Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok Review: A Worthy Endgame Ascension For Hardcore Fans

Cygames' Granblue Fantasy Relink is the gift that keeps on giving, and today, that's quite literally and figuratively. The game is hands-down one of the best modern action RPGs, with a ton of content to pursue and do on your lonesome or with a crew of fellow Skyfarers in Multiplayer. And if anyone has yet to experience it, they're doing a huge disservice to themselves, especially if they're someone like me who craves that dopamine surge of toppling formidable odds and nabbing their sweet loot.

The endgame, or rather, post-game grind of Relink is notorious for being a hefty time sink, one that'll keep you steadily busy well past a hundred hours. So, after a solid two years of post-launch support, how does the game on this scale pay back to its loyal community? Well, by taking a page out of Monster Hunter's playbook and delivering an expansion that's brimming with a whole new layer of stuff to do.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Endless Ragnarok is a new high-profile DLC that introduces a bunch of new challenges and incentives to chase after in the game. You've got new difficulty tiers for quests, a whole new Roguelite mode, new bosses, as well as a set of new weapons to grind and craft from your hard-fought battles. It is quite literally a treasure trove for the hardcore fans.

And as someone who spent an unhealthy amount of time with the base game on PlayStation, I had the esteemed opportunity to check out everything this new expansion offered, and, suffice it to say, Endless Ragnarok is a DLC that builds on Relink's strongest ideas while giving veterans plenty of reasons to stay invested. Let's talk about it.

Now, I wouldn't say this is the end for our Grandcypher Skyfaring crew, but with how Endless Ragnarok treats this stay as an epilogue, expect it to pick up after the main campaign events of the base game. The Captain and Lyria meet up with Rolan, who informs them of mysterious gates opening on Mount Neigelith, similar to the one we encountered in Seedhollow when we fought Angra Mainyu. Only this time, there are various ripples of these with much stronger threats awaiting inside them in an ominous realm of sorts.

This is the part where Rolan turns our attention to an accompanying cryptic woman named Historiath, who calls upon our acclaimed heroes of Zegagrande to check out the mysterious threats looming in this new realm, now dubbed the Conflux. And that's where the game steers into introducing you to the brand-new Roguelite mode.

Regarding the narrative side of things, the base game already wasn't exactly the main draw for most of the audience, or even for me, actually. I mean, the lore and dozens of Glossary entries on the important bits of flavor text are still there if you want to get up to speed again or are just an enthusiast. The series' worldbuilding is seriously fascinating if you take the time to check it out on a whim.

However, for me, the main story of this DLC is pretty much just a backdrop, even with a new villain that slowly gets unveiled and teased throughout your brief adventure here. It's a nice little setpiece for those who actually grew attached to the characters and their stories, but, again, to me, it really isn't the main selling point, since the gameplay is the bulk of GBFR and genuinely the main appeal for anyone diving in for the first time. But hey, get those weapons maxed out and awakened later on, because you'll need them for what's in store here.

Endless Battles, Endless Rewards

The Conflux is one of the major new components comprising the Endless Ragnarok DLC, serving as a Roguelite mode where you can enter and fight your way through various stages of enemies or non-combat gimmicky encounters to reach the respective Cycle's boss fight. And upon successful completion, you'll be granted boons that you can exchange for rewards of your choosing.

If you're even the slightest bit familiar with games like Hades or even Risk of Rain, then you'll grasp the idea of the Conflux mode fairly quickly. Firstly, the Aura system allows you to collect a new buff and passive bonus every time you clear a stage or whenever you buy it from the NPC merchant in the safe area in exchange for your Conflux Points (CP). These buffs and bonuses range from your typical stat-boosting properties to even modifying some of your main playable character's ability kits.

You're only allowed to select one Aura from the three choices given to you from a cleared stage, but with those Conflux Points that I mentioned, talk to the Mellose Acolyte NPC whenever you land yourself in the Limbo's Way safe area, and with enough of these points, you can easily buy a couple of new Auras or even upgrade your existing ones to make them more powerful. And with so many to choose from, you can keep track of the ones you've collected and discovered after each run with the Aura Collection option from Historiath.

Oh, and since this is a Roguelite mode after all, you can earn some permanent progression from the Resonance tree at Historiath to make subsequent runs in the Conflux a tad bit easier. Loads of buffs here from increasing your HP or starting off each run with extra CP to spend. You'll eventually need all of these upgrades, so just fully splurge away on this tree after each run with your accumulated RP.

From each Cycle or stage that you can attempt and run here, don't forget that party composition is still vital here. You can brainlessly hack away at enemies in some of the encounters, but in some of the encounters where you have to defeat hordes of trash mobs quickly, the faster you are, the better your Resonance point earnings and overall points for a high score. Fast-hitting and crowd-control characters will shine amazingly here, but as is tradition, you can choose whichever your main character is in this mode with a suitable party.

Build-wise, I have to appreciate that the Auras incentivize you to strategically choose which ones will benefit your party, as these can very much trivialize the end boss. And much as is the case with prior boss fights that you've fought in this game, completing those additional objectives is vital to earning extra rewards at the end of each run, so have fun grinding this for some of the newer materials and resources, as well as the older ones, in case you need more fuel to the fire to get Sigils or upgrade weapons.

