BLUE REFLECTION

It's definitely not for everyone, but if you know what to expect, accept it for what it is, and don't take it too seriously, then you're in for a treat!

Mechanically, it's a dumbed-down Persona game. It's a lighter, simpler, more relaxing Persona experience. On Normal mode, the enemies are so weak that it barely matters which stats and skills you invest in. If you're a JRPG fan that's more interested in gameplay mechanics and playing around with complicated systems, you're probably not going to have a good time unless you're able to keep your expectations in check. The RPG elements are.. serviceable. So why play it?

Because whoever was in charge of this game's style and art direction is basically Thomas Kinkade but Japanese. Visually, this game is so gorgeous you just wanna puke. They asked "how pretty should it be?" and all said "yes." If you have the right sense of humor (or even just morbid curiosity), this alone makes it worth it

Next, the music is 10/10. I'm not sure I've seen any other piece of media whose soundtrack fits so appropriately. The battle music is so girly and so dweeby, and the calmer tracks suit the game's tone perfectly (mellow and, again, PRETTY)

The story and characters are fine. It's anime, so the stories are kind of stupid, and the characters are tropey. Outside of battle, this game's tone and pace is so light and mellow, so, even though you'll get much more interesting characters and stories in Persona (or just other games in general, if I'm honest), I think that would be too disruptive to the game's relaxing, mellow vibe

My biggest problem with this game is that there aren't any good options for toning down the graphics. Only my newest, nicest laptop was just barely able to run this

I'm glad I grabbed this on sale because it's a really special game with a strong identity. Very pleasant!

A simple but still fun magical girl jrpg that is equal parts charming and chill. The game is more character focused than story but it does pick up story wise towards the end and the gameplay loop is straightforward but enjoyable enough. I loved the character designs and environments although they are very limited in assets and scale. This is an easy recommendation for me although the price tag is on the high side.

This is a budget kinetic visual novel with some dungeon crawling on the side between the chapters.

The story is alright, the real value is the slice of life part where you make friends and get to know them via side activities. There's a rudimentary dating system, but there's no romance, only friendship. Unfortunately, it's all formulaic, and each girl goes through the same exact activities (except for two, in late game).

The RPG elements boil down to stat improvements tied to story progression, which in turn unlock skills at certain thresholds. Dungeon crawling is randomized, in that you get a small set of areas that get randomly selected and connected each time you visit it. Enemies and gathering spots drop random materials that could be used for usable item crafting, and for skill enhancement. None of which is essential, but if you're going for 100%, then expect a lot of boring grinding. Boss fights are a highlight, but there's only a handful of them.

And there's a lot of fan service, from panty shots to wet clothing simulation, regular bathing, swimsuit events, etc.

Don't buy if you want to play mouse and keyboard. Controls are unintuitive and difficult to manage. The VN part and characters are alright but overall not worth the frustration of the poor interface and battle gameplay.

The only good thing about BR1 was the character development through the ''invite'', good music and the boss battles . Apart from that, the game quickly became repetitive and boring, not to mention that the story only gets good in chapter 6 onwards (12 chapters) and we only have 3 characters for the rest of the game.

If you're planning on playing it because of yuri/shoujo ai, this game isn't for you. It's focused on friendship, not romance.

This game has a lot of fan service, if that's your cup of tea, but the American version is censored in the zoom and lower camera angle.

I only recommend it on sale because of the music, interesting characters and boss battles.

Beautiful Gust game. You are a magical girl having fun with your friends and with that well... not everything is as it seems. An emotional story about nostalgia, empathy and emotional growth.

* Story 7.3/10 - Emotional Story, great bonds.
* Characters 8.2/10 - Everyone is so precious, cute girls doing cute things
* Pacing 6/10 - It took too long for the combat system to fully open up, then it's over too fast after you get the best fragments. Grinding for character events is a bit annoying as the side stories can be boring.
* Combat 7/10 - It's solid GUST turn-based combat. It's too easy even on hard. Overdrive is a fun concept, but I wish your "super" skill when fully utilizing it would unlock sooner.
* Graphics 6/10 - It's GUST graphics, don't expect flashy graphics, but it doesn't look ugly and the designs are amazing.

Overall: 7/10 - The game is a solid 7, bonus points for Gust fans.

Notes:
* Every achievement can be unlocked in one playthrough easily.
* There is a NG+, but it doesn't offer anything new.
* Check out how to increase resolution beyond 1080p.
* P R O T E C C Yuzu and Lime
* None of the DLC is needed, skip it all and save the money.

100% complete on hard mode in 48 hours (I tend to play games slowly, probably could be done in 30 hours or less).

Pros:
Music - Not as good as most Atelier games, but still pretty good. Has a different sound compared to other Gust games. Music transitions during boss battles.

Unusual enemy design - particularly some of the bosses.

Okay:
Main story - Pretty decent, though is mostly predictable past the prologue with a little twist towards the end of the game.

Area design - Some areas have some nice visuals, but the school doesn't feel fully realized and the other areas never feel thematically connected.

Battle system - All characters take turns based on a timeline, with the bizarre caveat that enemies are shown on their own timeline. This makes it difficult to tell the exact order at a glance and instead you always need to check the numbers underneath the portraits. The main unique addition here is "Ether", which controls passive recovery, timeline speedup, defending, and Overdrive, the ability to use multiple attacks in one turn. Unfortunately, the main way of gathering Ether is to choose the Ether Charge option when a character's turn comes up. This option recovers MP and Ether while the character is still moving on the timeline. However, putting one or more characters on what is basically standby when you only have access three characters hurts. Enemies are also easy enough that there is no need to push the system to the max. You could probably even get away without using the move-powerup tools called in-game as Fragments. Battling regular enemies is only for gathering materials.

