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With Endless Ragnarok on the horizon, the Granblue Fantasy: Relink community has no shortage of questions regarding Endless Ragnarok, and Cygames was ready to answer them. Alongside our exclusive sit-down with the directors, Cygames opened the floor to a broader media session where Creative Director Tetsuya Fukuhara and Endless Ragnarok Director Sanshiro Hidaka fielded questions from outlets across the region. The conversation ranged from fan-favorite character absences to how the team balances solo and co-op play, covering ground that any Granblue Fantasy Relink player has probably thought about at least once. Here is what came out of that session.
What Players Taught the Developers
After Relink’s launch, the community wasted little time dissecting its systems, finding optimized builds and unintended mechanics that the developers themselves did not fully anticipate. When asked whether players ended up teaching the team anything surprising about their own game, Fukuhara had a ready answer. “The one that sticks out to me is Lancelot’s triangle attack. Everyone started using that way more than we expected, which really was surprising, but we knew that we needed to adjust it for Endless Ragnarok.”
Hidaka noted that this kind of discovery is not entirely foreign to the development side either.
“Our developers are already pretty good at breaking the game, so they find a way to find those things as well.”
Still, seeing the community engage with the game at that level had a direct impact on how Endless Ragnarok was designed and balanced.
Solo Play, AI Companions, and Co-op Balance
The AI companions in Granblue Fantasy: Relink earned strong praise for making solo play feel viable and enjoyable, and the team put considerable work into making sure they could keep up with Endless Ragnarok’s more complex mechanics. “We got a lot of great feedback about the AI-controlled companions in Relink, so we really wanted to continue having stable companions for Endless Ragnarok. So we did a lot of work adjusting them to make sure that they could keep up with the new content,” Hidaka said.
The AI will not match a skilled human player in terms of raw damage, but it holds its own in other areas. Fukuhara explained the key difference.
“Players will use optimized combos and they can continue attacking in an optimized way. The CPU, however, will perform an action or a couple of actions and it might have to stop to calculate what to do after that. So players continue with damage the whole time. CPU has high total damage, but there are gaps where players would perform better.”
On the defensive side, however, the CPU can sometimes outperform human players who are not yet familiar with a boss’s attack patterns, since the AI is considerably more consistent about dodging and blocking. Hidaka pointed to one specific scenario.
“If you blind die on the ground, the CPU is actually much faster than real players on noticing that and reviving you. And even while they’re reviving you, they’re really good at dodging and coming back, whereas real players might have their own interests besides reviving you.”
Six New Characters and the Thinking Behind Each One
Endless Ragnarok adds six new playable characters to the roster, and the reasoning behind each pick was more deliberate than it might appear. Fukuhara was upfront that the selection came down to a mix of factors. “It was like a little bit of everything that went into selecting these characters,” he said.
Gallanza and Maglielle were driven in part by fan demand, but also by the team’s own desire to see them in action alongside the character Id. Beatrix and Eustace round out the Society, a group that already had Zeta and Vaseraga in the base game. “Even in our other titles, if you have Zeta or Vaseraga, our fans probably also expect that the four of them will be the main characters in the game and for the group to be complete,” Fukuhara explained.
Fraux and Fediel were chosen partly for their absence from Granblue Fantasy Versus, giving players who primarily know the franchise through its console entries a chance to meet characters they may not have encountered before. “We thought that they would be really cool to express in the game world. And also, we thought including those characters would be a really fun surprise for our fans,” Fukuhara added.
Boss Design and Where the Challenge Comes From
When fans pointed to Lucilius as one of the highlights of Relink and asked what to expect from Endless Ragnarok on that front, Fukuhara explained that the team’s philosophy around boss difficulty has shifted. “For Relink, especially with Lucilius, he really tests your reflexes, so that’s sort of where the challenge comes from. However, in the new difficulty tier, there’s new mechanics that revolve more around memory, strategy, or seeing visual information and reacting to that information, rather than just pure, raw instinct,” he said.
That shift is intentional. Making every encounter as demanding as Lucilius would lock a significant portion of the player base out of the content entirely. “If we added bosses that were as difficult as Lucilius, that really limits the number of players who can play that content. So we want to create an environment where players can play the story of Endless Ragnarok to the ending without encountering something like Lucilius,” Fukuhara said. That does not mean the ceiling has been lowered though. With Master Traits pushing character power to new heights, the expansion does include content that surpasses Lucilius in difficulty for those who seek it out. “We’ve prepared some appropriate challenges after the credits roll for Endless Ragnarok,” he confirmed.
