As we have covered extensively these past few months, fighting games are having something of a resurgence as of late. Netherrealm Studios’ Mortal Kombat 1 recently announced that it had sold over 3 million copies in the two months since its release, Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 has sold around that same number since its release in June, and Bandai Namco’s ever-popular Tekken series looks to release its 8th installment on January 24th of next year. Fighting games have never been better, so it’s with great joy that during this resurgence of the genre that Arc System Works’ Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising looks to make splash on the fighting game community, starting with its open beta that is currently free to play over the weekend from November 9th through November 12th.
Arc System Works is no stranger to fighting games, being the developer of the ever-popular Guilty Gear series as well as crowd favorite Dragon Ball FighterZ Arc System Works have really made case for being up there with Capcom and Bandai Namco as one of the leaders of the genre. One of their titles, unfortunately, was never able to live up to its company’s reputation: Granblue Fantasy Versus had a rough release, with a limited 12-character roster and a delay-based netcode that the community was quickly growing sick of. Fantasy Versus, despite being based on the immensely popular Granblue RPG series, was never truly able to get off the ground even though it sold around 1 million copies. With the delay-based net code preventing players from playing online and the COVID pandemic preventing players from meeting in person, Granblue Fantasy Versus’ growth was unfortunately stunted.
But with Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising there’s a chance to change all that. Rising is being released at the height of a fighting game boom, and features a very expanded roster at 29 featuring all 25 characters from the original Granblue Fantasy Versus as well as four new characters in Anila, Siegfried, Nier, and Grimnir with Anile and Siegfried being available for the open beta. The net code has also been greatly improved, as it is now up to the industry standard of rollback net code with crossplay available, meaning that players can now have near-seamless matches against opponents on any of the available consoles. There have also been many system changes from the first game, expanding the things you can do even with the old roster.
Hopefully, the stars align to keep this game afloat, the Granblue property is ever-popular with an RPG, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, also set to release in the future it seems fans of the franchise will have plenty to chew on. And within the fighting game community this is another great choice among a selection of great choices. If you want to try out Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising right now then the beta is open all weekend from November 9th through November 12th on Playstation 4 and Playstation 5 as well as Steam. The full release of the game will be available on those same platforms on December 14th of this year.