your social gathering. You get showered with these sigils as quest rewards, and whereas that is initially a random course of, you’ll be able to later entry a approach to dismantle ineffective sigils in change for precious assets to get a lot better ones.
Taken altogether, this results in a gameplay loop the place you’re by no means at a loss for one thing precious to do subsequent. There’s all the time one other character who may use a greater weapon, or a particular sigil you’re hoping to seek out, and these little objectives assist to make the grind rewarding alongside the way in which as you construct your social gathering as much as tackle more and more harder content material that may yield even higher rewards.
And whereas the joy of the grind step by step wanes as you push ever deeper into it, the method itself is smoothed fairly a bit via the inclusion of high quality of life options that minimize out irritation, comparable to a ‘wishlist’ that permits you to spotlight enemy drops you’re in search of and kind for quests which might be possible to offer them to you.
Although the entire recreation is new to Nintendo audiences, the explanation this launch is again in lots of headlines is as a result of launch of the all-new Limitless Ragnarok enlargement. For followers of Monster Hunter, that is analogous to the ‘G-Rank’ expansions that always come a pair years after the launch of a brand new entry—Limitless Ragnarok not solely provides a brand new postgame storyline to observe, however enormously expands the endgame with a brand new issue degree, tons of latest missions, weapons, characters, sigils, and an entire roguelite recreation mode that distills the development loop even additional.
You possibly can entry bits and items of the brand new content material early on, however the bulk of it’s accessed after you’ve cleared the comparatively temporary story mode and although it’s a bit disappointing that you just’ve started working for it a bit, Limitless Ragnarok is effectively well worth the wait.
The bottom recreation was already the type of factor during which it doesn’t actually unfold its wings till you’ve reached the meaty endgame content material, and the enlargement content material supercharges this additional by supplying you with harder content material to check your well-trained social gathering in opposition to and loads of new methods to energy them up even additional.
Whereas a lot of the enlargement is just geared toward supplying you with extra, the brand new Conflux mode acts as one thing that’s distinctly new. When you’ve unlocked this, you’ll be able to drop your social gathering right into a twenty-ish minute gauntlet during which you clear rooms of enemies and managers in change for unique rewards and a basic roguelite ‘choose 3’ boon alternative.
These randomly generated boons will give you varied passive buffs that’ll bolster your social gathering only for that run, making successive runs that rather more fascinating as totally different boons encourage you into totally different playstyles.
The bottom recreation was already largely pointed in the direction of working via chains of bite-sized missions, so it feels just like the Conflux is a pure match for the general gameplay loop. Not solely can this be an efficient approach to catch up characters which have been sitting on the bench for some time and will use a gear tune up and degree increase, but it surely serves as its personal separate department of development as you run varied events via more and more harder ranges of enemy waves. The one downside is that it will possibly at present solely be performed solo, which feels slightly odd given how a lot the remainder of the content material permits for co-op play.
Visually, this recreation employs an artwork model paying homage to one thing like Tales of Come up, with anime graphics which might be tempered with only a little bit of realism. Character designs are memorable and distinctive with out being too excessive, whereas animation high quality is impressively advanced, significantly throughout the huge Chain Bursts.
Essentially the most constant spectacle comes throughout the fight encounters, the place 4 characters independently triggering all types of flashy combos and abilities can result in a display awash in rainbow sparks and superb fireworks. All this runs at a clean 30 FPS in docked and handheld; some could also be dissatisfied that there’s not a minimum of an possibility for 40 FPS, but it surely’s nonetheless spectacular that there are not any apparent hitches even with all of the particle results and animations enjoying out directly on display.
