7.2 /10 1 Votes
Artist(s) Hideo Minaba | 7.3/10 MyAnimeList Producer(s) Koichi Haruta Initial release date 10 March 2014 Developer Cygames | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Composer(s) Nobuo UematsuTsutomu Narita Similar Cygames games, Role-playing games | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Granblue Fantasy (グランブルーファンタジー, Guranburū Fantajī) is a role-playing video game developed by Cygames for Android and iOS platforms, which first released in Japan in March 2014. The game is notable for reuniting music composer Nobuo Uematsu and art director Hideo Minaba, who also worked on Final Fantasy VI (1994), Final Fantasy IX (2000), and Lost Odyssey (2007) together.
Contents
Gameplay
The game plays as a role-playing video game with turn-based battles. The game also contains summons and a class system that alters the main character's move-set and growth. Characters gain levels and abilities by accruing experience; summons and weapons equipped also confer characters with bonuses on attack power and HP. The characters themselves are gained either via quests (the main story quests or special event quests) or by using in-game currency to receive random crystal fragments, which may contain special weapons that add specific characters to the party. Characters, summons, and weapons are ranked (from best to worst) as SSR, SR, R, or N; each is also of type wind, water, fire, earth, light, or darkness. Voice actors provide voices for all of the characters in battle, and for much of the main and event storylines.
Development
Uematsu worked on eleven tracks for the game, with Tsutomu Narita doing nine others, and Minaba drawing roughly 100 potential character designs. The game also contains voice overs from Hiroaki Hirata, who previously worked on Final Fantasy XII and Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.
The game was originally planned for release in Japan for December 17, 2013, but it was put back to March 10, 2014. The game is free-to-play and published by Mobage. At TGS 2015, it was announced that the game would receive an international release in March 2016. The international release however, was not on its own separate server, but rather an option in-game to switch language. This allows international players who have been playing the Japanese version to keep all of their data.
Reception
By March 2016, the game had been downloaded over 10 million times in Japan.
Pre-release
Many journalists have compared it favorably to earlier Final Fantasy video games.
Light novel
A light novel adaptation was released in 2014. The series currently has four books that contain game codes that can be redeemed for special items in the game. The digital volumes of the Granblue Fantasy light novel also contain game codes.
Anime
An anime and manga series based on the franchise was announced in September 2015. The anime series is being produced by A-1 Pictures and directed by Yuuki Itoh, featuring character designs by Toshifumi Akai, and music by Nobuo Uematsu, Tsutomu Narita and Yasunori Nishiki. Bump of Chicken will perform the series' theme song, titled "GO". It was scheduled to premiere in January 2017, however it was delayed to April 1, 2017 for unknown reasons. A television anime special which aired the first two episodes of the television anime series was broadcast on January 21, 2017 on Tokyo MX prior to the anime series. Aniplex of America has licensed the series in North America.