Doing what works, again
“When the world ends, the skies shall burn crimson, alighted by wrathful flames of the gods.” Endless Ragnarok is Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s first major content DLC, serving as an epilogue for the base game’s story, where after Lilith’s defeat, mysterious portals and creatures start showing up, threatening Zegagrande’s very existence.
MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch
Endless Ragnarok’s story is somewhat light, mostly focusing on the world’s backstory and how the dragons, primals, and astrals influenced it, as well as the present-day matters of the conflux portals and mysterious ragnalia creatures that started showing up. The DLC has us alternating between delving deep into the Conflux, a somewhat randomized set of challenges that allow for grinding materials, and the new Chaos missions, unlocked by achieving the Fatebreaker skyfarer grade.
There’s a very clear sense of progression as you grind the Conflux stages for materials and then increase your power level to tackle the chaos difficulty encounters, slowly advancing the story as you face more mechanically demanding foes. It’s nice that the Conflux also doubles as a quality-of-life addition, as you get to select the specific rewards you want at the end of each run, but its basic roguelite mechanics leave much to be desired. You are allowed to choose between encounters as you progress and gain new auras to increase your performance for that run, but not much feels consequential or changes the way you play the game.
One of the biggest new additions to the game’s combat is the summoning mechanic, which allows you to equip four different monsters to briefly control during battles. Bringing a summon onto the battlefield is always an exhilarating feeling, as you perform large-scale attacks that deal absurd amounts of damage, towering over the enemy you are fighting against.
Primal summons are also introduced, bringing iconic monsters from the base game like Proto Bahamut and Excavallion to perform an AOE attack at the end of your Skybound Art chains. These super moves make for a stylish way to end your fights and help with a good bit of extra damage to hurry things along. Each summon also comes with randomized traits and equip bonuses, meaning they play a vital role in making your whole party stronger.
Endless Ragnarok brings in six new characters to expand upon Relink’s already massive roster, providing alternatives for all sorts of playstyles while also placing a heavy emphasis on flashy movesets. Some of these newcomers are Beatrix, a seal weapon user, Eustace, a powerful long-range marksman, Fraux, a melee fighter whose moveset very closely resembles Bayonetta, Fediel, a mage who alternates between melee and ranged stances while teleporting around the battlefield, and previous bosses Maglielle and Gallanza.
Maglielle was my go-to character for the DLC, a long-range magician who wields an arsenal of mythical weapons that could make Gilgamesh from the Fate series blush. It’s surprising to see just how much the developers at Cygames trust in their own game design, as not many titles would be comfortable with letting the player control a character with near global range, especially one who does as much damage as Maglielle does, but somehow it works when coupled with the game’s very well-designed boss fights.
For those not familiar, the game’s characters all work under MMORPG-esque rotations, usually based on building resources by completing combos and then spending those resources to pull off massive attacks. Relink’s combination of real-time hack-and-slash combat and Monster Hunter-esque mission structure makes for a very addictive gameplay loop, where being able to closely adhere to your character’s mechanics during its tight encounters rewards you with faster clears, meaning more materials and higher mission rankings.
Overall, Endless Ragnarok is a solid DLC for a game such as Relink, not only upping the difficulty with some of its new bosses but also introducing a lot of features that the community has been requesting for a long time. Between balance tweaks, crossplay, alternative farming methods, solo content, and so many other features, it becomes clear that Cygames is quite thankful for the positive reception the game has received and aims to thank the community for latching on so tightly to a reasonably new franchise.
Endless Ragnarok is very much worth playing through, not only because of characters like Fediel and Maglielle, who will have you rethinking how you tackle the game’s encounters entirely, but also because of the flashy new fights and new grinds available, as well as the extremely fun summoning system.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.