Blue Reflection Second Light - Review

Genre: RPG
Developer/publisher: Gust/KOEI
Platform: PS4, Switch, PC.
Official Site: https://blue-reflection.com/secondlight/uk/
Release date: 2021-11-09.

 

Well you know it was coming... but I delayed playing this game for a bit.

Prerelease I have seen some... less than positive comments I tried my best to ignore them

cuz i'm only really here to see how it ties all together. The anime wasn't the best either...

and I wonder what the hell gust even tried to achieve with this multi-media project? cuz it seems

like cash was tight or they just didn't have the time to do better? maybe that too.

It also didn't do that well in japan, blurays cancelled and lacklustre sales.

There's supposed to be a mobile game too but idk what happened to that.

If you're still wondering if should play the first game and watch the anime...  not really unless you

have time and want to see more Hiori/Mio or experience Hinako's adventure but its not a must.

Anyway... like I said in my post about the anime ray the characters and to some extend the story

 really are BR's strong point, if you want a quick and dirty TL;DR for the most part I enjoyed it

but this game isn't the best either its nice in its own way.

Pro's

- Story&character are interesting to learn more of.

- Pacing is okay, feels a bit too relaxed at times though,

- Decent amount of optional content.

- Music is great.

 

Con's

- Requests that require stealth are quite annoying.

- One on One battles controls feel off, relies too much on perfect timing.

(Its interesting but idk why they decided to suddenly turn it into a QTE/action game....)

- Animation in combat, its hard to see what's going on while having to watch turn bar as well.

- Dating part while cute might get redundant and there are many.

- Was it really necessary to force an entire NG+ run for one more scene?!

 -

 

I like the OP movie, song is calm and sets the mood for the game!

too bad it only plays once after you finish the prologue, maybe it also plays

if you linger on the title screen but I didn't bother to check.

Storywise it still offers the same type of emotional/chacracter development the first game

and the anime to some extend is known for so all in all its still blue reflection

really I think the character stuff like getting their memories back is the best part.

The first half of the game was pretty relaxing for the most part and felt like there was no rush

to go and do things which in a way is kinda bad? its very laidback that just playing

one or two hours was enough and come back to it whenever I felt like progressing.

Sometimes I do think this is nice, in most rpg's you always have to save or protect something

but in this game they're just trying to survive while getting back their memories

obviously the fighting/protect part came in too but overall it felt different from other rpg's

even the first blue reflection game which was more sailormoon-ish than this.

I liked the general flow of the story, but it did remind me of the persona  4/5

cuz the dungeons are character focused and you slowly get to see the big picture.

However I fear this is gonna make or break the game for people, this game is a slow burn

and at times it feels more like a character game cuz the story takes a while to get going. 

The one time I was annoyed was at the end of ch10's boss rush cuz there was no rhyme or reason

to be even fighting those exact same enemies again, there wasn't even any dialogue for it. >_>

 I liked the majority of this game more than I expected even though I don't like the combat

at all and think that the original blue reflection had more charming UI/menu design.

I did always think that the original blue reflection was kinda open-ended

and that there was something missing maybe they did it on purpose? and now we

got the anime ray and this game second light which continues from that.

There's more content and subevents don't feel as static anymore as well unfortunately like most

gust games sub events can seem endless as they appear even and trying to see all date

or do all request once they show up can feel overwhelming.

Anyway its not a bad game but... its also not the greatest either its just okay!

Many times you want developer to do more with an IP and they don't... 

well gust did try here and i'll give them credit for it! I mean the anime might not

have been the most appealing to watch but this game was nice to slowly go through

its just that depending whether or not you have the energy for a second run

its okay to just youtube the additional scene when you're done like it makes sense storywise

why they did it, however there's not enough new content to make it worthwhile.

and I wanted to add that it could ruin the experience by turning it into a slog.

I remember BR1 being more like oh well all's well that ends well but then this game

comes crashing in like bitch hold up you ain't got nothing on me! in the end

while I enjoyed most of the journey I still feel a little mixed about this entry.

I totally understand why some people are pissed or annoyed... because this game has a few

questionable design choices archaic even and I can't really recommend it

except as a character game and hey maybe you'll like the combat too

but its not really a typical rpg the story just doesn't allow it to be.

