Granblue Fantasy: Relink Review

Does Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok enrich the slimline RPG? Find out in the GameWatcher Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok review.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink became one of my favourite RPGs in recent times for one reason: it respected my time.

Yes, I do enjoy a sweeping epic RPG story about thunderous godlike gits threatening to destroy the world, but Granblue Fantasy: Relink showed me you could have the spectacle in more manageable pieces by cutting its story into replayable chunks on small-scale maps. I would liken the game to an RPG palate cleanser, a little snack between hearty meals.

With that being said, it did feel a touch shallow. The original game was around 20 hours tops, and while you could grind away for more by replaying levels with different characters and going through the endgame content, that was rather tedious. I checked out once I’d had my fill of the story and experimented with a few characters.

Now we have the Endless Ragnarok expansion, which threatens to show you a bad time in a good way by throwing some really tough challenges at you and adding in new encounters, boss fights, and characters, whilst tweaking a few of the minor gripes from the base game.

Granblue Fantasy Relink sees a crew of adventurers in the Sky Realm get caught up in a plot that could see primal beasts destroy the world. This ragtag group sails the skies, heading to the various floating isles that populate the world, in search of answers and picking plenty of fights along the way. You pick up new crewmates by using Crewmate Cards, and from there, you can mix and match your party to meet the challenge ahead.

The way combat plays out lends itself to a pick-up-and-play style. Battles happen in real time, and the player controls one of four party members, utilising their specialities to help turn the tide. Canonically, you play as the Captain (either Gran or Djeeta), an all-rounder perfect for the main story, but beyond that, there’s a wealth of character options both readily available and unlockable over time.

Given Granblue Fantasy’s success as a Gacha game on mobile, it’s unsurprising that Relink’s structure is mainly bite-sized and riddled with unlockables. Before you wave the red flags, everything is easily unlockable through play, and you can see the end without hoping you spent enough to get there. It has an online co-op side, but it’s surprisingly not going for the live-service moolah.

Yet as I mentioned before, the grind could still get tedious. Endless Ragnarok has come with something of a solution, however. The grind isn’t quite as aggravating now (although this is mainly thanks to a patch to the base game), but the downside is there’s little story here; it’s largely pure gameplay-oriented nonstop fighting against tougher and tougher foes in a beefed-up road to the endgame.

That did throw up an initial concern for me. I, like many Granblue Fantasy: Relink players, wanted more of the game, but I’d hoped for something more story-oriented. When you do get a story, it’s mostly presented in underwhelming vignettes.

It’s a shame because in the main game, the story scenes provided so much staggering showy spectacle. Colossal boss fight intros, skyfaring battles, and vivid world-ending threats were a delicious reward for playing through the linear combat encounters.

Following the story path means you are never too far from some big moment. As a fan of Kaiju movies, Granblue Fantasy: Relink was a constant source of joy as one hulking monster after another showed up to get whipped by my mix-and-match crew.

And while there are plenty of new challenges, a roguelite mode called Conflux, and six new characters to play as, a lot of what Endless Ragnarok offers is effectively more of the same with a fresh coat of paint, especially in terms of enemy design and the reuse of established maps.

I can admit this narrow focus disheartened me at first, given I’d effectively checked out of all this side of the game once the main story was done in the base game. But being away from Relink for nearly 18 months made my introduction to Endless Ragnarok almost a fresh experience.

The reworking of how you build characters with Endless Ragnarok adds a bit more tactical flavour and flexibility that was increasingly vanishing by the end of Relink. Thanks to the new progression systems like Weapon Transcendence, those weapons that seemed largely useless by the end of Relink are useful once more.

Then you have Master Traits, which push your characters beyond the usual levels and open up new Master Level trees where you can slot materials into those Master Traits to boost or modify your character’s loadout.

Before, it felt like you were being funnelled down something of a ‘correct path’ in terms of character builds. With Endless Ragnarok, I actually found myself more involved thanks to a wider set of options. The new quests can be brutal, and the challenge they offer up requires a more considered approach than my default of ‘smack things until dead’.

Now, to clear increasingly complex obstacles, you can tweak a character build to the point they really do feel like a specialist. This solved one of my original issues, where I was reluctant to use too many different characters, as I found favourites and stuck with them through tougher times by brute forcing my way through battles they were perhaps ill-equipped to deal with.

The characters in Relink aren’t exactly captivating themselves, so when any personality was shown, it made it easier to side with those ones. Endless Ragnarok taught me to dismiss that superficial side and look at my options like I would a sporting squad. Different players for different game states.

The tedium of returning to old maps and missions I’d felt before was replaced by a fresh enthusiasm for experimentation. It’s hardly groundbreaking stuff in a wider RPG context, but for Relink specifically, Endless Ragnarok adds the depth where Relink needed it most.

But there’s more. The aforementioned Conflux mode is a single-player-only experience that sees you facing three small-scale stages that might include combat encounters, platforming, or even puzzles before tackling a boss fight. Simple enough premise that has a tempting hook where you can effectively ‘cash out’ after that boss or go for another run in the hopes of a bigger payout.

The thrill here is in the alluring temptation of a higher reward vs. the risks in the unknown of what will come next. You get an Aura buff after completing a stage, building up your character for tougher challenges ahead.

I found Conflux mode to be a welcome break from the main point of Endless Ragnarok. The limitations do begin to show after a while, so I never got fully distracted by its simple allure, but it’s another way this game has smooshed RPG mechanics into moreish snackable bites.

So for Relink players keen to do more grinding and find greater challenges, Endless Ragnarok offers plenty of worthwhile additions. Newcomers get a more balanced overall experience than they would have previously, and really, the only people suffering are those who wanted substantial story additions.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok review code provided by the publisher.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok is out July 9, 2026, on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam.

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