The Granblue Fantasy series has never particularly appealed to me. Perhaps the likes of Persona, Xenoblade, and Fire Emblem are to blame — my ‘beautiful anime people in big fights’ cup overfloweth — making the thought of taking on another big anime-flavoured RPG a little too intimidating. Well, after 45 minutes with action-RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok, I think I’m starting to see the appeal.

Originally released in 2024 for PC, PS5, and PS4, Relink was a major step for the series’ foray into gaming. It’s been a mighty popular sausage in the years since, racking up over two million purchases and pulling in a desire for ‘more’ in the process.

Three post-launch expansions were planned, Cygames tells us accumulated journos at the preview event before revealing the hands-on demo, but the dev felt that the game’s unexpected popularity called for something meatier. Enter Endless Ragnarok.

This is the first time that the game will be available on Switch 2, it’s true, but this version adds more besides a new platform. There are new characters and storylines, fresh combat mechanics and bosses to use them on, and an all-new Conflux mode for those after something a little more roguelike-y.

I didn’t get to see all of this in my hands-on time — the devs estimate that the game is roughly 1.5x bigger now, with nearly double the playtime (HLTB puts the previous version’s ‘Main + Sides’ at 32 hours) — but from what I did catch, Switch 2 feels like an almighty fitting home for this.

For series newbies like me, Relink is a little overwhelming from the jump. I was met by two tutorials on starting up my demo, which introduced me to the game’s Summon and Master Trait mechanics via a huge monster battle.

Said tutorials were refreshingly hands-off, with the game opting for a ‘you’ll figure it out yourself’ approach over constant pop-ups, though it did mean that things became a little much as I was welcomed to the world of Skills, Team Up attacks, and giant transformations, all while trying to make sense of the gameplay’s constant damage/healing numbers and impact marks. PlatinumGames was initially on the project before Cygames took over, and it really shows — there’s Bayonetta and NieR energy throughout all of this.

With enough beginner’s knowledge under my belt, I was thrown into my first quest, a battle against a massive foe. This flying one-eyed beastie called for some more teamwork proficiency, and I soon settled into the rhythms of using Gran’s buff and healing skills to target my allies and help them out accordingly.

The chaos of the whole thing became a little easier to parse, too. I wasn’t being hit by nearly as many attacks (praise the lord for the ‘Hold Y to recover’ knockdown system), and dare I say, I even started to fire off my skills and summons without needing to remind myself of their purpose first.

It would all be child’s play for those well-versed in the game, I’m sure, but for someone fresh-faced, it’s the kind of milestone that I don’t manage to hit with all ARPGs. Strong work there, then. If it doesn’t hit like that for you but you want to push through regardless, there’s a new Assist Mode this time around to make the combat that bit more accessible.

I particularly appreciated the smaller challenges thrown in during the quests, giving me a series of subtasks to think about (defeat the monster within the allotted time, don’t get downed too much, destroy X number of environmental hazards) when the battle got a little hit-spongey. These giant monsters can take a hit or two hundred, so it’s nice to have some other objectives on the go to keep the ol’ brain box active.

It all seemed to hold up really rather well on Switch 2, too. There’s so much happening on screen at any one time that I wouldn’t want to try and put a precise number on the frame rate, but I noticed very few drops even when things got especially hectic. The visual style looks a little too similar to every other pretty fantasy anime series on the system for my liking, but that’s not to say it’s remotely harsh on the eye.

Having wrapped up a quest to two, I was thrown forward into the new Conflux game mode, where the combat really started to sing.

Every game has a roguelike spin these days, and Relink is no exception. This mode had me battling through waves of enemies before hopping into one of two portals, each offering me a series of risk/reward possibilities. It’s a similar loop to what we’ve seen previously with the likes of Shredder’s Revenge’s Dimension Shellshock DLC or even Hades, but there’s no denying that it’s a format that works.

Every few portals, there’s a boss stage, tasking you and your party to take out a bigger enemy before moving on and sweeping up some larger rewards in the process. Firing on all cylinders with the controls by this point (again, rookie stuff compared to what some people out there are capable of, I’m sure), I liked the increased challenge of every stage and the potential to try out different techniques on the fly.

Did it get a little repetitive the longer I played? Of course it did, but I’m sure the scaling challenge would have kept things interesting if I had longer than ~20 minutes with it.

There’s still a lot of Relink that I’m yet to see (I got only a whiff of the stacked character roster, and didn’t touch the single-player campaign), but assuming it all holds up as well as the slice I got to go hands-on with, I can see this being a hit on Switch 2.

As anyone who played the 2024 release will tell you, co-op is where Relink really comes into its own. It’s another feature that I didn’t get to see for myself this time, but Cygames has promised full crossplay and Switch 2 wireless local co-op, too. If you’ve been dying for some late-night monster hunting with pals, this might be the place to look.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok launches on Switch 2 on 9th July 2026. A downloadable demo will be available later today. Will you be checking it out? Let us know in the comments.