The World’s inclusion as one of the expansion’s earlier bosses also came with a specific rationale. Beyond being a popular figure from the mobile game, he shares a direct story connection with the new character Fraux. “Because we had Fraux, we knew we needed to include The World,” Fukuhara said. The expansion also introduces completely original bosses, including the giant crab featured in the hands-on demo and the Ragnalia, a group of enemies created entirely for Endless Ragnarok.
Getting Into the Game, Whether You’re New or Returning
One of the more practical questions raised during the session was how new players are supposed to catch up to Endless Ragnarok content without a skip option. Fukuhara confirmed there is no direct shortcut but pointed to the Conflux as the most efficient path. “If you really want to get to the Endless Ragnarok content as a completely fresh player, you can just play The Conflux multiple times. That’s the fastest way to catch up,” he said. The mode also provides materials that speed up weapon and character development, and completing it should set players up well for Relink’s harder Maniac and Proud difficulty quests.
Hidaka added that the Backup Character system offers another layer of support for newcomers. Players can borrow a fully developed character from another player’s roster and bring them into their own party, effectively letting a new player lean on a veteran’s progress to clear content more comfortably while building up their own characters.
For returning players who want to experience the new story sequences added to the base game, Fukuhara recommended continuing from existing save data rather than starting fresh. New sequences added to earlier parts of the game will be triggered automatically when playing from old saves, so there is no risk of missing them. “However, if you want to experience them in a perfect chronological order, it would be ideal to replay the game from the start,” he said. Switch 2 players, coming to the game on a new platform, will be starting from scratch regardless.
On the topic of the Conflux’s mini-games, Fukuhara clarified that choosing them over combat encounters carries no meaningful disadvantage.
“There’s not any inherent benefit. One way you can think of it is sometimes the mini-games are faster than the battles, so for people looking to clear it faster, that would be one way to do it, but it’s mainly for people who like mini-games to have a little bit of variety.”
Mini-bosses, however, do come with higher rewards for players willing to take on the tougher fights.
Progression Beyond the Level Cap
For players who maxed out their characters in Granblue Fantasy: Relink and are wondering how much further they can go, Hidaka laid out just how much has been added. The original level cap of 100 remains, but Master Level unlocks on top of that, enabling access to Master Traits and pushing character power significantly further. Beyond that, new weapons, the Transcendence upgrade system, and additional masteries all stack on top of each other. “All the progression elements have been expanded,” Hidaka said. Even players who reach the very top of the Master Level system and max out their battle style will still find progression available to them.
“If you’re in the really late game, there’s still progression to be had even in the latest stages of the game.”
A Global Community and What Comes Next
Both directors said they do not separate player feedback by country or region, treating the entire player base as a single community. Hidaka observed that the opinions they receive tend to be remarkably consistent regardless of where they come from.
“The opinions of Japanese players are very similar to the opinions of American players, which are very similar to the opinions of Southeast Asian players, which seem to be similar to the opinions of European players. So our community seems to be pretty unified.”
Fukuhara also touched on what it means for Cygames to be expanding its presence on the console scene, noting that opportunities to connect with media and players around the world are something the studio is actively embracing.
“Within Endless Ragnarok, we’re expecting even more fans to discover the game. And that’s what we’re really aiming for.”
He also expressed hope that the new Assist Mode would help bring in players who might otherwise shy away from action games, giving them a way to join friends in the game.
Looking ahead, Fukuhara was measured about what comes next for Granblue Fantasy: Relink. A second expansion on the same scale as Endless Ragnarok is not something the team is ready to confirm, but he did not rule it out. “It could be another large-scale expansion like Endless Ragnarok, it could be a full sequel. It just really depends on what happens after we launch the game and see how players react.” Hidaka echoed that sentiment, emphasizing that the relationship between developer and player community remains central to how the team moves forward.
“We still have more features to announce. So I can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on it, and I can’t wait to hear what they have to say. Play the game, give us your feedback, and tell us as much as you want. That directly relates to how we develop the games.”
