SGF ‘26: Summoning a Boldly Ambitious Expansion

Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok is the next stage in a franchise that has long embraced adaptation. 2014’s Granblue Fantasy was a mobile and browser-based JRPG that quickly branched out into animation and novels. In 2020, the property shifted into a proper fighting-game stance, with Granblue Fantasy: Versus delivering Arc System Works-developed pugilism. Relink followed in early 2024, reimagining the Sky Realm as a real-time action RPG with four-character parties, solo play, online co-op, and a plethora quests.

That history is significant because Endless Ragnarok isn’t your typical post-release DLC. It represents Cygames’ attempt to fuse the franchise’s mobile-RPG accessibility, fighting-game readability, and Relink‘s boss-rush structure into a single, expanded action RPG. Yes, the studio is undertaking a lot. On paper, creative director Tetsuya Fukuhara and director Sanshiro Hidaka’s ambitions seem particularly lofty. But after a hands-on demo and the opportunity to interview the two developers, the new exposition, characters, quests, systems, and modes are all shaping up toward a must-play experience for Granblue fans.

This time out, Endless Ragnarok picks things up after Zegagrande’s period of peace. The ragnalia, described as a catastrophic harbinger of doom, start to appear, and a chaotic dimension opens deep within the snowbound peaks of Mt. Neigelith. Pleasingly, that sense of urgency has seeped into Endless Ragnarok. Given that paid expansions doesn’t always boast exigence, this is an encouraging sign.

Not Your Average DLC Drop

At Summer Game Fest 2026, Cygames’ creatives said the expansion was a response to demand rather than some kind of live-service roadmap. Fukuhara said the team heard from fans who “wanted more content from Relink,” while Hidaka explained a core design quandary: “we couldn’t simply just make the content harder.” Those two comments say a lot about Endless Ragnarok‘s direction. It seems poised to push players toward new builds and co-op roles, while also goading them into learning new ways to survive.

The hands-on build began near the opening of Endless Ragnarok‘s storyline, with the quest counter immediately unlocking a new Chaos-level difficulty. These undertakings introduce the ragnalia and bosses with EX Burst attacks, which are telegraphed by a vibrant purple aura. The whole approach seems designed to push players toward reading visual cues rather than relying purely on their action-game instincts. As someone who sank weeks in Relink, this seems like a prudent direction, with gameplay feeling intense, with frequent moments of screen-filling spectacle. I’m sure Relink players wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Cast Grew in Unexpected Ways

The playable roster shown at the demo felt more like a rebuilt, reunited cast than a typical DLC package. Gallanza is a spear-axe wielding powerhouse with some serious attack reach. Playing as Beatrix nearly requires  cycling between offensive, defensive, and recovery self-buffs during a fight. Eustace can be best described as a mobile ranged gunner, built around charged shots and careful reload management. Fraux, bonded to the primal beast known as The Devil. brings her own distinction to the lineup. Fediel blends ranged dark-attribute attacks with an instant warp that can close the distance, triggering a powerful melee strike in the process. And Maglielle favors summoned blades alongside a barrier that grants the whole party brief invincibility. Who doesn’t love a team savior?

The other major feature on display was the Conflux, a solo roguelite-style progression mode. Instead of basic quest repetition, players progress through a sequence of randomly shuffled areas, selecting power-ups along the way that linger for the rest of your run. Area types range from straightforward combat encounters and tougher boss rooms to treasure-only stops, rare-monster encounters, and optional mini-game challenges if you’d rather skip a fight. Any collected Aura buffs can boost a character’s damage or survivability, and rarer Auras offer even bigger payoffs. It’s a welcome option for soloists looking to catch up on gear or just experiment with their builds outside the usual co-op loop.

Summon Early, Summon Often, But Summon!

Undoubtedly, summoning is Endless Ragnarok‘s showcase mechanic. Players can equip summons, build a shared Summon Gauge in battle, then call them in for a limited time. Some summons can be directly controlled, potentially making the player invincible, with everything from an offensive burst, a defensive escape, or a counter against a boss’s lethal attacks. Fukuhara described summons as “powerful moves that can turn the tides,” and Hidaka compared them to “a bomb in a shooting game.” I asked how Cygames kept summons from becoming a push-to-win button, and Fukuhara detailed the team’s fastidious approach to balancing and how summons aren’t a panacea. During the demo, two primal beasts stood out: Furycane, a centaur-looking monstrosity with fast moving-tornado combos that close in on you. There’s was also Managarmr, which can shift forms, swapping speed for sheer ability and dishing out assaults that can freeze enemies.

Expectedly, there’s a limit on how much summons can assist in a fight. In co-op, the four-person party shares one gauge, and only one summon can be active at a time. So if a teammate is mid-summon, everyone else waits their turn. Costs do have some flexibility: bringing out a cheaper summon first can knock down the cost of a teammate’s pricier one, encouraging some on-the-fly coordination.

There’s a hard floor to that discount, though. Hidaka was clear that a summon’s cost can drop to one segment of the gauge, but not to zero. As for unlocking them, Fukuhara described a fairly organic system: most summons come from clearing quests tied to the enemies encountered in them, with NPC side-quests around town potentially offering another route. Summons also tie into Primal Burst, a bigger payoff where Lyria herself joins in. Once all four party members chain their Skybound Arts together under the right conditions, she can summon a primal beast for one additional, devastating hit.

Relink Finds Its Final Form

Collectively, there are plenty of refinements to a game that already had a reputation for satisfying combat. From this early look, none of it feels like padding. Endless Ragnarok keeps Relink‘s four-person spectacle intact while layering build crafting, a genuinely solo-friendly mode, crossplay, and summon timing on top of it . Whether it holds that density across a full twenty-plus-hour campaign is the real test, but if the Summer Game Fest demo provided insight for the final build, Endless Ragnarok looks like the version of Relink that finally pulls together the series’ ambitions into one, first-class package.