Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok Review
Two years ago, Cygames pulled off what seemed like an impossible feat. I’m still a bit in awe to this day at how Granblue Fantasy: Relink overcame its messy, extensive development cycle. From PlatinumGames’ departure as its primary developer to establishing a brand-new branch office in Osaka to take over its development, it almost seemed like Relink would never manifest after multiple years of waiting and, sometimes, complete silence on it.
Yet somehow, Relink finally released and surpassed my expectations. While I’m somewhat familiar with the Granblue Fantasy series, I wouldn’t consider myself a fan compared to the people who regularly play the original game on browser and mobile. The majority of Relink’s players are in a similar boat - either minimal or no familiarity with Granblue, yet still found enjoyment out of Relink.
It speaks volumes when the overwhelming response to Relink from its playerbase was “please, we want more”.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok only came into fruition because of that response. The initial concept and idea of it didn’t even come together until a few months after Relink released. There was no plan to support Relink further beyond the three smaller-scoped post-launch updates that added a few new endgame quests and the characters Seofon, Tweyen, and Sandalphon.
Taking Endless Ragnarok’s relatively short two-year development cycle into account, I think it is a highly impressive expansion to Relink - but I think it is important to set expectations of what it brings to the table. It is not a full-fledged sequel that completely revamps the entire game; Endless Ragnarok continuously builds upon the endgame systems of Relink with new harder quests and a vast array of new mechanics to build up characters to tackle them.
The release of Endless Ragnarok also brings a substantial patch to the base Relink game that improves a lot of its pain points in grinding, and adds widely requested quality-of-life features, such as a button to instantly unlock all nodes in Mastery Trees and searching for Sigils in the inventory based on the specific Traits they possess. Since both Endless Ragnarok and this new Relink patch release simultaneously, my overall thoughts in this review won’t isolate them from one another because I experienced them together as a whole.
Relink veterans loading up their endgame saves into Endless Ragnarok will probably experience the same surreal feeling I did for the first hour. While completing the quest “The Tale of Bahamut’s Rage” is required to start Endless Ragnarok, the new content doesn’t begin right away because the game still has to “catch up” your save with the new features implemented in Endless Ragnarok that interface with the base Relink game directly.
Upon loading up that save into the starting Folca town, a small cutscene with previous boss characters Gallanza and Maglielle occurs, which hands over their specific Crewmate Cards so players can unlock them immediately. Then, it has players travel to the other locale, Seedhollow, to introduce its new Conflux roguelite mode. Throughout this process, several pop-up windows appear to notify players that there are new Settings they can tweak with; some of them are quite useful, such as hiding the damage numbers of your allies and minimizing the graphical effects of their skills to make battles more visually readable.
Players will have to do a quick condensed run of the “easy” and “normal” difficulties of the Conflux mode because this is more meant for brand-new players who are going through Relink for the first time, but it has to “catch up” existing players by teaching it to them. I’ll dive into this new roguelite mode a bit later. Just be aware that Endless Ragnarok won’t kick off immediately.
Those who want to play the six new playable characters right away have some options to consider. Gallanza and Maglielle are easily recruitable because they give their exclusive Crewmate Cards right away for those who have met the story prerequisites to start Endless Ragnarok. Beatrix and Eustace are available to recruit for one Crewmate Card each, which are rewarded in the initial Conflux tutorial quests.
As for Fraux and Fediel, they can be unlocked as well - but there’s a caveat. They both cost two Crewmate Cards each, but if you wait until they officially join you in Endless Ragnarok’s main story, they’ll give you their exclusive Crewmate Card that does not consume any of the generic Crewmate Cards. It’s a fair compromise and ensures that people who are eager to play Fraux and/or Fediel won’t have to wait to play them.
Endless Ragnarok officially begins when Seofon and Tweyen notify the player in Folca that there’s been a new disturbance that’s been basically mutating monsters. Unlike Relink’s story chapters, Endless Ragnarok’s main story progression is driven by knocking out quests in the new Fatebreaker-grade that opens up. This means that all the main story quests in Endless Ragnarok can be played in multiplayer.
While I appreciate this change, it does affect the main story’s sense of flow in Endless Ragnarok. Although Relink’s main story wasn’t its biggest strength, I saw it as a fun action movie that frequently presented flashy, varied action sequences through its cutscenes and traversable gameplay stages. The story was detached from the core Granblue Fantasy source material just enough that it was still digestible to players who had no attachment to the IP.
Endless Ragnarok does away with that narrative experience, which makes sense when factoring in its relatively quick two-year development cycle. There is still a main story in Endless Ragnarok that it’s building up, but the way it executes it is quite lackluster.
