Granblue Fantasy

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted April 30, 2026 on Steam There are TWO things that are going to filter the majority of people away from Granblue, so I'm going to address them now: -[b]I'm So Sorry, But This is a 12 Year Old Gacha Game.[/b] You will be joining the party very late, you will have a comical level of grinding ahead of you if you're hoping to just get to end game and farm the best stuff, and there are literal thousands of weapons, characters, and support summons attached to the slot machine the game exists to get you to pull. -[b]This is a Browser Game, and The Steam Version of This Game Sucks.[/b] Complete the tutorial in the Steam version, then go to https://steam.granbluefantasy.com/ on your mobile browser of choice, log in with steam, and bookmark it. That is the primary way you will be playing this game. Granblue Fantasy is not just a mobile game, it is a Mobile -Browser- Game. It is optimized entirely to be played in portrait mode on a smart phone's internet browser, and Nothing Else. The Steam version is nothing more than a little window that loads up the portrait mode browser game and slaps a stat window and an update box to either side of it to pad space. Still here? Cool. Not immediately putting this game on Ignore midway through reading one or both of the above points puts you in what we in the business call The Cool Zone where I now get to tell you how Granblue Fantasy is the most entertainment you're going to get out of the price of Zero Dollars and it's not even close. 12 years of continuously updated, fully voice-acted campy JRPG fantasy story driving a shockingly intricate RPG system filled with creative strategies, builds, party compositions, and all sorts of stats, bonuses, upgrades, levels, and boosts to progress towards as fast as you want to, along with an international community that is thriving and studiously putting together guides to help new players go off the deep end until the only thing they think about at night is the next Guild War. Granblue Fantasy is a very deep setting and has spawned a number of spin-offs such as Versus Rising, a fighting game, and ReLink an ARPG, and almost Touhou levels of "You've absolutely seen this character before, and now you know what they're from". Well this slot machine is what spawned all of them. The game is also one of the more generous Gachas, it floods you at the start with free rolls and your-choice SSRs to get you started, and those welfare picks are going to carry you all the way up to end game if you let them. And once you get to end game? A huge portion of the Best-In-Class characters are not even from the Gacha. They are instead gated behind entirely free grinds tied to events that come around every couple months, meaning that as you're progressing through the story, you will have many opportunities to work towards unlocking characters that will let you tackle some of the hardest content in the game without spending a dime. If the idea of a fun, campy JRPG story that you pluck away at long-term that you can have on the side on your desktop and pull up on your phone's browser when you're out and about or lounging in bed and have fun little events every so often that you can get excited for because it means more stuff to earn and unlock and progress with all sounds fun to you, then Granblue is definitely worth giving a shot. Just trust me on this - do not spend money. At least not for a while. The game FLOODS you with stuff up front that is more than you will need for a long time. Enjoy the game as a free player for as long as you can, and if that is forever, then cool, and if that's not very long, then you can stop without much investment. And remember, Your Life Belongs To The Guild War Now.
• Not recommended Posted March 11, 2026 on Steam Great idea, but HORRIBLE execution. I'd love for this game to get new players to breathe some fresh life into the game. However the way it was done here is bad. You can't link an existing account, so veterans can't use Steam. This means that the steam charts (which are often used to measure popularity) are going to be abysmal since the loyal player base CAN'T join without starting from scratch. The Interface is conflicting. I like the battle screen being wider and having quick access to events. However, on browser you can hide the sidebars and such so it only takes ~1/4 of your screen, while the steam version requires your full screen. Not to mention the lack of a refresh button, which is critical in higher level raids. There's no reason to install this version of the game when you could easily play in a Google Chrome browser. Excluding the horrible steam launch, the game is both fun and a massive, massive, massive Grind. Recent updates have added a lot of catch up mechanics, so new players don't have to completely do everything in order. This game is really fun to play F2P if you treat it as a seasonal game and play only during big events. The gacha can be quite forgiving if you save all your pulls and only use the free ones from events until there's a character you need. You won't be able to pull for everyone, but a few selected characters plus a bunch of random characters per year is completely doable. Your power is based on a lot of math, so wikis and veteran players are a good place to look at when trying to get stronger. It's also a lot of grinding. Like weeks of farming for a single weapon upgrade; maybe months if you're looking for late game upgrades. Just know it's basically a full time job when you try to play seriously and can be life consuming for hardcore players. I've been playing on and off for about 8 years now and I'm only just hitting "the midgame" (~Level 200 / 425) in terms of power. There's absolutely zero chance you fully catch up to the top players if you're starting today unless you're a billionaire willing to spend everything on a gacha game. The story is phenomenal and I'd recommend the game simply for the story alone. It's a long read, but well worth it. The characters are top tier in design, personality, story, and gameplay. If the only thing you want to do is experience the story, you don't really need to be a hardcore player. TLDR : If you want to play a game with a great story and a SUPER LONG grind, go play the browser version of this game in Chrome or Mobile. Steam might be useful in a few years, but right now it's an inferior product.
