Gust was previously the game studio I went to when I wanted great character writing (Atelier series) or insanely wild ideas (Ar series) in my JRPGs.
Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. This game, along with Gust's other recent releases, such as Atelier Lydie and Nights of Azure, has convinced me that they're no longer great writers and that they can only rehash old ideas poorly.Gust was previously the game studio I went to when I wanted great character writing (Atelier series) or insanely wild ideas (Ar series) in my JRPGs.
Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. This game, along with Gust's other recent releases, such as Atelier Lydie and Nights of Azure, has convinced me that they're no longer great writers and that they can only rehash old ideas poorly.
Though at least Blue Reflection has some positives and isn't total garbage. Let's get to the good part first.
It a game about high school girls dealing with self-identity and emotions in their school society. For the most part, everyone is concerned about their image and what other girls think of them, based on their actions, looks, skills, hobbies, etc. This part of the game is done well enough, but there's not much variety in the different things that each girl experiences.
You deal with these emotions by basically going into a girl's mind, magical girl style, and beating up monsters or picking up items until the target girl no longer has any emotional issues. The big chore in this game is that there's a large number of side-quest girls that you must complete to get through the main story.
These side quests revolve around a girl standing in place and going crazy, giving you a line or two about her situation, such as "I'm ashamed of my body and people think I'm fat," going into her subconscious and defeating an enemy, then exiting and the girl giving you another line, such as "I was silly and shouldn't put so much thought into what other people think of me."
Due to the number of these side quests that you're forced to complete, I eventually got tired of reading their few lines of dialogue. This could have been so much better..
The main quest situations are basically the same, but are better written, longer, and involve the protagonist directly. And while they're not very interesting in most cases, this is the best part of the game in my opinion.
Technically, the game isn't good and is the worst that I've experienced from Gust. Issues include typos, non-centered text, words wrapping to the next line mid-word, and battle animations pausing randomly. The actual environment isn't much better: The school is small and uninteresting with no teachers or non-student NPCs. The world inside of girls' emotions is low quality and small. There's basically no exploration there since each time you enter, you're put into a small random map, with each map only containing items, monsters, and a crafting station.
Crafting isn't worth mentioning, other than saying it's the most basic crafting system you could possibly put in a game. Yeah, this came from the Atelier people (the most extensive crafting system I've ever seen in a game).
The battle mechanics aren't good. Going through the game on Normal mode, my party never died. There's not much of a challenge or strategy besides deciphering the large number of skills that have almost identical descriptions to determine which ones are worthwhile. After you figure this out, you'll likely only use 2 attack skills (out of 25 or so) for each of your characters for the entire game. But at least it's flashy with lots of lights and colors to keep the kids entertained.
The main plot isn't very good. Early in the game, you might assume that it has something profound say about the protagonist's situation (an injured leg that prevents her from doing ballet), but you'd be disappointed. It's all about defeating demons with power of friendship. The protagonists's situation is never addressed. You just beat the big bad guy who is trying to destroy the world/humanity for typical JRPG reasons.
The game will work best for people who are going through similar self-identity situations in school, or who want to re-experience something like that. Well, I suppose the other audience are those who like high school girls in short skirts - Oh, did I mention their tops go see-through when they get wet? Yeah, that's the best that Gust could come up with this time around..… Expand
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