I downloaded this app specifically for this game. Here are my first impressions:
The English version is great! It's far better than a simple machine translation. In fact, it's better quality than some global games I've played. That's good, because there is a *lot* of text. Whoever translated and localized it knows what they're doing. The Japanese voice acting, for the most part, is high quality and there is a ton of it.
It's a shame there's no official western release, though, and I doubt there will ever be, considering the game is five years old. The UI is dated and there are load times everywhere, but the art is gorgeous. Character designs are pretty good, if you liked Final Fantasy 9 and 12's characters, you'll find more of that here. I'd go on longer but apparently there is a 1000 letter limit.
GBF was recommended to me by a friend. I initially downloaded it in order to play with them and I'm glad I did. Casting aside some of the issues like items that are rarer to come by than they should be (ones tied to character progression in a game with hundreds of them), the countless currencies and systems that will confuse new players, the somewhat complex interface for some menus (in a bad way) and issues that are more based on personal opinion like the gacha system and the excessive fan service, the game is actually quite enjoyable. There's an endless stream of content to engage with, complete with a main quest, side quests and seasonal events (and some fun side content like the casino). The game is also very focused on the story aspect of the quests. There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of text in this game. Each character has their own personal background and story progression that you can explore as you level them up, side quests and events also have a lot of dialogue in them and sometimes you won't be in the mood for the infodump so you're gonna rely on your trusty skip button, which includes a brief summary of what is happening in that scene. The world building is somewhat loose, the in-universe rules seem to bend sometimes and there's an ever expanding cast of characters with completely different backgrounds, origins and explanations as to why they possess the powers they do. That's not a problem to me personally but I can see how it might not be to the taste of people who enjoy stricter power systems and more interconnected workings when it comes to magic, technology and/or time periods. The characters themselves are quite interesting, too. They come from a variety of backgrounds, are associated with different groups like factions or institutions and belong to different races like humans, human-like races with distinct attributes like animal ears or horns or even the primal race, which describes characters associated with the world's origin in a way that you will have to find out by yourself.
This game's strongest suit is very apparently the art. The voice acting is stellar, as expected. Famous voices give life to many of the characters you'll come across and if you're like me you're never going to grow tired of hearing the same voice lines every time you cast a character's ability. Some of the stories in the game are also fully voiced and they even have special voice lines for special occasions like birthdays, valentine's, white day and Christmas. The art is stunning, with impressive character splash art, sprites and other illustrations. A lot of character and weapon designs are very interesting too. I am a fan of the artstyle present in the older material but the new one isn't bad either, I just feel like the older one had a bit more personality and the character designs felt more grounded. You can see the difference between new and old character splash arts for yourself and draw your own conclusions but I think both can be appreciated for what they are.
The soundtrack is definitely the absolute best aspect of this game by a longshot. That's not to say the visual elements are bad, quite the opposite. They're a testament to how amazing the music in this game is. Plenty of soul-touching, inspired tracks bring vivid atmospheres to the scenery, evoking tone and emotion to better match the situation. Legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu has contributed to some of the jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring tracks you will find in this game. They alone should be a reason to play this game, but if not then consider listening to the soundtrack somewhere else, such as on YouTube.
Mechanically, GBF is a solid game. You have your standard RPG class system complete with weapon proficiency, class progression, skills and much more. Your team and weapons/summons correspond to a certain element, your teammates have preferences for weapon types, they fill certain archetypes or roles in the party and there's a lot of depth to the strategy within a team's composition. Learning to use different characters and classes is a lot of fun and your own classes have unique mechanics that set them apart from one another. Branching out is even encouraged (and recommended) as you'll unlock more advanced classes and gain some stat bonuses. As you progress through the game and face tougher enemies you'll start to notice that spamming your skills won't get the job done and you'll need to harmonize your skills with the correct timing and cooldowns across your whole party. Builds can get pretty convoluted later on and you'll definitely need some sort of help if you don't want to spend the whole time reading up on different effects and their variations. Guides are really useful and getting the help from an experienced player can be even better, but min-maxing is not necessary to enjoy the game's various contents.
The gacha system is very present but I found that it's not extremely greedy. Some rare events can give you a lot of pulls (I'm talking hundreds with little to no effort) and the smaller ones can still give you a 10× here and there, plus the rates are pretty standard. You'll want a few characters and summons from the gacha but not everything needed for a good build comes from it.
In conclusion, it's a good game that I recommend checking out if you're into turn based RPGs with a lot of story content and an expansive universe filled with charming characters and amazing art, with a complex build system. It is inescapably a gacha game though, so keep that in mind.
Easily the best mobile game I've played and my catalogue is very big. it's a bit hit and miss with some people because traditional JRPG fans will love this due to the grind to get stronger, fully voiced stories, constant updates and deep mechanics. The other groups that might not like this are the people who want to pay their way to get strong or just cant handle the grid cause they want "fast and rewarding instances". Overall, if you decide to join, you won't be disappointed at all. Rich story with good art, characters, developers and insane amount of freebies
I play for six years and this is the best game I've ever played!!!!
