YMMV / Granblue Fantasy Versus

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • This line from Tomoi when the Lowain bros talk about Metera after defeating her, mostly due to it mentioning "came" and "cave in".
    Tomoi: If Metera actually came on to me. I'd cave in.
  • Ladiva says "How lovely!" when she defeats her opponent using her Super Skybound Art. She was pinning them to the floor beforehand, in a way that can be interpreted as a hug of love.
  • If Vaseraga and Zeta are matched as Player 1 (on the left) and Player 2 (on the right) respectively, Zeta says this line which sounds like an innuendo:
    Zeta: Wondering who's gonna come out on top today? Well the answer is me!
• And You Thought It Would Fail: During the game's announcement on 2018, English FGC players were surprised that Arc System Works made a fighting game for a Gacha Game (gachas have a stigma in the West for their monetization practices), especially for an IP that was still niche in the West despite its popularity in Japan and some parts of Asia. The game also had a somewhat Invisible Advertising, and pre-release issues, so the FGC thought its first week sales would completely flop on 2020, to lesser numbers than the Guilty Gear and Persona 4: Arena games. But to the surprise of many in the FGC, GBVS sold higher numbers than expected; at more than 150,000 copies within two days with very positive feedback from pro E-Sports players, and later top the Famitsu's sales chart almost a week after launch. On August 2023, the game eventually sold more than 1 million copies worldwide.
• Awesome Art: Granblue Fantasy in general is already known for its impressive anime art style, but the illustrations that were drawn specifically for Versus (especially the character art) are another step up from what was already superb art; being more detailed, cleaner and shaded in a more realistic way. They are simply a joy to look at, and luckily, you'll be seeing them a lot, especially in the game's main menu and the character select screen.
• Awesome Moments:
  • Gran hasn't had the best of reputations since The Animation, so the story mode of Versus reminds everyone why he is just as strong as Djeeta. He defeats Katalina empowered by Ares on his own, and then goes on to defeat a good chunk of the cast and several Primal Beasts ^note Charlotta, Lancelot, Colossus, Ladiva, Metera, Yggdrasil, Ferry, Percival, Rose Queen, Zeta, Vaseraga and Bahamut with the aid of only one crew member. It bears mentioning that Gran is fighting to subdue all of these people thanks to Belial, all of whom fight him intending to maim or kill... and Gran still won. He caps off the story mode with a double knockout between himself and Beelzebub, who early on is empowered by the remains of Bahamut's power, without Sandalphon's or Cagliostro's aid.
  • Ferry manages to see through Belial basically at a glance even though she can only sense very faintly that he's no ordinary human. The fallen angel of cunning is surprised and impressed enough to remark that she is "sharp as a knife". What's more, up to this point, Ferry had been investigating the phenomenon of spreading chaos all by herself and on her own initiative, purely out of concern for restoring peace in the skies. This gets used against her when her memories are tampered with, leading her to believe that Gran's actions as the singularity are the source of the distortions.
  • A villainous one for Belial, who manages to curbstomp Zooey without any effort thanks to the Versus Core and Avatar's cores. This is even reflected in the music when she transforms. First it starts playing Armageddon, the Grand Order boss theme, but it is quickly overtaken by Belial's Parade's Lust theme, showing just how in control he still is.
  • Two for Beelzebub. First after he is defeated by Gran/Djeeta, he defeats Bahamut with ease. And after he returns, he does the one thing he wasn't able to do since he was introduced; he manages to outsmart Belial.
  • Zooey later gets a severe case of Lawful Stupid and decides to fight Gran and Djeeta to determine who is the true singularity. The first awesome moment comes from Gran and Djeeta who fight Zooey to a standstill and the others can't tell who is going to win. The second moment comes from Lyria and Vyrn who manage to talk down Zooey and determine that they don't care which one is the "true" Captain, they have fond memories with both.
  • After years of their status as the Strongests in the Skies being more of an Informed Attribute, Anre demonstrates why the Eternals are considered such a menace by fighting off legions of Erste Empire soldiers without breaking a sweat and fighting Belial to a standstill, forcing the Fallen Angel to admit that they are too evenly matched.
  • After the entire cast of the game gets played and pissed off by Belial, Beelzebub, upon returning to the Sky Realm, does the one thing that Belial isn't expecting, teaming up with the crew. This unlikely alliance beats the ever living hell out of the Fallen Angel, forcing him, in his own unique way to start begging for mercy, making Lucilius awaken too early and making Belial retreat to the rift between worlds.
