Where to start with Grandblue Fantasy series?

[UPS_with_WINGS]

Yello! I want to know where I should start to get into the series.
From my memory, Granblue has the games Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and Granblue Fantasy Re:link game, as well as 2 anime seasons. Is there any others? And in what order should I consume them so i can enjoy the story of Granblue fantasy? thank ya ^^

[DarkLeafNinja]

The gacha game if you want the story since that's the source.
Versus follows the story to a point then diverges i think.
Relink is just a isolated independant story.
The anime follows the story as well but there is only 2 seasons and it's not great but good, at least season 1 was.

[Thalq]

GBVS/Rising, Re:Link as well as the main game (granblue fantasy, the gacha) on browser are three separate timelines that don't require any specific order to be enjoyed, so go with what you'd prefer:

• GBVSR --> Gorilla fighting game that is a decent entry point to the fighter genre, however its gameplay as FGs go is extremely shallow and badly designed, becoming stale as soon as you become average at the game. It has a free version you can try right now with rotating characters to get a feel of things for yourself though.
  
  
• Re:Link --> Character-action JRPG that plays like a blend of monster hunter, a platinum game (metal gear revengeance, bayonetta, dmc) and a recent J-ARPG like tales of arise or the xenoblades. Aside from the writing and voice acting being extremely mediocre the game is absolutely fantastic and is easily one of the best games in its genre. Story is a flashy blast from start to finish, then the real game begins when you hit the post game at the Proud difficulties.
  
  
• Granblue Fantasy --> The main game and story. Very long-running (10 years old!) and super expansive gacha game that can be played on any chromium browser (brave!) and is a turn-based JRPG with ultra complex (we're talking path of exile levels of optimization here) team building & gearing, a ludicrously steep learning curve and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of VN-like story content. It's also fully translated in english.
  
  It is the most generous gacha out there and pretty F2P friendly, however the UI is the worst and most convoluted thing ever, it is a rabbit hole of info to the point where you absolutely need to have the (huge and amazingly well maintained) wiki open on the side at all times, and most importantly, the grindiest game I have ever seen in my life, taking you a YEAR of grinding just to reach endgame, where the real game begins.
  
  Fortunately, it can be "played" very casually as long as you're coming to terms with the fact that you will never reach endgame, as the story and side-stories don't require an advanced weapon grid to be cleared.

In conclusion:

Do you want to have a very non-committal, basic idea of what the hell gbf is about? --> Anime Season 1

Do you want gorilla (or pain)? --> Rising, until they revamp the whole freaking game (hopefully next month) because rn it's a chimera that makes no sense

Do you want a good time? --> Relink

Do you want a good time with friends after the first good time? --> Relink

Do you want an initially terrible story that gets really well written, hype and crazy later on? --> GBF (casually played)

Do you want pretty gacha mommy jpegs? --> GBF (seasonal, only played during august/december/march for the free rolls)

Do you want an actual semi-social MMORPG with ABSURD braindead grinding and no respect for your time and energy? --> GBF (hardcore, find a good crew on the official discords which you can find on the wiki or r/granblue_en, they'll teach you the ropes) - If you are taking this option do not ever touch your gold bricks, damascus ingots, sunlight stones and gold moons, and do not roll outside of gala banners (middle & end of month)!

Do you want crazy banger music and killer art? --> Any of the 3 games really, I mean come on... (yes the intro is 3 minutes long) this is FF14 levels of insane and it's only the tip of the iceberg my man.

Do you want an actually good gacha that isn't predatory? --> Limbus Company

[Fish]

Watching just the first few episodes of season 1 anime should give you a good enough idea of the setting. Beyond that, everything else is more in-depth lore only if you have the interest to really explore.
The bulk of the story content is in the original mobile gacha game, but a lot of that lore isn't really needed for Rising, or even Relink for that matter. These games do recap of their own and is often good enough to get you onboarded.

[Accendo]

Originally posted by Thalq:

It is the most generous gacha out there and pretty F2P friendly, however the UI is the worst and most convoluted thing ever, it is a rabbit hole of info to the point where you absolutely need to have the (huge and amazingly well maintained) wiki open on the side at all times, and most importantly, the grindiest game I have ever seen in my life, taking you a YEAR of grinding just to reach endgame, where the real game begins

Is that UI REALLY that convoluted? Cuz I navigate easily and.. if you play on PC, you can just bookmark anywhere you want to click to and just create a shortcut to that place...

[Thalq]

Originally posted by Accendo:

Is that UI REALLY that convoluted? Cuz I navigate easily and.. if you play on PC, you can just bookmark anywhere you want to click to and just create a shortcut to that place...

