Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok has the makings of an all-timer expansion, at least for the dedicated fans of the base game. A series of brilliant balance changes and a massive wealth of new content improve the experience for both newcomers and hardcore fans who inspired this expansion’s creation.
I got to spend about 45 minutes playing some early missions in the expansion, alongside the new roguelike mode TKTK. I also heard directly from the developers on the expansion, creative director Tetsuya Fukuhara and game director Sanshiro Hidaka, about why Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok came to be.
In terms of fully new content, Endless Ragnarok adds six new playable characters, and about 20-30 hours worth of new missions for returning players. These new missions are in a new difficulty tier, higher than the base game. It also adds in the Conflux mode, a single-player focused roguelike mode, designed to make grinding for character and weapon upgrade materials much faster.
For gameplay, there are two major additions. First are the summons. Summons can be used like a special attack, with meter building over time before they can be used. You take control of these large summons and become invulnerable for a period of time. There are over 100 summons being added, with a large variety from monsters to NPCs. Hidaka said his favorite was a monster with an ice beam attack, because it stuns monsters for his allies and wags its tail during the animation in a cute way. Fukuhara said he liked the Quakadile, because he likes the way its rolling attack animation works.
The other major gameplay addition is the Master Traits. These are new unlocks for each character, with three major trees to focus on, each promoting a different playstyle. For one of the returning characters, they could specialize in gaining stacks for buffs, enhanced versions of their current buffs, or building up a powerful, but slow, special attack. There are ways to mix and match small elements from these builds, too, allowing for a ton of customization for both new and returning characters.
Hidaka spent a lot of time during the presentation talking about how Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok started being developed because of how successful the base game was. He said there were no plans to run it as a live-service game, so when fans wanted more, they focused on a major expansion. Based on what I heard from the developers and from the bit I got to play, I think hardcore fans are going to be stoked to get their hands on it.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok releases on PS4, PS5, Switch 2, and PC on July 9.
