Granblue Fantasy: Relink is criminally underrated. Thankfully, the action RPG gatcha spin-off is getting a new lease on life with Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok, an expanded version of the 2024 release. On top of being an approachable onramp for people new to the Granblue world and its many heroes, villains, and monsters, it’s a surprisingly deep and fun adventure that stands out from other anime-inspired games.
While at Summer Game Fest, developer and publisher Cygames showed off the significant additions to that solid base, with new characters, a summon system, a rogue-lite mode, and more, giving stalwart fans a ton of content while simultaneously reintroducing the game that too many missed the first time around.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok adds six more characters and plenty of new content.
Endless Ragnarok could have been a simple rebranded rerelease with some minor changes for its debut on Switch 2, but the Cygames team is cramming plenty of content into this revamped package. We were introduced to the expansion by Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok’s director, Sanshiro Hidaka, and creative director for Granblue Fantasy spin-offs, Tetsuya Fukuhara.
They explained that the studio has created around 1.5x as much content, adding approximately 20 to 30 hours of gameplay. That’s thanks to the addition of a new story campaign, which takes place after the Relink story. Six characters are also joining the roster, bumping the total playable cast to over 25 members.
The newbies include former foes from the Relink campaign, Gallanza and Maglielle, Beatrix and Eustace, who are familiar faces from the fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus, and finally, Fraux and Fediel, who factor into the expansion’s story. Like all of the previous characters, each of them features unique playstyles, mechanics, and movesets to learn and master.
Master Traits allow players to focus their characters along three different playstyles.
Cygames didn’t stop at adding characters to the game. Every Relink veteran (and the new crew members, of course) has added tools to play thanks to the new Master Traits. Master Traits provide ways to focus on three different playstyles. For instance, Gran can now spec into one of three Master Traits. One specializes in a more straightforward DPS build, another that grants benefits for being a combat healer, and a third that rewards Gran for being the team’s tank.
This way, players can use more elements of each character’s kit to a greater effect, finding fresh ways to play and build teams. The skill trees from Blizzard’s Diablo series are an inspiration for this new system, allowing for more flexibility in player expression.
Maybe the most impressive feature debuting with Endless Ragnarok is the new summon system. According to Cygames, just about every NPC and monster can be summoned and controlled in battle with a limited moveset. Going hands-on with a build of the game, summons added another fun layer of bombast to combat, with towering monsters like golems being conjured to destroy everything in sight. In practice, they’re powerful and offer a bit of respite to the party, absorbing enemy attacks while wearing down tough bosses.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok feels like a whole new game rather than a simple expansion.
While discussing the creation of summons, Fukuhara revealed a surprising connection to an oft-forgotten classic PlayStation fighter. “Tobal 2 featured a system where the main cast was just over a dozen characters or so, but in the quest mode, you could use over 400 characters of all power levels. It was a super crazy idea,” Fukuhara explains. “I remember having a lot of fun with it myself. So we discussed how to implement this.”
After playing Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok, its scope feels more like a whole new game rather than a simple expansion. When asked why Cygames opted to build on top of Relink rather than create a new title entirely, the answer was simple. Fans of the original were enthusiastic for more Granblue, and base Relink took a long time to release.
“We wanted to be able to deliver a product as quickly as possible for the players who wanted more Relink. Cygames is still new to the console development world. We wanted to deliver a high-quality expansion rather than focus on a sequel that might take too much dev time,” says Hidaka.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a hidden gem that more people should give a shot.
A perk of using Relink as a base for Endless Ragnarok is the inclusion of a roguelite mode called Confluxes. These missions pit players against a series of quick skirmishes that reward modifiers after each victory. Conflux reuses arenas and enemies from the game, with little to no exploration between fights.
That’s slightly disappointing compared to the rest of the pillars of the expansion. However, Conflux’s loop isn’t meant to be an endgame grind. Rather, it’s designed as an alternative way for players to level and gear up characters on the roster who aren’t yet up to snuff.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is already a hidden gem that more people should give a shot, and Cygames is aiming to make it properly shine in an already crowded summer release season. The sheer amount of additions shown at Summer Game Fest is impressive, and if the full release matches the vision explained to us, Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok is poised to get the much-needed second chance it deserves.