Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Part 2 (the CONS)

I am a very fussy gamer. I don't have a lot of patience for things that aren't what I am looking for in a game and I think that is perfectly ok. There are a ton of options for gamers and therefore I don't normally stick around for a game that doesn't fit the bill entirely for me. I quit on more games than I complete and I think that most people are that way.

Granblue Fantasy Relink started out really great and I had a lot of good things to say about it in my previous writeup, but now I am going to focus on some of the things that turned me off about the game and also why I am unlikely to continue playing it.

I have already moved on but want to point out the game's shortcomings just so people can have a good idea about the game in it's entirety.

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CON: Combat takes too long

I think that the general idea here is that they were tying to make a game like the very popular Monster Hunter franchise that I tried to get into, but didn't really enjoy it. A lot of other people have though seeing as how they have sold something crazy like 100 million copies of those games.

The issue I take with the central theme of the game being to defeat bosses on a regular basis is that these battles take a Very long time. Much of this has to do with the massive HP pool that said bosses have. The combat doesn't get any more difficult and honestly, the fights are actually pretty easy even once you step the game's difficulty up to "hard." I rarely step games up to hard level but I was breezing through bosses without really having any strategy at all.

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If you desire to do so, you can just stand really far back out of harm's way and let your 3 teammates do all the work. This will take longer but they will eventually win, even on hard. If you turn on the "assist" function the game basically plays itself.

After a bunch of battles I found myself losing interest in even participating.

Con: Leveling up basically IS the story

I don't mind a game not having much in the way of a story, but as far as your objectives are concerned in this game, the entire point of all that you are doing seems to be leveling up all of your nearly 20 characters as well as their weapons in order to progress. The various things you can equip are very limited, and the only thing that you really need to do is occasionally visit the blacksmith and upgrade your main weapons.

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There is a massive "skill tree" that is called "Masteries" and while i put a bunch of time into choosing just the right things at first, I quickly came to the realization that none of this really makes that much of a difference and I believe the entire reasoning behind all of this is for this to be a time-sink so you will grind in order to level everyone up.

While there is a main character in this game, you have the option of playing as anyone, which is kind of nice until all of your toons are many levels apart from one another and you are simply running around doing repetitive quests in order to get XP. I don't mind a bit of grinding, but after a bit that becomes the entire game and since combat kind of loses its lustre after a few hours, this stops being fun.

I enjoy the casual nature of this game but after a bit you kind of get tired of simply hitting square all the time, hundreds of times in a row for a single battle.

Con: Too much voice acting

I think the voice acting in this game is actually done very well and I applaud that. I mentioned before that I think the way that you are able to skip nearly any scene or story segment is done very well in this game. However, there is constant yammering that takes place during fights that might have had good intentions but after a while I just want everyone to shut up because it adds nothing to the game and the talky talky talky is not relevant to what is actually going on in the battle itself (such as a companion warning you about incoming missiles or something like that).

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There also doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why the various characters choose to talk. During the boss battles the amount of yammering is just a mess of characters talking over one another at the same time and it's annoying. I wish there was an option to disable this.

Con: Vyrn is irritating as hell

JRPG's seem to have some sort of intense fascination with some sort of cute floating character that follows the group around and give you hints about where to go and what to do.

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I have disliked this sort of character ever since Zelda Ocarina of Time introduced us to "Navi" all those years ago HEY! LISTEN! HEY LISTEN!

I guess it is just protocol with Japanese-centric games but even though I have previously said the voice acting in this game is pretty dern good, Vyrn is just annoying in every sense. He/she/it is the Jar Jar Binks of this game and I hate that creature.

When I looked into this a bit I found out that Japanese players have a similar disdain for this character when playing in Japanese.

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Biggest CON for me, personally

The main reason why I am going to be stepping away from this game, probably permanently, is because many years ago MMORPG's kind of had some bad impacts on my real life and after that instance I decided that I wasn't going to play MMO's anymore.

Now Granblue Fantasy Relink technically isn't an MMO but since the game never actually ends and your objective is to just play it forever like Diablo games or the Destiny series of sci-fi games.

I prefer to play a game that has a beginning, a story, objectives, and finally an end. One of the commonly held scrutiny of Granblue is that the actual story part of the game is very short and the real objective of this game is "end game material" and that my friends, is something I have never enjoyed ever since writing off MMO's around a decade ago.

Granblue is a pretty game that kind of lacks an identity. It isn't an MMO, it isn't a story adventure, it isn't a shooter, it's not really an open-world game either even though it tries to act like it is.

For me, the cons outweigh the pros for this game and while such a game might appeal to other people, this one just isn't for me. If you do like casual RPG-like games that don't ever end and the whole idea is to just get more and more powerful and take on increasingly powerful boss fights, this might be a decent one for you to check out especially if you have a PS-Plus account because it is currently free and likely to stay that way for quite a while.