Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok Review: The Grind Is The Point, And That's Fine

I loaded up Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok on Switch 2 with low expectations for the story. I'd heard the original was a gorgeous but narratively thin action RPG, and the new Endless Ragnarok expansion adds more of the same: more quests, more characters, more bosses, more loot. I expected a competent port of a decent game. What I didn't expect was to lose three hours to a single quest chain because I couldn't stop tweaking my party's skill loadouts between runs.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: the story is fine. It's a Granblue Fantasy story, which means sky pirates, ancient gods, and a lot of characters who look like they walked out of a gacha banner. The new expansion's narrative is more of the same — a new threat, some emotional beats that land if you're invested in the characters, and a final boss that looks incredible but whose motivations you'll forget by the time the credits roll. If you're here for a sweeping RPG narrative, go play something else. This is not that game.

What this game is, is a combat system that understands something fundamental about action RPGs: the loop has to feel good before it feels meaningful. Every character has a distinct moveset, and the game lets you swap between four party members on the fly. The real magic is in the cooldown management and the Link system, where landing attacks builds a meter that lets you chain ultimate abilities. When everything clicks — and it clicks often — you're not just pressing buttons. You're conducting a symphony of explosions, healing, and crowd control. It's the same feeling I got from Dragon's Dogma when a pawn would grab a goblin and I'd launch a fireball into its face. Shared chaos, coordinated by instinct.

And that's where the unexpected connection hit me. This game's combat loop — the way you grind quests for materials to upgrade weapons to fight harder bosses to get better materials — is structurally identical to Monster Hunter. But the pacing is different. Monster Hunter is deliberate. Every swing has weight. Granblue Fantasy: Relink is fast. It's arcadey. It's the Monster Hunter loop filtered through a Dynasty Warriors lens. You're not hunting a monster for twenty minutes. You're clearing a wave of enemies in three, then moving to the next objective, then the next. The satisfaction comes from the rhythm, not the individual hit.

The Switch 2 port is excellent. It runs at a smooth 60fps in handheld mode, and the art style — all vibrant cel-shaded skies and character designs that pop — translates beautifully to the smaller screen. I played through the entire expansion on a train and never once felt like I was missing visual fidelity. The load times are snappy, the UI is readable, and the gyro aiming for ranged characters is a nice touch. If you have a Switch 2, this is the kind of game that makes you appreciate the hardware.

The Endless Ragnarok expansion adds a new hub area, a handful of new characters, and a post-game quest line that's clearly designed for players who want to push their builds to the limit. The new bosses are genuinely challenging, with attack patterns that demand you learn them rather than brute-force through. It's not a revolution. It's more of what worked, refined slightly. And for a game like this, that's exactly what it needed.

Who is this for? It's for people who like action RPGs but wish they had less walking and more fighting. It's for people who spent hours in Monster Hunter trying to get that one plate to drop and thought, "I wish this was faster." It's for people who see a 100-hour grind and think, "Good, I have a week off." If you're that person, you'll love this. If you need your RPGs to have a story that makes you feel something, this isn't for you.

I've been playing games since the GBA was the best thing in the world. I've beaten Demon's Souls three times despite not enjoying it. I know what a good grind feels like. This is a good grind. The story is a vehicle for the combat, and the combat is a vehicle for the loop, and the loop is the point. That's not a criticism. That's an honest description of what this game is. If that sounds good to you, pick it up. If it doesn't, you already know.

What's left after the credits roll? Just you, a party of characters you've built from the ground up, and a boss that's waiting to teach you something new. That's enough.