7/10

More rambles after the jump.

  Character wise Ao, Rena, Kokoro and the others are interesting to get to know more of!

Though it took a while for me to like Ao but I like her fascination with shinigami's.....

for better or for worse she kinda turns into a harem protagonist. >_>;

Uta remained a questionable addition but this game adds more depth to her character so that is nice

cuz I honestly had a hard time understanding her in the anime, I do want to say that in the

case of Hiori/Mio their heartscape was shorter but that was mostly because we already know

about their situation in the anime and honestly with all the uguu'ing between them

I am glad it didn't drag on. I don't dislike them its just that we had enough of that elsewhere.

Shiho's connection to a certain someone felt like it was pretty much a way to bring that

someone back but other than that I had no problems with it. Honestly I didn't really like Uta

before this game and would've liked to see Niina as well but alas

at the very least I came to understand Uta in this game and she has become likeable.

Hinako from the original game is also back but like the other characters except Ao has amnesia.

When too many chara's have amnesia I tend to worry but they did handle it pretty well.

Over the course of the game became pretty obvious to my why the subtitle is TIE

because of the characters having ties to each others which in turn connects to the story.

(I know in ENG its second light, probably cuz its more marketable but

they still say it on the title screen, gust knew what they were doing.)

 Gonna be weird but part of this games whole finding themselves in another world/place

reminded me of digimon, the girls might not have a cute pet at their side but they had eachother.

Why digimon? there's a place with traffic markers you get to explore I guess...

it really did make me nostalgic of the old anime haha.

 Also of you like maids and/or swimsuits you may want to buy the season pass.

I really liked Rena's maid costume. 

 

This time the menu design is more simple, like I said before I miss the one from BR1.

This might turn ranty but I didn't really like the combat all that much.

Combat... seems its reused from Ryza except while in that game the butt was the saving grace...

here its not so much and it looks really awkward. In a way maybe it lives up to the original

but this isn't really turned based anymore time only stops when you select a skill.

The timeline is also like an MP bar meaning it allows them to use different more powerful skills...

 Honestly the combat just felt weird and clunky and the camera work was awful. Sorry

its just not really fun to me having to watch the turn bar like a hawk?! cuz its hard

to pay attention to everything on screen for some reason. Oh well most of the time I ended up

spam L2/R2 and X so you don't miss your turns. Gust... WHY?! why did it come to this?

There's also a one on one vs the boss but this targets a random party member

this turns the game into a bimbo action/QTE game and boy do the controls feel floaty

often I'd try to dodge or counter but it doesn't work and they get hit anyway...

there are fragments to help with that but idk at around chapter 6 I just said if they die they die

and i'll just revive them, I also stopped playing on normal but that was because I finished ch6

yet missed locations in that heartscape which you have to get before you finish the boss

so I replayed it on easy and never went back except for the ether tide trophy cuz there is

no real difference and I was tired of having to heal so much, i don't want to imagine

what the unlockable harder difficulty is like.

The combat in general also takes a while to reach its potential, I didn't really like

the way you transform in this game either seems like its just attack a few times and it'll happen?

no special command to press the number next to the char just needs to reach 3 IIRC.

I think Hinako had it good in the first game being able to transform right off the bat and all.

Ao and co have to work for it...  speaking of Hinako pretty sure she's the fastest cuz unless delayed she's the first one to transform. Anyway in the beginning you won't be transforming too much

except boss and if you do the battle will most likely be over as you do, so now I hope you understand why I say it takes a while to reach its potential. Sadly in this game I don't have oneitis, I really liked

Rena but her abilities just aren't on par with others, like Shiho's healing is a necessity and doesn't

compare to Rena's bimbo heal. So my main team ended up being Ao, Shiho and whoever else

I found useful to bring along guess this game did it right, atleast ones you don't use

lvl up as well unlike TMS...... so you can still use anyone again if you want to.

