I’ve always had a real love for RPGs, so Blue Reflection Quartet immediately caught my attention, despite me having very little familiarity with the anime series itself. What I had seen of the anime certainly looked interesting, though, and that was more than enough to make me curious about stepping into its world for myself. Developed by Gust and published by Koei Tecmo Games, Blue Reflection Quartet seemed like the perfect opportunity to experience the series properly and discover what all the fuss was about. With four games bundled together in one collection, I went in genuinely excited to see whether this could become another RPG series for me to fall in love with.
ℹ️ Reviewed on Playstation 5 | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.
| Developer | Gust |
| Publisher | Koei Tecmo Games |
Things I liked!
- The Music | The music in all four games is great. There is a mixture to enjoy, and also ways to customise the music experience as you play. Firstly, music varies across each of the common areas that house the enemies that you will eliminate. Each area looks vastly different from one another, and very dreamlike compared to the normal world. Each track here feels ethereal in nature, and has a mysterious tone to it that helps sell the environment.
During normal play outside of the Common, you can pull out your cellphone and change the backing music, which carries over to the exploration throughout the school area. It’s a neat little feature that isn’t really found in games. The real star of the show though, is the boss battle music. These tracks are extremely fun to listen to. They have an addictive, high-temp beat that really made each boss fight memorable.
- Battle System | Blue Reflection doesn’t have your typical battle system found in other RPGs. Blue Reflection, while turn-based, also offers a knockback system that I found myself getting into in almost every battle that was put my way. At the top of the screen is a bar, and all the characters, including the enemy ones are tracked to show who goes next. Certain moves have a knockback effect, and if successful will push the enemies back in the queue, meaning it takes longer for them to get a hit in.
Apart from this, the rest of the battle system is largely the same for an RPG. You can attack, cast magic, use items, and even escape from battle. They have special moves which allows you to band the girls together and create an all-out powerful move, along with additional supporting characters based on how many friends you’ve made at school. These attacks deal extreme damage, and are worth holding out for. - Anime Graphics | Graphically, Blue Reflection Quartet is a great-looking package. It is also quite performative with every game in the collection running well. All games are presented in 4K and run at a smooth 60fps, which is great even for base PlayStation 5 consoles. Characters are well-modelled, and environments feel alive with characters to interact with, and enemies roaming around in the Common area. Not only that, but special effects for attacks look fantastic, with a generous use of eye-popping colours, and detailed animations.
- Four Games to choose from | Blue Reflection Quartet is a good collection if you are into the series. The four games on offer are: Blue Reflection, Blue Reflection Ray, Blue Reflection Sun, and Blue Reflection Second Light. Each story is told in chronological order, and the main menu even explains which order to play them in so you can easily follow the story. As someone who is new to the series, I really appreciated the heads up. Ray is the only game in the collection which is a visual-novel-style game, but it does a great job of bridging the story between Blue Reflection and Sun.
Each game has its own style, with Sun being more of a gacha-style game, and Second Light being a more traditional combat and exploration type game. - Map Implementation | It is rare for me to give props to the in-game map system used across the three playable games, but I have to say it is one of the best maps I have ever used. First introduced in Blue Reflection, simply tapping L1 gives you the option to browse through areas of the school. Since the school is quite large, it takes a lot of time to walk through it normally. But by far the best part is being able to select where in the school you wish to fast travel to. The map even highlights if there is something to do in that area. Selecting that part of the map will instantly transport you there, where you can spend more time interacting with the world, instead of aimlessly running down corridors!
Mixed & disliked!
- Extreme Repetitiveness | I am not a fan of how the game pads itself out. Before bosses can be fought, and in many instances, even before the game can progress, you must meet a set of specific requirements. Usually these involve having a certain amount of friend points, and be a certain level. To level up you must speak to specific students who are being traumatised by enemies inside the common. An area outside of the school that enemies are found in, and where the girls can freely use their powers. From here, you fight the enemies until you meet the quota killed before being allowed to return to the school and claim your XP from the student you helped.
Some of the objectives in each area will vary, including having to collect certain items, but these missions won’t reward you with XP. So fighting enemies, and collecting items is a must. This is the extent of what you need to do every time: Travel, kill, collect, repeat. Nothing else. This is done hundreds of times throughout the games. Not only this, but you are also tasked with making friends by inviting them to hang out after school. These conversations are rather boring, and don’t add anything to the overall story. They are more fleeting side stories that hold no real value. Once you meet the requirements, you must report this to your friends, who will then kindly thank you and tell you that tomorrow it needs to be done all over again. The sheer mental drain of these objectives made playing extremely boring at times.
- Extremely Slow Burn Story | Story wise, Blue Reflection isn’t going to win any awards. It is a simple story told across four games about a series of girls who discover they have powers and become “Reflectors”. Hinako fights apocalyptic monsters to heal deep emotional trauma from hurting her leg as a ballet dancer, while Hiori and Ruka navigate a fierce conflict of beliefs. The other games have an event called “Ashfall” that creates mutants that the girls fight with self-destructive powers, while helping amnesiac students unite in a floating academy to help them remember.
The latter games are genuinely better story wise, but Blue Reflection was some of the most mind-numbing writing I have ever had to sit through. I genuinely didn’t care, and the whole monster fighting being an allegory for your trauma seemed desperate as a whole. Even though it has been done to death, I would have preferred some dark-entity storyline, where an unknown force tries to take over the school. It’s cheesy, but classic cheesy. - Fragment System is Extra Padding | During your playthrough, you will unlock the ability to add fragments to your character. These fragments can boost your attacks, recovery, and defence during battle. While they do add some buffs, they largely didn’t help me since most of the character progression and bigger stat gains are tied to character growth when levelling up. I actually forgot all about it at one point and went through almost the entire last half of the game without upgrading, or adding fragments at all.
Getting fragments is also extra work. Fragments are found inside the Common when you are battling enemies. They are little shining spheres that must be collected. Some of these fragments require multiples in order to be assigned, too. The fragment gathering is sometimes attached to mandatory side quests that I mentioned above, where you must help students in need. It feels like a very extreme way of making sure you engage with that mechanic of the game.
- How long did I play the review before publishing? 80 hours
- How long to beat the story? 100 hours +
- How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 39/48
- How long to get 100%? | 100 hours +
- You’ll love this game if you like these | Final Fantasy, Atelier Ryza, Echo of Soul
Score: 50/100
Blue Reflection Quartet is a frustratingly uneven collection, with its stronger moments dragged down by two games that suffer from repetitive gameplay and disappointing writing. While there’s still plenty here for fans of the series to appreciate, half of the package simply doesn’t maintain the same level of quality or engagement. As a result, it’s a collection that feels firmly split down the middle.
Gaming is in my blood. Be it handheld games, Xbox, PC, Switch or Playstation, I am all over it.
I make my own games as part of my profession and love playing co op games with friends in my spare time. Avid dog lover and camper van enthusiast.
