As someone who painfully sat through every delay this game hit I was worried it would fall into dev hell and be terrible. Thankfully this game is everything we could have asked for and more on the GBF side. For sure need to get the grind on looking forward to that free DLC content update!
The difficulty discussion is interesting. However, id like to throw my own hat into this particular discourse and say that i think there is a distinction between difficult to play and difficult to master. Despite the fact that it is very easy to clear content in this game, i am still very engaged because the nuances of combat i find to be challenging. Mastering attack timing as well as perfect dodges, parries and charged parries. Mastering different characters' kits and optimizing them to kill enemies as fast as possible. Thats where the challenge comes from and thats whats keeping me engaged. Not that the bosses are hard to beat. Some games like Dark Souls are about overcoming challenges while other games like Devil May Cry are about mastery.
I think maniac quests were challenging and made me focus up, but proud is where i had my first actual failure. Took a group of randoms and I a couple tries to beat the white dragon. Those lightning walls really clapped my cheeks.
@@exaltedreverse4463the proud gameplay in this clip didn’t look very challenging - is the video deceiving? is it challenging in the sense you need to max your gear then it’s easy, or are there difficult mechanics?
I'm mostly surprised by how well integrated the set piece moments are into real-time gameplay. It's extremely impressive, those big moments, and raises the bar for what I expect in games of this kind.
My hope is they add "Death Ineluctable" from the mobile game where it completely prevents a character from reviving itself. Maybe in a higher difficulty than Proud in the future.
I remember correctly, Lucilius HL raid has "Death Ineluctable" effect after Paradise Lost trigger. Maybe Lucilius raid in Relink next month will have this effect?
I’ve been loving this game so far. I don’t necessarily need my games to be extremely hard these days to enjoy them. The gameplay is great for me I enjoy grinding and leveling up my characters. Thanks for the reviews.
The issue is that it's extemely easy, at least by MHW's standards. Rurikhan literally killed a boss in the game with only his npc companions.. It that doesn't qualify as easy I don't know what is.
It started to be a little bit challenging for me when I hit maniac difficulty and its probably because my main squad isn't remotely min maxed besides Yodarha who've i been using as my main.
I will say there is a good amount of challenge involved with some of the Quick Quest fights given they reduce your power to the recommended if the given quest. I ran into maniac Gallanza on there and my team fit absolutely stomped by him. Also side note but Revenge of the Hordes on Maniac gives around 30 large crystals. Not super fast and not as good as a sole dedicated crystal quest but it’s a decent farm for them.
There is a way to RNG Scum the sigil gacha, the rolls are randomized after each quest. If you save the game before rolling, you can check if you will get anything you want, if you don't just return to title screen and do a quest to reset de rolls.
I appreciate this video so much! As the exact gamer you described in the beginning and someone who loves your channel I’ve been on the fence with granblue. I was a little turned off by the accessibility options in the demo (usually if they’re present the game is probably not going to be very challenging or tuned correctly) I think I’ll give it a buy now, thank you Ruri!!
You sold it man. I was going to skip this one because none of my friends play video games. But it looks like you can clear all content with bots. I’m in!
I think MH players often forget the sheer power of legacy skills. Not only have you been playing MH for thousands of hours so I-frame timing is easier to figure out, but you've also been playing FFXIV for thousands of hours so the boss battle mechanics are gonna be like home. Not saying it isn't significantly less punishing then both, its just something to keep in mind when talking about difficulty.
man ı am dead serious your taste in games is great and a lot more like mine so I will play whatever game you play without hasitation keep up the great work !!!
I watched your Gran Blue Fantasy Relink playlist and as I was watching the 4th video I pulled up the ps store to buy it because I was sold. I'm okay with it being a little easier as a veteran monster hunter. I don't need this to be that. I wanted this to be like a gatcha game without my micro transactions because I've never played one due to that. For me this game is 10/10.
I'm still progressing through the endgame and I agree that most of the game is on the easy side, but it doesn't matter. The game was never advertised as a soulslike or anything like that, maybe as a "monster hunter-esque game", but even MH isn't particularly hard on release, and for some crazy people it never gets hard. What matter is that the gameplay is good, the music is great, the visuals are simply gorgeous, the live service feeling of long term progression is there (for regular players that doesn't go hardcore minmax week 1 at least) without the big cons of a live service game and the characters aren't noisy like in Tales of Arise. For me the biggest con is the lack of a proper frontline tank waifu with a big axe.
As a mhw and souls player, the difficulty argument is not a fair point until after experiencing proud mode. Game is definitely easier, but the caveat is that it is not just easy. It scales really well. Edit: early proud is a joke imho, and in the grand scale, only a handful of fights are actually top tier in proud, but i think the game having such an excellent difficulty curve overall should be a bigger point than just "easier mh/souls"
What I’ve noticed, being new to this series, is that the community is extremely toxic if you say anything negative about the game. The Reddit is full of people acting personally offended if you question the difficulty, dmg cap, or anything else. Still an awesome game though. I’ve just learned not to interact with the community.
I think the reason the game might feel easy at times is because if you do it online and everyone is fully stacked up on end game gear the bosses get rolled over pretty fast... BUT also another reason might be that the game gives you multiple chances of reviving yourself and others, if they limited players to 3 downs then it would definitely make the game "harder" or make players be more cautious, since there are sigils like auto revive which revive you much faster before your critical bar runs out, specially if everyone has it equipped, there are multiple variables but I think more than anything the devs wanted the game to be accessible to everyone, casuals and hard core players. They would only make the game feel more challenging by limiting the amount of times a team can faint before failing the quest, which might be why they have the revive system instead, not to mention there are also sigils that can give you more revive potions and Cagliostro as an example to pick up people faster to save that "critical bar" from depleting and failing. (Not to mention you also have Ai that helps you, if the game was a solo experience it would take longer and would be much more "harder" or time consuming)
As an older gamer which played basically all the Demon Souls and Monster Hunter games when I had the time in the world, I totally agree with you this being easy. Dont get me wrong, Im glad it is. Pretty much moved on with life and can hardly play games and make content. I was glad that this game makes it easier to farm play and enjoy at the same time. I do not have the luxury to play 1hr-2hr per boss fight.
They clearing the boss on proud in like 5 mins. I was clearing maniac with randoms in like 2-3 mins. So I quit playing. The game is fun af tho but I don’t really feel rewarded for beating the bosses.
