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Granblue Fantasy Versus PS4 Review

Arc System Works is one of the most active fighting game developers at the moment. The company has released many titles this generation, which covers two – and one currently in development Guilty Gear games, three BlazBlue titles, Dragon Ball FighterZ and also supporting the recent releases of those games with downloadable content. Joining their fighting catalogue is Granblue Fantasy Versus, a spin-off of the rather popular Japanese role-playing game that came out in 2014, Granblue Fantasy, for iOS and Android, which unfortunately has not seen a release outside of Japan yet (it does feature English language options). As with anything that gains mass popularity, anime and video game spin-offs are here build the brand, with this fighting game the first of two titles (another is an action RPG) that were known to be in development.

Single player content comes up as a talking point in fighting games. This might not be an attraction for a lot of dedicated players, but it can help newcomers get a feeling for the game and hopefully once done, they will want to improve their game to beat their friends locally or the random people online. Single player modes can range from features like the highly polished cinematic story mode and bonus challenge tower modes that come with NetherRealm Studios’ games, extended gameplay modes as seen in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but they can also be some lacklustre attempts at story cinematics or simply just be a barebones arcade mode. The developers of Granblue Fantasy Versus have decided to use the mobile game’s roots and adapt the main mode of single player action to something dubbed “RPG Mode”.

RPG Mode introduces us to the fantasy medieval world where islands exist in the sky, as it drops into the shoes of the lead character, Gran, and a group of his buddies who are trying to protect a blue-haired lady, Lyria, from the resurrected empire that was thought to have vanished. On the way to meet a friend, things turn sour when this person wants to capture Lyria. Not sure what is going on, the gang end up finding out key people around the sky islands are acting differently, more violent, as they become possessed by evil entities. The gang decide to investigate why this is happening and turn their friends back to good guys. You can expect this mode to last around 12 hours, even more if you want to take on the harder difficulty after beating it or making your way up the Tower of Babyl, a bonus area that tasks the player to take on a few floors at a time, with better rewards gained the higher up someone gets. As far as the story goes, it does a good job introducing characters, since I’d expect not many people will know everything about this mobile hit, but the game quickly explores the history of how these characters know each other. There is also a glossary to look up more detailed explanations. In the end, it is a rather trope-filled adventure that is more enjoyable thanks to the characters, rather than the general plot.

The structure of RPG Mode reminds me of some of the mobile RPGs and how they design their stages. The gist is that a mission is selected from the menu, then often a dialogue scene is shown with the characters – with fully voiced actors in both Japanese and English – then enemies appear and you begin the mission. The combat for RPG Mode is not a mirror of the game’s one-vs-one fighting mechanics, instead, it is more of a stripped down beat ’em game with the abilities of the fighter’s move set. This means it is rather limited, due to the movement restricted to the 2D plane of a fighting game and the bad guys coming in like poor fighters that you can kill with a few hits. Initially, it kind of does a nice job to get people to learn new characters, as it dedicates some quests to new party members to show off their abilities, but then it returns to the repetitive fighting. This ultimately fails at teaching the player how to play the game, since most things die within the same auto combo or special move.

Granblue Fantasy Versus also fails the people who might have been expecting the next Streets of Rage or Dragon’s Crown – those will be disappointed. This is a 2D plane filled with a few enemies to beat up, then either the mission ends or asks you to walk to the end of the screen to load up the next lot of enemies in a similar background environment. This causes RPG Mode to feel repetitive and rather one-noted, with only the boss fights or one-vs-one with other main characters adding something a bit different.

I understand that fleshing this out to be a full beat ’em up would take time, something that Namco has done before with Tekken Force, and there are elements of more complexity added here with some of the gatcha (also known as capsule-toy vending machine) mechanics brought over from the mobile game – this is strictly in game money and not monetised – to gain random new weapons to buff the damage output. This along with the experience system to level up characters has the blueprints for so much potential, but as it stands, it’s a little fun-filled detraction from the main entertainment of Granblue Fantasy Versus, serving as a way to introduce the characters and story more in-depth than the game’s Arcade Mode could do, while wrapping it in some simple gameplay action that takes cues from the original source material.

In reality, having a passable RPG Mode is not what is important for Granblue Fantasy Versus, what matters is how it plays when you are fighting mano-a-mano across local or online, and on that front it succeeds rather well with some great core fighting mechanics and a streamline approach to help newcomers to the genre – this is a topic that seems to be always actively discussed throughout the fighting game community, as it boils down to if a game is going to be “dumbed-down” to allow accessibility for newcomers, but that does not have to be the case if the developer can get the mix right. Granblue Fantasy Versus is on the right track with this philosophy.

No matter what experience or skill someone has with the genre, everyone will want to jump into the tutorials to learn the game and some basic moves, fighting fundamentals and specific character combos to get started, which it does a sound job at explaining, with demonstrations available to offer a better understanding. Some elements are familiar for people who play Arc System Works’ fighters, such as auto combos, but in terms of how fights play out, Granblue Fantasy Versus is different to Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and Dragon Ball FighterZ, feeling more grounded than the crazy action that happens off ground in those other titles. All four face buttons on a controller are used to input light, medium, heavy attacks, with a final button acting as a unique attack for that character. Tapping any of the three strength buttons will chain an auto combo if close to the opponent. These will not deal the best damage, but players can use these as starting points, then train to extend these combos or perform manual combos as they feel more comfortable doing so.

