BLUE REFLECTION

On the surface, Blue Reflection is one of the most "okay" Games ever made. It's hard to come out of this game super positive on it. There are some interesting ideas going on here for sure, there's a lot of promise, but it never really comes together. The gameplay is unbelievably repetitive. Progressing the story requires doing a bunch of copy and paste sidequests, usually either picking up items or fighting a specific enemy type. While fighting those enemies you get to engage with the battle system, which is actually really good! In very specific instances. It takes way too long to unlock all the mechanics. You will have played half the game before unlocking the full range of the battle system. And unfortunately, most fights don't utilize at all it! By hour 1, I had already figured out how to beat every enemy encounter before they moved. The strategy would evolve a little over the course of the game, but the idea stayed the same. This means that EVERY SINGLE NORMAL BATTLE will be exactly the same. It's boring. However, this brings us to one of Blue Reflections positives. There are positives. In fact, there's three extremely big ones. Good enough that I would recommend this otherwise mediocre game to just about anyone. That first positive is the boss fights. The boss fights are the only time you get to actually use the core mechanic of the game, the ether gauge. Blue Reflection operates on an ATB like system. ATB wait to be more specific. While waiting for turns you can do passive effects that consume the ether gauge, something that is fairly committal to generate. This includes healing, blocking attacks, speeding up assist cooldowns, or even using multiple attacks in a single turn. It’s not groundbreaking by any means, but it is interesting. Having a resource that the party shares is usually a surefire way to create interesting decision making, and Blue Reflection succeeds at this, even if it’s only for a few fights. That however is not why the boss fights are good. Well, it helps, but that’s not the real reason people remember them. People remember the boss fights because of the spectacle. Every boss in Blue Reflection is treated as if it were the final boss of your typical modern jrpg. They all have insanely cool designs, demons that tower over the city. Each fight has multiple phases, with unique battle themes that progress with the fight. It’s actually unbelievably cool. No other jrpg has done boss fights this good. Genuinely, they’re easily the thing you look forward to the most while playing and help make the slog that is the progression system feel worth it. But a huge part of that is our second positive. There is no hyperbole in this statement. I mean this sincerely. Blue Reflection has the single greatest soundtrack of all time. For any video game for sure. Maybe for anything ever. The game DOES NOT deserve it, but it has it. Hayato Asano is an absolute legend. His songs are always the most standout tracks on any soundtrack he’s ever worked on. Blue Reflection however, is a complete solo work by him. And it’s a masterpiece.The quiet melancholy of the school, the emotions conveyed by every area’s emotional theme, and the battle themes. THE BATTLE THEMES. The thing that convinced me to pick up this game in the first place was hearing a single song from it. That was it. It was genuinely so good that it made me buy the game. And the craziest thing is I know two other people in real life who did the same, for completely different songs! At the very least, you owe it to yourself to listen to this soundtrack. And that brings us to our third positive. The writing! Kind of. The truth is, the writing in this title is not very good. It might even be bad. I think the best way to describe what this game's story feels like is “Persona 5 if every arc was 10 minutes instead of 10 hours.” That is what playing this game feels like. There’s almost nothing to hook onto here, most of the extended cast barely exists and the side content with them is crazy boring. That being said, the game does kind of start to build up something engaging, enough to keep me interested. Unfortunately, the ending is REALLY bad and kinda pulls all the wind out of the game’s sails. To word it in a way that avoids spoilers, Blue Reflection takes way too long to actually get you interested, and when it finally hooks you in, it kinda just gives up. There’s no weight here. So here’s the thing. The writing in Blue Reflection is not very good. HOWEVER, there is one big important elephant in the room. Blue Reflection has a sequel. And IT is unbelievably good. It is basically the exact opposite of what this game is. The spectacle of the boss fights is gone, and while the soundtrack is still very good, Asano pushes for more gorgeous environmental tracks instead of all out bangers. It trades those two things in favor of actually being good. The battle system is completely revamped into the most interesting implementation of ATB I’ve ever played, the entire cast is amazing and super well developed, the protagonist has actual personality. Is it worth playing Blue Reflection to play Second Light? Yeah. Is it worth also watching Blue Reflection Ray, the anime that takes place in between both games, just to have a better experience with Second Light? Absolutely. The game is that good. Genuinely. So pick this one up on sale for like $10-$15, enjoy the boss fights, enjoy the soundtrack, enjoy the vibes for about 15 hours. It’ll be worth it.

