I kinda completely missed the first Blue Reflection game (though I did research it very mildly before writing this review). I’m not entirely sure WHY I missed it, as it’s an RPG made by what seems to be the team behind the Atelier games, or at least a team somewhat related to it (considering how crafting works), and this offers something pretty close to Atelier. You figure I’d have checked this out, but it took me until the sequel to notice it.

I ended up buying it recently while it was on sale at Amazon Canada, and then I waited because early this year was super busy game-wise, and I had plenty of other stuff to play through, so this took a backseat for a while. But finally, game releases calmed down a bunch, and I got to finally play it.

So let’s see if it’s good!

Developer: Gust
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Release date: November 10, 2021
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4 (Switch version reviewed)
Genre: RPG

Review

This does have a pretty weird story. You play mainly as Ao Hoshizaki. You find yourself in an alternate world, which includes a school, surrounded by an infinite ocean, and the school has 3 people in it: Kokoro, Rena, and Yuki. This place ends up getting called Oasis. Ao is weird though, as, unlike the other people in this world, she remembers her life before getting into the world, and is unaware of things about the outside world that the other characters end up being familiar with. After some conversations with Kokora, a Heartscape appears, which is a world separate from the school, built upon the memories of the person related to it. These worlds are inhabited by demons, but also contain materials you can use for crafting. But, more importantly, these worlds contain memory fragments, which allow the character it belongs to to remember their past lives. Namely, these are based around some trauma they had or a very important moment in their lives. By remembering their lives, they start learning about the possible state of the outside world, but they may also start remembering other people, and said people may even end up appearing in Oasis.

The state of the outside world? Something called Ash is falling everywhere, and touching the Ash causes Ash Syndrome, an incurable disease that very quickly kills the infected 100% of the time. As you recover more of the girls’ memories, you find out they’re all Reflectors, basically magical girls, that were in the process of trying to find how to deal with the Ash but ending up in Oasis somehow. So it all ends up being a plot about trying to find out what is happening in the outside world, who created the Oasis world, why that happened, who is the enemy here, and who even is Ao? There is a true ending if you finish the game in New Game Plus… which I checked on youtube, it’s just the same ending with a slight change to the very final scene (it’s a “slightly happier” ending). Would be nice if there had been extra elements to that true ending, like changing some minor parts in the last chapter to lead to this.

If I have any issues with the story, it’s the fact that most of the characters end up being little more than background decoration past their arc. Some characters have slightly longer arcs, and Ao is central to everything, but even a major character like Kokoro (who is there from the start) barely pops up past the first chapter. How characters appear past their chapter is as sidequest givers, and you can go on “dates” with them. This gives some extra look at the personality of those characters, and I think determines which “ending” you end up with (which will be the same scene, just with a different girl in it). It’s fine, but I’d like some of the characters to be a bit more involved in the actual story, the dates and such are fairly minor… things. I don’t even remember anything about Shiori’s story, because she pretty much stops existing after her arc. For fans of the original game, the 3 playable characters from that one do play a role and are more important plot-wise than most of the other characters, and the events from that first game do have some minor relevance to this one… though, if you haven’t played the first game, you’ll follow the plot here fine, since it’s all about giving you exposition about the characters’ past lives anyways.

Graphically the game is fine. The areas you visit are pretty interestingly-designed with familiar, real-world things but also being twisted and placed weirdly since these are dream-like areas, with a post-apocalyptic sense to most of these places. The characters look okay, though their faces look weird at first (they all look depressed AF early on), but you get used to it and quickly enough the characters do start emoting a bit more and not looking as depressed. There’s essentially no fanservice of the ecchi variety, beyond Ao getting bikini outfits (the swimsuits for the other characters are… not very notable). Other than that, not even a single panty shot or anything like that, even accidentally. But they still modeled the character to look pretty, and, beyond having to get used to their faces, they did a good job there. I will note quickly that the Switch version has some frame pacing issues in some cutscenes, but is generally fine, it’s mostly stable. My game did crash a few times, but that happens with literally every Switch game so it’s hardly worth mentioning. At least the game autosaves a bunch so you won’t lose progress when it crashes.

So I should get to gameplay, and there’s at least a bit to talk about. Game flow… basically, most chapters start with either a new girl popping up after you build a new facility, or a new facility you build eliciting a memory in one of the girls, spawning that girl’s Heartscape. Then you explore the Heartscape, fight the boss, recover the girl’s memories, and then rinse and repeat. At any time, you can go back to school and do… stuff. More on that later.

Combat is fairly simple. You can mostly handle most of the combat by looking at the bottom-right of the screen. This shows how much EP each of your characters have. With a minimum of 1000 EP, a character can use an action. EP goes up fairly quickly. The bar also shows when the enemy will attack. Their icon starts on the right side of the screen, and they’ll launch an attack when it gets to the 1000EP segment of the bar. Once a character has enough EP to act, a button will appear above their icon (as well as under their HP bar). Pressing that button pauses the action, letting you choose an attack. If you have enough EP, you can select attacks that cost more or select multiple attacks that cost less. Each attack adds 1 to the combo counter, and each number in the combo counter multiplies the damage of the next attack. The combo meter can get reset if an enemy launches a big attack (but otherwise it’s safe). If an enemy gets an action and it adds a “Danger” message over their icon, that gives you until their next turn to either kill them or use one of Ao’s skills that gives a chance of protecting the combo meter.

