How Long to Beat Granblue Fantasy: Relink?

Games like God Eater, or Monster Hunter tend to be massive investments. It isn’t enough to beat every stage, you need to beat every stage multiple times, get a specific drop, followed by repeating the process until fights come down to build/skill. While Granblue Fantasy: Relink has elements of this, it isn’t quite as rigid as other games in the genre. Still, given the potential massive investment, and Q1 2024 being loaded with fantastic experiences, we wanted to touch on how long to beat Granblue Fantasy: Relink.

Main Story

I finished the 11 chapter main story on hard difficulty in roughly 12 hours. During this time I did not do any optional mission, and spent a fair amount of time exploring each map. Without exploring I’d estimate the time would be closer to 10 hours, with it decreasing further on lower difficulties. Though, I should note my run only had three full wipes, so it’s more about enemies being quicker to kill than anything related to wipes/challenge.

Episode 0

Following the main story is an optional epilogue. To finish this chapter you’ll need to complete a large number of high ranking quests, and a couple story stages. In all it’s about 20 to 25 quests to unlock everything required to finish Episode 0.

This took me approximately 21 hours to do. Please note, I did this 100 percent offline, without any grinding, or knowledge of the meta. With a full team online it can be completed much faster. Especially since the final story fight is at a fixed difficulty, so even if people online carry you the fight itself will not be any easier, or harder.

Maniac Difficulty

After finishing the epilogue there will be another two difficulty tiers. These are Maniac, and Proud. At this point playtime comes down to what you’re looking to do.

I made it to the final Maniac fight at about 28 hours. The final mission is extremely difficult with barely leveled AI teammates. By the time I finished it I was at 34 hours having leveled my teammates a bit/getting better equipment myself. This time will be slashed a significant portion if you find someone at a much higher level to carry you through the content, or even equally leveled people to avoid having to level AI companions.

Proud Difficulty

Once Proud is unlocked you’ll have access to the hardest missions in the game. The real highlight isn’t enemies with even higher stats, but build opportunities. This mode also features three unique bosses, and a special version of a story boss fight.

What this mode also does is add a number of ways to grind for the best possible gear. These include notable V+ sigils, stones, and the even a special weapon. Two of the unique fights are also required to level sigils, so these stages are an absolute must for anyone looking to finish their build.

Clean Up

Beyond that, getting all the trophy/achievements will easily hit 100+ hours. This is largely due to the grind for all the weapons, which offline should take roughly 14 hours to do so. Hopefully that will decrease with online, though it relies on luck over skill.

It will also require a fair amount of cleanup, so another full story run, along with I believe getting all the Wee Pincer collectibles. This was a task we did not complete due to the difficulty of finding them, but at least 20 are required for one trophy/achievement, and 25 for the current side quest. We assume it will increase until you find them all, or at least 25 or more.