Luxia Le

Elon Musk taking over Twitter caused a great upheaval in the Granblue Fantasy community. Two major things occurred during this time. Firstly, the ability to log into your Granblue Fantasy-associated Mobage account was disrupted and many users had to relink their account to a different service or risk losing it. Secondly, Granblue‘s players typically used Twitter to find raids to join, and when Mobage and Granblue lost access to the API, they were no longer able to do that. So, is the game still worth playing in 2024? Let’s assess.

Genre

Granblue Fantasy‘s genre is JRPG. It’s a turn-based, massively multiplayer online game where players can team up to take down massive raid bosses. It also has the “gacha” genre, where players make randomized draws, like a slot machine, to receive playable characters and weapons.

Payment Model

Granblue Fantasy uses a free-to-play model funded by microtransactions. The primary use of premium currency is to make draws in the Premium Draw gacha section, which yields playable characters and weapons.

Consumer Friendliness

While gacha games are inherently less consumer friendly than single-payment games, within the genre, Granblue Fantasy stands out as being exceptionally consumer friendly. The base rate for SSR characters and weapons is 3%, compared to most games which are either less than 1% or just above 1%. There is also the Premium and Flash Gala (also known as Legend Festival/LegFes and Flash Festival/Flash Fes) events where the SSR rate is doubled to a hefty 6%. To guarantee your draws, the game has a “Spark” system, where players who make 300 draws on the same banner can choose any rate-up character from the banner as a guaranteed 301st pull. A few times a year, the developers will offer a “Surprise Ticket” which gives the player a ticket for a ten-draw and a guaranteed character or summon choice ticket.

In terms of strictly free-to-play players, the game is highly F2P friendly. Playing casually and without spending any money, players can accumulate 300 draws to spark every 3–5 months depending on how much time they invest. Additionally, there’s no need to pull for weapons to flesh out your grids because the free-to-play Omega grids are strong enough to do late-game content.

Events

Events are the primary gameplay feature of Granblue Fantasy. There are story-related and non-story events, including crossover events with other franchises, such as One Piece, Sanrio and Friends, and Code Geass. Most events get re-run one or two times. In some cases, after an event has been rerun several times, it will become a permanent “Side Story” that players can access year-round. There are also events for various holidays, including Christmas, Summer, and the game’s anniversary.

Events often yield rare items and crossover events typically yield relatively rare loot. The typical loot for story events can be utilized by new players as their weapon grids are underdeveloped. As players progress, the story event drops become useful as reduction items as the reduction materials are used often for upgrading more powerful late-game weapons and summons.

Is the Story Any Good?

Granblue Fantasy has an immersive and fun story. However, it is very long. The game has been out for almost twelve years now and receives regular story updates and story events. I’ve only read about half of the story and prefer to skip event stories that don’t interest me. Still, I had a great deal of fun with the story that I experienced and will go back later and read all the event stories and story chapters.

Are the Events Worth It?

Events in Granblue Fantasy are the game’s primary gameplay beyond your daily raids. Roughly every week or two, a new event will be released. Sometimes they are story-related, and these events are accessible to all players and contain excellent rewards no matter what level you are. Other events, like Tower of Babyl and Tales of Arcarum are aimed at intermediate to high-level players. However, they are still playable by new players even if they can’t necessarily be completed by them. New players should use these events as short breaks to farm regularly available raids for drops.

Is It Worth Playing?

I would say that Granblue Fantasy remains the golden standard by which all gacha games should be held. Many would give that title to Genshin Impact or perhaps Honkai: Star Rail by MiHoYo and Cognosphere, but I’ll give that title to Granblue instead. Granblue has the highest draw rates and some of the most free-to-play friendly systems in the gacha world, which are often dominated by games for and funded by whales.

Conversely, you can play Granblue mostly or entirely for free and still retain a competitive edge in both PvE and PvP content. Additionally, it’s platform flexible. You can play the game on your phone, in your browser, or in the AndApp desktop application. All three platforms are entirely valid choices and you won’t lose any functionality when doing so.