@@graceypatrick I hope they do. But if not I know their next game is gonna be crazy. Or either monster hunter speed their combat up some. But they probably won’t.
@@ogbreeze1081 I think they will. There’s a lot of people on RUclips saying the game is too easy. So I think they will change it because they wouldn’t want the game to die out
While I will agree it is a BIT on the easier side(if we're comparing to games like Monster Hunter, etc.), I do have to admit that playing with other people contributes to that pretty heavily. I went through almost all of the game single player with the NPC's up to the end of extreme and the end of Chapter 0. And the few times I played with randoms on the quick quest(all on extreme quests), the difference in difficulty is almost night and day. The enemies and bosses die way faster, and you don't have to worry about taking damage and going critical as often, if ever. Not to mention only having to worry about gearing up and upgrading/leveling one character.
You can get a good amount of (L) fortitude shard from the quest "Serenity upon the mountain". You could clear it in about 4 to 5 mins. at your power lvl. It gives about 35 shards each run.
After finishing this games main story today I was a bit concerned at what I would be doing after it was done since I don't have PS plus and can only play solo, so to see this game ooz even more content even after the story is basically done was a pleasant surprise, and the content there isn't your usual filler, at least to me since I've been enjoying whats there, the combat alone though can definitely be a good reason as to why the game doesn't get old since the sheer variety in characters to play as and the uniqueness of each one, will make this game insanely replayable
Agreed on difficulty. As a monhun player, I feel right at home. Even the quest to unlock proud only took 2 tries, the first I failed only because people didn't know not to bust SBA before the skill check phases.
I am finishing up a game first, but I am so ready to hop on Relink. Been hyped for this game for years… everything about it the artstyle, the UI, the music, the gameplay, it looks fucking amazing. I don’t care if it’s somewhat easy most the time (I was expecting the game to be easy based on all the gameplay before it was out), it looks so damn fun.
I recommend Cagliostro as a support character, she has an awesome healing and resurrect skills. And although her chance is low she can do a lot of dmg with a very special link atk.
My biggest criticism of the game so far is that you cannot join lobbies of players with whom you are not friends. I just want to join a lobby like in Monster Hunter and spend the whole evening questing together. Unfortunately, I don't know any other PS5 players. Otherwise, I haven't had this much joy in grinding for a long time
I was one of those that voiced my displeasure of your initial review lol. And unfairly so tbh. We are playing it completely differently as i have been playing solo nearly exclusively. I don't like matching up with randoms until i know all the systems and ins and outs. None of my friends bought the game lol. I love the game and it feels like a gacha with no restrictions. All the min maxing and different ways to get stuff and make your character better that some gacha games have but without the predatory trash. I want people to play because i would love for this to be a template of future games. So yeah i got a bit heated seeing people run with how you said it was too easy. But i also realize those people weren't going to buy the game anyway. But it does make me sad that most of the people on my friends list on PS5 are from MH and none bought it. They are mostly weebs too. Gonna start deleting fortnite and destiny 2 ppl. Need to purge lol. This is a great video and you are pretty much spot on. I apologize for overreacting. I know it's a lot to assume you read my comments in prev vids but i'm pretty sure you did unfortunately. I was pretty damn doochey.
For those who wants to get more FC L the best mission I see that can give 10-20 max per run is category Defend -> Hallowed Be Thy Ground on Maniac 8000 Power.
I believe the crit weapon is the strongest weapon early on in the game and suggest to get it as soon as possible since you can max out crit rate and crit damage so fast. Every hit i do is a crit over 40k. It was enough damage to push through bahamut versa in the story. Also my brother was amazed that my character pushed our sba over 2mil.
I must suck at the game or I was under-leveled, because the massive 3 stage next to final boss fight carted me 3 times. I failed that quest 3 times before I killed it. There were so many purple laser beams everywhere that I just couldn't dodge
As a gunlance fan to another I think Cagliostro and Ferry kind of has something from each. Ferry's gimick revolves around summoning ghosts and then spending them to buff her Triangle attack. Cagliostro's gimick is all about shooting a giant rock after combo finishers.
Personally think the difficulty is perfect for the average player. I would like them to increase it going forward tho not right now. The issue is unless they crank the difficulty to a hard degree any mainstay soulslike or MH players arent going to feel a extreme challenge. Difficulty is also subjective ik people that say the later souls games are easier than the early ones but thats only cause they were more experienced in the genre when the newer one came out. The team play feels more impactful in this game for me compared to MH which I very much enjoy. Getting what you want is also feels more realistic to me compared to MH which is a major plus imo. You might not want to admit it ruri but you and a majority of the people that are actively social online about these games are in the top 10-20%. You are a very good player at these games compared to the average.
I cant stop playing!! I love all the characters, Now finished Proud mode and loved the 4 last fights (I really hate the Smoll and big duo) Time to farm the 6th weapon and hoping for a War Elemental soon!
I think as long as they include dlc and take feedback from the base game we will have more challenging fights. I also don’t mind it being on the easier side because of the amount of grind you need to do for some stuff and it allows to play multiple characters
I think it's true that it's pretty easy but it's also true that you playing with people makes it WAY easier. I did most of the normal and some of the hard quests solo and then in multiplayer to test and solo took 2-4 times longer than multiplayer every time
The quest revenge of the hoard on proud give you around 30 large crystals and 20 medium per run. It’s much much better than goblins of fire. It also drops like 20 flowers after 3 runs you can trade all the flowers for like 800 tickets. It’s a much better quest.
I appreciate your coverage on the game and your opinions on it. I personally find that I generally agree with your takes on difficulty, and if you say something is really easy or challenging, I'll more or less feel the same way. My biggest concern is that if every fight pre proud is easy, and there's only a couple of fights in the end game that can present a challenge, then I know I'll get bored slogging through the easy stuff, and then grinding it to clear a wall. And I'm not suggesting every fight needs to be Fatalis or Melania. But I'm also not a big fan of the idea of 40-60 hours of village rank quests to unlock a handful of fights I'd actually enjoy. I still haven't picked up the game because I've been suddenly busy dealing with my car dying, but it's definitely something I'm still considering. Thanks again for your honest takes on the game.
As a Monster Hunter fan, when the base game of Monster Hunter Rise came out, I thought it was super easy even compared to base MHW or MHG and say that this game was more harder. Although I haven't completely finished Sunbreak, I do know that MHR is alot more challenging now with all the updates it had so Relink could just be in a similar situation. I honestly wouldn't be surprised that the new boss in March will be pain in the ass lol but we will have to wait and see.
