If you're confused by the title, don't be. It's another game that fills some void of classic Final Fantasy games. Of course, story, lore, characters, pales compared to the good old stuff. But the mobile titles in Japan say a different story where it became the golden goose for CyGames.
Since 2014, it has franchised itself into multiple mediums, including anime and a fighting game series. Relink was announced 8 years ago, that was 2 years after the franchise found success. Part of it due to creative contributions from artist Hideo Minaba, and composer Nobuo Uematsu.
Despite being a Triple AAA shoe-in for the PS5, it's actually quite fun. In fact, credit where its due is that it managed to draw me into the world and characters, while being distracted by the insanely fun combat. We're talking like Tales of Arise, DMC, and Final Fantasy 16 kind of fun and purely a single-player game with co-op multiplayer. Along with some slight hiccups here and there.
Talk about a crazy start, I am glued to the screen with such eye candy, the cloud boxes look great having seeing them close with a flying ship, there's this majestic appeal from the art style and visual finesse. Presentation wise, it's a crazy great looking game. And then the intro.
So a bunch of characters I don't know seems to be in the in-between part of their journey, most of them seems like they know each other very well and often references things I don't have a single clue about. All this before I had to choose between an MC and FMC.
I am fighting enemies from the empire used as a simple tutorial section. But right afterwards, we're fighting an enraged celestial entity known as Proto-Bahamut. The girl with the aqua color hair is his summoner. Cutscene afterwards was a lot to take because the characters are reacting and no idea as to exactly why. Who is the aqua colored girl and why she is important, and the flying lizard.
MC, girl, and pet lizard tripped and have fallen on a forest land, where we encounter various wildlife. The tutorial also extends to here, where I get to use skills. Some of these skills have elemental effects like air, water, earth, fire, poison, and so on. Outside of dodging, blocking attacks, there's basic and special attacks, constantly attacking enemies down create linked attacks after exerting enough pressure, and enemies have break meters, meaning they're knocked out for some time.
All of the other characters from the ship comes looking for them, and once they've found them, another boss battle ensues. There's a special move called Skybound Arts attacks. Filling up the meter before launching it. The A.I. companions also follows up with their Arts, ending it in full burst.
Now I was having fun, this is the entire game full realized. Each characters have command list for both ground and air attacks. Most of their kit, skills and attacks are different from one another. The prologue was done, and I was switching between 6 of them. And I'll tell you later why that's crazy.
As JRPGs go, the gameplay is fast-paced, constantly making me feel engaged because everything around it feels elevated. Enemies can easily be taken down, but some need good crowd controlling otherwise they'll overwhelm. Others are hard, and despite the dopamine making it feel like it's all button mashing, there's so much information to process through during the battle.
Ok, that was a lot to read and understandably quite a bit to comprehend. No worries, the best stuff is coming along. And it opens up the freedom to do questing and running around the town hub in and out. Feeling like you're underpowered, go back, do some side questing, then upgrade and come back.
The way it works is kind of like Monster Hunter, everything else in the town is done before starting a quest. But most of the quests are locked away till main story quests are done. So I have to continue playing through the story, and unlock everything that comes along.
Majority of the townsfolks have errands, like find X item in X amounts, most items usually found from either doing the quests from board or just finding items playing in the story. I've fulfilled like over 70% of these requests in my playthrough so far. It's hard to keep track of what I get, because of the large reward pool from everything that I do.
Like, if I have to unlock and upgrade stuff, the quest board exist solely for the grind, but they're also fun as difficulty modifiers are also unlocked and believe me, tougher fights are where the real exciting moments come from. Testing the mantle of what I've learned so far.
This might be a contradiction, I did say that the world and characters did lure me into the game. This was mostly the case for the surface level appeal, they look great in design and the graphics did help as well. But man, talk about constantly raising the stakes with contrived moments.
Like the bad guy suddenly appears just so they want to, and take the aqua haired girl because of her magic abilities. She's literally a running damsel in distress and I have to go, and save her all over. Of course, this time we don't win and the big baddy cult overpowered us, so we have to journey through the rest of the game in order to overcome them.
So yeah, they're forgettable enough to be invested in the plot, it's a lot different when I start playing them though. After this chapter, I unlocked what is called a crew card. There's more characters to play as, and the fun aspect bumps up starting with Narmaya.
Her attacks have six-seven chain combos, dodging doesn't break it, and two different styles to switch to. Including two others for mid-air. More successful attacks create butterflies, and they're important for increased attributes and increased damage from skill usage.
This is where they truly shine, the destructive power makes me want to try each of them out so badly. You dodge anything on time, you're invincible. Passives like increased ATT and DEF Three other things factor into growing their power levels are masteries, sigils and gears. If you've played mobile gachas, these will be familiar and might turn you off just from the UI.
The currency for masteries are earned by simply looting around and playing the game. I've managed to max sections out per character, while at first kind of deceives me into thinking it's simply for increased damaged and link attack prompts. There was more.
Like new skills to use, more sigil slots, various passives like the dodge invincibility, and so on. They boost up power levels significantly. Sigils boost each attribute, this one also seemed useless until I realized they can be upgraded and characters can have multiple slots through masteries.
Blacksmiths upgrade these weapons, sometimes even forging them. And the stars you see, factor in their levels being at max 150. Level 50 is 3 stars. And the amount of grind required to do all this, this is why unlocking more story content, then getting the far more difficulty stuff to do from the board to hoard out the items are required. As well maxing out masteries, sigils.
All these gacha characters, with different game design and many abilities to later get and experiment on, and not just me. With co-op, I'll be playing with people who've done the same and our insanity is on full display, taking out monsters and such.
The monsters in this game are insane, remember that I said this is a Final Fantasy shoe-in, this is why. The battles, enemy design, boss battles, they're so well tuned to be crazier and crazier with more difficulties. Forget the visual spectacle, because that is deception enough to get you distracted from all the stuff happening. Meanwhile, when we're winning, that's when it gets good.
I haven't tried the co-op yet, but I've seen videos, and have heard from friends who are very specific about how they pick their JRPGs, finishing the main quest in 12hrs and already put 40hrs into post-game content. Take my man Rackam for example.
Press and holding basic attack for burst range attacks, while his meter goes up, and soon hits limit, my ultimate blast powers up quicker and can easily knock down anything at their attack phase with the right time. Plus, the invincibility dodging skill, and these other power trips I am getting.
It's a hodge-podge of multiple gacha and triple-AAA action/RPG titles put together. And the formula is pretty sound. It works, it's fun, and the story isn't the type to overstay the welcome. I think it is worth the price of admission for all it provides.
There's no egregious monetization, aside the deluxe edition bonus. Unfortunately me being too broke, I decided buying it on sale would be better. No, instead am library sharing this one. Crazy game, seems like anybody obsessed could easily spend over 200hrs in. But it's better to purchase this for the online multiplayer, which has dedicated matchmaking.
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