Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising follows the crew of the Grandcypher, an airship with a motley crew of anime stereotypes – and my dream husband, Rackam. After an antagonistic force that the crew thought disbanded attacks a peaceful nation, ship captain Gran and his friends discover that previous allies have not only forgotten them, but are now outright hostile. With a greater threat clearly at large, the Grandcypher sets off to reunite with old friends.

This is the opening of the Story Mode, which plays out as a mixture of 2D beat ’em up, graphic novel and 1-on-1 2D fighting. This continues as episodes, with boss fights and character introductions as you go through. The story is a pretty good, if somewhat typical, anime yarn and fully voice acted in Japanese with English subtitles. Also, as you progress, you unlock Journal entries that explain the different characters, locations and organisations from the universe.

However, this Story Mode is far from flawless. Similarly to my thoughts on the previous game in the series, I don’t feel like the 2D beat ’em up segments work well enough with the core mechanics of the game. As the fighting relies on directional inputs for attacks, you can be attacked from either side, and some of your attacks will miss as you turn in different directions. This cannot occur in the standard fighting as you’re always facing your opponent, making it an annoyance that only rears its head in these sections.

Speaking of the mechanics, the way Rising plays is very similar to the last game, so a lot of your muscle memory will carry over nicely. All of the characters have some auto-combos, four Skills mapped to different combinations of R1 with a direction, and a Skybound Art, the last of which is a