It depends a lot of what you are used to. Having done Ultimates on FFXIV, played MHW and Fromsoft games I also find the game on the easier side. Grind to a decent power level so that you can survivee a hit or two, respect the mechanics and greed in dmg as long as it's safe, the game is on the easier side, but not braindead easy and definitely not bad by any means, people just need to accept good games can be good games without being Soulslike difficulty (This is not a rant about what Rurikhan said but to let people that are not used to Soulslike that it's ok if they didn't find it as easy as some other people do or not think that it being easier than from software games is a bad thing.)
Just beat the story yesterday. The game's great! I love it. I think I just hit level 60 and my power levels around 5500. Maybe a little higher. I am running into an issue where I'm having a hard time ever finding people to matchmake with. Do I just need to get higher level and there's more people playing there? I read somewhere that if I change my download region to Japan I'll get more people. But wouldn't I be playing with awful ping?
I think the reason why it was on the easy side, extreme and below. Is that they want casuals to actually enjoy the game. It is also why the full auto assist only works until extreme mode. But stop working on maniac and higher, caz maniacs are where tryhards actually starts grinding gear to prepare for the challenge on proud. Also i would believe if they going to release even more difficulty stages in the future, as in the mobile game. As of right now, the most difficult stage in relink is proto baph, which in the mobile. It is considered one of the early raid bosses in the game. And i believes that they will slowly pump out contents and makes more difficult raids in the future.
Hey! Thanks for the video. Do you mind showing some of the other game modes such as Defend, Survival, etc? I have no seen anyone on RUclips showcase those mission types. Sub earned
Playing this with friends makes a HUGE difference. I got matched with a Lancelot for that Proud promotion quest and he was hitting for less than 2k damage and his SBA did an entire 200k damage.... 2 attacks in my regular combo do over 200k damage.... ugh lol
My problem with too easy games isnt that i dont die or get hit enough, but rather that enemies die too fast to use the fun game mechanics. This game doesnt have that problem that much. As long as i can use my skills in combat, can get a link attack every once in a while in mob encounters, and get to do sba's and chain bursts in boss fights a few times, im good.
I have to agree that the fights are way undertuned for having 4 characters in a fight. But when I took off every party member after the goblin boss fight in the story (hard mode btw), the game suddenly became a lot more challenging even in just story missions, not impossible but the last fight chapter 9 definitely took me quite a bit of min-maxing and saving up bursts to meet the dps check using only Gran and no other AI/Players. Also fights usually last 8-10min when i was playing this way (Except the desert giant and that harvin boss which took takes like 15 - 20 min). Now that I am almost at the end of maniac difficulty, I am still able to play without the 3 other party members, getting S ranks are definitely much more difficult, not impossible but definitely feel much more satisfying when you do get it. Also since bosses seem to be a lot more aggressive in maniac, I feel much more need to learn a fight in order to win as the boss is always focused on you. So for those who want their experience more in line with monster hunter difficulty, consider try playing the game without party members, fights will take longer as boss dont scale with amount of party members, and you will miss out on full-bursts, but definitely more satisfying to play, and 10min ish runs isn't that bad, monster hunter also take about the same amount of time to kill a monster. I dont know how Bahamut Versa in proud is gonna be like tho, but I am looking forward to it.
I feel the same. When I'm playing this game, I play for long hours. When I'm not playing, I'm thinking of playing. Now I got my Steamdeck to remote play with my PS5 so I can play while in the washroom too XD
I would agree the game is a bit easy, I did hard mode for the story and it didnt seem different to me at all. It's also easy once you understand the perfect guard, dodge, and adding in counter attack abilities to your kit. It makes it almost impossible to get hit once you understand all of it but this is still a fun game to me and I enjoy doing the harder fights all over again taking no damage and solo running it with no NPC or other players helping out. The Challenge is really fun!
I'm playing Dragon's Dogma at the moment. If I wasn't I would be pretty eager to play Relink. DD is just too good and I can't stop playing it haha I great problem to have :)
good choice, not long until DD2 so you'll be up to speed. even though really the story wasn't really there and DD2 is a separate parallel universe, but whatever XD...
I just beat the first 120 boss that brings you into proud I don’t want to say the name of it because I don’t want to spoil what that boss is for the people who are playing but I don’t have any friends to play with me and I played with randoms and that fight took me four attempts to beat I loved every second of it
Im playing my first monster hunter game its mhw ive played solo for every new monster. Im addicted lol and i wanted to play gran blue but i want to finnish all of mhw before dragons dogma 2 lol
yes the game is a bit on the easy side relative to souls games and monster hunter but 1) its not always a bad thing 2) it does offer challenge when you reach maniac and proud. and if you're already someone whos played the game to where you can get offended when he says its too easy then it means you are already playing it and deemed its challenging enough for you. so thats already a non issue. but i do think its fair of him to highlight this considering difficulty is a deal breaker for some players out there and they do need to have some expectation of what its going to be like.
Yea. Honestly find the tougher bosses on proud to be more enjoyable than a lot of MH/Souls fights. Just hope they keep ramping up the difficulty in future updates. They need a bit of a steeper curve to deal with your character progression.
@@jordanneal8979 yes u are right about the curve. that is my main issue as stated by rurikhan is that its back loaded. in MH and souls there is some challenge to be met even during the early/mid game. souls is an exception cuz its structurally different and can be challenging at pretty much whenever u reach certain areas thru exploration. like we grind and build up our character and go through countless easy quests only to finally be able test ourselves with very small amount of quests by way of proud and maybe some maniac quests. there is no wall in this game until proud.
Me and my friend had the same experience as you with pushing until we hit the wall and it was literally until we reached Gallanza and Maglielle duo boss quest that we couldnt clear it
Hi Ruri, would it be too much of a hassle for me to ask for a video doing a direct comparison between this game and MH:W / MH:R? The combat looks a lot like the Tales game, particularly Tales of Arise.
Theres about 4 total proud quests that are actual challenges the rest are fairly easy. If youre grouped with rabdoms the game becomes significantly harder trying to beat some of these proud quests
My wife got offended when she heard that it's easy cause she's struggling while playing in story difficulty. In my mind is that she didn't play enough games yet. Lol😂 she's not a gamer.
