Mobile Game Review: Granblue Fantasy

What is 'Granblue Fantasy'?:

A turn-based Role-Playing mobile game by Cygames, Granblue's design would likely remind some of the famous Final Fantasy series(more for the older games in the series). It makes sense, since the initial designs and soundtracks are provided by Hideo Minaba and Nobuo Uematsu, who have both worked on the Final Fantasy series before. In the game, you play as 'yourself', a skyfarer who travels though various islands with your companions on adventures against the Empire as well as solving the mysteries behind the ancient beings known as the Primals.

(Special note: The game can also be played using internet browsers such as Google Chrome with this link: http://game.granbluefantasy.jp/#top )


Gameplay:

Prebattle set-up involves setting up your party members, Equipment and Summons. The latter two affect party members with passive effects(Typically damage boosts to characters of a specified element).

           

The combat itself is centered around these elements: Skills and Attack. That's it. Player/character skills are cast within the turn, meaning multiple skills can be cast in one turn before ending it by pressing the Attack button. As characters attack or are attacked, the Charge bar would get filled and they would use their Charge attacks when full. It can be saved up and stacked as chaining Charge attacks will cause a finisher move that is affected by how many Charges were triggered. As for enemies, they would mostly take a certain amount of turns before using a skill. Some are more special, with an Overdrive bar that boosts their abilities once a certain damage threshold is hit(Damage from Skill attacks are also counted), though conversely, if enough damage is dealt while they are in Overdrive, they would Break and have a reduction in ability as well.

As for character growth, there is Upgrading and Uncapping.Upgrading strengthens characters/weapons/Summons by having them absorb other material weapons/Summons(Though characters can just gain experience normally via battles). They all have a maximum level capacity, however, in which bring us to Uncapping, which increases their level capacity. Uncapping is somewhat easier for characters in this case since their materials can be hunted for, unlike weapons and Summons that need duplicates of themselves to uncap.

Granblue's primary means of revenue is the Premium Draw, which provides Rare(R) to Super Super Rare(SSR) items, through crystal earned from quests can be used to draw as well. 

Why you would be interested:
-It's so Final Fantasy
-Turn-based combat is easy to get into, though later requires more thought in distributing skills in battle.
-Game has Raid battles where players fight a super boss for rare items/materials, which provides a good means  for player interaction.
-Game is generous on crystals and early-game difficulty is reasonable.
-Various Classes to experiment or try out.
-Engaging storyline, with sidestories littered about.

One of the greatest mysteries of all as 'you' set out to find dad.

Why you would be NOT interested:
-It's so Final Fantasy IT HURTS
-Like most FF games, the game would have you start grinding. For? Everything. Materials to uncap characters,  forge items, levels, class points to unlock classes etc etc
-MORE LIKE GRINDBLUE FANTASY
-Class balancing needs work
-Playstyle can be affected by what characters you have on hand
-Game plays on a BROSWER no matter what. If you download the game off the App store(s), it'll play off a  browser by Cygames which makes the game fairly choppy and you might as well play it off the phone's  browser(Note that the link provided at the start of the post would still work on phone broswers)

-Difficulty spikes to the point where you'd need at least one SSR character to pull through or struggle  miserably.

At least they have the courtesy to show you the rate of-
Oh. 

Final word:
If you were an fan of Final Fantasy or traditional turn-based RPGs, this shoe would fit just right. Just watch for the grinding and relatively terrible draw rates.