This review contains spoilers
Continuing on my binge of AA JRPGs, Blue Reflection is a game surprisingly similar to Persona in its setting, themes, and gameplay. You play as one Hinako Shirai, a former ballerina whose career is cut short due to injury. Through a twist of fate, Hinako becomes a Reflector, something described even in-universe as a magical girl a la Sailor Moon. Your task is to enter the Metaverse Common and steal hearts stabilize rampant Fragments to protect the world from Yaldabaoth Sephira. Combat uses a turn-based system actually very similar to Atelier Ryza, in which there is an action timeline which pauses whenever someone reaches the center and then performs an action. I like this combat better than Ryza’s, however, because it does exactly what I suggested it should do and pause the game for everyone’s turns.
Combat is SMT-styled with characters using skills with unique affinities to hit enemy weak points for big damage. A second resource, Ether, allows for the use of All Out Attacks Overdrives and is accumulated by special attacks or guarding. It’s enjoyable and fairly simple. It is, however, laughably easy and terribly repetitive.
Why is this the case? Because of the structure of the rest of the game. Each chapter until about 3/4ths the way through the game, a new girl is introduced, you do some mandatory sidequests, and then you confront the main girl’s problems by stealing her heart and stabilizing her emotions. Wash, rinse, and repeat 12 times. This loop is fine- it works well for persona 5- but the pacing required is awful. See, in persona, time is a limited resource, and so managing time becomes an important skill. In Blue Reflection, time essentially pauses whenever you’re on a free day, so you can grind out the friendship levels of any/all of the girls. This system is optional anyways, so that sounds fine- until you realize that grinding friendship ranks gives you combat levels. This is in fact the best and only way to grind for combat levels. Me, being interested in this game for the characters and story, grinded through every single girl’s content as fast as possible. As such, I trivialized the combat during story sections but was still required to finish the mandatory sidequests the game put in place to prevent players from being underleveled. These mandatory sidequests require you to have a certain combat level and a certain number of sidequest points. I was quickly 10+ over the level required for these progression checks but was barely slinking by on sidequests points, because they were incredible wastes of time. No voiced dialogue, no interesting changes to the core gameplay loop, and no reward for doing them besides being able to progress the main story.
So, around the time i had to needlessly grind for the 8th time, I dropped the game and watched a no-commentary playthrough of the game on YouTube to finish the story. So, how was the story?
It was good. Nothing special, though. I was hoping that there would be proper yuri romance in this game considering how obviously influenced by the yuri genre it is, and there wasn’t. Fine, but disappointing. The mysterious nature of the sisters was well-developed, but I dislike the Sixth Sense plot twist and would have preferred that the sisters were the true villains if only because it would have been more interesting both on a narrative and gameplay level (especially because my Hinako was solo carrying every fight anyways).
Mao as a villain had a surprising amount of potential, but she felt like she should have been the first villain and then the rest would have become more threatening from there. The Sephira are incredibly flat as villains and are basically non-factors to the story except to move things along.
I’m excited for the sequel and I’ve heard there’s an anime. Here’s what I wish BR1 would have done differently and what I hope the sequel does:
- More enemy variety
- Access to the full suite of combat controls earlier
- More playable characters/Supporters in every battle
- No mandatory sidequests
- Improved level design for the Common
- Yuri Romance (this one’s a stretch, ik)
- Scrap the crafting system and have fragment progression dependent on friendship level
- Time management
Music do be banging tho. My man’s hitting the sickest Amen Break of his life in the boss track. The voice acting is neat and the graphics are serviceable.
Yuri best girl. Tennis-chan worst girl. Most girls fairly mid.
Combat is SMT-styled with characters using skills with unique affinities to hit enemy weak points for big damage. A second resource, Ether, allows for the use of All Out Attacks Overdrives and is accumulated by special attacks or guarding. It’s enjoyable and fairly simple. It is, however, laughably easy and terribly repetitive.
Why is this the case? Because of the structure of the rest of the game. Each chapter until about 3/4ths the way through the game, a new girl is introduced, you do some mandatory sidequests, and then you confront the main girl’s problems by stealing her heart and stabilizing her emotions. Wash, rinse, and repeat 12 times. This loop is fine- it works well for persona 5- but the pacing required is awful. See, in persona, time is a limited resource, and so managing time becomes an important skill. In Blue Reflection, time essentially pauses whenever you’re on a free day, so you can grind out the friendship levels of any/all of the girls. This system is optional anyways, so that sounds fine- until you realize that grinding friendship ranks gives you combat levels. This is in fact the best and only way to grind for combat levels. Me, being interested in this game for the characters and story, grinded through every single girl’s content as fast as possible. As such, I trivialized the combat during story sections but was still required to finish the mandatory sidequests the game put in place to prevent players from being underleveled. These mandatory sidequests require you to have a certain combat level and a certain number of sidequest points. I was quickly 10+ over the level required for these progression checks but was barely slinking by on sidequests points, because they were incredible wastes of time. No voiced dialogue, no interesting changes to the core gameplay loop, and no reward for doing them besides being able to progress the main story.
So, around the time i had to needlessly grind for the 8th time, I dropped the game and watched a no-commentary playthrough of the game on YouTube to finish the story. So, how was the story?
It was good. Nothing special, though. I was hoping that there would be proper yuri romance in this game considering how obviously influenced by the yuri genre it is, and there wasn’t. Fine, but disappointing. The mysterious nature of the sisters was well-developed, but I dislike the Sixth Sense plot twist and would have preferred that the sisters were the true villains if only because it would have been more interesting both on a narrative and gameplay level (especially because my Hinako was solo carrying every fight anyways).
Mao as a villain had a surprising amount of potential, but she felt like she should have been the first villain and then the rest would have become more threatening from there. The Sephira are incredibly flat as villains and are basically non-factors to the story except to move things along.
I’m excited for the sequel and I’ve heard there’s an anime. Here’s what I wish BR1 would have done differently and what I hope the sequel does:
- More enemy variety
- Access to the full suite of combat controls earlier
- More playable characters/Supporters in every battle
- No mandatory sidequests
- Improved level design for the Common
- Yuri Romance (this one’s a stretch, ik)
- Scrap the crafting system and have fragment progression dependent on friendship level
- Time management
Music do be banging tho. My man’s hitting the sickest Amen Break of his life in the boss track. The voice acting is neat and the graphics are serviceable.
Yuri best girl. Tennis-chan worst girl. Most girls fairly mid.