Granblue Fantasy: Relink does the thing most action RPGs only promise. It hands you a crew of four, a sky full of floating islands, and a fight that rewards you for actually learning it. Cygames Osaka built a game that respects the grind without drowning in it.
It is also, quietly, one of the better co-op RPGs of 2024. The published critical score sits at 8.3/10 across five outlets, and that number holds up.
Trailer, via Cygames公式チャンネル.
Zegagrande Skydom and the Grandcypher
You start aboard the Grandcypher, an airship carrying the Captain and a crew bound for Estalucia, the mythical Astral realm. Lyria, Vyrn, Katalina, Io, Rackam, Eugen and Rosetta round out the roster. The ship reaches the Zegagrande Skydom and is attacked almost immediately.
The opening sets the stakes fast. The Captain and Lyria summon the primal dragon Bahamut to fight off the monsters, and Lyria loses control of it. Bahamut turns on the ship. The crew barely subdues it, Lyria goes overboard, and the Captain and Vyrn follow her into the clouds.
That is a strong cold open. It establishes Lyria as a liability and an asset at once, and it gives the crew a reason to be stranded. The game does not waste the setup.
Folca, Rolan, and the Furycane Job
The crew lands and makes for Folca, the nearest village, while the Grandcypher undergoes repairs. There they meet Rolan, the village priest and a self-proclaimed handyman. He is the best character in the game, and the one who keeps the middle act moving.
Rolan needs help evacuating villagers from Tempeal, a nearby island where the primal beast Furycane has gone berserk and kicked up catastrophic windstorms. The crew rescues every villager before heading to Furycane’s shrine to subdue the beast.
This is where Granblue Fantasy: Relink shows what its combat can do. Furycane is a wind-based fight that punishes standing still. You slash, shoot or hex your way through it depending on your party, and the four-character roster means you can build around whatever the boss throws at you.
Lilith, the Church of Avia, and Id
The win does not last. The Church of Avia, led by Lilith, ambushes the crew at the shrine. Lilith captures Lyria as part of her plan to reach Estalucia, and her bodyguard Id defeats the crew outright. They retreat to Folca to regroup, and Rolan agrees to help.
The chase leads to the shrine of Managarmr, where the crew finds Lilith has put Lyria under her control with a special collar. Lyria absorbs Managarmr and escapes again. The crew cannot stop it.
Then Rolan takes them to Seedhollow, the capital city of the Zegagrande Skydom. The story keeps widening rather than looping, which is the right call. Lilith is a real antagonist with a real plan, and Id is a wall the crew has to climb.
Four Players, One Sky
The co-op is the reason to keep playing after the credits. You form a party of four from a diverse roster of skyfarers and take on quests solo or with up to three other players in four-player co-op. The game supports single player, multiplayer and co-operative modes, and the third-person perspective keeps the action readable when four characters are on screen at once.
The genre blend is deliberate. It is a role-playing game first, a hack-and-slash second, and an adventure throughout. The themes are action and fantasy, and the game never pretends otherwise.
Quest structure rewards repetition without demanding it. You can push the story solo and never touch the multiplayer, or you can grind quests with friends and build out the roster. Both paths work.
What the Aggregate Score Actually Reflects
Granblue Fantasy: Relink shipped a million copies within two weeks of release. That is a franchise finding its audience outside Japan, and the positive reviews track with it.
The 8.3/10 aggregate across five outlets is fair. This is not a game that reinvents the action RPG. It is a game that executes one cleanly, with a co-op loop that holds up and a story that keeps escalating instead of stalling.
A few things matter more than the rest. The Bahamut sequence in the opening is the best set piece, and the Furycane evacuation is the best quest. Rolan is the character who carries the middle. Lilith and Id give the back half a spine.
What does not matter: the exact number of skyfarers on the roster, or how many hours the quest list takes to clear. Those are noise. The signal is that Cygames Osaka built a combat system worth mastering and a co-op mode worth returning to.
The Verdict on Granblue Fantasy: Relink
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is the rare licensed-adjacent RPG that stands on its own. It does not require you to know the Granblue Fantasy franchise to follow the Captain, Lyria and the crew to Estalucia. It rewards you if you do.
The combat is the strongest part. Slashing, shooting and hexing give each character a distinct role, and the four-player co-op turns that into a real team game. The story is serviceable rather than exceptional, but it moves, and Rolan, Lilith and Id give it enough weight to carry the runtime.
The weak point is the middle stretch around Managarmr, where the crew loses Lyria twice in quick succession and the chase starts to feel like a treadmill. The game recovers once Seedhollow opens up, but the pacing sags before it does.
That is a minor complaint against a game that gets the fundamentals right. Granblue Fantasy: Relink is worth your time solo and better with friends.
The Numbers Behind Granblue Fantasy: Relink
- Title: Granblue Fantasy: Relink
- Release year: 2024
- Developer: Cygames Osaka, Cygames
- Publisher: PLAION, XSEED Games, Cygames
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC (Microsoft Windows)
- Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat ’em up, Adventure
- Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative
- Perspective: Third person
- Critical score: 8.3/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 5 outlets)
- Copies shipped: 1 million within two weeks of release
Best Reasons to Play Granblue Fantasy: Relink
- Four-player co-op that works with the combat system rather than against it.
- The Bahamut opening sequence, which sets the tone in the first hour.
- The Furycane evacuation quest in Tempeal, the best-structured mission in the game.
- Rolan, the priest and self-proclaimed handyman who anchors the middle act.
- A roster of skyfarers with distinct slash, shoot and hex roles.
- A story that keeps widening toward Estalucia instead of looping in place.
The score at the end is 8.3 of 10. Granblue Fantasy: Relink earns it by doing the basics well and the co-op better than most.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