  • The whole finale of Part 3 of the story is full of amazing moments. Gran and Djeeta with the help of Beelzebub infiltrate Zero to rescue Rein from Lucillius and Belial. When they get there Beelzebub throws Versus to Rein so she can achieve her full power and become Versusia, a being so powerful she is able to One Shot Kill Belial. In response to this Beelzebub gives his biggest Bring It Slasher Smile yet and quickly goes toe to toe with this godlike being. Meanwhile Gran and Djeeta confront Lucillius who they deliver a Shut Up, Hannibal! to and back up their statement by being able to bring back an old friend of theirs, Sandalphon, who is grateful to them and to get revenge on Lucillius. This is reflected in the battle itself when Sandalphon helps heal the duo, and in the finale of the fight Gran and Djeeta do a Combination Attack to finish off Lucillius. With Zero starting to become unstable Gran, Djeeta, and Beelzebub retreat but they are not done with each other, with Gran and Djeeta calling out Beelzebub's crimes and challenging him to a final showdown, and Beelzebub showing that while he doesn't have the Versus he is still has grown strong himself to go toe-to-toe.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • With enough hindsight or context, a lot of the upcoming playable character reveals became too predictable for the Granblue fans due to several factors.
    • Since the first trailer, Lowain, Percival, Metera, Zeta and Vaseraga are already expected or obviously "foreshadowed" to be in the base roster because the official title artwork contains their unlocking weapons from the gacha game.
    • Even before the director stated it in an interview, fighting game fans who also play the original Granblue game speculated the devs to prioritize fighting game archetypes first, or that they'd include an actual fist-fighter or wrestler in the launch roster. Indeed, some correctly guessed that Ladiva would be added at launch simply because she's a wrestler who'd fit the Grappler character archetype of Fighting Games.
    • Fans already expected that some of the most popular characters or villains from the gacha would end up as DLC here to boost sales. Narmaya, Belial, Cagliostro, Anila, and Nier were just few characters who straight-up proved this on their own. Other characters (such as Siegfried and Vane of The Dragon Knights, or Beatrix of The Society) were also predictably expected because the rest of their group were already playable. Over time, it wasn't much of a surprise on who would be added in the roster, it's more about when they would come, especially since Cygames themselves have been regularly conducting and posting fandom survey polls to determine the next playable characters (as shown in this survey result).
  • Playable or not, it was already obvious that Sandalphon will inevitably appear in the Fighting Game spinoffs in some form, considering how the story of these games rely on the lore and worldbuilding from the "What Makes The Sky Blue" anniversary story arc of the gacha game (the trilogy that made him a Breakout Character of Granblue), and because several villains he faced in that story arc (such as Beelzebub, Belial, and Lucilius) are prominent Big Bads here in Versus. True enough, Djeeta's introductory quest recaps the events of "WMTSB", and Sandalphon is shown there.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Lowain's Yggdrasil has been treated as a yardstick to distinguish if the opponent is a newbie or a veteran in fighting games, and brought debates on whether or not she's a fair mechanic. Yggdrasil has gimmicks involving high-damage attacks, gravity manipulation and invincibility. Because she cannot be KO'd (and can leave Lowain with 1 HP should the opponent choose to be aggressive), one option is to play even more careful until Lowain returns. Yggdrasil's attacks can also be "spot-dodged" using the evade button instead of blocking and receiving chip damage, but this requires a bit of knowledge on attack timings. This video listed precise ways on how to deal with her, and encourages practice and "labbing" against her. These are why she gets called the "Scrub Killer", since at higher-level plays, she becomes less effective once the opponent has anticipated her and knows what to do.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • No matter the region, Ferry turned out to be a fan-favorite in the 3-day Closed Beta Test period of Versus, primarily for being Popular with Furries thanks to her Erune race and her Fanservice Sexy Backless Outfit design that caters to anime fans. This isn't entirely surprising as she was already popular in the mobile game and Versus sparked a resurgence.
    • It got to the point where the beta test spawned a lot of Ferry fanarts and in-game screenshots of her, that they make up for most of the number of screenshots, character impressions and video thumbnails on social media as compared to the other 4 initial characters.
    • During the first day of the beta, even some voice actors like Kana Ueda noticed the large number of Ferry users in Japan.
    • Gameplay-wise, it also helped that she is a "zoner" character, one of the archetypes that complete beginners start out with in a Fighting Game due to their mobility and long-ranged attacks that put emphasis on being safe from a distance.
  • After the release, Lowain and his bros have become instantly beloved by the community due to their role as Plucky Comic Relief and humorous interactions with the rest of the cast. It helps that in the main game for Granblue Fantasy, they were breakout characters there as well.
