Granblue Fantasy

Granblue Fantasy is a Japanese role-playing video game developed by Cygames for Android, iOS and web browsers, which was first released in Japan in March 2014. The game reunites music composer Nobuo Uematsu and art director Hideo Minaba, who previously collaborated on Final Fantasy V (1992), VI (1994), and IX (2000) and Lost Odyssey (2007).

Granblue Fantasy 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; by collecting certain materials, some character may earn an extra star (which is called "FLB" or full limit break), resulting in new abilities and drastically improving their power. The player character, who is always a part of the party, can equip various classes to best suit the current challenge. Summons and weapons equipped also confer characters with bonuses on attack power, HP, and the passive skills each weapon holds. Building up a 'grid' of weapons and summons is the core of progression in Granblue Fantasy, with a variety of grids and character line-ups required to tackle the harder challenges in the game.

Whilst some quests are single player, there are a variety of challenges that are tackled co-operatively, called Raids, where up to 30 players work together to defeat the boss. In these encounters, everyone's damage collectively depletes the enemy's HP, with all debuffs and enemy attacks being shared amongst the gathered players. Depending on the amount of damage they contributed, victors will receive chests of different rarity, many of which drop weapons and items key to progression.

The characters themselves are gained either via quests (the main story quests or special event quests) or by using in-game currency to roll and 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. It is recommended to use a superior element in battle (for example, using water against fire-type opponents) as there are several benefits in doing so, like increasing the player team's damage output. There are even some levels that penalize the player for not using the superior element. Voice actors provide voices for all of the characters in battle, and for much of the main and event story lines, including tie-ins/collaborations, characters, and stories.

The game frequently holds a variety of special events. These include story events, that are detached from the main story, but feature various characters that are obtained via the gacha system; Unite and Fight, a mode which allows groups of players, called Crews, to compete for points for rare rewards; and special tie-in collaborations that feature characters and franchises from outside Granblue Fantasy, such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Street Fighter, Samurai Shodown, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Negima! Magister Negi Magi and Hunter x Hunter.

The Captain (Japanese: 団長, romanized: Danchō; the player character, either Gran (male) or Djeeta (female) by default) and their winged companion Vyrn are relaxing in the town of Zinkenstill when they spot an Erste Empire airship in the sky nearby. The Captain inadvertently comes to the rescue of a girl named Lyria and an imperial officer named Katalina as they try to escape from the Empire, but he suffers a mortal wound during the fight, forcing Lyria to merge her soul with them to bring them back from the brink of death. Lyria then uses her power to summon a giant monster called Proto-Bahamut, driving the Empire's forces away. With the Captain and Katalina's fates now tied to Lyria, the three of them decide to head to the island of Estalucia, both to escape from the Empire and possibly find clues about the Captain's estranged father.

Despite escaping, Katalina's poor piloting skills cause them to crash-land elsewhere in the Port Breeze Archipelago. The trio looks for a working airship and a pilot to steer it. They end up meeting Rackam, an odd helmsman working on an airship that has been broken for years, but the Empire follows them to the island as well, looking to recapture Lyria. The three eventually manage to convince Rackam to help them fight off the Imperial soldiers chasing them, and in return, help him finish repairing his airship, the Grandcypher, to make it skyworthy.

As the Captain travels across the skies, gathering up more allies on their journey and fighting Primal Beasts, creatures created by those many years ago, the crew finds themselves slowly dragged into a plot involving the mysterious Black Knight, the doll-like Orchis, and the history that the Empire seeks to keep secret while they pursue Lyria.