Some people get too offended by their game being called easy. Like that's not inherently a bad thing especially when an easy game doesn't immediately mean a bad game. Same can be said about difficult games immediately mean a good game. I think it's good that despite being easy, granblue still manages to be super fun
I've been excited, and mostly loved the demo. But I've been waiting to see a lot more endgame gameplay because I enjoyed the demo for a little more than an hour and then was bored to tears just dropping into a boss arena, fighting the boss and then leaving. I need more to combat than that. And since they didn't allow any of the other features in the demo like upgrading characters or weapons I don't know if that would be enough to keep me wanting to play.
Not sleeping at all actually. Ive been grinding the absolute hell out of this game. The combat is just way too good. And the boss fights are intense. Characters all feel different and thats a great feeling. Lancelot and Vane are god tier. Totally satisfied with the game, i got a little worried before release but the demo made me happy enough to buy it and I am satisfied fully. A good game to hold me to ff7 and then dragons dogma 2.
The fights seems a lot of bashing compared to MH games but I’m pretty curious to feel it with controllers in the hands and give it a try if you enjoy it !
After goin through a lot of the post game grind, i have replayed chapters on Ultimate difficulty twice, a whole lot of Proud rank quest grind even fully awakened 6th weapons, in my opinion the game is pretty easy and chill. Not sure why ppl would be offended when you say the game is easy. First of all, everyone experience things differently, so the game can be easy for some ppl and it can be challenging for others, it's just how things are Irl too.
I think the game is fairly hard on very hard and beyond, the biggest thing that makes it easy is how hard it is to actually fail. I'm midway through extreme right now and I still die a few times but there's no real punishment tbh.
There is an extreme quest that I use for farming and it spawns I think 2 silver slimes and 2 gold slimes and I can trade in the mats I get for tickets and you get a ton of coins to buy crystals with
Thank you for information and have good days 🍻👍 mate My 3 favorite vasarega and vane and Siegfried by the way 😅 I agree with you all what say 😅 I still playing the game almost reach proud missions
Yeah, even as someone who has completed all the SoulsBorneRingSekirowhatever games and did some challenge runs for some of them, I can say that the game is definitely not "on the easy side" for me. That said, coming from FromSoft games, I also don't tend to do much grinding - in those games you either "git gud" or you fail.^^ I'm having lots of fun with Relink though. It's the first game in quite a while that I just can't put down. :)
I definitely think some maniac and proud missions are tough. They might be “easy” if you dump a ton of time in grinding your characters up non stop such as 73+ hrs. Also if you play with people it will be easier.That being said before maniac is easy
You can get autorevive or guts that will help alot .. Or smash the button to revive faster because i always play with random and most of them dint know about this ..
yup that or just get rid of it, you get so many options and ways to negate and avoid damage that if you die it should be game over. or maybe you get 1 death and the 2nd is game over. its wayyy too forgiving the way it is right now.
the proud quest with multiple bosses lv 130+ are the ones who really challangers me and I feel most of the times it is not my fault im getting hit, I dont know if it its only me but the lock on system in this game sucks a lot.
The fact most of the game is fairly easy make the experience dumb fun all the way to Proud difficulty . Even if most of the "easy" fights last 3 minutes , it just never feels boring and monsters stills does enough damage or just straight up one shot so you still need to pay attention . This game just had such a good combat flow , i just don't care about killing things fast, it's always felt like a part of the joy ride . And the best part about this joy ride is the fact that the longest and hardest fights rules! As soon the game push you , it's simply gets even more fun. It's absurd. The progression , the power spike , the weapon mastery and the sigils ... This game simply did everything right and somehow keep throwing stuff at you the more you go through it. I still found out some new sigils after 90 hours thanks to Zathba . 19 characters, all of them are viable. Don't even waste your time with tier list and just pick up someone you might like to play and connects with your gameplay. In the endgame everyone is busted. The game lunches with so much content and possibilities , it'll put to shame some live-service games whos been around for years . GBF Relink has been in dev for 8 years and it shows, so please give it some love because it deserve it .
the only really difficult part of this game is sitting through the story and characters. I actually felt exhausted just watching the cutscenes where dialog happens. thankfully there's a skip button because even the devs know lol
I think even extreme and maniac can be fairly challenging if you're running them with CPU companions. They are just not as capable as humans plus you need to spread your MSP and stuff thinner to level everyone up...
As someone who painfully sat through every delay this game hit I was worried it would fall into dev hell and be terrible. Thankfully this game is everything we could have asked for and more on the GBF side. For sure need to get the grind on looking forward to that free DLC content update!
The difficulty discussion is interesting. However, id like to throw my own hat into this particular discourse and say that i think there is a distinction between difficult to play and difficult to master. Despite the fact that it is very easy to clear content in this game, i am still very engaged because the nuances of combat i find to be challenging. Mastering attack timing as well as perfect dodges, parries and charged parries. Mastering different characters' kits and optimizing them to kill enemies as fast as possible. Thats where the challenge comes from and thats whats keeping me engaged. Not that the bosses are hard to beat. Some games like Dark Souls are about overcoming challenges while other games like Devil May Cry are about mastery.
I think maniac quests were challenging and made me focus up, but proud is where i had my first actual failure. Took a group of randoms and I a couple tries to beat the white dragon. Those lightning walls really clapped my cheeks.
Proud difficulty is a big jump
@@exaltedreverse4463the proud gameplay in this clip didn’t look very challenging - is the video deceiving? is it challenging in the sense you need to max your gear then it’s easy, or are there difficult mechanics?
Yeah I hope the DLC and hopeful expansion that comes out is more difficult, but I am really enjoying the game so far.
24:04 the face expression says it all.
This game is a banger.
Waiting 8 years for this was painful, but I think it was worth the wait. I absolutely love the characters and setting of Granblue.
I'm mostly surprised by how well integrated the set piece moments are into real-time gameplay. It's extremely impressive, those big moments, and raises the bar for what I expect in games of this kind.
Only thing i wish from this game is for it to keep going, go live service keep adding and let us enjoy the game for a long long time
My hope is they add "Death Ineluctable" from the mobile game where it completely prevents a character from reviving itself. Maybe in a higher difficulty than Proud in the future.
I remember correctly, Lucilius HL raid has "Death Ineluctable" effect after Paradise Lost trigger. Maybe Lucilius raid in Relink next month will have this effect?
