After years of waiting and requests, Granblue Fantasy Versus fans finally got their wishes mostly fulfilled with the announcement that a sequel is on the way this year featuring both rollback netcode and cross-platform play, but that’s not all the new game is going to be bringing in for players.
Cygames and Arc System Works also revealed a brand new multiplayer mode for Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising called Grand Bruise Legends, which brings Fall Guys-like multiplayer minigames to the fighting game.
Grand Bruise Legends is included as part of the title’s revamped online lobbies, so players will compete against each other using their chibi lobby avatars to try and claim victory in a variety of minigames.
So far, only 2 of the events have been specifically detailed between Rising Royale, an obstacle course race, and Gold Brick Hoarder where teams stockpile gold in their zone though the trailer showed off potentially more.
There’s a brief glimpse of soccer being played as well as a bomb survival game although the former may be a separate activity for the lobby.
Even with the small amount of details confirmed the far, Grand Bruise Legends looks like a promising experiment to give fighting game players more fun things to do outside of grinding matches.
This follows something of a trend we’ve seen arise in the genre since Covid arrived with fighting game developers trying out new ways to keep players engaged online and building a sense of community that’s not going to locals or joining Discord servers.
Street Fighter 6’s Battle Hub lets players interact with each other using their custom avatars for example as well as offering classic Capcom arcade games to play without leaving the lobby.
Other fighters like Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown attempted to add more social features too through broadcasting replays and their interactive lobbies, but they didn’t help the game catch on much — though we can likely thank its poor online netplay for that.
Even if it’s copying its homework from Fall Guys, Granblue’s new lobby games are arguably the most ambitious we’ve seen in the genre in a long time.
The ultimate question, however, is whether or not people are actually going to play Grand Bruise Legends and keep coming back for more.
A big part of that will probably come down to the types of rewards players can earn for competing and winning these minigames, which hasn’t been confirmed as to what that’ll be.
If they give away prizes like character colors, weapon skins or a currency to purchase such things, the lobby mode could prove to be successful, but anything lesser like lobby stickers and emotes probably won’t be enticing for more than a few rounds.
The other hurdle Grand Bruise Legends is going to face is having enough players around to fill out those games, considering you not only have to have a bunch of people online, but also have plenty queued up to partake in the festivities.
Rising’s inclusion of crossplay will certainly help mitigate that factor a good bit, but that doesn’t ensure the lobbies are going to remain packed after the launch period.
Despite these questions and concerns, we are still greatly interested to see what ArcSys is putting together here in their attempt to give players more things to do and keep them entertained, especially with the genre moving in a direction to socialize their communities within the games themselves now.
Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising doesn’t have a confirmed release date yet, but it’ll be coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC later this year featuring new characters, new mechanics, enhanced graphics and a new story mode to go through as well as the aforementioned Grand Bruise Legends.
