Granblue Fantasy: Relink was easily one of the best action RPGs of 2024. Taking place in Cygames’ hugely popular Granblue Fantasy franchise, Relink was far more than just another pretty anime-inspired battler, mixing enjoyable combat with impressive worldbuilding and storytelling. Keen to bring even more players to the series, Endless Ragnarok is an expansive DLC, adding new missions, characters, modes and quests to the game. Alongside that, the game has now arrived on Switch 2, and Nintendo owners really are in for a treat.
It says a lot that I’ve never deleted the original version of Granblue Fantasy: Relink from my PS5’s hard drive. It’s the kind of game I’ve repeatedly dipped into, even if there haven’t always been other people to play through quests with, and I love the art style, the gameplay loop, and the huge cast of characters, each of which often have wildly different playstyles. Its move to the Switch 2 has undoubtedly brought some visual downgrades in comparison, but it’s largely the same excellent experience, and Endless Ragnarok gives players even more to do.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink finds Gran and his crew in the Zegagrande Skydom, sticking their Skyfarer noses into everyone’s business, because that’s the type of do-gooders they are. They get wrapped up in a whole mess of fantasy shenanigans, with Lyria, a key member of your crew, at the centre of it, with her ability to talk to the Primals, immense monstrous weapons, making her the target for the game’s evil forces. You spend a lot of time fighting off goblins, skeletons and other hateful minions in some of the flashiest anime combat you’ll ever see, before coming up against massive beasts that make it feel as much like Monster Hunter as anything else.
Persevere, and you’ll find a cavalcade of loot, gold and upgrades popping out of everything, which is ideal when you have to use the shared skill points across the entirety of the cast of characters. With the arrival of Endless Ragnarok, that’s even more characters, and even more potential grinding to get them all up to the level you want them to be at, but the action is so tight, and the loop so rewarding, that you won’t feel too hard done by. Ragnarok’s endgame, and the new Conflux mode, do thankfully make it all feel much more approachable, though.
Outside of the central narrative, there are challenge quests, available from a counter in your hub village, steadily increasing in difficulty and reward. They also form the basis of Relink’s online modes, and you can head off into these with up to three other players taking the reins, with full cross-platform play making things easier to find people to crew up with. Equally, the game’s AI is actually pretty smart, and you can play through the entirety of the challenge quests solo without too much worry about not having support.
With the number of characters on-hand, Granblue Fantasy: Relink can feel pretty overwhelming. The key thing is that there aren’t really any wrong choices, especially as the main narrative is very approachable in terms of difficulty. If you like the look of someone, it’s worth trying them out, and across melee, ranged, support and summoner types, there’s a massive amount of variation.
You can alter each character’s loadout too, so if you’re playing solo, you can build them to support and fight how you want them to. It’s not as specific as something like Final Fantasy XII’s Gambit System, but you can definitely make them play in a more specific way, even going as far as removing all their skills so that they just attack constantly.
Endless Ragnarok’s main questline can be accessed once you’ve made it through Relink’s narrative, and for returning fans there’s a huge amount here to make it worth the return visit, from a swathe of new characters to the addition of new mechanics including Summons, which turn some moments into giant Final Fantasy XVI-style monster battles. These are only available within the new quests and content, though.
The Conflux is the other major part of the expansion, adding roguelike runs to the game’s side quests. From a portal down a seedy back alley – you’ll literally find it in Seedholm – you can embark on runs with your chosen party, and as you make it through progressive waves, you’ll unlock Auras which imbue you with new powers and abilities to take you forward, giving you all the tasty joy of creating stupid builds that destroy everything in your path. Of course, there’s various rewards of gear and loot in the shape of Boons to make this an unmissable distraction.
The Switch 2 version of Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok puts in a solid, if not stunning, performance, but while you can occasionally see and feel the downgrades from the other versions, the gameplay loop does a great job of dragging you so deep, you’ll likely forget them.
The key difference is the shift from 60fps on PS5 to a 30fps target, which certainly makes combat and exploration feel a step less fluid. The 30fps holds up fairly well, but you will see and feel drops at various points, whether you’re in the hub village or out in the field fighting off a large number of beasts, especially when you’re firing off an array of special moves. Which is most of the time.
You can also see the heavy lifting being done by DLSS in some scenes, with a fuzzier image, reduced texture quality, or shimmer around the edges of characters, but the image quality is still very good, helped by the broader strokes of the cartoon-like art style. This is a world that I’ve loved since first watching the anime, and it’s just as enthralling on Switch 2 as anywhere else. I won’t pretend that playing it back to back with the PS5 version isn’t an obvious step backwards, but for most Nintendo fans they won’t know any difference.