Regarding the soundtrack...Nobuo Uematsu composed for Relink. He's known as the composer for Final Fantasy as well as games like The Last Story, and Chrono Trigger. I have never been dissapointed by his scores

Most of the Fate stories actually do explain how/why each character joined the crew! Added a lot more than I thought it would, as I usually don’t care for character exposition dumps

Bit of an update on the difficulty thing. I agree that until very hard, they're pretty much a breeze if you're experienced in action RPGs, however, the next difficulties do actually start to be harder. For reference this are the difficulties Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Extreme, Maniac, Proud. I just got into extreme, and it does pick up. Maniac and proud are the difficulties where assist mode isn't available btw, so I'm looking forward to those.

Been looking forward to playing this game for quite a while. This review was great and made me want to play it that much more

I feel for this game they off-loaded the challenge to the endgame and to achieving maximum rank in multiplayer missions (the devs did showcase an endgame boss that one-shotted their entire high level party), I suppose the intention is to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the story and finish the main campaign even if they play on the hardest diffculty.

Well, Cygames is mostly known for mobile games, so with every different genre they tackle they try to have the most casual-friendly approach to them. As was the case with the Gran Blue fighting game, where your specials all come from Smash Bros'-like action commands (pick a direction and press a button). Tho in this entry they did say they wanted to provide a wider scope in terms of difficulty, but I guess the hard content is way beyond the main story. I think it's pretty much a given that this is supposed to be a entry point both for the mobile games' Cygames fans, as well as Cygames themselves into the ARPG genre. Not that I'm complaining, just pointing out why the difficulty may seem lower than expected for those out of the loop. That, and the games that the audience of this channel usually play have a lot more envolved combat systems. I don't really play games for difficulty. Be it me that is face rolling enemies or the enemis are face rolling me, I can have equal ammounts of enjoyment as long as the game's mechanics and presentation work for me. Still as excited as before to play this game tomorrow!

On the issue of the difficulty. The main campaign is not where the focus of any sort of challenge is. You aren't timed or graded on anything through the main campaign, and have been told by the Devs that assist mode is available for the entirety of it. The quest difficulty post game spikes, and continues to by skyfarer rank. The main game is throwaway. Its just a vehicle to dip your toes in, and have some spectacle.

The fate episodes do explain what the “side characters” are doing while the story unfolds and why they are there and also contain battles, I hope you give them a shot whenever you can!

1:30 A JRPG can be an Action RPG too. Like Tales of series, Kingdom Heart, FF15/16/7R, Star Ocean series, Scarlet Nexus, The World Ends With You. They can be Strategy/Tactics RPG too like Fire Emblem, FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre. All are part of the JRPG genre.

Regarding difficulty, post story quest have multiple difficulty level that you have to progress throught with rank up mission to unlock next tier: easy

I've been enjoying it a lot, it's very addictive, so far at least (just in the "final chapter" atm). It's not what I thought it was gonna be, but not in a bad way. Lol, I've playing mostly Eugen too, 😊

Japan is killing it with all these games. Palworld, Granblue, Like a Dragon (if you don't count the controvercy) and later DD2.

This was a good review. I just finished story and finally got to do multiplayer with my brother. I really wish they let us do the story together, because it got WAY more fun when we finished campaign and got to group together.

On the difficulty note, the extreme mode for story campaign will be unlock when you finish chapter 0. all mops and boss are lvl 90 and above. I have 4 characters with lvl 100 and the highest weapon i can get but still struggled

I prefer not to swap between characters. I feel much more connected to the character I'm using, which motivates me to master it. From my perspective, multiplayer is the solution to the main complaints about 'controlling' other players. Regarding the story of the other characters, I've heard there are specific quests for them. To finish on the difficulty, I honestly think it's an easy fix they can address in the next patch and addons.

I played the demo yesterday, and almost completely lost interest when I found out I could win all the fights one-handed, no, I'm not joking; due to the fact that most characters have a lot of movement when attacking I found that I didn't need my left hand in the slightest to play... XD

Deff understand your issue with the difficulty but sometimes it’s nice to have a game that you can turn on and enjoy playing. To me I feel this will be good to enjoy and have fun with.

