Granble Fantasy Versus was already a rather decent...if perhaps -limited- at times fighting game that worked really well as what one could call an 'introduction' towards a lot of core fighting game elements with some spice with it's large diverse cast to let you find a playing style you'd enjoy. If anything it was held back by the fact that it's online would just SLOG with anyone not even in the same city, more less state with you, and if one pal was on PS4/5 and another on PC, you'd have to double dip or just not play together. Rising in turn is this games second lease on life and it for sure ensures to solve these two major issues outright. Though it's not -perfect- and in many ways things where lost between revisions.

To start off Cross-play and rollback are both here, and both work extremely well at that. I've played with people all over the globe doing the Open Beta, and even with the little bit I got to do after obtaining this and writing the review, it's only stayed as solid at that. The few times it really can't hold a connection the game does it's best to still be playable instead of a river of lag, and for that it just makes for a far better player experience. Lobbies are now a snap to make, more less the larger scale lobby has far more to do in it then just que up for best of 3's. Add in some new features that make the pacing of fights far more faster in turn, and the game feels like it's gotten quite the glow up indeed. Then we start talking about the offerings for single player/co-op and the hammer falls...

Long and short, a lot of the hours I put into the first revision of the game was in due part of it's RPG Story mode. Unlock characters, use them in beat-em-up side scrolling stages and get gear that in turn became both cosmetics for the vs. mode experience along with items that where used to enhance your stats doing said RPG Mode. It all fed into each other quite well and progress in RPG never felt like it wasn't rewarding you with something that also carried over to normal gameplay. You even could co-op with a friend online to beat epic scaled bosses and it gave you a way to play with a friend that wasn't just about beating each others faces in. Come Rising though, this mode has been greatly downsized into a very barebones story crawl with some story fights, but you no longer can use 'anyone' for these fights, hard locked to key characters at that. Yet the greatest sin is that for all of the work you do in this mode, nothing but achievement clears matter in the full game. All of the gear is from the gatcha in online lobbies, all of the other stuff is via character progression by playing online vs. matches. IMO this much of an axe cut towards this mode felt like a concession to try to make it just 'easier' to see the story w/o the gear and grind gimmicks of before, yet as a result it feels vastly more lukewarm and it's only passable story can't carry the experience.

Does losing out on a far more robust story mode suck? Yeah, it really does. Is it worth going back to the more slower paced base game for this mode? That's where I still have to give Rising the thumbs up as for this major loss, it still refines what was there and does so much -right- it's going to kill me to ever go back to base ever again. So I could still vote this as a wonderful 'entry' fighting game with a LOT more spice to go around learning and getting used towards, and things you learn/master here can springboard into the large pool of other fighters out in the sea of games. Yet as a single player/co-op game, I feel like this ends up more of the same you'll see in so many other fighters and as a result can leave you waning. What I can suggest is give the F2P trial a go, and see how it feels to play and if you enjoy what you see, go for it.

Granble Fantasy Versus was already a rather decent...if perhaps -limited- at times fighting game that worked really well as what one could call an 'introduction' towards a lot of core fighting game elements with some spice with it's large diverse cast to let you find a playing style you'd enjoy. If anything it was held back by the fact that it's online would just SLOG with anyone not even in the same city, more less state with you, and if one pal was on PS4/5 and another on PC, you'd have to double dip or just not play together. Rising in turn is this games second lease on life and it for sure ensures to solve these two major issues outright. Though it's not -perfect- and in many ways things where lost between revisions. To start off Cross-play and rollback are both here, and both work extremely well at that. I've played with people all over the globe doing the Open Beta, and even with the little bit I got to do after obtaining this and writing the review, it's only stayed as solid at that. The few times it really can't hold a connection the game does it's best to still be playable instead of a river of lag, and for that it just makes for a far better player experience. Lobbies are now a snap to make, more less the larger scale lobby has far more to do in it then just que up for best of 3's. Add in some new features that make the pacing of fights far more faster in turn, and the game feels like it's gotten quite the glow up indeed. Then we start talking about the offerings for single player/co-op and the hammer falls... Long and short, a lot of the hours I put into the first revision of the game was in due part of it's RPG Story mode. Unlock characters, use them in beat-em-up side scrolling stages and get gear that in turn became both cosmetics for the vs. mode experience along with items that where used to enhance your stats doing said RPG Mode. It all fed into each other quite well and progress in RPG never felt like it wasn't rewarding you with something that also carried over to normal gameplay. You even could co-op with a friend online to beat epic scaled bosses and it gave you a way to play with a friend that wasn't just about beating each others faces in. Come Rising though, this mode has been greatly downsized into a very barebones story crawl with some story fights, but you no longer can use 'anyone' for these fights, hard locked to key characters at that. Yet the greatest sin is that for all of the work you do in this mode, nothing but achievement clears matter in the full game. All of the gear is from the gatcha in online lobbies, all of the other stuff is via character progression by playing online vs. matches. IMO this much of an axe cut towards this mode felt like a concession to try to make it just 'easier' to see the story w/o the gear and grind gimmicks of before, yet as a result it feels vastly more lukewarm and it's only passable story can't carry the experience. Does losing out on a far more robust story mode suck? Yeah, it really does. Is it worth going back to the more slower paced base game for this mode? That's where I still have to give Rising the thumbs up as for this major loss, it still refines what was there and does so much -right- it's going to kill me to ever go back to base ever again. So I could still vote this as a wonderful 'entry' fighting game with a LOT more spice to go around learning and getting used towards, and things you learn/master here can springboard into the large pool of other fighters out in the sea of games. Yet as a single player/co-op game, I feel like this ends up more of the same you'll see in so many other fighters and as a result can leave you waning. What I can suggest is give the F2P trial a go, and see how it feels to play and if you enjoy what you see, go for it.