Cons:
The scope of this game is tiny, with a budget that is even smaller. (I am talking about something that is probably even smaller than, say, Soul Hackers 2.) It is basically at, or even smaller than, what you could expect from an indie game. This amounts to the school and four other places being the only playable areas. The 2D backgrounds in the side story scenes appear to be photos that are lightly edited and run through a filter. The number of different enemies is very small, with each having four variables with texture and slight model changes. Most bosses are fought twice.

Side stories - Most characters have something of an arc in their side stories, but the small scope makes them all pretty shallow. Most have an arc that kind of feels at odds with how they are portrayed in main story scenes. One character is part of the cooking club, but the concluding event in her arc involves a rap battle. If there was space for more character events it could have worked as representing different aspects of a character, but the game just does not have the time to waste on that.

Crafting - Very simple. Item A + Item B + Item C = Item D. No interesting systems like in Atelier.

Graphic issues - Ambient occlusion seems to be partially broken, with leg-shaped shadows hanging off the sides of characters. Godrays also seem to not scale to resolution and show pixelation in some shots. Depth of field works, but breaks in certain cases and cannot be fully turned off.

Fanservice - Pool scenes, bath scenes, changing room scenes, showering scenes, wet semi-transparent shirt scenes, and also, onsen scenes (though this one does not show much of anything). There really is not any justification for these scenes. (Ar tonelico had better reasoning for the fanservice, but even that was pretty unnecessary.)

A pretty cozy game. You make friends, you help people solve their insecurities about their self image, their relationships, their future, and you save the world with the power of emotions. The game depicts positive and healthy female relationships, and I found it sweet. I fell in love with the main characters.

The story starts slower and builds up to what I found to be a very emotional and precious ending. There is the usual anime sci-fi stuff, but the emotional core of the story is about human connections. I think it's really worth it to see it to the end, even if you just watch the cutscenes online.

I'm not the biggest fan of turn-based combat, but it was serviceable, if a bit repetitive. Although, I think it becomes more interesting towards the end when all systems are unlocked and the battles are a bit more difficult. The difficulty is adjustable though, so you don't have to deal with difficult battles if you don't want to.

There is quite a lot of fanservice, which gave me some eyebrow raising moments. There are also quite a lot of typos. These things can be distracting, but I didn't find them detracting from the overall experience.

Gorgeous game. Critters are extremely well designed, and the animations are quite lavish. The writing, in places, had me in tears. And then facepalming at some quite cringe scenes that... like, we don't need shower scenes when the characters are in high school.

It's got a unique approach to levelling, there is no XP. You get your levelups as some quest and milestone rewards. No equipment, just a sort of materia system for bolstering each and every spell/ability. The only thing you get from combat are some crafting items to make your materia stronger, or to make out-of-combat consumables that buff stats temporarily, with some permanent ones, but the grind for those was... severe, and you won't need the extra power. This is not a hard game. You're going to ignore 80% of the abilities and you're going to destroy most encounters in a couple of attacks.

There's a lot of... repetition. Your incursions into the magical realm will feel quite same-y, because while there's a decent variety of maps, they're just random dreamlike locations to bumble through until progress happens. And you'll be dragging your friends to little scenes to fill in their meters as you get to know them.

But the characters are all very different and likable. Mostly. Primary theme of coming to terms with emotions... I found most of the characters quite relatable as different presentations of autistic individuals. But I have a bias in that direction. My playtime is rather higher than actual, as I spent a lot of time paused. NFI how long a normal playthrough should take.

I'm giving it a thumbs up for having more good than bad, for doing some very unique things... but I must warn that it's got some cringe and gets really repetitive. Oh, and there's just *one* time there's an un-warned point of no return. Final day, when you're getting encouragement from everyone, use the fast-travel to get to the science club, and do the rooftop dead last.

This game looks damn good for 2017 I'm impressed

This is an absolutely wonderful game with real friendships and an absolutely banger soundtrack.

I mostly enjoyed this game a lot! Hinako is a hilarious protagonist and I got obsessed with all the other characters too, I found them really cute and entertaining. The story starts off pretty mild and casual but gets quite intense towards the end (I sobbed). I also like how it combines (more or less) realistic daily life with magic and action and PLENTY of mentally unstable girls lmao :>
The gameplay is fairly simple (even on hard mode) which I believe some find boring but personally I enjoyed that I didn't have to stress too much during battles lol yet still had fun. While the boss fights are more challenging (and take significantly longer than normal battles) but are still managable with carefulness and strategy. The grinding during missions occasionally got annoying/tiring though.

The soundtrack is awesome, the visuals are beautiful as well, though in my opinion many cutscenes suffer from wasted potential due to being way too simple/empty than they could've been with the pretty art/animation the game offers at times :(

I'd say it's very nice overall, however definitely not for everyone since despite enjoying it, I can totally understand that it's likely boring for many who prefer complex gameplays and/or less "plain" plot!

So after completing game on steam deck getting all achievements I can say this game was fairly enjoyable game. Only problem for me is certain scenes I couldn't see like the ending it's just like a screen as if it's looking for a signal with static on the bottom corner.