The character design is just amazing. I am moved not only by the main story but also by every side story. The magnificent voice acting further drags me to the story.
The system allows you to make weapons, change to different jobs and nurture characters. There are a lot of buff in the game and I have great times thinking of strategy to win in battles.Time is needed in this game, but it is really worth your time.
BTW, you can change the language into English in the game, so it is highly recommend for English players too!!!
Easily one of, if not THE best mobile RPG I've played. It's easy to get into and has depth for long-term play. Try it, if nothing else. You will not be dissapointed.
The only con of this game is super slow progression. Aside from that, this game is great and worth putting some money into. Cygames is super generous too. This game is much better than than newer game, Dragalia Lost, tbh. The internet communities have so many fixes for this game to do it's really easy to understand. I also think it was clever for them to make an English setting instead of a new server.
Man, it's been 3? 4 years? since I last reviewed Granblu and you know what? it's still pretty good. they've implemented better rewards for newer players and some quality of life changes that have really improved the overall experience. I really can still wholeheartedly recommend this game. it's still incredibly grind heavy with some of the more samey fights that you have to do hundreds or thousands of times. still not having an auto repeat battle function for these fights is one of the major flaws of this game. it has generous annual rewards, typically around New Year and frequent rewards throughout the year. The community is still going strong, but none of the old resources, such as guides for weapons and overall layouts, have more or less disappeared. there are new resources, joining a crew and hopping on discord with these individuals usually will provide ample resources. obviously assuming their moderate to veteran players of course. and when all else fails Granblu wiki has been left in place with ample resources to spare. So even if many of the variety has disappeared. they're still the Crux holding the community together.
TLDR; game good, check it out. join a crew and frequently check granblu wiki for information.
I'll like to start off saying I started the game during the 6th anniversary, and would like to emphasize to all players out there that's hesitating to start playing due to being behind content, that it is never too late to start playing Granblue Fantasy.
I'll cover some of the features I find enticing in this review, starting with the basics. This will be a very in depth review and covers majority of what I love about this game.
Graphics: Beautiful. Simply beautiful. There are some really intricate illustrations in the story cutscenes as well. There's also an appearance feature where you can change your character's outfit to story art, paid and free costumes, or even the multitude of awakening splash arts from all variants of the same character.
Storyline: This is where the game gets really good. I'll say that in the early stages of the main story, where it was written many years ago, could definitely be better. But the latter was absolutely fantastic, and I can't ask for a more beautiful fantasy setting than a world above the clouds.
Gameplay: Now this is a bit tricky to review. The gameplay is really in depth with many layers of mechanics, but it's not something very accessible to newer players with their limited character lineup and grid. But know that characters are not everything and the tier list is not a gospel that'll fix everything. This game relies extremely heavily on your grid, or in another words, your weapons and their synergy with summons. All essential weapons you need are farmable and you don't need to pay a penny to reach endgame, just a huge amount of grinding. In fact, you'll be able to hit the damage cap with almost any character with a solid grid so although character kit is very important, it's not an entirely a necessity and you can build a team of your favorite characters instead. Overall, the gameplay is really fun and at times, challenging. I'll explain accessibility of characters shortly.
Sound/Music: The sound effects in combat is especially gratifying once you're used to it and able to dish out solid damage. The music is wonderful as well, and there are certain boss fights with their own original soundtrack, some of which has lyrics. There are also outfits, summons and characters you can have in the home screen that changes the background music, as well as charge attacks that changes the bgm in combat.
Characters: Gosh I love this bit. The devs evidently invested a lot of effort in building up every one of their individual characters. From what I've seen so far, the ratio of girls to boys in this game is about equal, that means husbandos and waifus are both plentiful. Apart from the already complex lore, and the multitude of events where even less common characters are featured, characters have fate, and cross-fate episodes, that further elaborate their lore and relationships. Furthermore, every year during occasions like Valentines Day and White Day, every character has special dialogues prepared for you. They add episodes to every character every year and with hundreds of characters to prepare, you can expect the developers to have already planned them out long beforehand. In these events, you can give and receive chocolate from the opposing gender in the respective, appropriate occasions.
Now that I've covered the basics, I'll go into the much less commonly discussed features I find promising.
GACHA: There are only 2 times you should pull in gbf. Flash Gala and Premum Gala, that is held during the mid and end of every month respectively. Why? Because not only are exclusive characters available to the pool then, but also SSR rates are doubled. The characters are consistent and will return without fail, which is why it is recommended to save a total of 300 pulls (includes both crystal draws and ticket draws) to spark a unit of choice. Gacha pools have weapons and summons, with some weapons unlocking their respective characters. Note that gacha weapons won't be used till very end game so it's recommended to not withdraw any gacha items from your crate unless it's absolutely necessary.
