High School Magical
Gust are the well known developers of the Atelier series who have over the past almost 10 years have worked on another mini game series known as Blue Reflection, much like the Atelier series over the years which has Deluxe packs of games released as a trilogy mostly, Blue Reflection has now had a release containing 4 playable games although we have only seen two mainline games released.
This quadrilogy includes remastered versions of Blue Reflection and Blue Reflection: Second Light, with two new games, the first being a console remake of the mobile game Blue Reflection: Sun and a video game adaption of the anime Blue Reflection Ray.
Starting with the original Blue Reflection, the game follows a persona-esque style of gameplay where you play as Hinako Shirai who goes to school, events take place at school and you have the option of talking with others aswell as picking options which determine how your relationship will go with other classmates. Unlike Persona, Blue Reflection you play mostly as girls who are attending a school and when the alternate-parallel universe becomes available known as the common. In the common, any weaknesses the girls have in their own world go away such as Hinakos bad leg and they would transform with flamboyant sailor moon style costumes in order to take down enemies in this otherworld and be known as Reflectors. The game then plays out in chapters where each friend within the group overcomes their own emotional turmoil, goes into the alternative universe and take down the manifestations that link to the real world.
Battles use a classic turn-based system, with a timeline along the top of the screen showing which character will act next. Levelling up will allow the party to gain new Ether skills allowing additional combat features. Accumulating Ether allows characters to perform Overdrive, letting you queue and chain multiple skills in succession for massive combo damage. Combat is quite bare bones which is a shame as Blue Reflection does have quite a decent and deep story and lacks when it comes to exploration also.
While Blue Reflection Second Light is the second game which we know to have been released, it is recommended as the last in the collection to play as the other two games added in this quadrilogy are before the timeline of Blue Reflection Second Light. In Second Light you play as Ao Hoishizaki who finds herself in a mysterious school with no idea how she got there or what happened to her memories. She meets three other girls who are in the same situation and cannot remember their lives before arriving at the school. Again like the original Blue Reflection the girls find a strange alternate world know as the Common which is linked to their emotions and memories and by unlocking these and delving further into them they become aware of who they are and the world around them. Blue Reflection: Second Light replaces the first game’s, traditional turn-based system with a fast-paced, real-time Battle system. Characters will continuously obtain EP during combat and attacks will cost a certain amount of EP, this makes battles a bit more intensive when compared to the first Blue Reflection game.
Blue Reflection Ray is the second recommended title after Blue Reflection and while it is classed as a game, it is a short one at that and is more of a small anime with very few gameplay parts put in and by gameplay, you walk around from one part to the next and this can be completed in less than 2 hours. The recommendation though is all but short lived as Hiori and Ruka who are the protagonists search around for their memories and there is no context as to what is happening and why, it is essentially the final act of the anime series. There is no combat and when you find fragments you are given a brief screenshot and narration, unless you have watched the narration then Blue Reflection Ray ends up being an incoherent segment of a story unless you have watched the anime show.
Blue Reflection Sun is the last recommended title to play in the Blue Reflection Quadrilogy and was originally a Japan only mobile game. This has now been reworked into a single player game without any mobile gacha mechanics and takes place after the ending of the original Blue Reflection game. While it is cool to see a game reworked without gacha mechanics, much like Blue Reflection Ray, Blue Reflection Sun becomes short lived due to how short of an experience it is. The game is slightly longer than that of Blue Reflection Ray but not by much, at most you can squeeze 3 hours of gameplay and has actual battles now which Blue Reflection Sun adapts the fast-paced, real-time command and combo-heavy timeline battle system introduced in Blue Reflection: Second Light but any element of progression is lost due to how short the game is.
Overall Blue Reflection Quartet is the best way to play these game if you are wanting to play them, considering you do get the original Blue Reflection game and Second Light which are the more lengthier stories and with the original games having a higher price this is the best value of money way to play these games the games do also come with Quality of Life features which do not affect the game in any way in terms of cheats but a way to bypass the more mundane elements, this includes faster field movement, battle speed options and cutscene skipping aswell as an autosave functionality. Blue Reflection Ray and Blue Reflection Ray Sun are essentially some added bonus content and if you really wanted to give them a go they are there but not necessary for full enjoyment of the story.
A PlayStation 5 Review Code was provided by Koei Tecmo. This article is featured on OpenCritic