I’m absolutely loving this game.

Hey, I watched all your streams so far with GBF, and I agree absolutely with everything. *BUT* ... The 'difficulty' part I feel like I need to add something to it - you died a lot. You didn't wipe even once, that's true, but the game if instead of a critical bar that slowly depletes had a "you can only die 3 times" kind of thing, would be totally, *ABSOLUTELY* different, and you would have wiped at least 10 times through your playthrough. You once said during one of the lasts fights "I did poorly, I didn't deserve to win, and we got him first try anyways", but I feel you did poorly precisely because it was hard, otherwise you wouldn't have died nearly as much. I say this specially because one hard fight you had (the boss who was 30+ levels more than you on the ice area) you had to play out of your mind even tho some NPCs almost threw the fight at the end, and it felt "hard" because you were feeling the idea of "if I die one more time, it's over". My point is, It's 'hard' but doesn't feel like it because there's absolutely no punish from dying, which ultimately makes it easy, but rather than saying "the game feels easy" I would say "being able to die 20 times in a fight makes the game easy even in hard difficulty", to what I feel it describes the problem better... but that's just my opinion on it. Dunno, could be me just rambling. All in all, loved your thoughts. Have fun with the game!

Well the story is the story, as said a tutorial and a introduction to the game. But each character have his own Fate story with 2 missions and 11 segments. Some are really cool indeed.

For some context around the difficulty, up to extreme (1 rank after very hard, which is the rank Ruri is on) you are still progressing in the story, somewhat like how you have HR in Monster Hunter. The game even says that you can keep the assist mode enabled for any quests with Ex rank or below. This means that just like FFXIV, they tone down the difficulty so people that are not that good on action games can play them. The issue of having a story mode that's too easy is still there, but I think it's unfair to judge the game difficulty until Maniac/Proud.

FYI the "side characters" has a unique voice line at the start of a story quest if you choose to play them.

Do you have to do multiplayer to progress the story and power up characters? Do you have the option to solo multiplayer missions? I’m not a big multiplayer guy, don’t really have any friends to play games with and matchmaking is usually inconsistent and/or toxic.

Can't wait to play tomorrow

LOL at the savage Phoenix fight comment. The one fight where my group had to take breaks just to rest our eyes.

I'm having a blast playing GranBlue Fantasy Relink. I understand your downsides but all in all, it's a really fun game so far.

Like with Monster Hunter, the real game starts after the credits. I did not spoiler myself and was expecting a JRPG but the thing I got was suprising in a good way. I love the game so far. And the devs already updated some bugs and thats always a good sign.

can confirm runs realy smooth on pc I5 13600 kf/ 4070ti super 100-120 fps constant @ 1440P.

I think the game should just go to maniac at story and unlock proud and proud + after you finish it. Since even in og game the easy to very hard is walk in the park.

Nobuo Uematsu is John Williams of video game industry.

Looks cool! Thanks for the review.

I watch my friend (a pretty good player) against that exact Boss and get obliterated on medium mode (with Yodarha). I think that Eugen help a lot because you have to dodge way less attack (From what a i see on your footage). Still that remain a problem i guess !

Honestly looks like Strangers of Paradise, I actually enjoyed that game quite a bit.

22:59 He is to clarify that the game is not easy... the story and the main game is easy. There are several difficulties and what would be considered the "high" and "master" ranks quests on this game. The difference is that MH makes you deal with High and Master ranks during the main story but Granblue don't.

the moment I thought "this game is great" was on the very early goblin quest. Thats the first time you can switch around the party setup and I decided to go at it alone, no party, hard mode. god damn those bosses there busted me up good but I had such a blast! dodging and blocking become insanely important and I learned a lot about my character. so for difficulty you could opt out of all or some party members to make your own challenge :D

There's no doubt that the combat looks like Tales of Arise. It may or may not actually be quite different, but it definitely looks similar. Anyway, good video.