I’ve been loving this game so far. I don’t necessarily need my games to be extremely hard these days to enjoy them. The gameplay is great for me I enjoy grinding and leveling up my characters. Thanks for the reviews.
The issue is that it's extemely easy, at least by MHW's standards. Rurikhan literally killed a boss in the game with only his npc companions.. It that doesn't qualify as easy I don't know what is.
I need mine to be hard
Oh yeah, proud black dragon handed my arse everytime I ask him for materials :(
It started to be a little bit challenging for me when I hit maniac difficulty and its probably because my main squad isn't remotely min maxed besides Yodarha who've i been using as my main.
If you’re struggling in maniac then I pray for you in proud difficulty 💀💀
I will say there is a good amount of challenge involved with some of the Quick Quest fights given they reduce your power to the recommended if the given quest. I ran into maniac Gallanza on there and my team fit absolutely stomped by him.
Also side note but Revenge of the Hordes on Maniac gives around 30 large crystals. Not super fast and not as good as a sole dedicated crystal quest but it’s a decent farm for them.
Maniac Gallanza is weirdly hard man.
I just started Sunday, Relink is an absolute blast. Will be grinding the game until FF7 Rebirth.
Think that's my plan need something to do between now & rebirth then gonna rebirth till dragons dogma 2 🤣
There is a way to RNG Scum the sigil gacha, the rolls are randomized after each quest. If you save the game before rolling, you can check if you will get anything you want, if you don't just return to title screen and do a quest to reset de rolls.
I appreciate this video so much! As the exact gamer you described in the beginning and someone who loves your channel I’ve been on the fence with granblue. I was a little turned off by the accessibility options in the demo (usually if they’re present the game is probably not going to be very challenging or tuned correctly)
I think I’ll give it a buy now, thank you Ruri!!
You sold it man. I was going to skip this one because none of my friends play video games. But it looks like you can clear all content with bots. I’m in!
That's what I've been telling ppl but they denied it I had to cater to the people who want to play this offline
I think MH players often forget the sheer power of legacy skills. Not only have you been playing MH for thousands of hours so I-frame timing is easier to figure out, but you've also been playing FFXIV for thousands of hours so the boss battle mechanics are gonna be like home. Not saying it isn't significantly less punishing then both, its just something to keep in mind when talking about difficulty.
This is one of the only games that made ranged feel as good as melee. Adore the combat
man ı am dead serious your taste in games is great and a lot more like mine so I will play whatever game you play without hasitation keep up the great work !!!
I watched your Gran Blue Fantasy Relink playlist and as I was watching the 4th video I pulled up the ps store to buy it because I was sold. I'm okay with it being a little easier as a veteran monster hunter. I don't need this to be that. I wanted this to be like a gatcha game without my micro transactions because I've never played one due to that. For me this game is 10/10.
I can agree with you. Been replaying MHw on pc an it's only giving me so much since I've played 300+hrs on ps4. But Ruri has definitely sold me on it
Been really digging your coverage of GBF-R. I'm maining Io and her casting mechanic is really satisfying. Looking forward to Tweyen come April.
I'm still progressing through the endgame and I agree that most of the game is on the easy side, but it doesn't matter.
The game was never advertised as a soulslike or anything like that, maybe as a "monster hunter-esque game", but even MH isn't particularly hard on release, and for some crazy people it never gets hard.
What matter is that the gameplay is good, the music is great, the visuals are simply gorgeous, the live service feeling of long term progression is there (for regular players that doesn't go hardcore minmax week 1 at least) without the big cons of a live service game and the characters aren't noisy like in Tales of Arise.
For me the biggest con is the lack of a proper frontline tank waifu with a big axe.
Was cruising up to maniac but proud hits different
As a mhw and souls player, the difficulty argument is not a fair point until after experiencing proud mode.
Game is definitely easier, but the caveat is that it is not just easy. It scales really well.
Edit: early proud is a joke imho, and in the grand scale, only a handful of fights are actually top tier in proud, but i think the game having such an excellent difficulty curve overall should be a bigger point than just "easier mh/souls"
What I’ve noticed, being new to this series, is that the community is extremely toxic if you say anything negative about the game. The Reddit is full of people acting personally offended if you question the difficulty, dmg cap, or anything else.
Still an awesome game though. I’ve just learned not to interact with the community.
I think the reason the game might feel easy at times is because if you do it online and everyone is fully stacked up on end game gear the bosses get rolled over pretty fast... BUT also another reason might be that the game gives you multiple chances of reviving yourself and others, if they limited players to 3 downs then it would definitely make the game "harder" or make players be more cautious, since there are sigils like auto revive which revive you much faster before your critical bar runs out, specially if everyone has it equipped, there are multiple variables but I think more than anything the devs wanted the game to be accessible to everyone, casuals and hard core players. They would only make the game feel more challenging by limiting the amount of times a team can faint before failing the quest, which might be why they have the revive system instead, not to mention there are also sigils that can give you more revive potions and Cagliostro as an example to pick up people faster to save that "critical bar" from depleting and failing. (Not to mention you also have Ai that helps you, if the game was a solo experience it would take longer and would be much more "harder" or time consuming)
As an older gamer which played basically all the Demon Souls and Monster Hunter games when I had the time in the world, I totally agree with you this being easy. Dont get me wrong, Im glad it is. Pretty much moved on with life and can hardly play games and make content. I was glad that this game makes it easier to farm play and enjoy at the same time. I do not have the luxury to play 1hr-2hr per boss fight.
I love monster hunter
They clearing the boss on proud in like 5 mins. I was clearing maniac with randoms in like 2-3 mins. So I quit playing. The game is fun af tho but I don’t really feel rewarded for beating the bosses.
@@ogbreeze1081 I’m sure they will make it more difficult at some point
@@graceypatrick I hope they do. But if not I know their next game is gonna be crazy. Or either monster hunter speed their combat up some. But they probably won’t.
@@ogbreeze1081 I think they will. There’s a lot of people on RUclips saying the game is too easy. So I think they will change it because they wouldn’t want the game to die out
While I will agree it is a BIT on the easier side(if we're comparing to games like Monster Hunter, etc.), I do have to admit that playing with other people contributes to that pretty heavily. I went through almost all of the game single player with the NPC's up to the end of extreme and the end of Chapter 0. And the few times I played with randoms on the quick quest(all on extreme quests), the difference in difficulty is almost night and day. The enemies and bosses die way faster, and you don't have to worry about taking damage and going critical as often, if ever. Not to mention only having to worry about gearing up and upgrading/leveling one character.