Using attacks increases your gear level. There are different numbers of attacks for each gear level, and that changes as you progress through the game. As you get stronger, you may start at a higher gear level, and take fewer attacks in-between gear levels. While it may take a few attacks to get from Gear Level 1 to 2 in the early game, in the late game you’ll start battles at Gear Level 2 and 2 attacks will boost you to Gear Level 4. Gear Level has 2 uses in battle. Each level gives you an extra 1000 EP maximum so you can charge EP longer to do a bunch of attacks in one action, or do attacks that cost more. Second, each gear level unlocks better attacks. So your shitty attacks at Gear Level 1 are much better at higher Gear Level, and you also get new attacks (may have different elements, or better effects in addition to damage). Also, there are some super attacks you can use, not exactly sure what triggers those, I don’t care because they’re useless.

My big problem with the combat though is that it’s massively easy. I didn’t even talk about the Support system (which you can use to order items, which will be used by the Support character when the order meter is full… also there are support skills, which MAY launch when the order meter fills up a set amount of times), because, beyond the first couple chapters, you’ll basically never use it. Heck, I didn’t talk about magical girl transformations, because it’s really just reaching Gear Level 3 and it has no real effect in battle. What makes it easy is just how freakishly powerful you get. Early boss battles might be a bit difficult and enemies might hurt you a bit (there’s even one battle I almost came close to nearly losing), but, as you progress, it becomes mind-meltingly simple. At the start of the games, all battles start you at Gear Level 1 and take several attacks to power up, in the latter chapters you start at Gear Level 2 and you power up really fast. Even with nerfs to your defense, soon enough enemies start being basically unable to damage you by any significant amount, and you deal so much damage even boss battles are trivial. Battles against 2 normal enemies are done in 4-6 hits, while minibosses might take 10 and full-on bosses might take 12. This makes the support system useless because you’ll never get to support skills happening. The final boss only takes more hits because it’s, like, 4 different battles in a row, each taking at most 16 hits. The final boss is so weak you’ll likely beat his final form without getting hit once.

Outside of battle, there are a few things you can do at the Oasis. There’s a crafting table where you can make items (some for building, some for crafting, some for battle, some for story progression). Item crafting works a lot like Atelier, but it’s WAY simpler. The most important crafting you’ll do will be facilities at school. Those can be placed in various spots around the school, and what they do is gives some passive stat upgrades for your party. The facilities require some pretty demanding amounts of materials which I will complain about later. Facilities have sizes, and can only fit in certain spots around the school. Some facilities also have special effects if they’re placed at the same time, so trying to activate as many effects as possible really helps.

Facilities do have another function. When a facility is built and placed, characters will want to go on dates with Ao. This does a few things. It improves some hidden relationship stat (which I believe decides what character you’ll see in your ending, I saw Kokoro), and I assume your dialogue choice may influence that. You can also influence this by choosing the character you want in some optional conversations. The other use of dates, as well as side-quests (which are generally just crafting, beating minibosses, killing a certain amount of monsters, or finding specific items), is to get TP. You use TP to unlock some talents for each character. Some are stat upgrades, some are new attacks, some are support skills, and some are improvements for when you craft items. There are several of the characters that don’t participate in battle at all, so their talents are actually power-ups for the characters that can fight. Getting enough TP increases the character’s talent level, which can unlock more talents (and progressing through the game will occasionally also unlock either new talents or whole new sets of talents). It’s a fun way to level up your characters. Also, each date gives you a Fragment, which is basically equipment. You can get extra fragment slots in the Talent trees. Each Fragment has a size (so it may take more than one slot) and an Active Gear level, which is the Gear Level at which that stat boost will activate. It’s pretty interesting.

Other complaints… First, the final chapter is, like, 90% filler, it’s pretty annoying. They put a really stupid boss rush that requires lots of pointless walking, then have a dungeon that they could have just… put the boss rush in. Second… sand is fucking annoying to get. Each Heartscape has one type of sand that the enemies within it have a very small drop chance for. The problem with san though is that these are required for most of the facility-building materials you can craft. So if you need some warm sand, time to go to the first Heartscape in the game, fight shitty lame enemies, and hope they drop sand. Very fucking annoying. There are eventually other ways to get sand, but they’re not very stable. Third, I kinda hate that you can’t skip all conversations, only those that don’t have dialogue choices… which means all dates can’t be skipped, for example. There’s a LOT of optional dialogue that I’d be totally fine with skipping, TBH. The sheer amount of dates and optional conversations you get while walking around the school and shit gets really ridiculous at some point. Fourth, the stealth sidequests suck. All of them. Fifth… I always hate in RPGs when you see enemies in the environment, but they always chase after you when they see you, even when you’re massively stronger than they are. How did Earthbound get that right in 1994, but most modern RPGs still don’t?

There’s a few minor things I didn’t talk about, but this is about all I have to cover. Like how you can cut grass or hit enemies with your scythe to start battle. Not super important.

Overall

I enjoyed this game a bunch, but it’s not without issues. Namely, it’s so freakishly easy it’s almost insulting. There’s a lot to do, but most of it is… skipping through dialogue (unless you really want to read it all, even if you read quickly this takes a lot of time). Some of the item gathering feels a bit annoying, especially sand. The stealth missions suck. It definitely has problems.

That said, the combat is pretty fun and could be a good basis for a more challenging game, the story is surprisingly okay, and it has fun systems to build your team up even if it’s somewhat linear on that end.

Overall I give this one a decent recommendation, but for this kind of calmer, more relaxing RPG, the Atelier games are definitely more worth checking out.