Ignore my playtime; I've played this game since 3rd anniversary on the browser version. I can confidently say that I only recommend this game to one of 2 kinds of people:
1. You are PURELY a story/character collection player. You don't have an inkling of interest in the turn-based combat or theorycrafting teams or the feeling of progression. If this is you, you can enjoy the story with minimal grinding
2. You are looking for a game to play as a full-time job. You are happy to play "stare at black screen" simulator for hours every day.
If you do not fall into these two categories, I cannot recommend this game. Everyone else has covered the sheer amount of grind required, the inability to transfer existing accounts, and the fact that they removed previous collab events from this release, so I want to cover my experience from a long-term veteran.
Back when I first started the game, the gacha scene was still new, niche, and rough around the edges. Personally, Granblue was, by far, THE best gacha game at the time. It felt like every year, I'd say "there's no way they can top last year in terms of how generous they were," and each year I'd be proven wrong. They'd always find a way to keep giving you free stuff. Of course, the game was still grindy, but the freebies would help you cover some of the resources required for it and help you build endgame teams. In addition, endgame could be easily reached by f2p players because all the weapons you could want were from grinding. Sometimes, a p2w whale grid was WORSE than the f2p alternative. Collab events were a treat because ALL collab characters, summons, and skins were free. You could actually be endgame in every single element as an f2p player because the only thing stopping you was the grind. I genuinely considered Cygames to be one of the best, if not THE best gacha game company because of this and Shadowverse 1.
At some point, this stopped. The freebies stagnated, if not gotten outright worse (e.g., removal of end-of-summer legfest, which was THE best banner to pull on for ANY player). The powercreep was off the charts (though admittedly, they seemed to have dialed this one down the past couple of years, though it does still exist). Suddenly, weapons from the gacha became so disgustingly good that even f2p players were recommended to pull multiple copies of them. Collab events now have limited-time gacha units, which they initially introduced as "testing the waters" and "we won't release characters that are too good here", but not only has it stuck around, the Evangelion collab featured a gacha unit whose performance was on par with another top tier unit. They constantly release new stuff to grind, but barely make the low level grind easier, so new players will take eons of consistent grinding to catch up. They released weapons you can only get by trading 150 gold moons (which you get from SSR character dupes) saying they'd just be niche, just for some of them to be so powerful that they were considered must-haves if you planned to main their respective element. Endgame raids have begun to progressively feel like roster checks, often consisting of units that required several hundred hours of grinding or limited-time gacha units. All of this, when they haven't improved the gacha at all. Spark is still at 300, roulette still gives a similar amount of pulls, limited units still come out at the same pace if not more, we get powerful unsparkable summons every year (i.e., you have to get lucky or save 150 gold moons to buy them), rate-up is still garbage (0.3% chance for a rate-up), etc.
And if you think it's fine because it's a PvE game, this game is not a true PvE experience. Raids are just people trying to burst as fast as possible because your rewards are dependent on how much you contributed to the raid, which often means the raid will die insanely fast so you're forced to burst as well, making it die even faster. And because you're reliant on ping to get your skills off as fast as possible, and the servers are located in Japan, you're immediately disadvantaged compared to JP players. Yes, you can still get MVP, but assuming all things are equal, they'll have an edge over you. Yes, you can use a VPN to make it faster, but I shouldn't have to pay a VPN subscription for this. And of course, Unite and Fight is infamous for being insanely grindy because you're trying to out-grind other GBF players.
And all of this in 2026, when a lot more gacha games have become mainstream with bigger production value? It's a shame because the art, core gameplay, and music were all great. It's just all buried by an unreasonable amount of grinding and greed. If you want to enjoy the GBF universe, Versus and Relink are better options. I don't think this game will die anytime soon, but they've had so many years to fix the issues with this game, and instead they've only made it worse.

10/10 time waster. A monolith of the gacha game genre, and you can feel the age. Play with the understanding that the ROI is horrendous even by gacha standards. I'm here because I like the character designs.

Just started playing midway through the anniversary, and im kinda upset i didn't play this game sooner. Very generous getting new players on their feet and with pulls. If you're gonna start playing this game, i RECOMMEND HEAVILY you watch dy_dk on yt, his step by step guide for newbie players is top tier and easy to understand. As you can see by my time played so far on steam release, im hooked