Evo 2024 Viewer's Guide: Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Believe in victory, Skyfarers! Cygames’ Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising makes its official full debut at EVO 2024! Last year, a tournament was held for the game’s pre-launch beta, with reigning king of the game Gamera taking the tournament over Buh; notably, Buh was piloting Siegfried, a character brand new to Rising, and showed the power of the eldest of the Dragon Knights.
Since then, the game has fully released, and we’ve seen the game’s community blossom from a scrappy group of devotees to an FGC behemoth as a new generation of fighting game players discover a game able to bridge the gap between depth and accessibility. Today, ahead of the community’s largest bracket to date, we’ll be going through everything you need to know about Granblue and its competitive scene ahead of this year’s Evo!
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is a clearcut sequel to the original 2020 title, but many (understandably) believe the game to be a version update, akin to Super Street Fighter IV. Rising’s primary new system is the introduction of Bravery Points. Each player begins with three diamonds above their health bar, and can use them throughout the round by using Raging Strike (an unblockable yet reactable move similar to Street Fighter’s Drive Impact), Raging Chain (a combo extender), or Brave Counter (a defensive guard cancel that pushes the opponent away). Players take more damage the fewer Bravery Points they have left, and can replenish them by hitting their opponents with supers. Overall, the pacing of Rising is much faster than Versus prior through both the Bravery Point system alongside system mechanics like dash normals and metered, powerful Ultimate Skills.
Rising also introduces a variety of characters to the roster while bringing back every single character from the prior installment. Returning characters like Seox, Belial, Lancelot, Djeeta, and Cagliostro remain relevant at the top level of play, while newcomers like Siegfried and Nier have made their impact known in such a short period of time. These two in particular have come to define the early meta of Rising; Siegfried’s strong space control and high damage output have led players to great success. Despite a substantive nerf to her reversal, Misfortune, Nier remains strong as ever; her oppressive puppetmistress pressure combined with high damage and mixups keeps her at the top level of play.
Season 1’s season of DLC is well underway too, with three fan favorites in Lucilius, Vane, and Beatrix making their way into the game alongside a guest character: 2B from Nier Automata. Although it’s taking some time for each of these characters to fully pick up momentum and find results at the top level of play, one character of note is the explosive Beatrix and her high damage, Sol Badguy-esque rushdown at her first large offline event.
This year marks the second year of Granblue’s presence at the ARC World Tour, as well. Last year, Granblue’s presence at the AWT was more muted due to Granblue’s release window - a single elimination eight entrant bracket. Grand finalists at three events: Japan’s Cygames Cup Special (Tako and Fukunaga), Europe’s Kayane Cup (Fitizen and Sonic-san), and North America’s Frosty Faustings (Zippy and Xerom) all found themselves in the final bracket, alongside two last chance qualifiers in NA’s Kojicoco and Japan’s GOBOU. Ultimately, Fukunaga and his Lancelot would find themselves as the first world champion for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising.
This time around, though, Evo finds itself smack-dab in the middle of Granblue’s ARC World Tour as a Platinum event that auto-qualifies its winner for the finals. The winner of Evo will be joining Evo Japan’s winner Rookies at the end-of-year finals. That’s not to say Platinum-tier events are the only ones that matter, though; seven players will qualify through a points leaderboard accrued via placements at Platinum, Gold, and Silver community-run netplay events.
I mentioned earlier that Kojicoco qualified to ARC World Tour Finals through its last chance qualifiers, but I didn’t mention how miraculous of a run that was. Kojicoco took down seasoned competitors like KINARI and Shuaboo to make it through the last chance qualifier, and from there, he took down GOBOU, Fitizen, and Xerom all en route to silver at AWT. Since then, he’s been keeping his competitive momentum, with strong placings at both Evo Japan and ATL Super Tournament. Another player who had a stellar run at AWT finals was Xerom, a longstanding Charlotta specialist. Although he was strong in Versus, in Rising, he’s stepped up as one of NA’s premier talents: he’s found himself beating the near-unbeatable Zippy on two occasions at Frosty’s and AWT Finals, and won Texas Showdown. Charlotta’s an off-meta pick, so the onus is on his opponents to see how prepared they are to go up against the captain of the Holy Knights.
Many might have heard through social media that grand finals of COMBO BREAKER was a Nier mirror. And yes, that might be true, but that’s no reason to count out BEPaws’s Ferry - after all, the character pretty much solo got him through most of the bracket, with his Ferry pushing Zippy to the brink in their WFs set. The Chicago hometown hero’s been piloting the spectral zoner for years, and is determined to prove those insistent that she doesn’t fit into the current aggressive meta wrong. This EVO, it’ll be up to him to carry Ferry’s status in the meta on his back.
The North American netplay scene has also been alive and well. Organizations such as Tampa Never Sleeps and WASD Gaming make up weekly staples of the North American netplay scene with regular brackets highlighting the top level of play, both of whom are slated to host netplay AWT Silver events later in the year after Evo. There’s a wealth of talent present on North American netplay, and between every WASD GBVSR Open, TNS, ParagOnline Ladder, FlyQuest Fight Series, and many more, organizers have held an incubator for top level talent to emerge; in particular, Havaniceday’s tempo-defining mix of Djeeta and Beelzebub have come to become a mainstay in top 8 graphics. Hava recently top 6’d Combo Breaker, playing mostly Djeeta - but can he do it again at EVO?
Two players have come to define the upper echelon of Granblue Fantasy Versus since its release in 2020 - Gamera and Tororo. Gamera and Tororo have met each other in grands of every single major of base Versus (Evo 2022, Cygames Cup Special 2023, and Evo Japan 2023). Furthermore, Gamera flew over to North America for Rising’s beta tournament at Evo 2023, and won that as well. An underperformance at Cygames Cup Special, however, meant that he sat out ARC World Tour finals this year, but he went into Evo rejuvenated and ready to compete.Given that Gamera had won literally every single Granblue Evo up till that point, it came as a surprise that he fell to losers early at Evo Japan to Ren, a longtime Seox specialist. Despite that, he clawed his way through losers, taking down Ren in the runback, until eventually he found himself face to face with Tororo in losers finals, playing out a classic Djeeta/Percival match, before facing down Rookies in grand finals. Despite a dominant Grand Finals Set 1, Rookies was able to adapt and overcome Djeeta to become Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising’s first EVO champion and punch himself an auto-invite ticket to AWT. All eyes are on Gamera and Tororo to see if they can take their throne back at the top of Granblue at the Mandalay Bay. Tororo, in particular, already journeyed out to Korea to win AWT Gold event ATL Super Tournament.
This is just a quick preview of what’s transpired so far in the first half-year of offline Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising - there’s many more players and storylines that will come to a head at Evo. A game kept alive for years through the faith of its community is now more active than ever, and this event and its unprecedented bracket for the game serves as an international celebration of Skyfarers worldwide. Take a seat, grab a DjeetaNeverSurrender fansign, and get ready for an amazing culmination of a year of Granblue!