You can get a good amount of (L) fortitude shard from the quest "Serenity upon the mountain". You could clear it in about 4 to 5 mins. at your power lvl. It gives about 35 shards each run.
The first wall for me is Angra Mainyu in Extreme level. I struggled to destroy its hands when it was readying itself for the Salvation wipe.
ID+Vane trust me
After finishing this games main story today I was a bit concerned at what I would be doing after it was done since I don't have PS plus and can only play solo, so to see this game ooz even more content even after the story is basically done was a pleasant surprise, and the content there isn't your usual filler, at least to me since I've been enjoying whats there, the combat alone though can definitely be a good reason as to why the game doesn't get old since the sheer variety in characters to play as and the uniqueness of each one, will make this game insanely replayable
Agreed on difficulty. As a monhun player, I feel right at home. Even the quest to unlock proud only took 2 tries, the first I failed only because people didn't know not to bust SBA before the skill check phases.
I am finishing up a game first, but I am so ready to hop on Relink. Been hyped for this game for years… everything about it
the artstyle, the UI, the music, the gameplay, it looks fucking amazing.
I don’t care if it’s somewhat easy most the time (I was expecting the game to be easy based on all the gameplay before it was out), it looks so damn fun.
That firewyrm quest has some of the most hype music in the game and i loved it.
making the critical bar less forgiving and adding more content and we got here a game for a long time
I was anticipating for this game together with World, and it releases just couple month after Wilds announced. Unreal
I recommend Cagliostro as a support character, she has an awesome healing and resurrect skills. And although her chance is low she can do a lot of dmg with a very special link atk.
My biggest criticism of the game so far is that you cannot join lobbies of players with whom you are not friends. I just want to join a lobby like in Monster Hunter and spend the whole evening questing together. Unfortunately, I don't know any other PS5 players. Otherwise, I haven't had this much joy in grinding for a long time
I was one of those that voiced my displeasure of your initial review lol. And unfairly so tbh. We are playing it completely differently as i have been playing solo nearly exclusively. I don't like matching up with randoms until i know all the systems and ins and outs. None of my friends bought the game lol. I love the game and it feels like a gacha with no restrictions. All the min maxing and different ways to get stuff and make your character better that some gacha games have but without the predatory trash. I want people to play because i would love for this to be a template of future games. So yeah i got a bit heated seeing people run with how you said it was too easy. But i also realize those people weren't going to buy the game anyway. But it does make me sad that most of the people on my friends list on PS5 are from MH and none bought it. They are mostly weebs too. Gonna start deleting fortnite and destiny 2 ppl. Need to purge lol.
This is a great video and you are pretty much spot on. I apologize for overreacting. I know it's a lot to assume you read my comments in prev vids but i'm pretty sure you did unfortunately. I was pretty damn doochey.
For those who wants to get more FC L the best mission I see that can give 10-20 max per run is category Defend -> Hallowed Be Thy Ground on Maniac 8000 Power.
I believe the crit weapon is the strongest weapon early on in the game and suggest to get it as soon as possible since you can max out crit rate and crit damage so fast. Every hit i do is a crit over 40k. It was enough damage to push through bahamut versa in the story. Also my brother was amazed that my character pushed our sba over 2mil.
I must suck at the game or I was under-leveled, because the massive 3 stage next to final boss fight carted me 3 times. I failed that quest 3 times before I killed it. There were so many purple laser beams everywhere that I just couldn't dodge
As a gunlance fan to another I think Cagliostro and Ferry kind of has something from each. Ferry's gimick revolves around summoning ghosts and then spending them to buff her Triangle attack. Cagliostro's gimick is all about shooting a giant rock after combo finishers.
They really should add Deliford from the mobile game. He kinda plays like a Gunlance
@@nekotorin Or Razia, she uses Gunlance
Personally think the difficulty is perfect for the average player. I would like them to increase it going forward tho not right now. The issue is unless they crank the difficulty to a hard degree any mainstay soulslike or MH players arent going to feel a extreme challenge. Difficulty is also subjective ik people that say the later souls games are easier than the early ones but thats only cause they were more experienced in the genre when the newer one came out. The team play feels more impactful in this game for me compared to MH which I very much enjoy. Getting what you want is also feels more realistic to me compared to MH which is a major plus imo.
You might not want to admit it ruri but you and a majority of the people that are actively social online about these games are in the top 10-20%. You are a very good player at these games compared to the average.
I cant stop playing!! I love all the characters, Now finished Proud mode and loved the 4 last fights (I really hate the Smoll and big duo)
Time to farm the 6th weapon and hoping for a War Elemental soon!
I think as long as they include dlc and take feedback from the base game we will have more challenging fights. I also don’t mind it being on the easier side because of the amount of grind you need to do for some stuff and it allows to play multiple characters
I think it's true that it's pretty easy but it's also true that you playing with people makes it WAY easier. I did most of the normal and some of the hard quests solo and then in multiplayer to test and solo took 2-4 times longer than multiplayer every time
The quest revenge of the hoard on proud give you around 30 large crystals and 20 medium per run. It’s much much better than goblins of fire. It also drops like 20 flowers after 3 runs you can trade all the flowers for like 800 tickets. It’s a much better quest.
I appreciate your coverage on the game and your opinions on it. I personally find that I generally agree with your takes on difficulty, and if you say something is really easy or challenging, I'll more or less feel the same way.
My biggest concern is that if every fight pre proud is easy, and there's only a couple of fights in the end game that can present a challenge, then I know I'll get bored slogging through the easy stuff, and then grinding it to clear a wall. And I'm not suggesting every fight needs to be Fatalis or Melania. But I'm also not a big fan of the idea of 40-60 hours of village rank quests to unlock a handful of fights I'd actually enjoy.
I still haven't picked up the game because I've been suddenly busy dealing with my car dying, but it's definitely something I'm still considering. Thanks again for your honest takes on the game.
As a Monster Hunter fan, when the base game of Monster Hunter Rise came out, I thought it was super easy even compared to base MHW or MHG and say that this game was more harder. Although I haven't completely finished Sunbreak, I do know that MHR is alot more challenging now with all the updates it had so Relink could just be in a similar situation. I honestly wouldn't be surprised that the new boss in March will be pain in the ass lol but we will have to wait and see.
