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 Gust's best new IP and one that would've been a better game had Koei Tecmo put some actual effort into localization wise.
Blue Reflection tells an accurate story of a high school girl who is coming to terms with becoming a magical girl. The game is graphically one of the best looking games from Gust that I have played and I applaud them for trying something new. There's a lot to see in Blue Reflection if players put the time into the story, but if you're looking level grinding and item collecting, this isn't going to be the game for you.
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
Gust's new turn-based RPG presents good ideas as a more accessible combat system than the Atelier saga or the possibility of choosing which song to listen to. However, the division by zones, not have English voices or the little challenge presented in fighting makes Blue Reflection undeserving of more praise.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
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 a good start for something even greater. It manages to perfectly capture the atmosphere of classic magical girl anime series, and does so with some of the prettiest visuals I've seen in a Japanese PS4 game. Unfortunately, it fails at making a truly engaging JRPG to go with it. The lack of a focus on combat is interesting, but it ends up making combat feel more like an afterthought than it ought to be. I hope Gust is willing to put out a sequel, because with some of these issues tackled, this could end up being my new favorite JRPG series.
Visual novels and other titles like Sword Art Online: Lost Song have attempted to capture anime style in video games , but none have done it quite as well as Blue Reflection. In this magical girl Persona-like JRPG, you play as the lost and broken former ballet dancer Hinako.
Blue Reflection is lacking in a few areas, but it still has enough going for it to offer an overall enjoyable experience that fans of the magical girl sub genre will enjoy.
It's really rather unfortunate just how much is missing from Blue Reflection.
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
In the end, I feel like Blue Reflection had some good things going for it.
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.
The art style of Blue Reflection is absolutely gorgeous and truly sets it apart from Gust's other IPs.
As a brand new IP, Blue Reflection does its job well and may serve as a good foundation for a sequel, with an enjoyable (albeit not all that original) story, good character development, a unique leveling system, and a stylish presentation. Sadly, most of the game's features resemble too much those found in the latest Persona games and, as such, the game doesn't feel very unique, while the low difficulty level prevents the RPG mechanics from reaching their full potential.
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.
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 has minor issues here and there but it tells its story well with likable characters, well-integrated mechanics, solid combat and a unique magical girl style.
There's a bud of good ideas present in Blue Reflection. Unfortunately, it spectacularly fails to blossom.
Complemented by a strong sense of style in its gorgeous presentation, this is one of the stronger titles in Gust's library.