Only being familiar with the Granblue franchise from having seen the Anime adaptation a while back, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Relink.
Not helping is that it starts off a bit overwhelming, storyline-wise, promptly dumping a fully-formed and established crew on you. The mechanics are introduced much more gradually however and when you eventually get to town the optional Fate segments do a decent job of filling in the blanks with the characters’ relationships. Speaking of mechanics, I can’t say I like how Mastery points aren’t character-specific and the various sources of stat-boosting really should’ve been streamlined.
Having recently played Solo Leveling Arise: Overdrive it wasn’t hard to get into the combat here, which is quite similar. It’s exactly the kind of party-based action implementation I prefer, with the NPCs holding their own in combat with no babying required. It also helps that there’s a decent variety of characters available to choose from and you’re not forced to control the protagonist if one of them looks more interesting.
The exploration elements are a more mixed bag. There are hidden items and jumping puzzles… but all chests and collection points in an area are also clearly shown on your map. You also don’t seem to be able to return to places you’ve been (which means it’s rather easy to miss items), although that’s offset by the Quest Guild which let’s you (re-)fight time-limited scenarios for sizable rewards.
The weakest part of the game so far, at the start of Chapter 4, are the plot developments. They’re pretty bad and laden with battle shounen stereotypes; annoying mascot character, forced losses, sudden reversals, ‘this-isn’t-even-my-final-form’, and fluctuating power-levels. So much so that I’m strongly considering dropping it here.