🎮 Blue Reflection I played this for about 1.2 hours, and that was enough to see the core problems. --- 🎯 Gameplay & Feel The game feels stiff and unresponsive from the start. - noticeable delay in actions like jumping and attacking - overall clunky movement and combat feel It just doesn’t feel smooth to play. --- 🧭 Exploration Exploration is poorly handled. The game often forces you into cutscenes and battles without warning, sometimes ending chapters before you’ve had time to properly explore. This makes it easy to miss items with no way to go back. --- ⚔️ Combat Combat has some interesting ideas, but it’s held back by repetition. You are forced to watch the same animations over and over, with no proper way to skip or speed them up, which quickly becomes tiring. --- 🎨 Visuals The game feels unfinished in places. - lighting feels off - animations are stiff - noticeable graphical issues that break immersion --- 💬 Dialogue There is a lot of dialogue, but much of it drags on without adding much value. --- 🟢 Positives + battle system has some interesting ideas + music is genuinely catchy, especially the battle theme 🎧 --- ❌ Final Verdict A game with a good concept, but poor execution. Even early on, the technical issues and pacing problems are very noticeable. Not worth full price.

When it comes to Blue Reflection, I had higher hopes, because the concept is solid. RPG where you play as a magical girl, make friends, save the world, etc. This formula is one that lends itself well to emotional high points and strong, character based storytelling. Don't be deceived by my playtime, I actually had to start over because my old computer died and I didn't have a cloud save. Blue Reflection follows the story of a girl who has lost the ability to dance. She attends a school that segregates each of its grades into a special class for gifted students (such as ones who are amazing at ballet) and a regular class (for non-gifted students). Due to this traumatic injury, our heroine is relegated to the regular class. It is in this class that she meets Yuzu and Lime, who the game expects you to believe are her closest friends. The only problem with this is the game does not really do a good job of building their relationship in any meaningful way. Yuzu and Lime essentially give our heroine her magical girl super powers, and that is the extent of their connection until basically the end of the game. In between, Hina makes (almost entirely optional) connections with her classmates. These classmates all fill very generic stereotypes (the athletic one, the rival, the weirdo who is in love with her, a high functioning idiot savant, and a tsundere actress) and only the first half of their relationship is ever insisted upon by the game. I went through all the story beats, so you do not have to. They are largely wastes of time, surface level style friendships, that follow predictable tropey behavior. You are best served mashing through the dialogue, and getting your friendship points for your level ups. I will grant Blue Reflection one bit of praise, their way of leveling you up is relatively unique. While most games are content to let you grind monsters for EXP, and leveling you up through this system, Blue Reflection locks their level progression behind making friends and completing side quests, which fits in perfectly with the theme the game tries (and fails) to nail. I think where a lot of my apathy for this game comes from is that a core mechanic of the game is the beliveability of the relationship between Yuzu, Lime, and Hina... but again, this is largely absent until the end of the game. You report your magical girl progress to them, and have a couple lines of dialogue each chapter related to the mission you previously cleared, but largely, your relationship with them is very distant, as they are the only unique NPCs in the game you can't even hang out with, or have bonding events with. It leads to the climax -which is supposed to be very emotional- falling incredibly flat. It's disheartening to say, because again, this is a game that had a lot of potential to be truly interesting and hit on a lot of emotional story beats. The game can be completed in about 12 hours by an experienced RPG gamer once they get a hang of the broken battle system (by mid-game you should basically be doing the same thing in every single fight, and the boss battles are laughably easy, I never "died" once, even though there are no true game overs anyway), with 100% completion being possible in 20-25 hours depending on how long it takes you to understand things. If I were to slap a monetary value on this game, it would be no higher than 20 dollars. Any further is a complete waste of your money, and even at 20 dollars, I think you can find significantly better games that fit anything you may be hoping for out of this game.

