Blue Reflection Reviews
The overall experience of Blue Reflection is enjoyable even if it does rely heavily on yuri tropes. The high school setting, particularly what the player does in their free time and tries to befriend the other students feels like the developers took some pages from the Persona 4 book and mixed it into the Nights of Azure Atelier.
Blue Reflection is a solid, if somewhat fanservice-y, JRPG that suffers from some poor pacing issues. The characters themselves are decently fleshed out, and it's worth sticking with them to see how their arcs develop, even if there is a lot to keep track of. The skill customisation is a lot of fun to mess around with, but combat is the weakest part. Despite the excellent combat tracks, most battles feel like a drawn-out exhibition more than anything else. As one of Gust's best titles in years, however, it's definitely worth checking out.
Blue Reflection doesn't offer much as an RPG but it does carry a certain charm. The gameplay loop can get repetitive while the customization and combat system are fairly simple. The art style might make it feel like a typical slice of life anime but the game attempts to target the magical girl genre with its gameplay.
A number of issues with Blue Reflection quickly present themselves, such as some screen-tearing witnessed in the visual stakes and a questionable focus on the level of fan service wedged into the adventure, yet underneath these opinion-splitting matters there is an extremely enjoyable, memorable, and rather uncommon Japanese RPG adventure that will certainly leave an impression for the duration of the journey, as well as for a while after playing it.
Obviously the shooter or sports crowd won't play this; it's aimed for a certain niche. For those people, no aspect of Blue Reflection is at all bad, but I just get the feeling that rather than focus on fleshing out a few things, they tried to incorporate too many that all ended up quite shallow. Nothing here will anger or upset you, but nothing will amaze or move you either. It's a steady, repetitive line to the end without any sort of escalation, but not everything need to be full of crazy turns and ups and downs.
Blue Reflection is just a repetitive and simple rpg full of colors and nice music. It's view of relationships is utilitarian and flat. Just another piece of fandom for the magical girl fans.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
In the end, I feel like Blue Reflection had some good things going for it.
Blue Reflection - a good replacement for the next Atelier with cute heroines, deeper characters and not a bad storyline. If it were not for pauses in the gameplay, problems with graphics, repetitive tasks and battles, this game would have deserved a completely different score.
Review in Russian | Read full review
It's really rather unfortunate just how much is missing from Blue Reflection.
There's a bud of good ideas present in Blue Reflection. Unfortunately, it spectacularly fails to blossom.
A limp, repetitive gameplay loop and uncomfortable characterization rob Blue Reflection of the magic it tries so desperately to create.
Blue Reflection seems to want to tell a story more than wanting to be an RPG. The focus on delivering a coming of age tale, seeing all the characters deal with their growing pains during a typical school life comes across as genuine.
Blue Reflection is certainly not a title for every gamer: the fans of this genre might find something worth their time, while the hardcore gamers should probably look somewhere else.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Honestly speaking, there's nothing spectacular about Blue Reflection. It's rather modest and quaint, but that also gives it some charm. If it weren't for the performance issues, it'd be difficult to fault it very much.
Blue Reflection tries to take the social aspects of Persona and make them more streamlined and simplified but fails to make them interesting in any way. The combat and beautiful locations and character models add some light to the title, it's not enough to make it stand out or memorable in any way.
Blue Reflection is a simple game that'll appeal to a very niche crowd of gamers.
Blue Reflection, which has some strong artistic assets, can be an entertaining game for RPG newcomers or players who are not afraid of redundancy. It could have been a really good J-RPG for everyone, but it's hard to figure out what's its audience is.
Review in French | Read full review
Blue Reflection feels like a Gust game. That is, it looks and sounds beautiful at times, but ultimately falls flat elsewhere. While certainly easy on the eyes, it cuts every corner it can in what feels like a purposeful attempt to emit mediocrity. There's some good in here, but the rest feels hastily put together.
Blue Reflection is one of the few times where I would say that it would work better as an anime rather than a game. It has a lot of good ideas and systems at work but sadly none of them are fully developed and poor performance ruins the experience.
Blue Reflection has a lot of interesting ideas, from its plot to the core gameplay, so it's unfortunate that these ideas are left to fester in a pool of mediocrity and drowned in an adventure that feels boring and stale before it's even really begun. The opening scenes show a lot of promise, but none of it is built upon as the game develops. Blue Reflection feels like a tutorial for JRPG beginners - one that even the most inexperienced player would get bored with.