  • The referee in Ladiva's Super Skybound Art is considered by some to be the most badass referee ever, considering he doesn't just arrive in the ring, he jumps high into the ring, and starts the countdown with a Three-Point Landing.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Samurai Shodown, specifically the 2019 installment. Both games are grounded, slow-paced fighters compared to the more chaotic "anime" style that's become popular in recent years. The rivalry started with the two having close release schedules, and the comparisons just grew from there.
  • GBVS was also being developed in parallel with Guilty Gear -STRIVE- and were supposedly released a year apart, so comparisons were unavoidable. Added to the problem is the fact that GBVS got chosen to be part of ARCREVO WORLD TOUR 2020 when Strive wasn't.
  • GBVS later became a part of the EVO 2020 line up when the game is not even out, which certainly made BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Mortal Kombat 11 fans unhappy. However, this rivalry died down when EVO 2020 and its supposed EVO online format were scrapped altogether.
• Fountain of Memes: Almost every line from Lowain's intros has become a meme; from Tomoi asking Metera to step on him, to proclaiming that they don't have tactics in response to Charlotta, to Vyrn declaring Lyria is too young to vibe and Gran being concerned about her being lured to the dark side of vibing to "waheyyy!".
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Without context, one may find it odd that Belial's "weapon skins" in Versus are pairs of eyeglasses. They are actually a very subtle and clever reference to a scene in the gacha game's "What Makes The Sky Blue II: Paradise Lost" event where he introduced his supposed profession as a Fashion Designer.
  • When winning against Lowain, Ferry shouts "Waheey!" and "Duuude!", then puts a lampshade on them asking if that's how people talk nowadays. This sounds like a fourth-wall break acknowledging how Totally Radical slang is still common for the millennials and the younger generation of the 21st century.
  • Some terms and pop culture references surrounding Beelzebub rely on the etymology of his name ("lord of flies") or association with demonology.
    • From "lord of flies", the Beelzebub of this game has a projectile attack named "Black Flies", while his "Langelaan Field" is a Genius Bonus reference to George Langelaan, the author of The Fly.
    • In the Weapon Glossary section, his default gauntlet is named "Bohemian Rhapsody". By itself, that's already an obvious Shout-Out to the song from Queen, but the reference goes on further if one remembers the song having the line "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me".
  • Djeeta's "Eternal Ascendancy" Skybound Art is partially based on the "Reginleiv: Zenith" Charge Attack that is performed with the special "Guider to the Eternal Edge" outfit for the Captain in the gacha game. Djeeta summons and uses the ten Revenant Weapons that represent the weapon types of Granblue, and if the full combo is executed properly, the weapons she uses are arranged in ascending order based on the Numerical Theme Naming of the Eternal they represent; spear, bow, axe, dagger, staff, gauntlet, sword, katana, harp, and gun. She also counts from one to ten with each weapon swap, making it more obvious.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Street Fighter fans, due to Granblue Versus being similar to that franchise's focus on "ground-based", or "footsies based" fighting. There's also a lot of fan nicknames for this game which are straight up taken or derived from Street Fighter, such as calling Gran a "Ryu" character, or the game itself an "Anime Street Fighter".
  • With SNK fans simply due to Anila's debut in Rising and Anila herself having references to Terry Bogard. While Anila has always been a Terry Bogard reference ever since her debut in the original Granblue gacha, more and more gamers in the Fighting Game Community are becoming aware of it because of Rising. This further spread more awareness on the Divine Generals of Granblue (which Anila is a part of) all having references to SNK games.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There were some interesting bugs discovered by the Closed Beta Test participants:
    • Charlotta getting stuck in mid-air after the round ended.
    • Being able to chain a parry into a Skybound Art while still leaving the opponent stuck in the parry animation. In the final build however, the first half was left intact as an additional mechanic of parrying - the ability to cancel into almost any attack.
  • A couple since the full game launched has had a few, even one that's game breaking, which will be patched eventually. Such as you or your partner character's sprite frozen in place in the RPG mode. One where you and your opponents attacks phase through your character with no hitboxes. And the one that is game breaking at the moment is proximity option selects. Though there might be more than just these examples.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Most fighting games with pre-fight interactions usually have one character insulting or provoking the other in order to justify the fight. Versus however comes from a gacha game that encourages teamwork; most of the cast comes from the same crew or are good friends, and it shows. Most fighters respect and praise their opponents with the exceptions of Belial, Beelzebub (who no one in-universe likes either way) and Lowain and his bros (and even then they tend to go along with their shenanigans... assuming the fight is actually happening). This is best seen with characters like Percival, Cagliostro and Metera who have all shown themselves to be difficult people to talk to, and yet they show no problems or reluctance interacting with their fellow crewmates and even praising their friends.