突然想起来了忘记赏你个傻逼差评了，四合一合集还是不忘初心，要整你那个男人是吧， 岸田梅尔你确实户口本只有一页了，祝你新作销量暴死

do not pick up this game if you do not want to spend time reading about high school girls and their side gig as magical girls to save the world. if you do, this is a pretty swell time and will be up your alley, especially if you aren't looking for a very challenging rpg. as an aside, not a great pc port - setting options are vastly lacking, in typical koei tecmo fashion.

When it was released 8 years ago I was a Blue Reflection fan, since the music and "slice of life" - "school drama" genre really vibed with me. Plus you have very cute girls and a very nice but also sad story. It had a very beautiful design, the lighting style was pretty "new" these days and somehow playing as a magical ballerina with a sword was pretty refreshing for me back than. So yes, I loved it. I played it some months ago, since I compared Blue Reflection 2 always with the seemingless "better" prequel and at first, I enjoyed it. But than, slowly, I realized some very big flaws. The music is awesome. Really, I really love the OST of Blue Reflection. This is the biggest selling point for me and I am still listening to the OST regularly. But the OST in Blue Reflection 2 is far better. It has simply more variety. The gameplay, the mapdesign and the monster design is veeeeery repetetive. Damn, I even was slightly... bored at some point. Showing the girls while they're showering, bathing or changing several times... yeah, even for me it just crossed a line at some point. Blue Reflection 2 has fan service as well, but most of the girls there are more mature and they aren't shown as naked as in the first game. What is still good though, is the story and the mental struggles of the characters. Blue Reflection showed a big variety of hardships which a teenager can have and almost all of them very pretty relatable. You want become better at anything but slowly have to realize that you are just not good enough? You want to be just friends with someone but because your class mates are disapproving this relationship, you start to avoid this friend? Or you are friends with someone who is a star, but because you have self esteem issues you are hurting her but actually you didn't mean it? Or you have a crush on someone, get friends with this person and overstepped a line when you were alone? Hinako Shirai, the protagonist, is the most tragic person here. She just loses her whole dream, but help others to achieve their dreams and at the end she [spoiler]loses her two best friends[/spoiler]. I think, these stories were the reason, why I loved this game back than. And even today I really liked the writing. And the OST of course. But yeah, boring gameplay loop, map and enemy design and to much voyeurism are very big issues in this game and with that, I have to say: If you want give Blue Reflection a try because you want to play as a magical girl, than just play Blue Reflection 2. It isn't "very good" as well, but definitely better than the prequel.

potential yay, execution nay! but I love my sloppy goopy jrpg grind for when the brain is tired 😊 also at this point I gotta make a list of jrpgs with random german words thrown in cause I keep getting JUMPSCARED

Very bland JPRG and could not capture my attention nor make me want to know what is in store for the characters.