I saw a video of someone saying that doing endgame quest solo (with ai) is borderline impossible because the ai can't keep up with the amount of attack and projectile some boss are throwing at you.

"But I don't think they still give you a reason as to why they joined your party." They absolutely _do_ tell you how each person ended up joining Gran's crew via the Fate Episodes @Rurikhan.

The lack of weapon depths kills it for me. I did say it looked kinda mashy before, was hoping for some other mechanics to make the battle mechanics deeper. Add to that, game being too easy, yeah. I’m gonna hold back until I see more updates, thanks for the review Ruri.

you can set it to 120hz frame rate when playing on PC

There is 1 more dificulty after hard unlocked after campaing completion, and it rewards you with a trophy if you complete it. But still history is just a tutorial. "High rank", aka hard, is a introduction to endgame grind "Rank G" in other hanad (manic < proud < proud+ (monster lvl 150)) in other hand.... >,< ... maniac its not really hard by itself but grindy asf and is when you need whole party leveled to reach damage check bosses and stuff.... and aim for S++ ranks is the real "hard" mode cause missions are still doable. You can die a lot before fail a miss in this game. Also in G rank you start getting 2 and 3 bosses in the same arena D: and bosses have new and improved movements. Rank G is where the real fun start i think

It's worth mentioning the Critical Gauge doesn't uhh... it doesnt replenish. It depletes faster for the entirety of that level.

Hearing that it's too easy is a bummer. I was really hoping the later game encounters would escalate the difficulty from what we experienced in the demo. Hopefully raid/future content will crank the challenge up.

It's a bit of a shame to me that it looks like they focused on making a very gradual and forgiving difficulty curve for the game. I get having an easy story mode for people so that everyone has a chance to play it, and even super casual players will be able to play an hour here and there and get something out of it. I'm sure games journalists will have a wet dream over this many difficulty options, and you do have to sell the game after all. But personally I think something like Elden Ring has a way better approach to difficulty, because you can make the game exactly as hard as you want to. With something like this that has about 6 difficulties, and it looks like the first 4 steps are mostly pushovers, that means I'll have to play through at least a dozen hours just to get to something challenging. That said, I still think I'll enjoy the game and I still plan to pick it up tomorrow on PC. But I also have a feeling that because a big chunk of the game will be me breezing through the easy bits while taking in the story, the game might not have the replayability on the high end I'd like. So I may not get nearly as many hours out of this as MH or Elden Ring. It may surprise me, but we'll have to see just how many challenging fights the game has. And if it ends up being a little too shallow, I can wait for DLC or go back to my Safi'Jiva grind. Because at the end of the day I'm looking forward to this game being a nice change of pace before Dragon's Dogma 2, but not the kind of thing I'll put a thousand+ hours into over the course of 2024.

I too was annoyed in the story progression when I would try the red timed trials only to find out it was impossible to do because they were too high a level. Also, I lost a Fate quest because AI kept dieing (and gauge ran out) despite me not going down at all.

To me ReLink is an absolutely beautiful game, with all the depth of a puddle. I played as Djeeta (Female Gran) for thematic purposes, and I really noticed that a lot of fights seem to work against itself. Melee characters like Djeeta need to complete combos to increase there levels, but a lot of the time you are being forced off the enemy before you can even complete a single combo. Ranged characters don't have to do this, and just get free range. For some bosses like Chapter 7's boss, this was maddening as it kept moving away before I could build resources, and when I went to use them, it would move somewhere else and I'd have to start all over again. It's a work of art, very pretty to look at, but that's about it.

Wish I could play it on Steam, but my PC says nope. Not the only one though. Even if my Pc specs kinda suck XD. Hope for a Pc fix soon from the devs.

Don’t forget the end credit song. That was amazing

Apparently you can't platinum this game unless you purchased deluxe or collector's edition because one of the weapons is exclusive to those. It's not clear yet if it's on purpose or an oversight but it's a deal breaker.