The Grind: Be prepared as Granblue Fantasy has a truckload of content and grind waiting for you. The grind is unlike any other game I've played before. In fact, you can expect to be playing GBF as much as a typical mmorpg as the stamina system's practically non-existent with the sheer amount of stamina pots, berries they provide through events and other sources. I'm afraid that describing the amount of grind isn't enough to prepare you for what's to come. By all means, please, experience the feeling of slowing sinking into the abyss yourself.
The primary sources of grinding would be Story Quests, Special Quests, Events, Arcarum, Casino and Raids. Story Quests and Special Quests are basically where you farm for most basic mats, Arcarum is expedition based where you can get exclusive rewards from exploring areas and defeating monsters, casino and raids and pretty self explanatory.
I'll be covering the various Events and very briefly, the Casino here.
Limited Events: The game has been 6 years running thus far. You're probably thinking. "Damn! I missed so many events." Now first of, I'll like to once again bring up the topic, that all essentials to a good grid can be farmed without events. Events are in most cases, just fodders for skill levelling your weapons which is plentiful elsewhere."I don't care! I'm a collector! I want all events" Don't worry. All events will rerun once, before permanently added to side stories. Yes. Even now, events from years ago are still accessible there with all the rewards in stock. You can still get them now and always, and more events you missed will be added to the side stories given enough time. This applies to collabs as well, though not necessarily all of them. These events are not challenging as well, and even newer players would have no problems clearing them with exceptions to Maniac or Nightmare difficulties, which is not necessary in snagging the event rewards. They're just there for the bonus crystals the difficulty provides.
Rotation Events: So unlike most events, these events have weapons that are actually relevant to empowering your grid, except they come back regularly in rotation. Every 2 months or so, Proving Grounds, Xeno Clashes, Rise of the Beast and Unite & Fight (Aka Guild War), will come back with rotating rewards. There's nothing exclusive that only comes out once, you'll just have to wait for it to come back again.
Collaborations: Granblue Fantasy did it right. Collabs are to start of, although may or may not have interesting character kits, are never meta tier. But that won't stop you from using them once you get a solid grid as mentioned earlier under Gameplay. All Collabs are given to players for free upon playing their respective events. You will never need to Gacha for collab characters. Story-wise is subjective. There are some for example, that are really good and non-canon, that would lead to a different ending in their anime counterparts. The older collabs might have questionable loop holes due to the time it was written. Nonetheless, they are all refreshing reads.
Challenge Quests: These quests may appear in Premium Friday, Side Stories or Events. You will be given a fixed pre-determined party and you'll have to defeat the boss under specific conditions. Contrary to how it sounds, it's usually very easy and can be won simply by following the suggestions in the character's dialogue.
Casino: Now this is a twist. Tired of grinding 24/7? Come to the casino! Gamble your fortune away and make big bucks. Play games like Poker, Bingo and earn enough chips to get exclusive characters, costumes, weapons, summons and mats. All you need to get em all is your time and sanity.
Anniversary Events: So due to their consistency in hosting the anniversary events, I'll briefly describe what you can expect every year around March. They'll have a roulette where you can spin for a guaranteed 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 gacha pulls for the current banner, with the last day guaranteed to get 100 pulls. This is really f2p and I thought it'll be nice to point that out.
Woohoo! I've covered most of the content. Now it's time for some of the more exclusive features.
Real Life Events: Yes, there are real life events and merchandises you can get that provides serial codes to exclusive promotional items in game. Like outfits, summons and promo characters. This isn't accessible to most outside of Japan but you can still get from from online shopping websites at a reasonable price. Note that every promotional item is not meta and really just for collection purposes.
Longetivity: It's been 6 years, won't the servers terminate anytime soon? With how overwhelmingly popular and busy the game is, I highly doubt it. Raid rooms are flooded end game and theres literally hundreds and thousands of people in guild war ranking. I myself was ranked around 300k despite grinding 4-5 hours a day during the guild war 'Unite & Fight', although it might also be due to the fact that my grid is still rather basic. Furthermore, the devs has announced 12 Zodiacs, one to be released every year. Since 2014, about 6 has been released now and 6 more still pending. You can expect at least 6 more years and even more after that.
1 Server: There's only 1 server and it's the Japanese server with the option to change to English. This means you'll be on the same page as the Japanese and you'll never know what's coming next. I personally dislike games with multiple servers with the global server being consistently behind content. It generally feels like the global version will always be a shadow of a game.
Browser Access: You don't have to download this app to play granblue fantasy. You can play it straight out of your phone or desktop browser without any 3rd party extensions. Just go to game.granbluefantasy.jp
Now I've mentioned a bunch of plus. But is there any downside to this game? Well yeah. Surely there is. Though everything I said above is true, there might be some who disagree or dislikes said plus. So ultimately, it's subjective. I hope you don't take this review and every point I gave to be a good thing. It's based on your preferences. Give it a look and see for yourself if the game's right for you. Also, one more thing. Game eats up your mobile data faster than pac man so be warned.
I'm glad to see this game it's spreading to other genres I hope to see that continue and I hope to see just about every single character on each of those games the characters in this game make it amazing a 10 out of 10 even if the gameplay isn't all that good I would like to see an update to the Sprites
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