出新作了，还在惦记那个男角色，看样子是完全不知道手游为什么死的。背刺百合，还指望我们掏钱吗？

Bueno que decir, es complicado recomendar este juego si es tu primera aventura JRPG y estilo anime, no tiene nada que sea raro especialmente fuera de que te incomode las escenas en el baño (no se ve nada tampoco es nada escandaloso) pero lo que es el juego en si, la historia me ENCANTO. Es una historia que sabe lo que es, simple, sobre problemas pequeños y conflictos personales de cada personaje con un final muy bonito y a su vez trágico en cierto sentido, la palabra más correcta para definirlo es agridulce, pero no te deja insatisfecho. Ese es como un resumen sin entrar a profundidad ahora bien voy a comentar más del juego. APARTADO ARTISTICO 8.5/10 A este apartado depende realmente como lo vea cada persona, la verdad no le doy el 10 de 10 básicamente porque viendo los art-work que se desbloquean al desbloquear el juego, me hacen ver que no le hicieron tanta justicia a los escenarios, porque estos conceptualmente son absurdamente detallados y la atmósfera cambia un poco respecto al resultado 3D sin embargo del resto nada que decir, se ve hermoso, la UI es muy limpia y aun con esas desprende personalidad, es fácil de navegar y muy clara. Sin mentir aunque el estilo artistico no es del todo el que a mi me suele gustar no puedo negar que es hermoso. GRAFICOS 8/10 Este apartado tomen en cuenta que es un juego de 2017 y el Cellshading conseguido aquí es bastante único, es de lo que más me llamo del juego en un inicio de hecho es hermoso, sin embargo, lo único que peca pese a ser bastante cinematográfico y encapsular casi perfectamente el día a día de las chicas con su dirección y planos. Pese a ello las animaciones son bastante básicas, siendo del año que es y el hecho de que es la primera entrega realmente me sigue impresionando el resultado conseguido, el problema es que se nota el presupuesto limitado... Me explico, en las salidas con tus amigas no hay escenarios dedicados como tal... si no que, en lugar de eso son imágenes con el escenario de fondo y pese a que por si solos son bonitos, la combinación en el juego se ve cutre. HISTORIA 7/10 Seré sincero no me esperaba encontrarme un juego tan valiente aquí no le doy 10/10 por ciertos problemas que encontré, principalmente que tu empatía por los personajes depende de lo que hagas tu, yo hice todo el contenido que me podía ofrecer el juego, por ende llegue al máximo con mis encuentros sociales y esto es super importante, si no conoces a las chicas y sus dilemas, literalmente no empatizarías nada con ellas. Teniendo en cuenta que lo hagas todo, algunos encuentros son muy hermosos y otros son simplemente mediocres o pasables, diría que la mayoría son buenos pero solo 2 son memorables, si no contamos a Yuzu y Lime claro. De hecho, me duele el no poder invitar a Yuzu y a Lime para profundizar más en su relación aunque entiendo el porque no lo hicieron no me termina de convencer. Por otra parte, puedes terminar el juego bastante pronto, no estas obligado a farmear, solo lo necesario para que puedas afrontar las peleas contra jefes pero de ahí en resto, depende de ti si experimentar todo lo que ofrece. GAMEPLAY 5/10 Bueno ¿Qué paso aquí? no es que el gameplay sea malo, de hecho lo que pone sobre la mesa cada que añaden una mecánica nueva es bastante interesante lo que puedes hacer, para ser un juego por turnos se siente bastante ágil el tema es... Es demasiado FACIL de ROMPER, la dificultad no es que no haya existe, pero si sabes un mínimo sabrás como romper rápido este juego sin matarte mucho, literalmente todos los enemigos menos el jefe de Quest final y los jefes de cada capitulo les puedes hacer one shot, los jefes son los únicos buenos combates, y eso que el ultimo de las quest tampoco es tan bueno, solo se que me papeo una vez por que pensé que sería cualquier debilucho pero en mi segundo try lo derrote con la primera estrategia que se me ocurrió (pura fuerza bruta si soy sincero buffs a lo loco). En ese sentido se siente un desperdicio y puede mejorar en una segunda entrega, de ahí en resto los boses todos son disfrutables. MUSICA 10/10 Si bien no hay temas vocales eso es irrelevante, depende de gustos pero toda la musica era acorde y otras simplemente suenan muy bien y épicas, otras pegan justo en lo emocional funcionan bastante bien. DURACIÓN 10/10 Miren, con todo el contenido haciendo absolutamente TODO me duro 61 horas. Se que pone 84 pero 4 horas son tiempo muerto mío y las otras 20 son porque había empezado hace años una partida que se borro, por lo que empecé desde 0 teniendo 20 horas sumada. Dura lo que tiene que dura, honestamente comparado con otros me impresiona el poco farmeo que toca hacer, digo tu ves la lista de todo lo que hiciste (si lo hiciste todo) y te preguntas ¿Cuándo hice todo esto? porque se siente super ligero pero si es tu primer RPG dudo que lo veas así, hablo desde mi experiencia con este tipo de juegos. CONCLUSIÓN FINAL Que decir un solido 8/10. Teniendo en cuenta que es el primer juego de la franquicia se nota que en el apartado de combato necesitan mejoras y claro mejorar algún que otro vinculo, algunos son más simples que otros tanto en lo narrativo como en la presentación de los mismos, el trabajo de algunos era bueno y luego otros bastante normales. sin embargo, pese a los problemas con el gameplay que la verdad es un concepto y sistema excelente pero eres simplemente absurdamente fuerte pues fuera de eso la historia vale la pena, es hermosa y muy emocional, recomiendo que salgas mucho con tus amigas y hagas sus eventos, vale la pena pero si vas a las rápidas focusea a S4RAS4, MAO, SHIHORI, YURI, RIKA y AKO, FUMIO si te gustan las raras de resto son muy olvidables.