Blue Reflection thoughts!
Okay! So! I spent the last few days playing Blue Reflection, and finished it about 2 minutes before starting this post!
Took me 23.5 hours to complete. Well almost complete. I missed exactly one achievement because I accidentally completed a chapter without doing a specific sidequest. Maybe I'll do it later in a NG+.
Anyway, let's get into it.
Blue reflection is... Well from what I have heard about Persona, it's a similar concept. People have strong emotions, and you have to go in and stabilise those emotions by.... Killing demons I guess!
Except unlike Persona, there's no time limit, and the game isn't remotely hard. Oh and it has Magical Girls too. And ballet. For some reason. Can't say I was too big on seeing the same 10 second ballet dance like 20 times across the game, but that's a minor complaint.
Anyway.
So let's get onto gameplay.
Combat up first.
Blue Reflection is a pretty typical turn based JRPG, but with some atypical elements. For typical it's just wait your turn and attack, X is good against Y, Y is good against Z, and Z is good against X. That kind of thing. And it's extremely easy. You only have 3 playable characters and they're with you the entire game. And once Yuzu gets a move called Grape Wave, all battles, except bosses, are pretty much over in one attack, even playing on hard. Regardless of type advantage.
The atypical thing about combat in this game, is that aside from particular parts to progress thee story, and sidequests, the only point fighting monsters and combat has is to get your items for crafting. You do not earn EXP at all in this game. Which is probably why this game felt so short. I usually spend so much time grinding for fun in JRPG's, but in this game, there is absolutely no point. Especially after I found out I missed a single quest that made getting items have a point. (The crafting achievement)
So the other side of the game is school life.
Well, sort of. There's absolutely none of the actual schoolwork part. It's really just making friends, going on... Dates? And dealing with bullies. Most of the playtime is here, reading all the dialogue. I say reading, because only the main story is voiced. Which is disappointing. Speaking of reading through the story, minor complaint, but there are so many typos. But yeah not too much else to say here. Except why are bullies in games so one dimensional? Also they all have the same face!! Lazy!
So next is.... Characters I guess? The characters in this game are really not complicated at all. Their entire character is all based around one or two things.
Your main character, who is an ex ballet dancer, is all about ballet.
Another character, who has a crush on someone, that crush is their entire personality.
A character who is in the track club is all about running.
Pretty basic stuff. Not much there. And I DID do all the character story achievements, so I did see all there was to see!
Now the biggest disappointment about the characters was...
This is a Gust game. The people who do the Atelier games. It takes place in an all girl's school. There are literally no male characters in the whole game. So why is the cast less yuri than a typical Atelier game?! It makes no sense! The only actually gay girl in the game is just there to be a bit horny and make the main character uncomfortable! I've included some examples below. And again, like all the other characters, this is almost her only character trait. Liking cute girls.
It really annoyed me that the one lesbian character they included just makes the main character uncomfortable. I actually did not really like the main character. I say how you go into peoples emotions to stabilise them, right? Well half the time you have to stabilise them because the main character is a jerk and set them off in the first place! Annoying!
Okay moving on from that. I did have another complaint, but this seems to apply to all recent Gust games on steam. Meaning this game, Both Ryza games, and Sophie 2.
For whatever reason, despite being a pretty basic looking anime game locked at 60FPS and 1080P, it absolutely makes my GPU and CPU really hot (Well. Hot beyond what I'm usually comfortable with. I know some people absolutely abuse their computers. I personally don't like the coolant to go above like, 34. I even have more extreme custom fan settings for it.) for no reason. I've attached below what my parts were doing for one part, and what was happening on screen at the time. It makes no sense.
These GPU and coolant temperatures are higher than when I was playing God of War in 4K, 165FPS at ultra settings, during a hotter time of year. It makes absolutely no sense. While I'm on this rant, in Sophie 2, for whatever reason, when I was in the Menu, which has no animation, and might as well be a PNG, the GPU is sitting at 100% utilisation. I just don't get it. Is it just a bad version on steam?
Anyway moving on... My overall thoughts on Blue Reflection is.... It's fine? It's not a bad game, but I definitely had some expectations that were not met. It being a Gust game, the promise of yuri, and the expectation to be able to grind like most JRPG's.
Was a bit let down.
But hey, if you don't have these expectations, maybe you'll like it a lot!
The overall story was nice, but the gameplay just got so boring and repetitive in every way. Combat, going to the same 6 places with every girl for the achievements... Just... Eek.
Anyway, that's my thoughts.
I'll be doing Blue Reflection 2 at some point soonish too!
End!