  • In the RPG Mode after Gran and company defeat Zeta and Vaseraga and restore them to their senses, Vaseraga is notably depresed because he fell for such a trick and turned his weapon on his comrades. While he tries to hide it, and tells Lyria and Vyrn that Gran will protect them better than he could, the two don't care about those kinds of things and tell the member of the Society that he is their friend, something that cheers him up quite a bit.
  • In Part 3 of the story introduced in Rising we have Gran and Djeeta meeting their mother in the form of Rein. Despite never really knowing each other before this point they are able to form familial love quickly, which just makes Rein's Heroic Sacrifice in the finale even more bittersweet. Yet despite this Gran and Djeeta promise that they will find a way to rescue their mom from Zero and be a family. This is punctuated by Rein's narration that in the whole skies Gran and Djeeta are her most loved.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Despite positive reception from both critics and major FGC figureheads, the game had the misfortune of launching mere weeks before the COVID-19 Pandemic effectively halted in-person competitive tournaments for over a year, more or less smothering any chance of it developing a hardcore following in the cradle. The fact it was one of the last major fighting games to utilise delay-based netcode pretty much shut down the chance of the playerbase transitioning to online tournaments on top of that.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Back when Es was introduced in BlazBlue, fans called her "Saber" because of visual similarities. Non-Granblue fans who watched the first trailer compared Charlotta to Es. Little did they know, Charlotta is actually a visual Expy or a very obvious reference to Saber, including her Charge Attack resembling Excalibur. This turns the comparison between Charlotta and Es into a complete circle since both are based from the same reference.
  • A Mirror Match is given a unique take as characters point out such a strange occurrence. If the fight is between two Grans, Vyrn will mock the other "Doppelgänger" Vyrn as a "lizard", which is ironic since the gacha game has a Running Gag where Vyrn hates being called a lizard.
  • A promotional crossover between BlazBlue and Arcana Heart involved the former's protagonist, Ragna, going on a date with the latter's protagonist, Heart, a massive Love Freak. Here, Ragna's Engish actor, Patrick Seitz, voices this game's resident Love Freak, Ladiva.
  • This is the third game where Arc System Works had an IP featuring the character archetype/trope combo of "rapier-wielder with ice powers". They had Mitsuro Kirijo from Persona 4: Arena, Weiss Schnee from BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and now Katalina Aryze from Granblue Versus.
  • 2B's appearance as a Guest Fighter here is made more hilarious considering one key person related to her previous major fighting game appearance, Soulcalibur VI; in April 2023, Motohiro Okubo - the former producer of the Soul series - became the CEO of Cygames' American branch. As such, it's become easy to point out that Okubo enacted some level of pull in terms of getting 2B in two separate fighting games made by entirely different companies. To a lesser extent, both rosters feature zweihander-wielding armored knights named Siegfried, with the Granblue Siegfried taking his fair share of inspiration from his Soulcalibur counterpart.
    • Also, jokes can now be made about a character from Nier appearing in the same roster as a character named Nier.
• I Knew It!:
  • Granblue fans have speculated a Fighting Game spin-off even before Granblue Fantasy Versus was announced at Cygames Fes 2018. The gacha game had several "hints" on catering towards the Fighting Game Community; from the Street Fighter crossover events, the The King of Fighters references in the Divine Generals' Charge Attacks, character skills (such as Zeta's and Vaseraga's) having heavy metal references like how Guilty Gear does, the "A Thousand Reasons" event being a melee-based Tournament Arc, to Cygames sponsoring EVO 2018.
  • Despite this game being advertised mostly in Japanese early on, many fans predicted that an English localization and dub would still be on the way. Cristina Vee (who voiced Granblue characters Ferry and Charlotta since the 2018 "Brigade of the Sky" crossover expansion of Shadowverse, and in the Granblue Fantasy anime itself) tweeted about her Granblue roles mere weeks after the first trailer of Versus, leading to speculations that she would be returning for an English dub here as well. Indeed, an English dub was confirmed on the February 1, 2020 trailer.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Just like the previous ArcSys games BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Dragon Ball Fighter Z, the existence of auto-combos is criticized. While GBVS still allows manual or "technical" inputs, auto-combos were already controversial in the past for simplifying the gameplay, limiting options, or giving a shallow feel even when played competitively.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:
  • It was unexpected that ArcSys created a fighting game spin-off for a mobile/gacha IP, but the hype of GBVS is blamed for why other gacha fandoms suddenly wanted to follow the trend and request their own fighting game soon as well, or why they are wishing that their gacha should've been the first to receive an ArcSys treatment before Granblue did.