For people who are used to it like you and I, sure, especially when you know some of the little tricks like quickly opening gw/db/event boxes with the open->back->reset->refresh method!
For newbies it's a whole another story, I can't count the amount of times I've taught the ropes to someone while watching them scramble through the menus every time they need to reach something they don't know about (auto-reserve, plus marks, relic buster unlock items in siero's shop, etc etc) and It's been painful every time :p

[UPS_with_WINGS]

Originally posted by Thalq:

GBVS/Rising, Re:Link as well as the main game (granblue fantasy, the gacha) on browser are three separate timelines that don't require any specific order to be enjoyed, so go with what you'd prefer:

• GBVSR --> Gorilla fighting game that is a decent entry point to the fighter genre, however its gameplay as FGs go is extremely shallow and badly designed, becoming stale as soon as you become average at the game. It has a free version you can try right now with rotating characters to get a feel of things for yourself though.
  
  
• Re:Link --> Character-action JRPG that plays like a blend of monster hunter, a platinum game (metal gear revengeance, bayonetta, dmc) and a recent J-ARPG like tales of arise or the xenoblades. Aside from the writing and voice acting being extremely mediocre the game is absolutely fantastic and is easily one of the best games in its genre. Story is a flashy blast from start to finish, then the real game begins when you hit the post game at the Proud difficulties.
  
  
• Granblue Fantasy --> The main game and story. Very long-running (10 years old!) and super expansive gacha game that can be played on any chromium browser (brave!) and is a turn-based JRPG with ultra complex (we're talking path of exile levels of optimization here) team building & gearing, a ludicrously steep learning curve and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of VN-like story content. It's also fully translated in english.
  
  It is the most generous gacha out there and pretty F2P friendly, however the UI is the worst and most convoluted thing ever, it is a rabbit hole of info to the point where you absolutely need to have the (huge and amazingly well maintained) wiki open on the side at all times, and most importantly, the grindiest game I have ever seen in my life, taking you a YEAR of grinding just to reach endgame, where the real game begins.
  
  Fortunately, it can be "played" very casually as long as you're coming to terms with the fact that you will never reach endgame, as the story and side-stories don't require an advanced weapon grid to be cleared.

In conclusion:

Do you want to have a very non-committal, basic idea of what the hell gbf is about? --> Anime Season 1

Do you want gorilla (or pain)? --> Rising, until they revamp the whole freaking game (hopefully next month) because rn it's a chimera that makes no sense

Do you want a good time? --> Relink

Do you want a good time with friends after the first good time? --> Relink

Do you want an initially terrible story that gets really well written, hype and crazy later on? --> GBF (casually played)

Do you want pretty gacha mommy jpegs? --> GBF (seasonal, only played during august/december/march for the free rolls)

Do you want an actual semi-social MMORPG with ABSURD braindead grinding and no respect for your time and energy? --> GBF (hardcore, find a good crew on the official discords which you can find on the wiki or r/granblue_en, they'll teach you the ropes) - If you are taking this option do not ever touch your gold bricks, damascus ingots, sunlight stones and gold moons, and do not roll outside of gala banners (middle & end of month)!

Do you want crazy banger music and killer art? --> Any of the 3 games really, I mean come on... (yes the intro is 3 minutes long) this is FF14 levels of insane and it's only the tip of the iceberg my man.

Do you want an actually good gacha that isn't predatory? --> Limbus Company :leaCheese:

Thank you somuch for a detailed reply!

[UPS_with_WINGS]

Originally posted by Fish:

Watching just the first few episodes of season 1 anime should give you a good enough idea of the setting. Beyond that, everything else is more in-depth lore only if you have the interest to really explore.
The bulk of the story content is in the original mobile gacha game, but a lot of that lore isn't really needed for Rising, or even Relink for that matter. These games do recap of their own and is often good enough to get you on-boarded.

That's reassuring to hear. I want to definitely get Re:link and Ill go that route since it seems both Rising and Re:Link do their own recap. I find it interesting that they both take the story in different directions from what it sounds like. I will watch a video on Rising's story since i'm quite bad at fighting games.

[Fish]

Originally posted by UPS_with_WINGS:

Originally posted by Fish:

Watching just the first few episodes of season 1 anime should give you a good enough idea of the setting. Beyond that, everything else is more in-depth lore only if you have the interest to really explore.
The bulk of the story content is in the original mobile gacha game, but a lot of that lore isn't really needed for Rising, or even Relink for that matter. These games do recap of their own and is often good enough to get you on-boarded.

That's reassuring to hear. I want to definitely get Re:link and Ill go that route since it seems both Rising and Re:Link do their own recap. I find it interesting that they both take the story in different directions from what it sounds like. I will watch a video on Rising's story since i'm quite bad at fighting games.

Rising's story is sort of an "alternative universe" so technically it's not cannon. Hence why the story went in a very different direction. Relink's story however, is actually cannon if I recall correctly.

That said, there are some interesting story beats in Rising that I wouldn't be surprised to see integrated into the main lore in the future.