A gacha-less gacha, or a singleplayer mmorpg as i like to call this game.
It has every game mechanic that i love from those type of games: kill bosses, grinding for materials, to upgrade your gear and build your character, so that you can fight harder bosses.
Most regular rpgs follow this gameplay loop as well, but they always touch these mechanics briefly.
Only mmos and gacha games are that kind of to use these progression mechanics deeply.
In most rpgs you get your gear (either by buying it from shop, or farming slightly for it), upgrade it, get your skills/moves and just maintain your character's build, but it's always very briefly done. Even upgrading is very brief there,by getting an upgrade material or money, then go to upgrade station.
In mmorpgs your character usually has a story, every step you work toward your gear, or to your leveling feels more impactful as it requires more things to do than just have money or enough stats
I played a lot of mmos and even some gachas too, but they always had their innate problems (fomo, constant meta shift, powercreep, needing constant engagement to not fall behind etc)
I always loved to build my characters, farm materials, upgrade my gear in the ways i have to put effort in it so i've been looking for so long, for a game that can capture these feelings without those innate problems mmos and gachas have
And this game is exactly that. I'm so thankful for Grandblue Fantasy Relink that it exists. It has all the things i was looking for, and in addition it has a very satisfying combat loop, fun and unique characters and possibilities to build them,it's actually insane,it almost feels unreal.
But starting with the weapon upgrading, if i want to upgrade my weapon, i not only need leveling stones, but i need to uncap the weapon further. And uncapping requires different materials in the end game. So i have to go through the process of "okay lets see what i'm missing, this and that, 3 of each." "That can be gathered from the shop by trading materials, but the other one i need to kill a boss in this mission, and it's also a rare drop" so i do that, kill it a few times, get the rare material and upgrade my weapon further.
It perfectly catches the feeling of an mmorpg in that regard, and i love it
And the grinding is not monotone, not frustrating, and most importantly, really not much for most cases. You have to put effort to your gear and upgrades, but not to the point it becomes a boring chore or a checklist to do.
Also, the fact that all the materials that is like 70-80 different kinds, all of them has meaningful uses, either for trading for different materials at the knickknack shop, or straight up needed for uncapping or forging weapons. This aspect is so rare in rpgs, i got so used to 90% of materials being useless things for selling. It's a minor thing, but it gives so much to the playing for the better (also it resembles mmorpgs in this regard as well)
Then there is the character building. Firstly, you have 28 different character to play as, that already resembles a gacha team builder type rpg, but the fact that all of them have their own unique mechanics/gimmicks, that they are their own playstyles too, makes the whole thing so good it's almost overwhelming in goodness. If somebody cannot find a character that they should main in this game, then idk what they want from an rpg. On top of that every character has at least 4-6 weapons, giving you different flavor of damiging/styles to build for your main/team mate characters. And everything can be unlocked in the game by just playing in your own pace.
Some characters, like Tweyen, Seofon and Sandalphon's intended unlocking method can actually feel like a small event in an mmorpg, (the way how you grind for them) but without the fomo aspect, that you can do it at your own pace and even "pause" the grind if you feel like it. It's just the cherry on top of this beautiful cake.
Then i havent even talked about how fluid the game is with its q.o.l features,
- that you can fast travel with just pressing one button and selecting the place you want to go without a loading screen (instead of dragging yourself through a map and selecting the point there)
- that if you forge a new weapon the game asks you if you want to equip it/upgrade it
- that you can redo a mission after you got your rewards immidiately, no going back to town-reselecting-reentering hassles
- that you can have a wishlist of materials, and filter the missions by which ones drop that exact materials, you dont have to remember or look it up yourself
- that you can teleport to an npc if you completed its overworld quest to redeem it
- that you can save a lot of loadouts for different builds
- that you can skip the curscenes and still get a summary of what happens in the cutscene inside the confirmation prompt
All of this, entirely in a singleplayer structured game. No gacha, no fomo, no dailies, no necessary microtransactions, everything available in the game, and you can play any time, without energy/stamina system. I cannot be more thankful that this game exist, and that i dont have to resort to a live service mmo or gacha game to get this gameplay where i'm constantly pressured by dailies, fomo and the feeling of losing everything once the servers shut down.
I'm only sad i only get to know about this game after endless ragnarok and not since release
I'm currently at 50 hours, getting started on maniac difficulty quest, and i havent encountered any big flaws inside the game that would make my gameplay feel worse or not fun. The balance in the gameplay/grind territory is really good, it never feels tedious or that the game asks for an unreasonable amount of grinding, and it just feels fun to do. The game always presents more than one way if you want to grind for anything, so you dont have to do the same things over and over even for the longer grinds
I really see myself sinking hundreds of hours more into this game in the future.
