While the series’ flagship title is still a mobile game, which is a relic of a previous generation of smartphone RPG experiences, CyGames’ Granblue Fantasy thrives across media – from an anime adaptation and a growing number of spin-off releases. First released in 2024, Granblue Fantasy: Relink served as an action RPG that brought back fond memories of the PlayStation 3 exclusive White Knight Chronicles – featuring a strong narrative but also giving players the chance to tackle the experience their own way through a fun and approachable quest system that drew players into it with the promise of dozens, if not hundreds, of hours. While I am hoping that the development team at CyGames are looking at a fully fledged sequel, drawing from more of the lore and distinct characters offered by the series, for now, a major paid update for the base game has gone live many years later – Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok, expanding upon the original in many ways – from expanded solo and multiplayer content, to new narratives, to new playable characters. But with this not being a cheap $10-20 update you might find with other games… how does Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok fare? Read on to find out!
Where the base game delivered its story through a chaptered campaign full of cinematic set pieces and traversable locales, Endless Ragnarok takes a rather different approach, structuring its entire narrative around the new Fatebreaker grade at the quest counter. The premise kicks off in Folca, where the Eternals Seofon and Tweyen arrive bearing word that unnaturally empowered monsters known as ragnalia have been sighted across the Zegagrande Skydom, seemingly heralding some manner of end-times event, with a familiar face from the wider franchise… Beelzebub… lurking behind the curtain. From there, progression is simply a matter of working through batches of quests, and the plot is drip-fed in the gaps between them. Ultimately, these lean heavily into the mythology of the broader Granblue Fantasy universe and the new arrivals in Fraux and Fediel. Those who are long-time fans of the series will likely find some stuff to enjoy; those who came aboard through Relink alone may be disappointed to find the beloved crew of the Grandcypher largely relegated to bystanders in their own adventure. Add in the absence of any new explorable regions, and it becomes clear that storytelling is the expansion’s weakest pillar. It is serviceable, little else. Hopefully the narrative team are hard at work on a fully-fledged sequel instead.
From an aesthetic perspective, the strengths of Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok come from the foundations of the base game. The original release was strong, and therefore it goes without saying that the foundations this time around still work well. The six newcomers sport some of CyGames’ finest character work to date. It would be dishonest, though, not to mention where the two-and-a-half-year turnaround shows: the monster line-up. The bulk of what you will fight are base-game bosses returning in fresh colours with an extra mechanic, or two bolted on, and encounters designed from the ground up are a rarer breed. When those do arrive – the climactic battle above all – they are staged as lavishly as anything in the series. Between the new summons and the cinematic Primal Bursts, even the reruns rarely lack for fireworks.
So, with the story taking a back seat, how does Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok actually play? The good news is that, despite the content being structured into the overarching narrative and feeling more separate than seamless, it fits from start to finish. Headlining the package are six fresh faces – Beatrix, Eustace, Gallanza, Maglielle, Fraux and Fediel – lifting the number of playable skyfarers to twenty-eight. Set against the sprawling cast of the wider series, that may sound a modest haul, but not one of them plays like a retread of an existing character; each arrives with a toolkit and rhythm all of their own. Recruitment is handled with a light touch, too: Gallanza and Maglielle offer up their Crewmate Cards the moment you meet the expansion’s entry requirements, Beatrix and Eustace will each sign on for a single card earned in the opening Conflux quests, and although the impatient can pay a premium of two cards apiece for Fraux and Fediel, holding out until their story debuts sees the pair join without costing you a thing.
The other big swing is the summon system. Locked to the new Fatebreaker-grade quests, it introduces a fresh gauge that charges over the course of battle; spend between one and three of its segments and a primal beast answers the call, frequently handing you the reins for a short spell of direct control. Better yet, every summon performed makes the next one cheaper – a neat little economy that pushes you to spend freely rather than sit on your strongest options. And should the entire party have their Skybound Arts ready at once, a Primal Burst becomes available, a screen-swallowing cinematic assault that drags the likes of Proto Bahamut or Excavallion onto the battlefield.