It depends a lot of what you are used to. Having done Ultimates on FFXIV, played MHW and Fromsoft games I also find the game on the easier side. Grind to a decent power level so that you can survivee a hit or two, respect the mechanics and greed in dmg as long as it's safe, the game is on the easier side, but not braindead easy and definitely not bad by any means, people just need to accept good games can be good games without being Soulslike difficulty (This is not a rant about what Rurikhan said but to let people that are not used to Soulslike that it's ok if they didn't find it as easy as some other people do or not think that it being easier than from software games is a bad thing.)
Just beat the story yesterday. The game's great! I love it.
I think I just hit level 60 and my power levels around 5500. Maybe a little higher. I am running into an issue where I'm having a hard time ever finding people to matchmake with. Do I just need to get higher level and there's more people playing there? I read somewhere that if I change my download region to Japan I'll get more people. But wouldn't I be playing with awful ping?
If it’s easier, then good. I don’t like to play only difficult games, sometimes having fun and relax is great
I think the reason why it was on the easy side, extreme and below. Is that they want casuals to actually enjoy the game. It is also why the full auto assist only works until extreme mode. But stop working on maniac and higher, caz maniacs are where tryhards actually starts grinding gear to prepare for the challenge on proud.
Also i would believe if they going to release even more difficulty stages in the future, as in the mobile game.
As of right now, the most difficult stage in relink is proto baph, which in the mobile. It is considered one of the early raid bosses in the game.
And i believes that they will slowly pump out contents and makes more difficult raids in the future.
Hey! Thanks for the video. Do you mind showing some of the other game modes such as Defend, Survival, etc? I have no seen anyone on RUclips showcase those mission types. Sub earned
Playing this with friends makes a HUGE difference. I got matched with a Lancelot for that Proud promotion quest and he was hitting for less than 2k damage and his SBA did an entire 200k damage.... 2 attacks in my regular combo do over 200k damage.... ugh lol
I don't know how it would be possible that he was hitting 2k especially if he was lvl 100
My problem with too easy games isnt that i dont die or get hit enough, but rather that enemies die too fast to use the fun game mechanics. This game doesnt have that problem that much.
As long as i can use my skills in combat, can get a link attack every once in a while in mob encounters, and get to do sba's and chain bursts in boss fights a few times, im good.
I have to agree that the fights are way undertuned for having 4 characters in a fight. But when I took off every party member after the goblin boss fight in the story (hard mode btw), the game suddenly became a lot more challenging even in just story missions, not impossible but the last fight chapter 9 definitely took me quite a bit of min-maxing and saving up bursts to meet the dps check using only Gran and no other AI/Players. Also fights usually last 8-10min when i was playing this way (Except the desert giant and that harvin boss which took takes like 15 - 20 min).
Now that I am almost at the end of maniac difficulty, I am still able to play without the 3 other party members, getting S ranks are definitely much more difficult, not impossible but definitely feel much more satisfying when you do get it. Also since bosses seem to be a lot more aggressive in maniac, I feel much more need to learn a fight in order to win as the boss is always focused on you. So for those who want their experience more in line with monster hunter difficulty, consider try playing the game without party members, fights will take longer as boss dont scale with amount of party members, and you will miss out on full-bursts, but definitely more satisfying to play, and 10min ish runs isn't that bad, monster hunter also take about the same amount of time to kill a monster.
I dont know how Bahamut Versa in proud is gonna be like tho, but I am looking forward to it.
I feel the same. When I'm playing this game, I play for long hours. When I'm not playing, I'm thinking of playing.
Now I got my Steamdeck to remote play with my PS5 so I can play while in the washroom too XD
I would agree the game is a bit easy, I did hard mode for the story and it didnt seem different to me at all. It's also easy once you understand the perfect guard, dodge, and adding in counter attack abilities to your kit. It makes it almost impossible to get hit once you understand all of it but this is still a fun game to me and I enjoy doing the harder fights all over again taking no damage and solo running it with no NPC or other players helping out. The Challenge is really fun!
"I want to butcher something and it just EXPLODES into a *BUKKAKE* of crystals." - Rurikhan 2024
I'm playing Dragon's Dogma at the moment. If I wasn't I would be pretty eager to play Relink. DD is just too good and I can't stop playing it haha I great problem to have :)
One of the goats
good choice, not long until DD2 so you'll be up to speed. even though really the story wasn't really there and DD2 is a separate parallel universe, but whatever XD...
DD2 is going to be so good, I hope it sweeps our feet away and will be Goty
I just beat the first 120 boss that brings you into proud I don’t want to say the name of it because I don’t want to spoil what that boss is for the people who are playing but I don’t have any friends to play with me and I played with randoms and that fight took me four attempts to beat I loved every second of it
Im playing my first monster hunter game its mhw ive played solo for every new monster. Im addicted lol and i wanted to play gran blue but i want to finnish all of mhw before dragons dogma 2 lol
yes the game is a bit on the easy side relative to souls games and monster hunter but 1) its not always a bad thing 2) it does offer challenge when you reach maniac and proud. and if you're already someone whos played the game to where you can get offended when he says its too easy then it means you are already playing it and deemed its challenging enough for you. so thats already a non issue. but i do think its fair of him to highlight this considering difficulty is a deal breaker for some players out there and they do need to have some expectation of what its going to be like.
Yea. Honestly find the tougher bosses on proud to be more enjoyable than a lot of MH/Souls fights. Just hope they keep ramping up the difficulty in future updates. They need a bit of a steeper curve to deal with your character progression.
@@jordanneal8979 yes u are right about the curve. that is my main issue as stated by rurikhan is that its back loaded. in MH and souls there is some challenge to be met even during the early/mid game. souls is an exception cuz its structurally different and can be challenging at pretty much whenever u reach certain areas thru exploration. like we grind and build up our character and go through countless easy quests only to finally be able test ourselves with very small amount of quests by way of proud and maybe some maniac quests. there is no wall in this game until proud.