There's ether tide aka the characters special skill unfortunately this is unlocked not just by lvling

you have to beat a training dummy which is completely optional! I forgot about this

and never used it till ch10. Gust why oh why did it have to be like this?!

you also can only trigger it by having a combo of 15 and 3000 ether on the timeline

which isn't too bad but its kinda sad there's not much chances to use them on. I'm sorry

but honestly the combat is just a mess... that by the time it fully works its the end of the game

with little to no enemies to test it on, there's a dlc island but nothing fancy cuz gust loves

to reuse models and not in the clever way just recolor or straight up copy and pasta.

 

In terms of graphics its good but again i'm not big on it, gotta admit most of the heartscapes

look great and during ch2 I saw the school during the night and the sky was pretty.

The models itself were alright however I thought they were kinda stiff  in combat you'll notice it

during the 1 on 1 segments and/or during transformation, some transformations do look better

than others like Ao's is kinda eh but I like Kokoro,Rena,Shiho and Hinako.

I do have to say that the cutscenes are very well done. Music is really good though, it fits the

vibe of the game really well and the battle themes are catchy so can't complain about that!

In terms of volume the sequel has more to do just not right away cuz just like the combat

taking awhile to reach its potential you're going to have to progress the story regardless

to be able to do more things like make food or building fun stuff for the school.

The crafting part is just bimbo atelier, though I wish the items to make to remove obstacles

you only had to make once, I see little reason to bring multiples along, guess they're fragile. >_>;

I remember the first game you could hang with the other girls but it was just that, here

you could actually make them date Ao for no reason and you go and rebuild the school

they end up living at in that world. Its a plus if you enjoy shippy yuri-stuff.

 However it can get a bit cheesy and redundant to see everyone like Ao so much

it can get to the point of ugh just kiss already?! Also I don't mind shipping but I already have a ship 

for Hinako&Saiki and Hiori&Ruka from the previous game and anime so part of me thinks

that it was kinda forced even if its still innocent cute girls doing cute things stuff.

If I ship anyone with AO it would probably be Kokoro, Shiho or Uta, early on Rena too!

hahaha unfortunately there is one obvious ship in this game so it immediately feels wrong (for me

atleast) to ship those two with Ao so dating those two after chapter 8 became hard.

 Yea its just a game...but when you explicately have them state their feelings for each other

in main story dialogue and have them do otherwise in optional scenes it feels wrong.

Part of me thinks that the date scenario's were written by someone not involved with the story

but yea if you want Ao to have a harem, enjoy I guess?

...maybe go date you know who instead Yuki?

 My one complaint about the date stuff is that they are forced to walk, now I understand why cuz its supposed to be romantic but having to walk to talk topics usually a mile away from the landmark from a gameplay perspective is a pain! at the very least you can insta-travel to the date destination

but later in the game I stopped caring about talk topics cuz there are so many dates to sit through

and if you don't do them the chara's don't get stronger, they do earn stats with lvl's but idk

why they couldn't just earn talent points on lvl up. That would solve the Ao barely earns any too...

apparently they fixed it but Ao will randomly get max talent and 9999tp even on first playthrough.

Not sure if that is a bug because I bought the DLC but it took my by surprise during Kirara's chapter. 

I don't want to imagine what it looks like if you didn't do dates as they appear and do them at the end.

At times I felt overwhelmed by dates and requests that I'd be too tired to continue the story for

the day well at the very least one cannot say that this game has no optional content!

 

There are also little scenes in the heartscapes that are actually missable but if you

explore thoroughly the first time you're there you'll find them. A little annoyance of this

is you have to find all locations in the heartscapes before you beat the boss there! for most

you can find all just by fully exploring but later on such as in ch6 the location event points

become super tiny and you literally have to hug the spot. Its best to keep your eyes open

for any unique spots on the map or go to a site named barrelwisdom.

If you're not concerned with trophies or are on switch I would say to not worry too much

and just enjoy the game. Its weird but sometimes this game does warn there is a boss coming

and other times they don't... as well as letting you explore the heartscape after the fight

or instantly warping you back to the school. With all this in mind best to keep a save in the second

or third heartscape floors before you go finish it in case you do want to collect them all.