Bit of a PSA on the totem trial things; crossing the boundary will stop the trial prematurely. This can be particularly bad for ones that include a boss fight, like the one Ruri showcases in this review, said boss in my playthrough had just pixels to go before defeat when it cornered an AI near the boundary but before I knew it my pogo combo with Zeta bounced me back through the barrier turning the trial off like a light switch. Hope Cygames can make a fix for this or some sort of prevention since it'll be quite frustrating if it happens to future trials. In the meantime be wary of bosses that start rampaging near the barrier.

I just finished the campaign the only issue I had on pc was the sound cut out for a second here and there on me during cut scenes but I enjoyed the game..

Man, thanks for calling the game super easy. Now every time I get comboed to death I am reminded how much of a shitter I am. So fun. :)

I don’t understand this complaint about difficulty. Is the Monster Hunter campaign hard? Like I wanna know if the endgame bosses are challenging because that’s what actually matters. I don’t think a lot of people are buying this game for the single player experience.

i keep trying to get a friend to understand that about difficulty, thats why games like hk, er, heck even mario games are so good. arbitrary number changes usually make enemies hp sponges or mindless fodder, which at that point why play? difficulty game design thats curated to teach the player and grow their skill in the game as it progresses in a steady difficulty is the correct way to do it. the former is just a bandaid for the lack of design.

Thanks for your honest review.

How you described the difficulty is exactly how I feel about monster hunter. I do hope the end game fights here on proud are sufficiently difficult.

Yea been havin a blast wit the game. Its one of those games i shut down to get some sleep and turned back on 10 mins later 😂

is this game is viable to play solo i mean without team just ur character ?

For me, I don't need to be challenged to have fun. A challenge can certainly be something to look forward to and Inam excited for the highest tier endgame of Relink, but I'm not bothered in the slightest that the game leading up to that isn't hard.

I agree with the difficulty. I debated on whether or not to play on hard and I'm glad that I did. It's been fairly easy. I have only died to Furycane.

i played the demo, and immediatly after i saw the first goblin fight and heard the music in the game i was sold, i knew this was gonna be a good game , a game i would enjoy, the soundtracks in this game is so good, and the combat is extremly fun as well :) the bosses are very fun to fight and a great spectacle, , im only at chapter 6 but i cant wait to see how hard the endgame is gonna be :), you also are not supposed to struggle for the story , the real endgame is much much much harder, harder than anything that even mhw can dish out so get ready

Multiplayer mostly arena missions... yikes. I was expecting something with a little more depth to be honest.

okayu 100% got buffed in her new fit, and i am not fucking complaining bro..

extreme and proud pick up in difficulty pretty substantually, the ending of the start of the post game is still really the beginning of the game, 30 hours in i would say is where you'd actually be in the post game so if you're looking at it as the game doesnt start till post game the tiem frame adds up if it takes you 30 hours for the game to get "hard"

One thing to note regarding voices..if you watched the anime’s from several years ago, they seem to have brought back all the original voice actors in both languages.

The main campaign is less then 20 hrs because I completed the campaign around 12-13 hours

My complains are the repetitiveness and variety of the bosses (or rather no variety). Bosses are mostly just reskins or bosses you already killed in the story for the 5th time already just with higher damagr numbers and maybe 1 extra attack. For 8 years in development I expected more.

The fate EPs, Does speak on how they got involved with The main crew. Mostly static backgrounds, VOs on background lore. And occasionally an actual missions to gain Sigil slots. Worth doing even if you don’t care of the lore, they give you a bunch of Stat increases. My only real complaint, which probably because of not enough time for many people to play and beat game, Matchmaking Fails Way too much, even when set to Open, all lvls, no region specific. Even with the quick join feature, does it fail to connect. With the characters, and I’ll say this as a understandably note, that there’s only probably a handful of play styles you can come up with. That being said, even though every character has their unique Gimmick. There’s like only really a 4/5 actual different button Mechanics. ( using ps5 buttons) Mashing Square into Triangle at some point Simplified Dynasty warriors square with Triangle combo enders ( ⬜️⬜️🔺, ⬜️⬜️⬜️🔺 , ⬜️🔺🔺) Timed button presses/timed stance switching. Charge attacks/ charging after combo finisher or Skill use. I’m sure this was done on purpose, as this game is rather simple ( not a bad thing, good thing rather, for the players.) very pick up and play.