  • GBVS sold well in terms of first week sales, but the Granblue IP being popular in Japan was seen as the biggest factor (along with the in-game rewards). The hardcore players of the FGC thought that this game's profitability is yet another sign that fighting game developers are appealing to more casual audiences at the expense of continuing to simplify gameplay mechanics.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: At launch, the main story in the RPG mode takes around 8-12 hours on average, or even shorter than that at 6 hours depending on how fast you read the dialogue or finish the fights. This is the reaction of those who specifically wanted to experience more of the main story however, since there are plenty of other stuff to unlock, or sidequest stories to finish after the main credits roll.
• It Was His Sled: The villain is named "Chaos Bringer" (especially in the early days of marketing), but to the fans of the original game, they already knew his real name is Beelzebub.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Granblue fans who aren't into fighting games may admit that they bought GBVS and its DLCs on the Playstation 4 simply because of the bonus in-game codes that can be redeemed for unique items and outfits in the gacha game. Belial is also expected to have boosted sales as well, given that the "Malevolent Alter Ego" skin was tied to his release, and you can see many players in Granblue Fantasy with the skin already.
  • There are also Granblue fans who only buy the game if their favorite characters arrive in the roster even if they end up as DLCs. This was a common reaction from fans of the breakout characters like Narmaya, Zooey and Belial.
• Les Yay: Djeeta certainly seems more interested in the female cast members. She calls Narmaya "dreamy", and is apparently trying to get Katalina to wear cat ears. She also interprets Metera's offer to go "hit on guys" as "go beat up random guys in the streets". Her interactions with Lyria are also much more intimate than Gran's, with the two of them hugging and holding hands.
• LGBT Fanbase: Much like its origin gacha game, Granblue Fantasy Versus has attracted vocal LGBTQ+ fans due to the inclusion of Cagliostro and Ladiva, two characters who are seen as representations or positive portrayals of Transgender people in fighting games. Cagliostro is a powerful alchemist who was born with a sickly male body, but preferred to transfer her soul into a cute female body, while Ladiva is an All-Loving Hero who's referred to with feminine pronouns despite having a muscular build of a male wrestler. Ladiva is much more praised by these fans because the other characters' interactions with her show respect to her gender of choice. There have been various videos and threads praising the characterizations behind these two (especially Ladiva), leading to these online users diving into the Granblue IP for the representation.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Lowain is almost universally reviled as being an annoyance at lower tiers of play. His normals are bad, his specials are medicore, and his damage output is on the low side. While he has great pressure setups and a good okizeme game, he lacks a number of crucial tools other characters have which makes most of his matchups go poorly for him. His SSA, Yggdrasil, is one of the most powerful scrub-killers in the game, since while her moves deal tons of damage and can even then deal serious chip damage, each and every one of them can be avoided if the opponent knows how, making it a waste to use at high levels of play. All of this culminates in a character that is a perfect scrub killer, but struggles to be anything beyond that.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "HER CROWN HAS A HURTBOX!?"^ExplanationVia Hitbox Dissonance, hitting Charlotta's tall crown damages her (hence it having a "hurtbox"). Weapon hurtboxes are common since the older fighting games, but the concept applying to a crown (a cosmetic item) was surprising. However, this was intended by the devs because Charlotta is a Harvin (a little person); if her hurtbox would be too short, she could end up as a Game-Breaker by forcing her opponents to rely on low attacks or crouch all the time.
  • "This game got fucked by Corona before it got fucked by Belial"^ExplanationGBVS had the unfortunate timing of being released close to the start of COVID-19 pandemic, and EVO 2020 (where it was supposed to be a major title in) was cancelled. Initially, these phrases were at the expense of the game, but some Granblue fans changed the F-word's context to include Belial because he says a lot of innuendos.
  • "I'm a Granblue fan, the only button I know how to press is F5"^ExplanationGranblue Fantasy is a browser-based gacha game, so it's possible to skip lengthy animations and queue skills faster than usual by refreshing the page (pressing F5). There have been memes depicting how this transitions to a fighting game, such as a video skipping the characters' Skybound Art animations, or screenshots of F5 keys either seeing heavy usage or being torn from the keyboard.
  • "Gacha Player Detected"^ExplanationVersus being a spin-off means that it may attract the franchise's main gacha game audience into trying out a fighting game. This phrase works in several ways; by FGC veterans pointing out that somebody online is still new to fighting games (and thus needs to improve), or Granblue veterans encouraging FGC players to at least try the gacha game (usually by giving pointers on the RPG Mode, which reuses many gameplay concepts from the original).
  • Gran Boot Fantasy Versus.^ExplanationGran has been making waves within the competitive scene because of his two most infamous moves; his crouching Light attack which is even on block and goes into many potential combos, and his Medium/Heavy Overdrive Surge skill which can be comboed into from basically anything. Both moves involve Gran sticking his boot out, so it became common to associate Gran with boots. Multiple◊ edits have since shown him kicking the opponent with Timbs.