Me and my friend had the same experience as you with pushing until we hit the wall and it was literally until we reached Gallanza and Maglielle duo boss quest that we couldnt clear it
Percival is an easy character. If u want more challenging and rewarding character, play Siegfried
I have an idea for Cygames "Crystal Gigaslime King" a Slime king as big as the black dragon
Hi Ruri, would it be too much of a hassle for me to ask for a video doing a direct comparison between this game and MH:W / MH:R? The combat looks a lot like the Tales game, particularly Tales of Arise.
i never play games on hard, and because of your video i started on hard, and im having no problem, is super easy
Theres about 4 total proud quests that are actual challenges the rest are fairly easy. If youre grouped with rabdoms the game becomes significantly harder trying to beat some of these proud quests
I'm fine with it being a bit on the easy side. It let's you feel lore accurate and it let's you just vibe with the boys.
My wife got offended when she heard that it's easy cause she's struggling while playing in story difficulty. In my mind is that she didn't play enough games yet. Lol😂 she's not a gamer.
Played through the story on hard mode, only a couple of bosses were a challenge the ice primal and the Bahamut fight. Still beat them
@@Mystra yea ice primal in hard story was pretty fun. first time i actually felt like i had to try.
@@Shad0wmoses Same!
They need to also add a challenge that requires having master skill tree/best weapon, so a test of skill, nothing you can do gearwise
Some people get too offended by their game being called easy. Like that's not inherently a bad thing especially when an easy game doesn't immediately mean a bad game. Same can be said about difficult games immediately mean a good game. I think it's good that despite being easy, granblue still manages to be super fun
Really tempted to try this game . Is it crissplay ?
I've been excited, and mostly loved the demo. But I've been waiting to see a lot more endgame gameplay because I enjoyed the demo for a little more than an hour and then was bored to tears just dropping into a boss arena, fighting the boss and then leaving. I need more to combat than that. And since they didn't allow any of the other features in the demo like upgrading characters or weapons I don't know if that would be enough to keep me wanting to play.
I kinda wanna try playing through the game with no party members, a Gran-only run seems like it would be interesting.
Bro, F the haters. Your opinion is important, own it. If people get offended by your opinion, that's their problem.
Not sleeping at all actually. Ive been grinding the absolute hell out of this game. The combat is just way too good. And the boss fights are intense. Characters all feel different and thats a great feeling. Lancelot and Vane are god tier. Totally satisfied with the game, i got a little worried before release but the demo made me happy enough to buy it and I am satisfied fully. A good game to hold me to ff7 and then dragons dogma 2.
The fights seems a lot of bashing compared to MH games but I’m pretty curious to feel it with controllers in the hands and give it a try if you enjoy it !
Khan got dark hero to carry him, guy. On serious note, the progression is daunting for beginners
After goin through a lot of the post game grind, i have replayed chapters on Ultimate difficulty twice, a whole lot of Proud rank quest grind even fully awakened 6th weapons, in my opinion the game is pretty easy and chill.
Not sure why ppl would be offended when you say the game is easy. First of all, everyone experience things differently, so the game can be easy for some ppl and it can be challenging for others,
it's just how things are Irl too.
I think the game is fairly hard on very hard and beyond, the biggest thing that makes it easy is how hard it is to actually fail. I'm midway through extreme right now and I still die a few times but there's no real punishment tbh.
Wow 24 videos on granblue so far, that's impressive.
There is an extreme quest that I use for farming and it spawns I think 2 silver slimes and 2 gold slimes and I can trade in the mats I get for tickets and you get a ton of coins to buy crystals with
Thank you for information and have good days 🍻👍 mate
My 3 favorite vasarega and vane and Siegfried by the way 😅
I agree with you all what say 😅 I still playing the game almost reach proud missions
aight, Ruri, I give up. you sold the game to me. it's just too cool.
Yeah, even as someone who has completed all the SoulsBorneRingSekirowhatever games and did some challenge runs for some of them, I can say that the game is definitely not "on the easy side" for me. That said, coming from FromSoft games, I also don't tend to do much grinding - in those games you either "git gud" or you fail.^^ I'm having lots of fun with Relink though. It's the first game in quite a while that I just can't put down. :)
I definitely think some maniac and proud missions are tough. They might be “easy” if you dump a ton of time in grinding your characters up non stop such as 73+ hrs. Also if you play with people it will be easier.That being said before maniac is easy
they really need to reduce game over bar to half. right now it gives so much time to revive.
You can get autorevive or guts that will help alot .. Or smash the button to revive faster because i always play with random and most of them dint know about this ..
yup that or just get rid of it, you get so many options and ways to negate and avoid damage that if you die it should be game over. or maybe you get 1 death and the 2nd is game over. its wayyy too forgiving the way it is right now.
Rurikhan, don't take this the wrong way, because I actually mean it as an encouragement, but you just need to "git bad".
This game is dumb fun. Its a shame its not cross play with console. I just started like 3 days ago on pc and this game is beautiful.
the proud quest with multiple bosses lv 130+ are the ones who really challangers me and I feel most of the times it is not my fault im getting hit, I dont know if it its only me but the lock on system in this game sucks a lot.
I'm a big fan of the Gatekeeper for Proud being the hardest boss in the game.
The evyl blackwyrm can be a good candidate for black dragons in mh games
The fact most of the game is fairly easy make the experience dumb fun all the way to Proud difficulty . Even if most of the "easy" fights last 3 minutes , it just never feels boring and monsters stills does enough damage or just straight up one shot so you still need to pay attention . This game just had such a good combat flow , i just don't care about killing things fast, it's always felt like a part of the joy ride . And the best part about this joy ride is the fact that the longest and hardest fights rules! As soon the game push you , it's simply gets even more fun. It's absurd.
The progression , the power spike , the weapon mastery and the sigils ... This game simply did everything right and somehow keep throwing stuff at you the more you go through it. I still found out some new sigils after 90 hours thanks to Zathba .
19 characters, all of them are viable. Don't even waste your time with tier list and just pick up someone you might like to play and connects with your gameplay. In the endgame everyone is busted.
The game lunches with so much content and possibilities , it'll put to shame some live-service games whos been around for years . GBF Relink has been in dev for 8 years and it shows, so please give it some love because it deserve it .
how do I grind to lv100? Is there a way to make it more fun instead of repeating the same missions 100 times??
the only really difficult part of this game is sitting through the story and characters. I actually felt exhausted just watching the cutscenes where dialog happens. thankfully there's a skip button because even the devs know lol
I think even extreme and maniac can be fairly challenging if you're running them with CPU companions. They are just not as capable as humans plus you need to spread your MSP and stuff thinner to level everyone up...
75 hours and you haven't discovered the terminus weapon grind? Oh boy you're in for a treat