if you talk about monster hunter, maybe the will update Threo/Sarasa into Relink, her weapon is basically Switch axe next update will be the lucillus Raid, famous raid in the mobile game version, try hearing its bgm titled ZERO

Regarding the challenge - this game seems to use the same difficulties as the mobile one - meaning very hard is quite easy, and I think part of the reason they did it is to meet the expectations of players who have been with the franchise for many years. Granblue on mobile is both an insanely predatory game, and not a predatory game at all. There's no part of the game where it challenges you to spend money. if you're playing and progressing, you're going to have an easy time with the main story and huge chunks of the side content. At some point you're going to start hitting challenges (when you get to Revans raids, Lucilius, etc.), but those are there more for you to progress more and exploit the insane power of the characters you naturally get along the way. It wouldn't make much sense for "very hard" here to be challenging, when in the mobile game I oneshot it without even using skills. A lot of this game is heavily reminiscent of the mobile one - from the story structure, to mission structure, the focus on side content and farming. It truly seems this isn't a game that's about being able to kill a boss... but being able to kill a boss quickly enough so the time spent farming is worth it. Like, in the mobile game it's totally possible for you to try to join a "Bahamut Impossible" raid fight that's at full HP when you click it, and by the time you join a few seconds later, the other players have killed it and you get no loot cuz you couldn't even land a hit.

Ruri can you keep us updated on how difficulty goes in the endgame? At your own pace obviously

The online is super buggy, serevers arent holding up lastnight tried a 4 player lobby and after one mission it has trouble starting a 2nd or 3rd mission with connection issues. Wish more content creators woukd talk more about this

i was interested reading about the biggest complain about lv 75 raid boss. well, sorry for this. it isn't the late game yet. 75 only about extreme difficulty, 2 levels below Maniac and Proud Difficulty. when you reach later raids stage there's several raid mechanics that you need to observe and prevent it almost like FF14 style raids

this just dropped on PC so I can't wait to get into it after I finish Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth in 6 months

I found myself often comparing this game to wild hearts meets talesof series with hint of FF14. Each character may come of simple to pick up. As level up and unlock masteries. There is a ceiling level yet to explore. The monster battles in this game is amazing.

whats your favorite character guys? for me it's Percival by far, he's a great Damage dealer, buffs the whole party and he really looks like a lord of flames

12:46 FFVIII vibes here

The voice actor for dragon ball super that plays Gohan is Rackam.

I'm a bit nervous about the game if it has the problem of "It takes a LOT of hours to reach anything actually challenging". Especially since it has all these RPG systems that will only make difficulty balancing even harder, so theres a possibility min/maxers will either decimate encounters or you must be a min/maxer to be viable (I've had a lot of bad experiences with MMOs where this happens).

i absolutely agree with everything you said, especially how easy the game is. wonderful game, it just needs to be harder.

While the game is *slightly* easier than it needed to be during the campaign. Keep in mind that this person played almost exclusively with the safest and highest consistent dps out of all the starting characters. And despite his claim that he's not very good at action games he's clearly got years of experience playing rpgs and action games and has the game sense to make a competent build. If you know how to leverage the mechanics there is no honest challenge the game could throw at you that would feel hard. And this game is *very* honest (too honest if you ask me) about it's combat. Individual experience will vary, wildly.

I wish you could Customize the HUD not seeing to many people talk about this . I would like to take away some things or just adjust the size and location. Really takes away from immersion with all the oversized HUD

i agree on the extra chara need a quest or 2, like they put that in the gacha game version why cant they put it here? to save time? that was mistake i think people can relate and like the character more if they add special quest for each characters.

game gets harder if you want it to, but i'm definitely enjoying playing a game that you can just jump in and have fun without it having to be a sweaty souls-like experience.

