If arriving a couple of weeks late hasn’t quenched our hunger for curiosity towards ‘s new work Arc System Works e Cygames, now it’s time to tell you about our journey into a world that immediately presented itself as a real mix of RPG, fighting game and strong manga and anime influences. Let’s talk about Granblue Fantasy Versus Risingarriving from December 14th on PC and Sony home console, and which brings back the Granblue Fantasy Versus experience with notable improvements to the graphics and many other enhancements. Let’s discover together everything we observed in the our test in the Steam version for PC!
Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising: The Past is Empowered
We don’t hide behind a finger: Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising is significantly wider and deeper than its predecessor. This was possible thanks to the addition of new characters, fighting techniques, modes and other more or less important content which made the story now being released much more interesting. It is essential to start from the innovations introduced in this chapter, starting from a new act of history, ben 28 playable characters present in the roaster, while the 2020 version only included 11 of these.
The first impact with this new fighting game was the clear sensation of having a game in front of us simplified version of games of this genre, which on the contrary increasingly tend to stratify the gaming experience. The development team proposed us a game where, be careful, we shouldn’t think we have a lightened version of the base game in our hands, just because it presents a fewer contents.
On the contrary, it introduces many others, but designed for simplify the gameplay and discourage the defensive approach adopted to date by many players of the basic version of the fighting game. Let’s see in detail what this new Cygames title has in store for us in terms of content.
How an anime character fights
The new autocombos, guard-breaking attacks, Brave Counters and Ultimate Skills are just some of the examples that allow us to quickly turn the tide of a match (both for us and for our opponents), offering even beginners a chance to defeat expert players, but without ever excessively unbalancing the matches and without eliminating the strategic component adopted by those who prefer a proactive approach. In short, a good balanced mix for anyone approaching this game.
In essence, the fight comes out rather victorious from all points of view, resulting more balanced, unpredictable and spectacular. It is not not even particularly complex to learn the combos to be implemented to knock out our enemies more quickly, contributing to the simplification we have discussed so far. And speaking of training, there are different modes available to us to approach the game: from the classic Arcade to Story mode, up to Training.
The combat system was enriched with new mechanicsand to be honest, the graphics in the PC version we tested it is definitely neat, although it demonstrates its precision more in the animated sequences than in the gameplay phase. And it’s not the only flaw found in this last moment: the allows you to play with minimal input delays, but still present. Not a good sign for a fighting game, where everything is about reaction times and speed maximized as much as possible.
The story beyond the struggles
Finally, although we will have to reduce the story a lot to avoid spoilers, a mention of some aspects of the Story mode that are hidden in this title. While 2020’s Granblue Fantasy Versus already included a similar two-act mode, Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising completes the story with a third and final chapterthe longest-lived of all.
This last act stages the climax of Gran and his companions’ adventure, with a duration approximately equal to that of the first two acts together. At this stage therefore, we have a decidedly abundant number of missions, with new scenarios to explore and bosses to defeat. All with a good rate of involvement and offering interesting content, for those who want to dedicate themselves not only to the fighting phases, but also to a story in classic RPG terms.
The review of Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising
Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising is pretty much it a reboot, decidedly richer and more refined than the original, and worthy of attention from all fighting game lovers. Although it offers small technical limitations in the combat phase, and not entirely considered as trifles, the graphics sector does its duty, for a good overall performance and pleasing to the eye. The Story and Fight modes are two very different sides of the same coin, but this combination can work, especially for those who are not just looking for one of the two distinct game genres. A affordable compromisewhich will also present the online function from launch day, and which we hope will live up to the technical features we expect.