The Ultimate Proving Grounds Await

So you've managed to beat your first few cycles, but then it's time to digest the mainstay of the game: the quests. Endless Ragnarok elevates the core gameplay element of Relink by introducing the Chaos difficulty quests, along with its own new and revised boss fights to conquer. And right from the start, you'll be pushed to the limit with how well your team comp and character builds are, because the opening rank-up quest in the DLC itself pits you against the leader of the Eternals, Seofon, and his fellow right-hand huntress, Tweyen.

And after a few attempts on them until I finally managed to beat this arduous encounter, yeah, you quite literally have to earn that Fatebreaker Skyfarer Grade through some sweat and tears, alright.

This fight is just a taste of what comes later. Endless Ragnarok is filled with multiple fights like this that push you to the extreme boundaries of perfecting both your buildcrafting properties and your skill itself. I know the vanilla post-game experience delivered that same amount of high-tension ordeal, but there's a fine bit of mix-up here that really makes you feel that the developers are testing all the hardcore players that are coming into this expansion prepped up.

Speaking of mix-ups, the other new addition here is the Summons. Oh yeah, we're going all Final Fantasy here since Lyria can now call upon various mythical God-like creatures to assist you in battle. Depending on whether the quest allows their usage, you can have a total of four summons to use during battle, and each one also has its own stat bonuses that give you an extra edge. So it's not even just about how cool the Summon is; you can actually take their stats into account to see if they're useful to your characters.

Apart from being able to call these Summons yourself, Lyria will actively support you in battles by allowing you to unleash Primal Burst, a new ultimate finisher that you can dish out by executing a full burst chain of your party's SBAs under Link Time. And by doing so, Lyria will call upon a Summon to deal massive damage to the target at the end of the chain. Like seriously, it's just so darn cool to see Bahamut raining down an orbital death laser to engulf a boss fight.

What I love is that these new combat mechanics feel like a Quality-of-Life change rather than something to streamline the system. Summons are on a timer rather than having an HP, so you can spam away with their attacks until they vanish, plus the new Primal Burst really encourages you to lean your build optimization towards SBAs and Link Time instances more. And honestly? For some of the latter quests that I'll refrain from openly spoiling, it is just so gratifying to experiment with new unlockable Summons or just try out the new characters offered with this DLC.

A Mountain Worth Climbing

I relied on my familiar mains like Lancelot and Sandalphon for the majority of my nonstop grinding sessions with this DLC and to power through some of the quests, but obviously, I had to mess around and try out the new characters included here, such as Beatrix, Eustace Maglielle, and Fediel. I got my teeth kicked in for sure, but first and foremost, a massive applause to Cygames for creating a wave of new characters that yet again impress you with their kit design. They for sure cooked in that department like always, by making each one feel incredibly unique to handle and play.

Beatrix is definitely the standout one for me; her customizable kit was already intriguing the moment I played a bit of her in the demo, and now that I have full access to use my desired Sigils and maxed-out weapons on her, she's a character that can shred in the right hands and team comps. Meanwhile, I just know every mage main is going to have a field trip trying to find the right setups for Maglielle and Fediel, especially with the former's machine-gun-like ranged attacks and the latter's AOE dark magic blasts.

And with how Goku said it in his iconic transformation to Super Saiyan 3, this is to go even further beyond because every single Skyfarer in Granblue Fantasy Relink, both new and old, gains access to the newly introduced Master Traits of Endless Ragnarok. These are different from your base game Masteries, as this new tree allows you to re-spec points between three different nodes, with further sub-nodes in each one that allow you to gain passive stat bonuses and ability-boosting properties.

It further elevates the already in-depth buildcrafting potential for the Granblue Fantasy Relink, since you can freely re-spec and choose the desired tree or trait that you want to use for the character. Like, imagine further boosting the healing and support properties of a character like Cagliostro, and it just makes a character like her feel even more invaluable than she already was in the base game.

I genuinely lost track of time just running back Cycles in the Conflux to farm mats or just trying to achieve better grades on some of these tooth-and-nail quests on the Chaos difficulty. And as it stands right now, Endless Ragnarok is easily one of the best expansions offered to an already content-heavy game like Granblue Fantasy Relink that I'm sure hardcore fans will chew on for months to come, at the bare minimum, at least.

Endless Ragnarok doesn't try to reinvent Granblue Fantasy: Relink, nor does it need to with how near-perfect it feels. Instead, it expands on every aspect that made the base game such an addictive action RPG. The Conflux alone is a fantastic addition that constantly gives you another excuse to jump in for "just one more run," while the new quests, characters, Master Traits, and combat mechanics like the Summons ensure the experience rarely feels stale. Sure, the story serves more as a backdrop than the main attraction, but when the gameplay loop is this rewarding, it's hard to complain. If you've already devoted hundreds of hours to Relink, then Endless Ragnarok is the perfect reason to treat yourself to more of what made the base game so intensely addictive.