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amazon BLUE REFLECTION reviews
The role-playing game BLUE REFLECTION tells the story of Hinako Shirai, a girl with a strong love for ballet. After an unfortunate accident, she loses her ability to dance and gradually closes her heart to the world around her. Until one day, she discovered she could see the “emotions” of people. From there, she was granted magical powers, becoming a Reflector. Along with Yuzu and Lime, Hinako must use their powers to help their friends and save the world.
BLUE REFLECTION is set at Hoshinomiya Girls High School. Therefore, the entire cast of characters in the game is female. Moreover, the main characters can transform, becoming magical girls with beautiful appearances. Attractive to men, these magical girls also won the hearts of women. The lovely beauty mixed with mystical magic will surely make girls want to become magical girls.
Designing a magical girl always requires harmony between many aspects such as costumes, personality, and inner character. At school, the main characters live in harmony with their peers, having fun, talking, trying to understand each other.
However, when there is danger, they do not hesitate to stand up for their friends. Moreover, the game also exploits Hinako’s inner self quite deeply, allowing players to understand her feelings as a magical girl through a series of flashbacks and reflections. It can be said that BLUE REFLECTION has shown a very good “magical girl” through Yuzu, Lime, and especially Hinako.
In addition, the game also brings many other characters with their appearance and personality. And they are all very beautiful in different ways.
BLUE REFLECTION has two main areas: the school and The Common – a space created by human emotions. School is the main living space of the characters, and The Common is where Hinako, Yuzu, and Lime fight against monsters, collect emotional shards and protect friends.
First of all, the graphics in the game can’t reach the threshold of “immersing players” like in many current AAA games. But compared to Japanese role-playing games in general and games with the same theme in particular, the graphics of BLUE REFLECTION can be said to be quite good. At the same time, the way the game decorates the world is also very diverse and meticulous. School is probably the most familiar space for many people. The Hoshinomiya school depicted in the game consists of a staff room, a dining room, a library, a medical room, a changing room, a lobby, and classrooms on each floor. In addition, the school also has a rooftop, main yard, and training ground. You probably understand how the manufacturer has focused on designing this school in detail and close to reality. The rooms, areas, even layers are designed differently, creating variety and very real. In addition, weather conditions will also affect the landscape of the area.
The Common has four different environments, corresponding to four emotions, joy, sadness, anger, and fear. From the green meadow in the morning to the burning lava world, all are beautifully designed and attractive. Some viewing angles will give you a real overwhelm of the scenery in the game.
It’s illegal to talk about role-playing games without mentioning the combat system.
BLUE REFLECTION uses the turn-based combat system of classic RPGs. In an interview, the game’s producer Junzo Hosoi said that the development team had thought a lot about the game’s combat mechanism, wanting players to comfortably “see” the characters if they like. Therefore, the turn-based mechanism is the optimal choice, allowing players time to calculate freely and relax when needed.
In the game, a timeline appears at the top of the screen. The position of the character and enemies on the timeline determines the turn of the attack. Specifically, whoever moves to the midpoint first will be given the action, and after doing so, their position will be pushed back. Different attacks can make the user back to different distances. This design is quite simple but very effective. It will give you full information about the turn, the position of the characters on the timeline, or the distance pushed back after performing the attack. From there, you can come up with your strategies.
Junzo Hosoi also said that the producer wanted to direct the characters to protect each other rather than destroy the enemy. Perhaps that’s why the game supports a lot of convenient mechanisms for defense. First, attack and recovery moves are separated into two commands. Then there is a separate command to recover MP and Ether. MP is used to perform normal movements; Ether is used to perform some special commands such as Active Command (orders can be used when you have not yet turned) or Override (allows you to execute multiple moves at once). In particular, in boss battles, friends in the school can help the main characters in battle.
Finally, according to the plot, after helping friends, the characters will receive fragments from them. Attaching these fragments to the character’s moves will have many different effects. The game also allows you to upgrade pieces or craft items.
Although it has its features, the gameplay mechanics of the game are not too complicated or new than other role-playing games. You could call it “just enough,” and “just enough” isn’t bad, especially in a role-playing game as aesthetically pleasing and entertaining as BLUE REFLECTION. The combat mechanism to the interface presentation will make you feel comfortable, easy to play with, easy to breathe.