After completing several main story quests, a small memory vignette will play; these are presented similarly to Relink’s Fate Episodes for characters. They largely focus on the mythos behind Fraux and Fediel, which, I imagine, has a lot of interesting details for those that are already invested in the lore of the larger Granblue universe. As for me, I didn’t care all that much, and it’s largely because the existing cast that was established in Relink… don’t do much of anything at all.
Main story scenes in Endless Ragnarok consist of simple character interactions. There are no new explorable zones; quests usually revolve around beating bosses, though there are a small handful that don’t feature a boss. For better or worse, Endless Ragnarok highlights the narrative pros and cons of having the Monster Hunter-esque quest board progression be the primary structure to deliver its main story progression.
Another consequence of Endless Ragnarok’s shorter development cycle is that most of its bosses are reskins of older ones with a few new moves and mechanics to look out for. Of course, there’s certainly a handful of exciting brand-new fights; I’m quite fond of all of them, and the final main story boss is a highlight for me. Enemies are more aggressive, hit harder, and require players to consider how they’re building their characters even further.
This is where Endless Ragnarok truly shines with all the new character progression systems, such as Weapon Transcendence and Master Traits. A problem that emerged from Relink’s endgame is that Terminus Weapons became the de facto best-in-slot weapon for pretty much every character. It diluted character builds because the massive power gap between Terminus and other weapons made it worth using, regardless of the defensive penalties it incurred.
Although no one aside from Seofon, Tweyen, and Sandalphon got any new weapons added to their arsenal, Weapon Transcendence makes everyone’s existing selection of weapons a lot more viable to wield. As players progress through the main story of Endless Ragnarok, they’ll gradually unlock the ability to transcend each of a character’s weapons.
I won’t get too into the weeds since there’s a lot to Weapon Transcendence, but it further strengthens each type of weapon into a “roadmap” of how a player wants to build that character. For instance, Defender weapons now raise a character’s damage output the higher their max HP is, and Stinger weapons grant additional damage bonuses based on how much a character has gone over a 100% Critical Rate. There are more aspects to the Weapon Transcendence mechanic, but that is the basic blueprint of it, and I think it rectifies much of the game’s previous weapon balance issues in Relink. At the very least, it makes it much more interesting.
Meanwhile, Master Traits are another new, significant way to power up each character. After a character reaches level 100, players can further invest Mastery Points (MSP) into them to raise a new Master Level bar. As they increase that Master Level, they earn circle, diamond, and hexagon-shaped materials that they slot into Master Traits spread throughout a character’s three different Master Style trees of Insight, Essence, and Crux.
Each Master Style bolsters and/or modifies different parts of a character’s kit that push them down a lane of specialization. For instance, Katalina has a Master Style that focuses on lengthening the amount of time Ares is summoned, and provides additional damage bonus buffs to Katalina based on its duration. On the other hand, Katalina can decide to re-spec out of that if a player isn’t jiving with it, and instead opt to enhance Katalina’s buffing capabilities to the entire party.
The Insight, Essence, and Crux Master Styles each have their own unique set of Rank Perks and Rank Style pools of Master Traits. While a player receives enough materials to activate every Rank Perk 1 for each of the Styles, there are only enough materials given to fully specialize down one of the three of them.
While the Master Trait system doesn’t completely change up the properties and visuals of each character’s skillset as much as I would like, which other titans of the action RPG genre such as Path of Exile 2 excel at doing, the Master Trait mechanic still brings a meaningful addition that continually keeps Endless Ragnarok players on a compelling treadmill to experiment with a variety of multiple playstyles with their favorite characters. I am looking forward to seeing the Relink community discuss their findings on how every single character can be utilized with all of these new systems in play.
As I mentioned earlier, the Conflux roguelite mode is also another major addition to Endless Ragnarok. It can only be done in single player, and consists of completing three quick stages in a row up to a boss encounter. Then, the player has the option to exit out or continue going; the more stages they complete, the higher the payout will be.
Most stages in the Conflux are usually combat stages in different flavors, whether it be fending off waves of enemies, defeating as much as you can in a limited time, or a mini-boss encounter. There are a decent handful of non-combat stage types too, such as a platforming route to collect crystals, catching a slime rolling away, guessing the correct NPC after shuffling a trio of them, and even an Exit 8-esque spot-the-differences activity.
The Conflux serves as a decent way to grind for useful mats in a timely fashion, while keeping things varied. As each stage is completed, people can select 1 out of 3 Aura buffs that only apply to their Conflux run. There is a separate persistent Resonance tree that gives stat buffs exclusively to the Conflux mode; eventually, the goal is getting through the max difficulty of Conflux as fast as possible to get the maximum amount of rewards as soon as possible.
