Blue Reflection is a JRPG developed by the same developer behind the Atelier series. It was released for the PS4, Vita and PC but only the PS4 and PC were released in English. This is actually a good thing given that the Vita version suffered badly from performance issues. That said, there are still random slowdowns during cutscenes in the PS4 version for whatever reason.
The first thing that strikes you when playing the game is how the character models look great. The design is focused on making the strictly female cast cute and beautiful, which the cel-shaded style works perfectly. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for everything else. Objects in the game lacks complex textures so they look very smooth and blocky as if something is off. The game tries to hide this behind the art style but the sparse details in certain areas is noticeable. At least the menus look good? Although there is a slight wait due to the animations every time you open it up and go through the submenus.
The story follows Hinako Shirai, who was a talented ballet dancer forced to stop due to a knee injury. She is still bitter and frustrated about it but there is nothing she can do since it is a permanent injury. She attends Hoshinomiya Girls High School and there, she meets the sisters Yuzuki and Lime. They reveal that she has the potential to become a Reflector. A Reflector is something who can enter The Common, a type of area created by the joint sub-consciousness of the masses.
The role of a Reflector is to help others who are currently having emotional or mental issues, known as going rampant. This is symbolized by the environments being roamed by enemies that the trio has to defeat. There is also the ever looming threat of the Sephirot appearing in the real world, which are giant enemies that serve as the bosses of the game. Hinako was told that if she manages to protect the world and defeat the Sephirot, she will be granted one wish, which naturally means she’ll be able to perform ballet again, given that was her whole life. As a Reflector, they have the ability to transform and use magic (i.e. a magical girl).
What it effectively means is that the story ends up revolving around Hinako helping out all the other female students who have issues. Hinako, Yuzuki and Lime will jump into The Common, then find and purifying the girl’s fragment. Then the girl will join the team as a supporter and the cycle repeats multiple times. The game uses a turn based battle system, and it’s a simple one at that. Items cannot be used in battle, rather they are only used outside of battle to give you buffs before you enter one. Your party will only ever consist of the three main characters that can attack or use special moves that consume MP. The turn order is based on your character’s speed and there is a bar at the top of the screen to show how soon a character’s turn is coming up. The game is very easy in that you enter every battle with HP and MP restored to full, so there’s no need to ever be conservative with your special skills during normal battles.
Spicing things up is the ability to pair special abilities to your moves. This means that every time you use that particular move, you can tack on things like buffing, or restoring HP, or status effects. Defeating enemies will only give you items for crafting as there are no experience points in the game. Boss battles will also allow your supporters to tag along, providing additional firepower. Unfortunately, once you figure out the most useful attacks (i.e. the area-of-effect ones), each battle becomes the same, including the boss battles.
The combat is only around half the game, with the other half revolving around affections. Hinako can become friends with a lot of characters. In between attending classes will be free time where she can hang out with them. This is less exciting than it sounds since it’s a very shallow system with no stakes. Every time you hang out with someone, it is guaranteed their affections will go up, and there’s a short scene divulging a little bit more about them. Given that there are so many characters, it soon loses its charms.
The affection system also ties into the leveling system. The characters only gain levels by increasing affection levels with others, progressing through the story, and completing certain sidequests. You can however, choose to spend those levels to improve certain stats. For example, if you want to make up for a character’s innate low attack stat, you can spend those levels to focus on that stat to lower the difference compared to other characters. You can only focus to a certain degree though since the extra gain isn’t that pronounced.
The bulk of the game comes from the sidequests. These are simple missions that mainly involve speaking to a character to increase their affection levels or fight enemies in a dungeon. If you do all the sidequests as they come along, then you will become overlevelled very soon, making even hard difficulty a cakewalk. Given that every single sidequest has the same structure, it can become dull very quickly.
It’s really weird with this game in that it had a lot of good ideas but the way it executes a lot of them leaves a lot to be desired. Dungeons are poorly designed and repetitive. Enemy designs are reused from the third dungeon or so. Combat animations cannot be skipped and you are expected to do a lot of combat, so be prepared to become very familiar with those animations. There are a lot of typos, and even a case where one of the main character’s name was left as the Romanization of their Japanese name.
The game is very slow paced, with both the story and gameplay soon getting repetitive. The overall cuteness can only go so far to keep your attention. Although the game presents a lot of fan service, it practically shoves it down your throat every single second. There are constant bathing, showering, changing and swimming scenes. There are a lot of excuses for Hinako to stretch, and for every single one of these scenes, the camera angle will be there to take advantage of it.
Despite an overall bland story, the ending has a decent payoff, for the sole reason that you end up bonding with several of the characters. Even though the bond events varied in quality, there’s no doubt that you will become familiar with everyone. The ending then builds upon these themes so that it resonates with you and gives meaning to what you have been doing. It actually poses an interesting scenario. The ending elevates the game and makes it worth playing through the earlier slower bits. Plus, the game had some pretty cool boss designs, especially the final boss.
Overall, Blue Reflection had a good concept but is a bit rough around the edges, including a sloppy localization effort at times. It takes 20 to 30 hours to complete, depending on how much time you spend on the sidequests. The game has beautiful character designs and artstyle, but hindered by bland environments, a flat story and an average gameplay loop. You can see the potential and it is still worth playing if you are into these types of games, since it is rare to have a decent magical girls game. It’s more for the fact that they have a good core idea, and that hopefully there will be a sequel to build up and polish the game to become a good one.
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