Blue Reflection: Second Light is a satisfying sequel with great new features

Blue Reflection: Second Light is the follow up to Koei Tecmo and Gust JRPG drama about magic girls

Blue Reflection: Second Light follows a group of schoolgirls who have all somehow ended up in a mysterious place called The Faraway and have lost their memories.

The story mainly centres around protagonist Ao, who wakes up in The Faraway after seeing the message ‘Be Reborn’ on her phone while heading to school.

Waking up in an empty school she meets three other girls, Kokoro, Rena, and Yuki who are also in the same predicament.

After exploring her new surroundings Ao discovers The Faraway is filled with demons that she and the other girls have to battle with to survive.

Not only that, each discovers that they have rings on their fingers that allow them to summon weapons and transform.

As the girls begin to explore The Faraway, they discover fragments of their missing memories that help them to solve this strange mystery.

Blue Reflection: Second Light is a standalone story, but elements from the anime and first game appear as nice surprises for fans. The game is a slow starter, but after the first few chapters, the story starts to pick up the pace.

The story features great character development as the girls learn more about each other during this mystery.

The game dedicates a lot of time for players to invest in its characters through a mix of slice-of-life drama-filled episodes. Also, be prepared for a slew of heartfelt monologues, as these girls really love to reflect on life.

Blue Reflection: Second is a nice looking game mixing an anime aesthetic with Gust’s signature art style.

The main beauty for me lies within the battle animations which boasts slick camera angles for each move and brazen cinematics for each character.

Blue Reflection: Second Light has great background music that suits every different location and battle without getting too repetitive.

The game only comes with Japanese voice acting which may infuriate some as it’s getting a worldwide release and not everyone wants to constantly read subtitles, I don’t think this is a deal-breaker but clearly, this should have been worked into the game with its diverse audience.

Blue Reflection: Second Light gameplay is split into three main parts, exploration, battle and crafting.

Exploration will mainly take place on the school grounds and The Faraway, with new areas opening up as you progress through the story.

Each new area will pretty much serve as a dungeon, sporting a unique design whilst housing its native demons. These areas have seen a massive overhaul from the first game and feature a lot of depth that actually allows you to explore.

The game has included a new Stealth mode function, that lets you sense the enemies line of sight to help avoid them.

Using this function is mostly optional, but there are parts of the game that require you to progress using it.

Blue Reflection: Second Light is full of side quests that unlike the first game have more variety to them, than just always searching for an item.

Now players will have to craft new items, battle specific monsters and more. There are side quests that let you build extra school equipment.

The game also uses side quests to explore the characters’ backgrounds and even though these are mostly optional, they are full of great story moments for the fans.

Ao can also ask the other girls out on dates, which will allow her to learn more about their personalities in an attempt to deepen her connection with them.

But don’t fret all this emphasis on character engagement will reward players with Talent Points, which allow characters to learn new abilities and gain extra buffs.

The crafting system has also seen a massive upgrade and although it’s not as intense as the synthesising in Atelier Ryza 2. Here you need to find the material you need, which could be ingredients or fabrics and create new items.

The crafting feature is simple, with satisfying results that make the whole process a lot of fun. Combat is the main feature of Blue Reflection and the turn-base system feels really similar to Atelier Ryza 2.

The game has replaced the MP system with the new Ether system. Ether is a type of energy that makes up The Faraway, the girls use it as an energy source.

The game’s system works where your characters generate Ether as time passes, when they have enough they will move up the timeline and can attack.

The attacks each character can perform is determined by how much Ether they have built up, so essentially, more Ether allows you to execute stronger attacks.

Each attack builds up the combo meter which strengthens the following attack. The strategy here will be knowing what attacks have a long Ether wait time and measuring that against how much damage it does.

The main issue is that players will be able to simply spam weaker attacks to build their combo count quicker. This just stops players from experimenting with different attacks or thinking up different strategies.

Your party will feature a team of three who can all be swapped on the fly at any time or be controlled by the computer. When you gain more than three characters a support slot will be added to aid with items and buff.

As this is a Magical Girl game, all the characters can transform into their Reflector forms. When a character reaches a certain level in the game they will automatically transform and gain a massive boost in battle.

A great feature is that the boss battles switch from turn-based to real-time, after fulfilling certain conditions.

This stops those longer battles from becoming really repetitive. My main problem is that you can’t select who faces the boss in battle, the last person who hits it will be selected and the control system could really be tweaked to make it more streamlined.

Verdict

Blue Reflection: Second Light is a nice follow up with a lot of much-needed enhancements. I feel the series is still finding its footing, but currently, it’s striking the right balance between a great narrative and engaging gameplay, so I really look forward to where this series can go.