Review for Blue reflection. Game for PC, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 30/03/2017 The version for PC came out on 26/09/2017 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 20/05/2019
Probably many of the players born in the late 80s and early 90s have seen their childhood marked by Magical Girls without even knowing what they were: from the immortal Sailor Moon, continuing with the most recent DoReMi and Winx, this type of fantasy has always been extremely popular in the East.
It is therefore not surprising that Gust, struggling with the creation of a new IP d of the JRPG genre, made Blue reflection a title starring the "magical girls".
The plot of Blue Reflection seems to want to condense within itself every possible convention of the genre: Hinako Shirai is a young student who has just moved to school, a talented dancer torn from the stage by a bad accident, but who sees hope reborn when two mysterious twins, her classmates, give her a ring that can transform her into a Reflector.
They ask her to join their cause to save the world from emotion-devouring demons, assuring her that once the Sephirot (this is the name of the evil creatures) is defeated she will be allowed to make a wish and therefore her dream of becoming an étoile can finally come true. .
If a narrative sector without flashes of originality is however acceptable, the same cannot be said of the supporting characterization: starting from the protagonist, up to the last of the girls, every single character encountered by the player - all strictly female - fails to be memorable, precisely because of a stereotyping often present in oriental products, in which the "roles" within the stories are always very distinct, but which in this case reaches an exasperated level due to which it is practically It is possible to easily predict what the various girls are going to say.
To this is added the cumbersome presence of numerous intersperses between one chapter and another of the story, in which Hinako and her friends will dedicate their free time to deepen (more or less) their s in purely slice of life events; the idea itself is not bad, indeed, the beautiful settings and good Japanese dubbing make the purity and lightheartedness of the events very well, but the difficulty in empathizing with the protagonists risks transforming all this into an unsustainable succession of real dead times.
In reality, the interactions between the characters are much more important than you might think at first: perhaps to avoid excessive imbalance in a title that does not offer who knows what difficulty as a gameplay, the developers have decided to prevent the player from farming excessive, making the battles with the demonic creatures of the Common (this is the world name of the dimension of human emotions) only release crafting materials and no experience points. The only way to raise the level of the Magical Girls is, in fact, to make Hinako take part in social events - called Bound Episodes - and gradually increase your affinity with each girl.
The management of the social component winks too much at the recent Persona 5, with a text chat and dating system heavily inspired by the Atlus title, but without a tenth of the depth and freedom of choice. The best answer in conversations is always, practically obvious e the "two outings" will not consume the playing time, so that the player has full freedom to develop the with each young person to the maximum without any limits or gameplay difficulties.
The combat system is a classic turn-based JRPG; the three magical girls have pleasant aesthetics and beautiful animations, same goes for the creatures to be faced, perhaps not memorable in design but certainly well made, boss in the first place. Increasing the stats of the protagonists leads to unlocking new and increasingly powerful abilities, able to damage a single enemy or area and possibly "slow down" the opponents, allowing the heroines to attack more frequently. The skills are numerous and there is no lack of weaknesses and resistances of creatures to various types of attack; it is also possible to consume a certain percentage of Reflection to perform two consecutive turns and combine offense and defense in a reasoned way, to which must be added the customization of the various skills with the insertion of Fragments within the available slots, to increase their effectiveness or add side effects.
On paper, therefore, we speak of a combat system fun, colorful and full of tutus, transformations and almost naive necklines: so bad for the almost non-existent difficulty of the battles and the extreme repetitiveness of each main mission, which accompanied by an insipid plot risks making the continuation in the about twenty hours of adventure. Last, but not least, the Blue Reflection framerate is tragically unstable, consistently below 30fps on consoles and even with mini freezes during certain animations, especially those of the attacks performed by Lime.
Blue Reflection is not a high-budget title and even less ambitious: the care in the aesthetic and musical realization of the environments should therefore be appreciated, as well as the attempt to create a recognizable design for a completely new IP linked to a much hated genre. as loved as that of the Magical Girls. The basic problem of the game is its fishing to the right and it lacks mechanics already seen in much more successful products, first and last, the excellent Persona 5, but simplifying them to the bone in a surprising way.
We therefore find a light version, without gluten, salt, lactose and animal derivatives of a delicious cake, which tries to imitate the flavorful aspect of its original version, without being able to replicate the taste and with an almost equivalent cost. If you are physically addicted to the Magical Girls and intolerant of Phantom Thieves, Blue Reflection could make you lose your mind; for all the others this new, delicate title is simply avoidable.
► Blue Reflection is a JRPG-RPG type game developed by Gust Co. Ltd. and published by Koei Tecmo for PC, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 30/03/2017 The version for PC came out on 26/09/2017 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 20/05/2019