BLUE REFLECTION depicts the life of Hinako, an ordinary high school student. And to make this clear, the manufacturer has included many small details in the game, but it is also quite realistic and interesting.
First, listening to music, playing games, or participating in social networks is indispensable for a high school student. Through Hinako’s electronic device, you can read fun and humorous conversations between her and her friends on the FreeSpace social network. You can also play animal herding and watch them evolve into different animals. The phone also allows you to listen to the music in the game. You can even change the phone wallpaper.
In addition, Hinako can also increase the affection of friends. When you answer questions correctly or invite friends out, their affection will increase and unlock more scenes. At the same time, when Hinako comes home at the end of each day, you can watch her perform some everyday actions such as exercising, studying, sleeping.
These details are only minor, though. They don’t detract from the game’s main content but add some fun, relaxation, and realism to BLUE REFLECTION.
Perhaps not too surprising that the plot of a game that hits hard on “beautiful, lovely characters” is not of high quality.
BLUE REFLECTION revolves around the theme of Hinako helping her peers. Each schoolgirl has different problems to deal with, and, coincidentally, Hinako has always been the focus of her salvation. Many times, it only takes Hinako to offer a small piece of advice, a simple word of encouragement, enough for her friend in some way to “be more motivated.”
Although it matches the game’s content, such a cheesy emotional plot is unattractive and has nothing to do with reality. Of course, some unexpected twists and turns along the way, but you can be sure that nothing is too shocking or extremely profound. In short, in the game, the plot can be said to be a secondary factor only.
With that said, to progress the story, Hinako must complete the quests to help her friends given by Lime and Yuzu. Most quests force you to travel into The Common to do mundane things like slay monsters, earn gems, or craft items. And this will span almost the entire length of the game.
The Common is created by four emotions, corresponding to four different spatial environments. Therefore, playing too much will also make you bored. Of course, each space map has changed, but that is still not enough to create the uniqueness it should have. Nearly all of the game’s combat is wrapped up in only four limited types of environments, with very few types of monsters. Honestly, the game needs at least twice that amount of environments to significantly reduce boredom.
After winning a match, the game only rewards the character with furniture, not experience points. Points for upgrading stats are only awarded after completing the story missions, and after each match, the character’s stats will be restored intact. As such, each match is almost a literal repetition.
The producer has tried to integrate many small details to bring Hinako’s school life closer to reality. However, that’s not enough to make up because nearly all of the game’s content takes place in schools. Combined with the four spatial dimensions in The Common, we have exactly five different areas. A game that costs as much as an AAA game, with all the content taking place in five regions. I hope you understand how big the game’s “ruminance” is.
It’s not uncommon for a game to be released on consoles and then have many technical problems after being shipped to PC. However, some of the current issues in BLUE REFLECTION may have to take it to the next level.
The first thing that made many players “annoyed” since before the game was available on Steam was that the manufacturer announced that some parts of the game’s images would only be available at 720p resolution on PC, but on PlayStation 4 will be 1080p. Thus, the manufacturer has directly “squeezed” the PC version of the game publicly. That amount of content is quite small, and the PC version supports a higher resolution of the console, so we can temporarily hold off on this issue.
Next, bad ports’ eternal problem is the drop out of the game or the low FPS frame rate. That certainly exists in BLUE REFLECTION. When you switch scenes or perform certain tasks, the game may crash and shut down suddenly, annoying the player, especially if you forgot to save your achievements; condolences. The game’s frame rate is also modest compared to games with better graphics running on similar hardware. However, the existence of the problems just now is still at an acceptable level, not too severe, and probably only affects a small part of the playing experience.
However, Things were much worse. At the time of its release, BLUE REFLECTION was plagued with severe bugs. In chapter 7 of the game, after an animation, the game inevitably crashes and crashes. The player community confirms this, and it is KOEI TECMO that has posted a notice about this issue. The manufacturer has patched the above error, but other problems such as low FPS or sudden crashing from the game are still there. It is worth mentioning that, although not perfect, the community has found a way to patch the above error a week before the manufacturer.
Thus, BLUE REFLECTION on PC is a semi-seasonal port. Why is the bare minimum when building a product to make sure it runs from start to finish even once without the manufacturer being able to do it?
where can you get a BLUE REFLECTION online
Blue Reflection (PS4): Buy it now
Blue Reflection (PS4) UK IMPORT REGION FREE: Buy it now
Blue Reflection – PlayStation 4: Buy it now