For those thinking this could be an alternate questline, it is best to go into the DLC with the understanding that it is primarily endgame content. Simply reaching the new content requires clearing the base campaign, including its post-game Bahamut questline, and arriving with a build worthy of the game’s hardest existing difficulties. In turn, you are genuinely rewarded with some strong, challenging content that actually feels worthwhile playing, although it may leave some less hardcore players slamming their heads up against the wall. One wrinkle sits oddly with me, though. Full Assist Mode – the option that leaves you steering your character while the game sees to everything else, evading and guarding with inhuman consistency – was once barred from the top difficulty tiers. That restriction has now been lifted almost everywhere. The accessibility benefits are there, and that shouldn’t be understated. Yet, it is hard to shake the feeling that difficulty designed to be overcome loses something when the game puts the message “Hey… can’t do that boss? Let me help you”. Purists are not left wanting, mind: perched above everything else sits a small clutch of challenge quests where Assist options are switched off by force, and these are, without exaggeration, the most demanding fights anywhere in Relink. As for how long it all lasts, the quest list on its own is a twenty-hour-plus proposition – and that is before the new progression systems start eating your evenings, which, if you are anything like me, they will.
Speaking of buildcrafting, this is where Endless Ragnarok earns its keep. Anyone who spent time in Relink’s endgame will remember the Terminus problem: those weapons were simply the correct answer for every character, and the gulf between them and everything else flattened buildcrafting into a solved equation. Weapon Transcendence is the response, and rather than papering over the issue with a new tier of gear, it reaches back into your existing armoury – transcend a Defender-type weapon, for example, and its wielder starts converting raw HP into damage, opening up tanky builds that were previously a punchline. Master Traits, meanwhile, give the level cap a reason to exist. Push a character beyond 100, and a fresh Master Level begins accruing, doling out materials to invest across three specialisation trees: Insight, Essence and Crux. Crucially, those materials are rationed – sampling all three trees is possible, but fully completing more than one is not – so every character demands an actual decision, softened by painless respeccing for the chronically indecisive.
And then there is the Conflux, the expansion’s roguelite diversion and, quietly, its most important quality-of-life feature. Strictly a single-player affair accessed from a portal in Seedhollow, it strings together runs of bite-sized stages – enemy waves and mini-bosses mostly, though platforming gauntlets and even a spot-the-difference puzzle turn up in rotation – with a proper boss guarding the end of each circuit. Clear a stage and three Auras are laid out before you, temporary run-defining powers of which you keep exactly one; finish a circuit and the familiar roguelite question follows, namely whether to cash out or gamble on the deeper, richer floors below. It does grow samey once you have seen its full rotation, but as a means of stockpiling upgrade materials it is leagues more pleasant than repeating the same quest into oblivion. Stack on top of that a run of welcome housekeeping – drop rates loosened across the board, the ability to forge a Terminus Weapon outright when luck refuses to provide one, crossplay finally uniting every platform’s player base, and a lend-a-hero feature in the vein of Dragon’s Dogma’s pawns that lets your builds fight in other people’s parties – and the days of dreading the grind are well… not entirely gone…. but at least a little more tolerable a second time around!
So, circling back to the question I opened with: at a price tag closer to half a full release than your typical add-on, does Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok justify its asking price? For those who adored Relink’s combat and found themselves hungry for more once the credits rolled, the answer is yes! This is a meaty, mechanically rich expansion that rectifies long-standing flaws while piling on some of the most enjoyable systems the game has seen to date. Those who treasured the base game primarily for its storytelling, however, should temper their expectations, as the narrative here is little more than a garnish atop an enormous serving of gameplay. As for me, my hope remains that Cygames takes everything learnt across Relink and this expansion and channels it into that fully fledged sequel, because on this evidence, the skies of Granblue Fantasy still have plenty of adventure left in them.
Final Score for Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok
A digital code for Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok on the PC was provided to facilitate this review.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok is now available to purchase on PC (Base Game + Endless Ragnarok | Endless Ragnarok Upgrade), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.