    • Djeeta needed the ten Revenant Weapons.^ExplanationWhile a common interpretation is that Djeeta looks superior to Gran thanks to her Skybound Arts, many also interpret her needing all of the weapons' power just to keep up with the power of Gran's boots.
  • "Lowain Main Dance"^ExplanationThe round victory animation of the Lowain Bros is taken from his SR version's victory animation, which is a reference to EXILE's "Choo Choo Train" music video. Fans have either pointed out how funny his victory animation is, some even imitated the move in real-life.
  • "Motivated"^ExplanationVergil's memes from the Devil May Cry series were imported here due to fans associating Narmaya with him ever since her Versus reveal. This happened simply because both are Iaijutsu Practitioners, and Narmaya having a Palette Swap that resembles◊ Vergil's silver-and-blue color theme. Edits such as these examples◊ then popped online.
  • "Titbox"^ExplanationGBVS fans had a field day with this clip showing a particularly odd Hitbox Dissonance in one of Narmaya's attacks where her breasts have a hitbox. Cue jokes and a fanart about this. However, the original poster clarified that the clip is edited, just in case people end up believing it's in the game.
  • Sad M&M ^ExplanationA reaction image that became very popular when referring to the game, due to it not having rollback netcode for a long time unlike several other fighting games. It was used whenever a GBVS news doesn't involve the announcement of rollback netcode.
    • Happy M&M ^ExplanationWhen Rising was announced, that same image was photoshopped so that the frown is now a smile. Naturally, it was posted in droves in much the same way as its predecessor.
  • "Anila did nothing wrong." ^ExplanationDue to their similar sheep/ram Animal Motifs, brown horns, blonde hair and white clothes, Anila's reveal trailer has attracted a crossover of memes and jokes from the hololive fanbase of Watame Tsunomaki, most particularly the latter's "Watame did nothing wrong."/"Warukunai yo ne?" quote. Alongside these, Granblue fans also remind others that Anila actually came first (she debuted in the gacha game on 2015) than Watame (who debuted in hololive on 2019).
    • "Are you okay? Buster Wool!" ^ExplanationAnila's existing Terry Bogard references are also immediately noticed by the Fighting Game Community and the SNK fans ever since her reveal trailer for Rising. A flock of Terry Bogard-related memes, quotes, puns, and nicknames then appeared within Anila content. Post-release, there's even a clip of Anila wearing clothes like Terry's.
  • Where is Vane?!^ExplanationWith Siegfried's announcement as a playable character for Rising alongside Lancelot and Percival, many fans have demanded that Vane be added in as a playable character immediately to complete the Dragon Knights, by DLC if he has to. Sure enough, he was later announced as a DLC character to be released in mid-2023.
  • "Nier in Granblue. Also, Nier in Granblue." ^ExplanationRising brought a plethora of jokes that can be made about how 2B from NieR: Automata is sharing space in a roster with a Granblue character named Nier.
  • "I can fix her." ^ExplanationA common phrase used by fans who hope that their favorite Yandere or unstable fictional character can still be reformed. In the Granblue Fighting Game spin-offs, this is commonly used towards Vira and Nier.
    • "You can't fix her." ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}A meme response to the above which is carried over from the Granblue gacha's memes, mostly directed towards Granblue newcomers who discovered Nier through Rising. It's a reference to the gacha game's lore where her personality got worse in her 5★ uncap episodes, thus she can't be "fixed".
    • "She doesn't need fixing." ^ExplanationAt the launch of Rising, Nier is considered a High-Tier Scrappy due to the frequency of players using her to climb the online rankings. This is a response to the above, with a longer version joking that "Nier doesn't need fixing because she helps you climb to Master Rank".
• More Popular Spin Off: For the West only, as Granblue Fantasy itself is relatively unknown outside of its home country (Japan), and has a very niche appeal due to the source being a gacha game (despite having an English localization and being accessible through the browser). Granblue Fantasy Versus doesn't have this problem and has been met more warmly in the mainstream, especially by those who enjoy fighting games. It may have even attracted newfound attention to Granblue Fantasy itself.
• Older Than They Think:
  • For a while, there were Twitter users who claimed that GBVS "started" the trend of weapon hurtboxes (a Hitbox Dissonance which lets you damage your opponent by hitting their weapon). In fact, weapon hurtboxes already existed in older fighting games such as Street Fighter II ^note Vega's claw can be removed either via whiff punishing, or hitting him while he's blocking. Older Arc System Works franchises (such as BlazBlue and Guilty Gear) also commonly had weapon hurtboxes and disjointed hurtboxes (e.g. Amane Nishiki's ribbons).