Things become more interesting when speaking of the additional functions of the shoulder buttons. Each one represents a shortcut for an overhead attack, throw, guard and special moves, the latter performs a different special move depending on what direction is pressed at the same time. This is similar to the easy operation added in Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO. For people thinking this is awful, the standard way of doing special moves is still available, and for concerns about broken mechanics, which can happen when special moves are offered as shortcuts, because it opens up combos that are impossible – anyone remember the madness that was in Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition on the 3DS? To stop this issue, the developers added cooldown periods to special moves, signalled by the special move images under the character’s health bar. Special moves can be performed with different strengths based on what attack button is pressed, which equals a longer cooldown for more damage. The strongest moves add quite a delay to the cooldown compared to light or medium, and so these should be looked upon as buffed up attacks, similar to using metre for special moves in other fighting games. To reward people to learn d-pad inputs, the game does very slightly decrease the cooldown for moves done the traditional way.

The cooldown mechanic might seem like a simple change, but it fundamentally changes how you look at defence. If a fighter misses one of their specials, more so a heavy variant, then you have clear visibility that the attack cannot be used again for a set time. This is great to attack from defending, because if someone can no longer do a fireball, their zoning has deteriorated, if they cannot do an anti-air, then their air defence is weakened. This way of doing moves gives the game a different feeling to anything else Arc System Works has done, and it does it without feeling “dumbed-down” from the additional features to try welcome in novices to the genre.

Even though there is a block button, blocking can still be done in the classic sense of holding back or down-back, but what the block button does is help with cross-up attacks, since it will automatically block those without having to change direction. Pressing back and the block button allows a standing dodge with some invincibility frames, while forward and block does a dodge dash. The only downside I could see is that you need to be off the left or right directional buttons to activated it, otherwise one of the two dodge actions will activate, which could lead you into a bad situation if the opposite combatant spots this.

After playing matches for a few hours, I feel that Arc System Works has struck a nice balance between accessibility and complexity, and that is thanks to thinking about how the mechanics work through both input methods, rather than taking something made for d-pad inputs and slotting them into shortcuts. This does wonders for the overall combat experience without breaking core gameplay. Granblue Fantasy Versus is not only a unique experience through this mixture of inputs, but remains an absolute joy to play, while making this a Street Fighter experience than any other Arc System Works games to date.

While I do have praise for the combat, Granblue Fantasy Versus does have issues with a limited cast, falling into a same problem that the first Blazblue had back in the day. The game comes with 12 characters. Not only that, but by the time it came to Europe, two downloadable characters were available to purchase – the game had only been out in Japan since February 6th, and only a week later did another two characters appear as DLC. That’s quite the amount to drop in a short amount of time, and since these characters are part of a season pass, it means you are paying full price for the game and then another bulk of cash for new characters – one more is due to arrive at some point in the future. It seems like the game could have been delayed for a couple of months to offer these characters, instead, it feels more like a cash grab, doing a season pass because all other fighters are doing them. Those other games take time with their additional characters, while this  seems like they were close to ready. The quality of these characters, both downloadable and in the base game are fantastic, I have nothing against them, and what helps the game is that all the characters in the base game are unique, no clones here, so you are getting a versatile set to play with, but some could argue that a lot of the designs are stereotypical anime, but I do not personally have an issue with it.

Which comes to the online mode and playing against other people across the internet. Before any of that happens, the game has to judge a player’s ability by pitting them against a few computer controlled opponents and a couple of online fights to gain a placement rank. Ranked matches and lobbies are available, and also Arc System Works’ crazy hub system that features chibi models in a small area make a return in this game. As for how the online feels, it was mostly decent, and since I was playing while the game was full released to the public, there seems to be quite a few people online to play against, which probably helps with the connection. It can at times feel laggy, likely due to the game using delay netcode, rather than rollback, which seems to be the standard people are asking for, especially after experiencing such amazing netcode in games like Killer Instinct. It is a shame fighting games aren’t on this standard, but there are certainly worse online fighters than Granblue Fantasy Versus on the market. Still, it is worth pointing that out since this game is more grounded in combat, a hiccup in connection could misplace a well-timed confirm follow up attack.

Ever since Arc System Works debuted the use of Unreal Engine in Guilty Gear Xrd, their graphics have been a visual splendour for capturing the essence of Japanese animation, getting better with each new fighting game instalment. Granblue Fantasy Versus keeps this trend going with impressive looking character models and high quality animations. What that means is this a beautiful game to witness in action and is a wonderful representation of the original artwork – check some artwork posters for the mobile game to understand what I mean where it feels ripped from those pages and brought to life here. The backgrounds are also pretty, done in a sort of watercolour style, but the gorgeous character models are the real stars, especially when they transition through cinematics in a limited frame rate to try mimic a Japanese animation show (most of these shows are done with 24 frames per second, often featuring duplicated frames as well). Simply put, when it comes to the game’s presentation, there is hardly anything to fault with it.

In short, Granblue Fantasy Versus brings to the table some refreshing ideas that are novice friendly. Arc System Works has managed to do this without hampering the gameplay, using the cooldown special moves as a core mechanic to build this fighting game on, something not seen before in fighting game design. The hope is that these people will eventually become comfortable and want to improve at the game through its great tutorials, challenges and online play. For newcomers, Granblue Fantasy Versus is an easy recommendation, and for more serious fans of Arc System Works, they already know about how beautiful their games are right now, and Granblue Fantasy Versus is no different. This is a piece of visual pleasure, with a decent amount of content that offers a compelling gameplay with a varied cast of, if limited at the moment, characters. It might not be Arc System Works’ best fighting game, but it is a welcomed addition to their catalogue that, from what history has shown us about the company, will no doubt improve as a series as time goes on.

8 out of 10