• Not recommended Posted March 10, 2026 on Steam For the browser version, Cygames claims it's a 'Japan-only' game that just happens to have an English option. This lets them run collab events easily without dealing with complicated overseas licensing issues. But for this Steam version, if you look at the Side Story page, you can see that all non-Cygames collabs have completely vanished due to licensing problems. It’s highly likely this will affect future collabs too.
• Recommended Posted March 10, 2026 on Steam Ever want to experience a 9-5 job while also being unemployed? This is the game for you!
• Not recommended Posted March 26, 2026 on Steam Ignore my playtime; I've played this game since 3rd anniversary on the browser version. I can confidently say that I only recommend this game to one of 2 kinds of people: 1. You are PURELY a story/character collection player. You don't have an inkling of interest in the turn-based combat or theorycrafting teams or the feeling of progression. If this is you, you can enjoy the story with minimal grinding 2. You are looking for a game to play as a full-time job. You are happy to play "stare at black screen" simulator for hours every day. If you do not fall into these two categories, I cannot recommend this game. Everyone else has covered the sheer amount of grind required, the inability to transfer existing accounts, and the fact that they removed previous collab events from this release, so I want to cover my experience from a long-term veteran. Back when I first started the game, the gacha scene was still new, niche, and rough around the edges. Personally, Granblue was, by far, THE best gacha game at the time. It felt like every year, I'd say "there's no way they can top last year in terms of how generous they were," and each year I'd be proven wrong. They'd always find a way to keep giving you free stuff. Of course, the game was still grindy, but the freebies would help you cover some of the resources required for it and help you build endgame teams. In addition, endgame could be easily reached by f2p players because all the weapons you could want were from grinding. Sometimes, a p2w whale grid was WORSE than the f2p alternative. Collab events were a treat because ALL collab characters, summons, and skins were free. You could actually be endgame in every single element as an f2p player because the only thing stopping you was the grind. I genuinely considered Cygames to be one of the best, if not THE best gacha game company because of this and Shadowverse 1. At some point, this stopped. The freebies stagnated, if not gotten outright worse (e.g., removal of end-of-summer legfest, which was THE best banner to pull on for ANY player). The powercreep was off the charts (though admittedly, they seemed to have dialed this one down the past couple of years, though it does still exist). Suddenly, weapons from the gacha became so disgustingly good that even f2p players were recommended to pull multiple copies of them. Collab events now have limited-time gacha units, which they initially introduced as "testing the waters" and "we won't release characters that are too good here", but not only has it stuck around, the Evangelion collab featured a gacha unit whose performance was on par with another top tier unit. They constantly release new stuff to grind, but barely make the low level grind easier, so new players will take eons of consistent grinding to catch up. They released weapons you can only get by trading 150 gold moons (which you get from SSR character dupes) saying they'd just be niche, just for some of them to be so powerful that they were considered must-haves if you planned to main their respective element. Endgame raids have begun to progressively feel like roster checks, often consisting of units that required several hundred hours of grinding or limited-time gacha units. All of this, when they haven't improved the gacha at all. Spark is still at 300, roulette still gives a similar amount of pulls, limited units still come out at the same pace if not more, we get powerful unsparkable summons every year (i.e., you have to get lucky or save 150 gold moons to buy them), rate-up is still garbage (0.3% chance for a rate-up), etc. And if you think it's fine because it's a PvE game, this game is not a true PvE experience. Raids are just people trying to burst as fast as possible because your rewards are dependent on how much you contributed to the raid, which often means the raid will die insanely fast so you're forced to burst as well, making it die even faster. And because you're reliant on ping to get your skills off as fast as possible, and the servers are located in Japan, you're immediately disadvantaged compared to JP players. Yes, you can still get MVP, but assuming all things are equal, they'll have an edge over you. Yes, you can use a VPN to make it faster, but I shouldn't have to pay a VPN subscription for this. And of course, Unite and Fight is infamous for being insanely grindy because you're trying to out-grind other GBF players. And all of this in 2026, when a lot more gacha games have become mainstream with bigger production value? It's a shame because the art, core gameplay, and music were all great. It's just all buried by an unreasonable amount of grinding and greed. If you want to enjoy the GBF universe, Versus and Relink are better options. I don't think this game will die anytime soon, but they've had so many years to fix the issues with this game, and instead they've only made it worse.
• Not recommended Posted March 10, 2026 on Steam you don't even need to install or launch this "game" to play it. just open steam.granbluefantasy.com in a browser and log in via your steam account. note: you cannot unlink it, so there's no rerolling. even deleting the entire install doesn't do it. and deleting the "account" takes 60 days to accomplish. performance of this "port" is all over the place too. no collaboration events or characters. cannot customize to get rid of the bloat on the side of the UI at all. cannot center the main portion of the game. no Fullscreen. no aspect ratio options. uses about the same resources as the average Chrome tab for the original version. this exists for no one except to trick new and uninformed players into their ecosystem and perhaps get them to just look up at 2 minute guide on how to get started on the original servers. and make purchases through steam instead of figuring out how to buy coins on japanese marketplaces. I expected more from cygames after their treatment of umamusume global but this is just a fake global release. just don't do it.