There’s a decent variety of stuff to see and collect in Endless Ragnarok’s Conflux mode, but it inevitably becomes more and more repetitive. It’s a fun distraction that certainly makes building up multiple characters faster, though I wished it had a bit more variety, especially when it comes to the final bosses in each of the Conflux difficulty levels; they’re always the same no matter what.
Accessing the Conflux’s higher difficulty portals takes place in Tredame, the icy sanctum from Relink’s story campaign. There’s a new NPC by the Quest Counter that fast-travels players there, but the locale is so tiny that nothing else is noteworthy about it aside from the portal to begin a Conflux run.
Endless Ragnarok adds summons to combat, too. They can only be used in Fatebreaker-grade quests, and they’re obtained through first-time clear rewards, quest drops, and side quest rewards. Depending on how powerful they are, they cost between one to three bars on the new summons gauge added to the bottom left of the screen by the consumable potions.
Most of the summons that players call upon can be directly controlled for a brief amount of time, though the camera and movement are clunky for the larger-bodied summons, such as the summons for the various elemental wyverns. Summoning also lowers the cost of subsequent summons throughout a quest, so there’s very little reason to use a 3-cost summon at its full cost. It always makes more sense to simply summon a 1-cost summon first to lower the cost of a 2-cost summon, which will allow a 3-cost summon to be only summoned for 1-cost, instead.
There’s a lot of silly summons that provide helpful effects, as well. Summons also tend to hit hard, and come with a randomized Trait so those who truly want to optimize every part of their build can chase for summons that benefit them indirectly. It does sting a bit that a handful of human characters were only Summons and didn’t become full-fledged playable characters, but that likely comes down to Endless Ragnarok’s brief development cycle once again.
The six new characters and the three added post-launch Relink characters all have obtainable Terminus Weapons. Before you scream in agony, the new patch to Relink makes material farming, including Terminus Weapons, much easier. The drop rates have been significantly elevated. For example, a Fortified Hearth is always guaranteed as a chest reward in the Excavallion boss fight.
Terminus Weapon drop rates have also been massively boosted; though they still aren’t a guaranteed reward, I’ve only had to do two runs of quests that reward them at most for one to appear now. Most of the time, they do drop after a single quest completion, though.
Plus, a new material drops in those same quests that feature a Terminus Weapon reward. These can be used to forge Terminus Weapons that a player hasn’t obtained yet for the standard cast of characters. Some forgeable Terminus Weapons, such as those for Sandalphon and Fediel, require a specific type of material that is rewarded in the Conflux.
Back when Relink was still in its pre-release marketing cycle, one of the more questionable features was the implementation of Assist Mode and Full Assist Mode. The former allowed for a simpler control scheme, while the latter automated all actions aside from moving around. Their primary restriction was that they could not be used for the endgame Maniac and Proud difficulty quests.
Now in Endless Ragnarok, Assist Mode and Full Assist Mode can be used almost anywhere - including all the Fatebreaker-grade quests and the Conflux. While I can certainly see the value of these modes for automating repetitive tasks, Full Assist Mode feels way too strong. It can consistently perfect guard and perfect dodge against any boss, which sorta drains the difficulty out of learning the boss fights if you’re primarily playing it solo with your own party.
As long as a person properly gears up their primary party, they have little reason not to turn on Full Assist Mode if their party can competently keep themselves healed, alive, and do enough damage. I would’ve been more okay with allowing Assist Mode and Full Assist Mode to be flipped on, if a player beats a stage once manually first.
Thankfully, some new post-game challenge fights must be done manually, and those are definitely the hardest quests in the game.
I played all of Endless Ragnarok solo with my review copy, so I didn’t have a chance to test out its multiplayer features. One of the biggest inclusions in the new Relink patch and Endless Ragnarok is that crossplay is supported at last, which allows players on every platform to play together. People can also designate one of their characters as a Dragon’s Dogma-esque NPC Pawn to upload to the server, so people can borrow their character for their party.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok is an excellent expansion given its relatively short two-year development turnaround. It capitalizes and expands on what made Relink’s endgame loop compelling, but it does so at the cost of a lackluster narrative. There are a myriad of new ways to build its now 28 playable characters, and the moment-to-moment action is even more addictive than the base game. I hope that a full-fledged sequel to Relink will come eventually, because I crave more, but I want one to be built from the ground up with the lessons they learned from the first Relink, rather than another expansion that tries to apply additional band-aids over it.