A Kind Reflection

As someone who has been following the Atelier series of games from Gust for decades, a new IP coming from the studio was enough to pique my interest but unfortunately, due to time constraints, I never checked out Blue Reflection when it was first released.

Luckily, with the release of its sequel, I found the opportunity to check out if there was something worthwhile I’ve been missing out on and found myself pleasantly surprised.

Ya, I don’t know how to pronounce that word either.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PS4, Switch, PC
Played on: PC
Voice Acting Selection: JPN only
Played: 20~ Hours

Waking up in an unfamiliar school, Ao finds herself stranded in an otherworldly place. She soon meets up with others in the same situation except that unlike her, they have all lost their memories of their life before being spirited away. Together, they resolve to get to the bottom of this mysterious school and resolve to find a way back home.

Not having played the original, I can’t comment whether or not there are elements that are carried over to the sequel but I can say that I didn’t feel lost and was able to follow along with the story easily without having any knowledge of the original.

While the overarching story of uncovering the mystery of this strange place and the origin of their powers as Reflectors was compelling enough to keep me guessing, much of my time was spent interacting with other characters. Even though initially the vast majority of the cast seemed to follow pretty close to certain popular tropes, after I got to know them a bit more, I began liking them.

From partaking in activities which can best be described as “cute anime girls doing cute anime girl things” to delving deeper into what made them into the person that they are now and overcoming past traumas with each other’s support, there’s a good heart at the core of this story.

Adding that to my repertoire of pick up lines.

As for the combat, it reminds me a bit of the old school Grandia games mixed together with the system from Atelier Ryza 1. Once combat is initiated by making contact with an enemy on the field, there is a turn order bar with icons representing characters taking part in combat moving in real time. This allowed me to see who was getting their turn next and when the enemy would be attacking to try and interrupt or delay their attacks. Once the fight was in full swing, I could also opt to wait a bit longer to get multiple actions in a turn, all the while building up combo counters which steadily increased my damage output with more consecutive hits.

The enemies could break my chain with certain powerful attacks but there were good tell-tale signs of these types of attacks coming so I could avoid them as losing a long combo chain could decrease my damage output substantially. The longer the battles went, the more options were made available and the girls would also transform into their powered-up “Reflector” forms.

By fulfilling certain conditions, I could go in close for a one on one bout with an enemy during a heated fight to evade/counter their attacks and deal a significant amount of damage with some flourish as long as I played my cards right.

Overall, the combat felt fast paced and strategic as I had to make quick decisions but was well rewarded for thinking ahead when I managed to interrupt an enemy from making their attack or kept my combo chain going through some hectic moments where numerous enemies were attacking at once.

However, just as was the case in Atelier Ryza 1, there is a certain build up time required and the smaller, fast encounters that end with only a few hits don’t get the time to use much of the enjoyable mechanics available.

Keeping an eye on the timeline to take full advantage of the information present there will lead to success.

Aside from exploring dungeons and fighting monsters, there is a strong emphasis on spending time with the other girls in the school.

By approaching them during certain parts of the story or after some new facility was built, you can ask them out on a date and take them to a place to have fun with them and get to know them better.

Spending time this way gives valuable resources required for learning new skills as well as new accessories that can be equipped on characters, so it’s an essential part of getting stronger to tackle new challenges. Luckily, it’s mostly enjoyable and since I was able to choose when I would go into a dungeon for some combat or relax and hang out with some other characters for a bit of slice of life fun, I could pace my experience to my liking.

One area which I felt was definitely a step down was in the crafting system and while I understand that this is not an Atelier game and crafting items is not a main focus, it was still disheartening to see how barebones it was.

As for the PC port report, I would say it’s competent but nothing too exciting as the options are fairly barebones and I continuous had to switch windowed/full screen mode as it would not keep the full screen mode when it was booted it up but outside of that, I did not notice any major glitches or crashes.

Cute anime girls doing cute anime things.

Despite coming from a development studio that most people see as a one-series company, Blue Reflection: Second Light is a charming RPG with a clear identity of its own with a worthwhile story to tell and I’m glad I had the opportunity to check out after missing out on the original.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.