Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising evolves from the first game – Review

In the space of two months, we’re getting two international releases for spin-offs of mobile game Granblue Fantasy. One of them is the fighting game I’ve been pouring hours into since late December (and which I’m reviewing here) — Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. The other is action-RPG Granblue Fantasy Relink. Weirdly enough you can’t actually play the ‘original’ Granblue Fantasy, one of the OG mobile gacha-game RPGs, in English; or at least you can’t do so through official channels. Interestingly, this new iteration of the fighting game even includes a free version — so if you’d rather just see it for yourself you can skip the rest of this and go play that. Suffice to say, though, Rising made it onto my 2023 year-end list, so it’s pretty good.

Granblue rides again

Versus and Rising are back-to-basics, simplified approaches to fighting games. Where something like DNF Duel is that for fast-paced anime bullshit, Versus was more traditional and Street Fighter-y in nature, favouring lower combo damage (mostly) and more grounded poking. Some characters had powerful options to get in but this was the exception rather than the rule and outside of the corner (and some anti-air and air-to-air hits) damage was low and rounds could take a while.

One of its innovations, much to purists’ chagrin, was simple inputs. Versus was a bit stingier with these; if you used them you did less damage and your cooldowns were longer. Rising loosens things up even further — there’s only a 10% damage bonus for technical inputs if they’re done from neutral, i.e. not in a combo. Some cool bits have been caught in the crossfire, though, like Djeeta’s fun Deadly Rave-type rhythmic super just being a normal input now.

What’s changed between Versus and Rising?

Rising swings the pendulum way back to the ‘anime’ type, mostly by introducing some new mechanics (staggeringly powerful Ultimate Skills and Raging Strike, which along with some tweaks to the combo system enables much higher average damage). Most of these are genuine good fun — while some characters’ Ultimate Skills feel horrifyingly strong (Zeta’s beam and dive haunt my nightmares) the majority are a good trade-off between meter and utility. As well as all the characters from the first game, Rising includes four newbies: Anila, Siegfried, Nier and Grimnir. They’re all good additions (though Nier feels very oppressive in the current version).

The big new addition is Bravery Points, a resource which is spent for guard cancels (a get-off-me while blocking, and very strong) and Raging Strike, the replacement for the universal overhead. It is, however, even slower and more telegraphed than the overhead used to be. Even in Versus it could be difficult to open people up if they didn’t care about taking their turn back, and this feels similar in Rising. It’s just as well most fighting game players do a good enough job getting themselves hit. Rising also removes Rush, Backshift and Overdrive. If you played the original game and can’t remember what those even are, they’re options that were added to Versus in 2022, with the aim of providing alternate ways to spend meter (now occupied by Ultimate Skills and the Raging Strike followup).

Universal dash attacks might also divide opinions as a system change. They’re extremely powerful in the current version of the game. Tagging one from a distance with a long-range poke is generally unrewarding, while doing a dashing light attack usually leads to a full combo on hit or advantage on block. It’s similar to some other semi-ignorant mechanics (DBFZ‘s superdash, drive rush/impact etc.) but feels like it has less defined counterplay than those.

Characters and personality

Through the course of its life Versus gained a fairly large suite of colourful characters from the gacha game. Visuals and attention to detail were (and remain) a highlight, with Arc System Works delivering their trademark 2.5D style — some of the supers are genuinely impressive. ArcSys have been practising this style since the gorgeous Guilty Gear Xrd, and are still improving. If you like watching your intros (and/or care about the characters at all) you’ll notice a surprising depth of interactions; basically every character, even the former DLC ones, have specific intro lines and win-quotes for every other character. It’s a little thing but it adds a level of personality that’s often absent in modern fighters. The music is also a highlight; while some inspire raw fear for other reasons (Lowain’s theme), many of them are genuinely catchy tunes that don’t intrude too much on the action.

Speaking of characters, there are some mild balance concerns with the game currently; while some of the cast have taken to the new mechanics like a duck to water, others are struggling to swim. The likes of Percival, Katalina, Ferry and Zooey all feel a bit like they’re still playing Versus while others are playing Rising (and boy are Seox, Nier and Zeta playing Rising). I’d like to see the team bring some of the weaker characters up to par, reserving gentler adjustments for the stronger ones. In Versus I remember a lot of nerfing and tons of fun options being removed, so with the game’s shift towards madcap action it’d be nice to stick with that design philosophy.

Features: Rising‘s singleplayer and other random additions

Thankfully it seems like the days of barebones online-only fighting games are a thing of the past. Back when Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 were the big names it felt like that was the way things were going. The original Versus was quite feature-rich when it came to offline content; if anything Rising scales it back, while still feeling like a complete package.

It’s actually pared back the story mode a bit; while this reduces some of the grind it does feel like a shame. While Versus had Granblue Fantasy-inspired RPG mechanics in the story mode (levelling characters, collecting weapons), Rising gets rid of these, but keeps mechanics around the collection of support skills through the story and side-quests.

It’s still pretty good though, and presents the option to skip Part 1, which is essentially the story mode from the first game. It also dumps the Tower mode from Versus, which tied into the RPG mechanics. Rising has a traditional arcade mode, as you’d expect from a fighting game, with multiple paths and varying difficulty levels. It’s fun but if anything a bit easy; don’t expect brutal difficulty from it (or from the story mode, for that matter). If you’re one of that rare breed that plays fighting games purely singleplayer I’d recommend getting Versus on a sale, and maybe looking into Rising later if you really dig it.

Big improvements for multiplayer

Rising’s much better features in other areas make it a much more well-rounded package, though. The online play is much improved from the original game (more on this in a moment), the lobbies have been transformed, and there is even, for whatever reason, a mode that’s a bit like Fall Guys. In particular the changes from Versus to Rising highlight the strides that have been made in netcode in just a few years. Versus released shortly before Japanese developers really caught up to the West in terms of netcode, and a combo of that and the Coronavirus proved fatal for the game; without offline play, the game’s low playercount and truly dated delay netcode made it a pain to play at all. Rising feels smooth as butter online in comparison, with playable connections even across pretty significant distances (though at 125ms ping and beyond you’re still asking for trouble). 

There’s a level of care and detail that’s gone into Rising’s online features that’s lovely to see, even if there are some gaps. It’s missing any way to filter your matches at all except in the roughest terms and there isn’t any way to see connection quality before you accept; some areas like Australia and South Africa are stuck playing on far-away servers and accepting poor connections; you currently can’t join random room matches (the only way to unlimited rematch).

Rising has a wonderful sense of progression even outside of going on a win-streak in Ranked or the online lobbies. As you play a character you’ll progress down an unlock path, getting colours and weapon skins as you go — you can also spend in-game currency to play a crane game to unlock others. Coming this month is also a Battle Pass-type system along with the first DLC — speaking of which, there’s a plan for the entire first season. While I could take or leave the aggressive Season Pass approach of a lot of fighting games personally, it’s clearly a must-have for a game to stay alive in the modern era.

Conclusion

When it all comes together, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is a blast. The gorgeous visuals, fantastic music and sound and the faster and more frenetic pace of the game really work. The changes to the formula will depend on your specific taste, but the mastery of the audiovisual experience (provided you like anime stuff) can’t be denied. With a variety of content and a smooth experience whether playing offline, online, with friends or without, I’d heartily recommend Rising to just about anyone. Rising has a wealth of upcoming content and support, so it looks like it’s got a good service life ahead of it — go give the aforementioned free version a try if it’s up your alley.

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The only recent thing we’ve got is our 2023 round-up, so go read that if you like (Granblue features there as well).

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