  • Granblue newcomers who were introduced to the franchise through this game thought Charlotta's Noble Execution is a "newly-added move" for her that makes Versus rip off Saber's Excalibur from Fate/stay night. In fact, Charlotta has always been a Saber reference since the Granblue Fantasy gacha. Hilariously, this debate brought a group that mentions both Charlotta's Noble Execution and Saber's Excalibur are "anime ripoffs" of Squall's "Blasting Zone" from Final Fantasy VIII, which predates both the Fate Series and Granblue.
  • The RPG Mode of GBVS can be described as a side-scrolling brawler game. However, this is not Arc System Works' first attempt in such a gameplay loop; a similar idea was used in the 2000's with Guilty Gear Judgment, but that was simplistic in comparison to this game's focus on RPG Elements.
  • As soon as Anila's trailer for Rising was unveiled, many series newcomers assumed her appearance was based on Watame Tsunomaki of hololive due to their general resemblance, but Granblue veterans quickly reminded that Anila actually came first (she debuted in the gacha game on 2015) than Watame (who debuted in hololive on 2019). It's also been assumed that Anila was made into a Terry Bogard reference on 2023 for the sake of her debut as a Fighting Game character in Rising, when in fact, she and her fellow Divine Generals always had SNK references all the way back their debut in the Granblue gacha game; Anila has always been a Terry Bogard reference, and her "Buster Wolf" pose, for example, was even the focus of her 5★ uncap artwork.
  • Some characters like Yuel and Grimnir didn't originate from Granblue Fantasy per se, even though their inclusion in these fighting game spin-offs makes it seem like they're Granblue-exclusive. They previously had iterations in an older Cygames IP, Rage of Bahamut, but it's not much of a well-known thing in the West because the English version of RoB got shut down long before the Granblue franchise received an influx of newcomers thanks to Versus and Rising.
• Pandering to the Base: Some of the most popular, fan-favorite breakout characters or villains were eventually added as post-launch DLC. However, Granblue fans have already expected Cygames doing this to boost sales. Cygames would then periodically conduct surveys to determine which characters would fans like to see next in future content.
• Refuge in Audacity: Some of Belial's dialogue in his intro and match victory animations is rather disturbing, explicit, or both and often implies an extremely grim fate for his victims if he's allowed to have his way with them. And then there are the lyrics of his theme, "Parade's Lust", which somehow made it into the game completely uncensored despite featuring at least one line that is completely explicit, regardless of how goofy it may sound: Ahahaaaaa ... Call me anal-retentive!
• Special Effect Failure: During pre- and post-match cutscenes, players can get a good look at some low-quality textures, such as the (barely animated) 2D crowd in Albion Colosseum. Also, the way some weapons (such as Percival's sword) bend during attack animations can look rather silly.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The side-scroller-like, 2D RPG action style of the game's RPG Mode is the closest thing to what we could get if Arc System Works had an Odin Sphere-inspired game. Naturally, fans of the Vanillaware games were quick to point this out the moment the RPG Mode's trailer was released.
  • GBVS is also seen as ArcSys's version of Rising Thunder because of the similar "special abilities with cooldowns" gameplay mechanic in a fighting game.
• Tainted by the Preview: There were several pre-release concerns that caused some gamers to hold off playing or buying Granblue Fantasy Versus, and hoped that such concerns would be fixed first.
  • The closed beta generally had positive feedback, but people were quick to point out its flaws like the slow-pace walking speed and the inclusion of a dedicated block button. The first issue was eventually resolved when the game launched.
  • The pricing decisons were criticized due to several reasons:
    • The game having a $60 base price despite featuring only up to 12 characters (including the unlockable Beelzebub on post-launch) as its base roster. For a Fighting Game released in the 2020s, many expected there to be more to justify its price. Granblue fans are also unsatisfied because the origin gacha game had a lot (i.e. more than a hundred) of characters to choose from.
    • The bonus codes that could be redeemed for in-game items in the original gacha game are exclusive to the PS4 version, and aren't available in the Steam version. However, both versions still had a $60 base price despite the latter lacking such codes. Naturally, the PC-only Granblue fans are disappointed and say that the PC version isn't worth its full price by comparison. Following this concern, you either have fans waiting for a price drop and Steam Sales at best, or no longer buying the game on PC as the worse case scenario.
    • The two seasons of character passes were also similarly lambasted for being so expensive ($30 for the first season and $35 for the second) particularly because while it ultimately doubles the rosters, it was perceived that it still didn't provide the same value as many of its contemporaries that either added more characters or additional features for a cheaper cost. Much like the base game, it was accused that the inflated price was due to the new DLC-exclusive bonus codes/items for the gacha game.
