Well it's been a ride for Gust's Blue Reflection, I feel like I cycled through all the opinions you can have about a game with this one! It went from just wanting to give it a cursory glance to have some additional context to play it's sequel Second Light who's demo on Switch I rreeaalllyyyy enjoyed, to being more curious about where the game was going with it's disability plot line, to being grossed out by the leery, noncey camera, to being BORED out of my skull as the game refused to even begin several hours in, to stopping my playthrough... To going "wait a minute now... Maybe it was cooking?" To giving it another shot and then when all the mechanics and systems were introduced together we finally arrive here: I did really enjoy this one.
The problem was funnily enough, following JRPG wisdom too much to the letter. Like previous Atelier games, the mechanics and systems of the game unravel all the way until the final hour, and let me tell you when all cards are on the table? Blue Reflection SHINES, presenting a resource management system where a shared pool of ether and each persons place in the turn order timeline, become two resources you're challenged to synchronise for maximum efficiency. There are so many ways in which your party can delay the turns of opponents that it becomes just as valuable as a use of your turn then damage. Even bosses are designed around this system, with bosses having multiple parts on top of their core, in which if the parts lose health they lower the defence of the core until their next turn where they recover, which could even be the very next turn at times if not scheduled right. This seems like a needlessly harsh window and would absolutely be sucky design in the context of any other combat system, but the heartbreak of these out of sync plays and the absolute delight of everything coming together just right is the entire system, and Blue Reflection giving the player so much control of shifting turn order of everyone on the field makes it exhilarating!
But my god, it takes SO LONG to get there. For a lot of the game you just do not have any access to these tools, fights just kind of suck and feel like you're trying to wing it before the game graces you access to all it's systems. Look I understand and I know it's technically good design to not overwhelm the player, but it does end up feeling like you're playing half the game for over half the game. Blue Reflection isn't really long enough or packed with enough playtime to justify this slow start. It's just bad, until the game decides it's not. There's some plus side to this conservative approach tho, there are mechanics such as summons and being able to spend ether in some ways in between turns that is reserved exclusively for bosses. This feels like balancing as being given this level of control for all random encounters would absolutely trivialise them. Understandable! I wish more RPGs would take the approach of Being Able To Do More Things during big fights, but doing this globaly with the combat system at the start of the game, honestly just left me feeling more confused about what the the entire point of the combat system was. Why can't I use items? During late game Blue Reflection it's incredibly obvious why item use isn't conventional, but early game it just feels like the game is feature missing for the sake of being weird.
All of this just to say: It's slow lol but if you keep at it: The systems are really fun!
Another fun quirk is how it handles it's JAV elements. I don't need to tell you how popular "JRPG with Dating Sim elements" is as a concept, but typically the RPG elements are prioritised. While that's still clearly the case here, I've never seen a game that centres the JAV elements as much as this one does. Random encounters for example don't net you any EXP! Just crafting materials for a system you can largely ignore, no no no you gain EXP by talking to many lebeanans that join your party. While there are only 3 party members for combat, there are 12 members for just talking to! Whenever you do, you gain EXP and affinity with the character, and at set milestones you gain Fragments which can be equipped to your skills during combat to improve them. It's no exaggeration to say you fall into the same kind of loop of a JAV really quickly and it's the main way you progress the plot forward and power your characters. That's cool cos with your Personas and the like you get the impression that the JAV elements are kept at a distance somewhat, they can flavour but not intrude on a typical JRPG. Here it feels like the JAV elements guide the game somewhat and Blue Reflection is way more willing to make itself less of a JRPG to let these elements lift it.
Also god the noncery lmao the annoying thing is, it's actually not THAT bad in a game with a normal camera, but the camera it's almost a character in it's own right, doing everything it can to make every moment it possibly can to be creepy. And it can show up out of nowhere, least if a scene looks like it's going to the dressing room I can start mashing that A button, but you can never predict the camera lurching. Genuinely bogs things down I wish it wern't hheerreee
Lastly I'm surprised we're here! At the JRPG collage with this one. It's no surprise that Gust could venture into other genres of RPG of course, having the Ar Tonelico trilogy under their belt, as well as Monster Catcher series Night Of The Azure who's 2nd entry released the same year in fact. But it really felt like there would be more Atelier DNA in this one, what with the game sharing aesthetic cues, crafting mechanics and they even outright share animations with each other (Yuzu and Ryza doing the multi orb shot attack thing with their staffs was the big one I noticed). But in reality the craft mechanics are shallow and can be largely ignored, in fact as stated this game's progression resembles more a JAV then a Shop Game. So as always when we're at The Genre Impasse, you have consider who would be satisfied the most when going into a game thinking "I want to play a ____" and between me and Soffie, the Shop Game enthusiast and Sleet, the Adventure Game enthusiast, well I would have the kindest things to say about this one. So here we are!