The thrill of adventure in an unlimited playground awakens the imagination, something that is very familiar to players of Granblue Fantasy, a mobile/browser-based title that has been an international success for more than a decade. The original title is similar to 16-bit turn-based role-playing games like the old Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games, leaving behind larger-scale daydreams and exploiting a hopeful desire instead of an inevitable reality. With Granblue Fantasy: Relink, developer CyGames has the opportunity to explore a fantasy world with open skies and magic while transforming the game from a comparatively modest mobile title into a full-fledged 3D action game. Granblue Fantasy: Relink is not entirely successful, but it should be commended for going most of the way to a memorable title, but it took a little more ambition and unique content to achieve this goal.

Relink takes players through a single-player campaign with the crew of the Grandcypher, a group of air travelers who undertake battle-tested adventures on every new island they encounter. For this title, a completely original island and story was created, in which the crew was tasked with saving one of their own by defeating huge monsters called primitive beasts and defeating a sorceress who controlled them.

Those who are not familiar with the story and characters of Granblue Fantasy will not find Relink particularly interested in catching up with the player. Small vignettes about how the characters met and how they got to the newest Pitstop Island, where the adventures of this game take place, are essentially all that the player receives, without the help of fan wikis filling in the rest. It has an energy similar to picking up the anime One Piece halfway through or jumping into the middle of a game of Such, with no intention or desire to delve into its past, which presumably the player has seen.

Relink can also look beautiful, especially in its picturesque settings, but it is difficult to overlook the fact that the artistic style is inconsistently translated between the characters. Granblue Fantasy Versus by Arc System Works is a much more successful experiment with the same designs.

Although the single-player campaign is short, it offers interesting emergencies, such as climbing a wind god on a stormy mountain or recovering a castle from an invading force. Players take control of an unlockable cast of 19 characters with different fighting styles and special moves to follow a somewhat simple story that doesn’t require too many big or unpredictable changes.

All these characters have a similar template for using four special moves and movement options, but they differ significantly in special abilities and meters. My favorite character pounced on enemies and specialized in parades on the ground, but a late unlock focused more on transformations and building counters, which made even these two feel different.

Unfortunately, the levels are largely linear paths without much exploration. The endless sky and floating islands are rarely used for anything but backgrounds and carry over to the next battle, so there’s almost no reason to stick your nose anywhere else but in the most linear way. A world in which the characters talk about an inexhaustible space for escapades and whims, but spend much of their time in caves and sidewalks, is incongruous in a way that passes over time.

After completing the single-player campaign, players will be able to accept combat missions that can be played in co-op mode with friends or strangers. The difficulty level increases as the ranks progress, and the characters need to strengthen themselves through options such as skill trees and weapons to keep up. At the end of the game, it takes a lot of effort to maintain a strong enough team to play these missions solo, but focusing on one character discourages variety, especially when there is an opportunity to use 18 others. There is no real way around this routine, where you have to repeat missions over and over to get guaranteed materials and experience for an upgrade, although reversing the smooth progression of the initial game can act as a frustrating wall.

The final bosses are monstrous with equally gigantic HP bars, which makes the battles boring. Unlike a monster hunter, your prey never escapes or requires other strategies, and the probability of surviving a knockout state means that the player is mainly in a race against finishing the fight before getting bored.

The saving grace of these extended gameplay encounters is that the combat is reasonably exciting and the interactions between the characters are likely to excite existing Granblue fantasy fans. Relink is probably not a newcomer’s favorite game. However, the basic gameplay is fun and will keep you moving on the treadmill, especially if you have a collection of like-minded fans of the source material who will help you slay the biggest figurative and literal dragons.