BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light is an excellent JRPG.
JRPGs are a world all in themselves. There are a ton of games were to choose from, that range from the masterfully well-crafted beautiful art pieces to mediocre generic fantasy by the numbers adventure. So, finding a decent game in a sea of options can be as hard as fatiguing. Thus, when a game stands out is generally for good reasons, and BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light has the potential to become a cult classic in the genre.
The sequel that feels a bit more like a soft reboot for the series of the original Blue Reflection offers an interesting take on the genre, o the magical girl trope, and offers some narrative nuance that manages to perfectly balance human relations, the power of friendship, and an engaging story, that feels both anchored to reality as well as balls to the wall fantastic. If you are into JRPGs, but don’t want to sink into the ultra-heavy stuff, but don’t want to be babysitting either, then BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light might just be the right game for you. Let’s see why.
First things first, BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light is about a group of magical girls that are mysteriously transported to an alternate dimension because of reasons. You control Ao, a girl that must attend remedial school and is disillusioned with life itself. She is transported to a mysterious school in a different reality and meets a group of charming, varied, and very fleshed out girls, who, in the beginning, don’t even know why they are there or how they came to that school in the first place. And, yes, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. These are anime girls, heavily sexualized anime girls, but no, the game does not cater exclusively to the male gaze.
Contrary to what the swimming suits might tell you, the game provides enough nuance regarding interpersonal relationships, offers a way to cultivate actual friendship, lets you get to know the characters in depth through human interaction, and manages to show a relatable set of characters facing their problems, but bonding due to their friendship and the circumstances they face together, that one might think the themes and storylines are catered for a female audience. After all, every playable character is female and there is no male insight.
Of course, some romantic undertones could make one think this is just a case of yuri in disguise, but nothing regarding the interaction between characters feels forced, out of place, or cringeworthy. On the contrary. And, yes, you can go on dates with the girls, but they are more like dates between girlfriends and not girlfriends.
Let’s focus a bit on the narrative side of the game, which is one of its strongest suits. No, you don’t need to have played the first game to understand fully this one. Without spoiling anything, the game centers around a new cast of characters and, while there are some nods to the original entry in the series, these are explained within Second light. It even feels as if the studio behind the game decided to create a sort of soft reboot in which newcomers would be welcomed, but previous fans would also feel like there’s a payoff for having played the first game.
The story of BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light unfolds beautifully and the emotional investments you make during the first half are panned out and rewarded handsomely during the second half of the game, which can be beaten in around 30 hours. There is even a dungeon system in which you can explore the heart shapes of each girl, which are gateways for unlocking their memories and understanding just what happened in the first place, and help you understand the full picture. It is a clever way to reinforce the bonds between the girls while telling you the story through gameplay elements.
Now, BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light is a JRPG, not a visual novel nor a dating sim. And while narrative devices and their plot are very important, the actual gameplay is also very well achieved. The game uses a system called exhilarating real-time battles, which makes the combat very fast-paced, dynamic, and engaging. Here, mana, stamina, or whatever you might call it, is called ether, and it is used to perform attacks. The more time it passes, the more ether each character replenishes but the more you use it, the faster you get ether back.
Your party in BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light, consisting of three combatant characters and one support, off-screen but inside the battle itself as they provide buffs or special attacks, can be controlled manually or you can choose to enable auto-attacks, which makes it even faster for combats to resolve. Next to your characters’ stats, you will see a bar, which seems like a timeline, in which avatars of your characters will advance as they receive ether.
You can choose to save ether to perform more powerful attacks o spend ether in your basic attacks as soon as they are available. But you need to consider that, the more you attack, the better your combos will be, and the faster your ether will continue to accumulate.
This in turn can disincentivize players to opt for the more costly attacks to favor a bigger combo, which renders all other attacks kind of pointless. There are, however, two instances that compensate for this blunder. First, your gear also levels up during the battle, and once you reach level 3, gained through attacks, you can transform into your magical girl form, a la Sailor moon, with a fancy outfit that might be reminiscent of the likes of Card Captors Sakura.
Then, during boss battles, you can toggle one on one combat in real-time whenever the boss’s health reaches a certain threshold. You will control the character that hit last, and although frenetic in both pacing and animation, these encounters feel very agile and, well, exhilarating.
BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light is an excellent JRPG that although doesn’t hit every right note to become an instant classic or part of the hall of fame in the genre, for instance, its music, character designs, and creatures are not that memorable, it does provide an excellent experience for both newcomers to these types of games and seasoned veterans.