 

Some events that come from the development stuff is also nice but some things made me

facepalm a little, like an outdoor study session when they don't actually have any reason to study... leading to cute scene(s) they sure are diligent huh? but its supposed to be summer vacation too so who's gonna study when there's no need or teachers to tell them to? I wouldn't. I know summer class is a thing but again no teachers! at least there's plenty of other fun little events to come from putting

stuff up still idk that one might have been the dumbest cuz some don't even have all memories

so how would they know what to study Ao even said they didn't have their books.

 

 Gotta have to give a soft fuck you to the stealth missions though... the first one wasn't too bad

but its sometimes hard to see how far the enemies can see and if the mission has you going across

half the map and you get spot anywhere you have to restart...... which was just tedious.

Good thing is there are enough requests that you can actually ignore the ones involving stealth!

The stealth mission with Kokoro in Shiho's heartscape was the one where I really saw

how much of a pain any future ones were gonna be. I guess its better than it simply

being  a fetch quest but I don't really see the point of having to sneak in the side quests

for the one in the story it made sense but the quests? not really... just annoying.

If there's ever another blue reflection game stealth missions can go take a hike...

 

 Overall I think Blue Reflection Second Light was a nice game to come back to every now and then

though I wonder why gust recently has such an obsession with summer and the memories made.

Ryza wasn't bad at it either, this game gets a little weird but it gets to the point it was trying to make.

Even though its supposed to be relaxing the emotional/psychological themes of characters and such

it can be a little draining but for the most part there was no pressure to explore the heartscape.

My sessions with this game tended to be short regardless it was only near the end they got longer.

Unfortunately even though it makes sense storywise you're gonna have to play the same game

twice for one more scene at the end, I think replaying a game is all fine and dandy if you want to

but locking 1 single scene behind  15+ hours of scenes you have watched isn't exactly fun which

kinda turned this game into a trophy cleanup boss rush...  so either go do that or youtube it.

While the flow of the game is okay, the only time I got annoyed was at the end of chapter 10

where we were supposed to go gather everyones feelings in their heartscapes which is fine

but they had us fight every single boss as well, this dragged the game on longer than it should

there wasn't even a reason to fight them & every cutscene in the respective heartscapes

was like 10 seconds with no dialogue they just put the same bosses there not even reskinned.😓

This is what I call padding and/or bad game design... oh well atleast I got all of the ether tide trophies

but idk that felt really lazy to me even though the final dungeon and last boss was pretty cool/fitting.

 

Gust's games always had their charms BR second light isn't an exception but 

compared to what you come here for it could be a pass. If you're more of the cute girls doing

cute things while figuring things out at their own pace this might be worth looking into.

Honestly I can't describe this game in any other way...

You know gust isn't really the same as they were years ago and I still question why this game

and the anime is a thing cuz it really does feel like one of those we didn't ask for it sequel

but got it anyway! i'm not even sure what's gonna happen to Blue reflection SUN the mobage

or how that ties into all this sigh this is turning into a mess isn't it?

Maybe its better if you don't think too hard about the plot... cuz many times I wondered

while watching the anime and playing this game; where are we going with this?! even at the end

of the first playthrough I was like wait that's it? this game doesn't even have credits?!

Who worked on this game man?! credit your staff for god's sake.

Apparently this is a bug that it doesn't show the credits... did they even Q&A this game

some already got fixed by the time I started but this and the Ao suddenly got max TP really shows...

6or7/10 

(If I was harsh i'd give it a 6/10 but I did enjoy most of the game...)

Okay enough rambling! I think for what its worth Blue Reflection Second Light is okay

and for the most part I had a good time! i'm just not too sure how to recommend it

but like I mentioned if you want something like a laid-back character driven magical girl adventure

this might be good! I think I liked it more than Ryza 2... maybe cuz the cast is so endearing

and fun to see them interact and/or ship with Ao. Sadly I can't give it too high a score

and that's because of the combat plus the fact to beat the whole game twice

even tho it makes sense for a 20 second extra scene with your favourite girl. >_>';

Next game I am looking forward to is the hamefura otome game and Bilshana FD...

Atelier Sophie 2 looks good but not sure on it being  a midquel oh well atleast

people won't be having to play the entire mysterious series to get to it.