About

Granblue Fantasy (Japanese: グランブルーファンタジー) is a Japanese mobile video game developed by Cygames and published by Mobage for Android and iOS. It was launched on 10 March 2014 (with an English language option added in March 2016).

History

Granblue Fantasy released on 10 March 2014 by Cygames for Android and iOS platforms. Prior to release, Cygames developed Rage of Bahamut , a card battle phone game, and they are also known for collaborating with Nintendo on Dragalia Lost. Granblue also shares several characters and concepts with Rage of Bahamut and another CyGames mobage, Shadowverse, as well as having featured crossover events with Love Live! and the Tales series.

The game is notable for including previous Final Fantasy creative minds among its staff, particularly composer Nobuo Uematsu and artist Hideo Minaba.

The gameplay style is that of a turn-based JRPG, in which a player sets up a party of six which consists of the main character (who can't be removed), three main party members, and two substitutes. The player then engages in a single player battle or start/join a multiplayer raid where players join together to defeat an enemy.

The game is set in a fantasy world consisting of a group of floating islands, in which people travel the world via Final Fantasy-style airships. Characters tend to belong to one of four main races: Human, animal-eared Erune, the bovine Draph, and small Harvin. The world is also invested with countless monsters.

Granblue Fantasy tells a story about the main character, Gran (if male) or Djeeta (if female), who encounters a girl named Lyria and her bodyguard, Katalina. They are being chased by the Erste Empire because of Lyria's power. After being injured in a battle, Gran/Djeeta is given a power by Lyria to command a being called Primal Beast. The group then travel across the skies to escape from Erste Empire and also find the whereabout of the main character's father.

A spinoff action game, Granblue Fantasy Project Re:Link, developed Platinum Games for Playstation 4, is planned.^[5]

Anime Adaptation

The series received an anime adaptation by A-1 Pictures which aired from April to June in 2017.

Reception

Granblue Fantasy has been downloaded over 22 million times as of October 2018.^[1]

A controversy concerning the rates for pulling certain characters from the "gacha" system occured in late 2015,^[6] when the Japan Times reported that a player streamed his attempts to acquire a time-locked character, spending around ¥700,000 (approx $6,150 at the time). This caused a level of backlash against CyGames and an adjustment to the pull rates. The Japan Times wrote of one player:

"Kataoka feels trapped. He loves playing Granblue, but he thinks Cygames is taking advantage of its customers. “You can tell how much thought and ingenuity went into the illustrations, music and professional voice acting to make it popular, and the business side is now using that to whip consumers into a frenzy,” he said."

Granblue 's in-game pull rates are now fully disclosed within the game itself.

Online Presence

Granblue Fantasy 's browser version can be played simply by visiting http://game.granbluefantasy.jp/,^[2] although an account will be required to play.

The game has a dedicated subreddit at r/Granblue_en/,^[3] with 20k subscribers as of December 2018. There is also a dedicated English-language fan wiki at https://gbf.wiki/^[4], which includes coverage of in-game events, party builds, guides and all kinds of information useful to players.

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External References