    • Come Rising, discussions and complaints about the price of the full game would once again abound. The game lacks regional pricing, which means the game and its DLCs have absurd prices in countries with worse currencies that are blatantly unaffordable by the average person. The first season pass also costs $50, the price of the game itself, with the only justification being that it is a "deluxe pass" that it has skins for Gran and Djeeta and a lobby avatar of Vikala along with 6 DLC characters and extra colors. It's especially baffling when the game's deluxe version, which has both the base game and this season pass, costs a whole $25 less than what you'd have to pay if you bought the game and the pass seperately.
  • The lack of Rollback netcode which is proven in many fighting games as an improvement over the Delay-based netcode GBVS is still using has turned away a lot of potential players outside of Japan, especially when the COVID-19 Pandemic forced offline events worldwide to be suspended. Many bemoan the game's wasted potential, blaming Arc System Works and Cygames for not implementing something that should've already been an industrial standard by then. This was finally addressed with the release of Rising supporting rollback and crossplay functionality.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!
  • With the balance update in September 2020 that also introduced Belial as a playable character, the development team made sweeping balance changes to many characters, some of which were widely considered perfectly fine or only in need of minor tweaks before the patch. This led to some people proclaiming the death of the game, yet many professional players were quick to adapt to these changes, most of which were simply aimed at reducing the range at which some of the most damaging combos could be started. Many characters that were widely agreed on to have been top-tier before the patch (usually Gran, Percival and Ferry, often also Katalina and Djeeta) were suddenly considered mid-tier, though it took 2 weeks at best for people to realize that these characters were still legitimately strong and very viable for the most part.
  • Hype leading up to the Rising beta test was going fairly decently... until the developers revealed that they made a major update to the system mechanics, specifcally regarding the "simple" controls. In Rising, while it is currently unknown if using simple versions of moves will retain their cooldown periods, their damage output is no longer less than using the normal, technical input versions of the same moves, and is now equalized across the board. This has caused major friction among the playerbase, especially considering that the ability to perform immediate special moves AND Skybound Arts on reaction with no real drawbacks is an incredibly powerful option to have, to the point where it could potentially invalidate the use of traditional motion inputs.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Pre-release, the game's official title art hinted on the initial playable roster since it contains the weapons that unlock some Granblue characters from the gacha. Aside from Gran, the logo hinted that Ferry, Charlotta, Lancelot, Katalina, Lowain, Percival, Metera, Zeta and Vaseraga would be in Versus. This caused some fans to expect the base roster consisting of only 10 characters. Ladiva is later announced, which was surprising to some because her unlocking weapon wasn't in the logo.
  • Beelzebub, a.k.a. "Chaos Bringer", appears as a DLC season 1 pass fighter in the Villains series, which came as a surprise to many Granblue Fantasy players due to him being announced before far more requested Ensemble Dark Horse characters from the "What Makes The Sky Blue" trilogy such as Sandalphon, fellow villain Lucilius and even Lucifer himself. According to Word of God, his DLC story will touch on his mysterious identity that has yet to be explored in the main game.
  • While it was expected that an Eternal would make their way into the game eventually, most fans expected either Seofon (as the leader and face of the group) or Seox (being very popular and the star of the sixth anniversary event though he eventually joins later on). Absolutely nobody, then, could have expected Anre, a generally unpopular and underutilized member of the group. While most fans have justified his inclusion as being for male Harvin representation, there was a lot of initial head-scratching wondering why he was chosen over any other Eternal or any other male Harvin such as Sevilbarra.
  • While Granblue is no stranger to crossovers, a fighting game with a relatively condensed roster is a way different story from a 700+ gacha roster, with most assuming they'd stick to only characters from the series' setting. Then lo and behold one of the first DLC fighters of Rising: 2B from NieR: Automata!
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Par for the course for Arc System Works's modern fighters, the game uses 3D graphics, but is animated in such a way that it resembles a 2D anime and a sprite-based fighter. Not only that, but the lighting and the particle effects from many special attacks, even if it's just a regular "fireball"-style range attack, are really impressive to look at.
• Woolseyism: The Spanish translation follows the same pattern as other translations from other Arc System Works games, which use the European dialect, specifically the archaic variation. However, in this case, the use of the archaic dialect is justified because the game is set in a medieval fantasy world and was translated from the original Japanese version rather than the English version from proxy. As a result, some characters are referred to with the archaic English honorific "Ser" instead of "Sir," possibly due to the influence from Game of Thrones in the translation. This gives the translation an old-fashioned feel that fits well with the game's setting.

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