Been playing strictly on my AyaNeo with 15fps to 30fps. They look fine. With bullet time happens here and there. Yeah. Fine.

With nobuo uematsu (of final fantasy fame) as the composer i would expect the soundtrack to be very good.

Good game just needs another 6-8 months or a dlc to be ready I think; lot of enemy models are re used with just different colors the levels aren't visually appealing and the soundtrack is lacking. Also just to easy and even the hardest end game multiplayer stuff they just have lots of HP not actually difficult or challenging.

It's an action J-RPG not just an action rpg lol I thought you were a gamer dood :3

About the point of the non-main crew members and their involvement in the plot; I understand why they're not involved in the cutscenes as it could get really messy with how many characters there are, but it's still somewhat nice that they still get involved in the conversations during actual gameplay segments, even though it's still at a rather minor level of involvement. As for the difficulty; I feel it ultimately boils down to how slowly progression happens outside of the mastery tree, which is another issue due to how much of it is exclusively tied to the postgame. Because most of the weapons stats are in the second half of their uncaps, which are locked to postgame, on top of not being able to compensate for who you may have chosen to unlock due to how few crewmate cards are available before postgame, it makes it impossible for them to reasonably guess how strong the player's team may be....which can result in scenarios like Cagliostro cheesing the entire main story quest and most of the early postgame due to how absurd of a buff Phantasmagoria is. MSP being a shared pool makes this issue even more glaring because I found the objective best way to handle this was to just get the AI members the 4 skills you want, their perfect evade and perfect block, and then max out the character you mainly play because the AI is godlike at dodging so their health totals only matter if going for S++, but even then their chances of dying don't really become an issue outside of a select few fights.

Only thing that I am aware of is that the difficulty of the game is after the story, the real end-game gets tricky and has real actual mechanics like real raids. Difficulty? IDK, some people never cause wipes in raids and others cause wipes 24/7 so is it hard or bad players? You never know :p

Proud mode moment. Game responds to player complain about difficulty too easy. (Too easy killing bosses? Okay , lets do 3 at the same time)😂

Here are my thoughts on playing this game. I've finished the main story and now post game and doing lots of online play with random players. 1. I love love love the story!! I'm not sure why other people didn't. It's great! 2. The fate episodes were a welcome respite from fighting to learn more about the characters. You get more information on each character, which each have their own story. It reminded me a little of lost odesey which I loved. Some of the fate episodes were combat stories too. 3. I loved the local questing in the game. Super fun and I wish they had added more to this. 4. The gameplay and combat system is a blast! I'm playing on ps5 and it's running great! 5. As far as it being too easy, I think it's a welcoming in for new players. I didn't know anything about this series at all, and now that I have played this I am totally hooked. If it's too hard right off the bat, it will discourage the new players. One of the reasons I am totally addicted to Dark Souls and all of Miyazaki's games is because if you put in the work, you can accomplish great things. I've plantinumed them all. This game felt just like that to me. Do the work and practice and you can do it! I absoutely love this game and I will be playing it every chance I get!!

This sounds sort of like a mix of Valkyrie Elysium and Tales of Arise. I'll probably pick this up on a sale.

"The harder bosses are still so easy 😔" Lucilius in the corner, waiting to be dropped as a DLC boss:

23:37 This is fine. Too many times, or perhaps nearly all the time with these games is your party the weakest link. You level and work on developing your party but they become worthless the moment you're not controlling them directly.

It IS a power of friendship type of story but it is not too deep in that side though. From what I have seen even in the end of the story mode, it seems pretty natural, especially when compared to all the stories of this type out there.

it didnt get challenging up until the rank up to proud where u have to fight bahamut, and then they start throwing in multiple bosses.

I was kinda excited for this but after watching a few reviews I'm not so sure.

Shields up iron breakers 🛡️ ⬆️

The difficulty gives me a lot of vibes of ffxiv (honestly the gimmick rotations too) , I'm hoping once you hit the caps it follows suit and has things that really feel like savage etc